College sports are big business, so recruiting student athletes is big business. The NCAA limits the times coaches and recruiters can call or visit athletes, but text messages are all fair game. For now. The Chronicle of Higher Education explained in an October 2006 story: Before Chandler Parsons committed to play basketball for the University […] » about 300 words
Even Bob Borchers, Apple’s senior director of iPod worldwide product marketing, calls most iPod car setups an “inelegant mess of cassette adaptors and wires.” Indeed, while Apple aparently doesn’t want to get into the car audio business, they do want to improve the in-car iPod experience: What Apple really wants you to buy is a […] » about 700 words
Ironic secret: I don’t really like most wikis, though that’s probably putting it too strongly. Ironic because I love both Wikipedia (and, especially, collabularies), but I grit my teeth pretty much every time I hear somebody suggest we need another wiki. Putting it tersely: if wikis are so great, why do we need more than […] » about 500 words
Vonage has been saying Verizon’s patent claims are overly broad for some time, but now people have dug up some prior art. One of the patents Verizon is complaining about is #6,104,711, what they call an “enhanced internet domain name server.” In short, it’s all about linking phone numbers to IP numbers, and Jeff Pulver […] » about 300 words
Vonage will be in court again tomorrow defending itself against Verizon’s claims of patent infringement. The innovative VoIP company had lost the trial and was ordered to pay $58 Million in damages in early March, when a jury found them to have violated thee of seven related patents held by Verizon. Vonage appealed of course, […] » about 300 words
Mark Ontkush at ecoIron did some math starting with the Department of Energy data that showed CRT monitors consume less power displaying dark colors than light and determined that redesigning Google’s site in black would save 750 megawatt-hours per year (assuming that 25% of computer users still haven’t upgraded to LCDs and are using power-hungry […] » about 200 words
My nephew checked his email while he was here this morning and this was the first thing in his inbox. Maybe it’s because he’s 17 and my humor is at about the same level, but both of us were cracking up over it.
Miserable attempt at recovering my dignity with serious criticism: Will Farrell and landlord prove there is no meaning (or humor) without context. Would it be as funny without Will Farrell (with full afro!)? Or if the landlord wasn’t an innocent looking young girl?
Amid all the “ZOMG Paris Hilton is pregnant!” rumors, it’s worth remembering that the girl famous for doing nothing (except repeatedly having her racy photos and video leaked) is retiring in two months. Yep, on June 20th 2007, Paris is give up on public life. At least that’s what she said in Newsweek: She’s certainly […] » about 200 words
If the DeLorean looks at all like a Lotus Esprit, it should. Both of them were designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, and much of the engineering work was done by Lotus founder Colin—to add speed, add lightness—Chapman. Amusingly, John De Lorean also owned a company that manufactured snowcats under the DMC name. Owners and wannabes can […] » about 400 words
In yet another lesson about how a bad joke in front of one audience can trouble a larger public, MoveOn wants McCain to know bombing Iran is no laughing matter.
Music and bombing, it could be said, really only go well together when joined in criticism.
I made a mistake in changing my WordPress permalinks, but by the time I’d discovered it my blog had already been indexed. Fixing the permalinks meant breaking those indexed URLs, leading to a bad user experience, but leaving them as is wasn’t really an option. Last night, after getting 404’d while using Google to search […] » about 400 words
I don’t know why I love this quote from a post in panlibus:
serve some needs of some parts of the population, some of the time
…though my love for the quote may have something to do with my embrace of what OpenSearch creator DeWitt Clinton describes as the “80% case,” the solution that would work for the great majority of applications most of the time.
It’s one of those things that’s easy to see in retrospect, but difficult to aim for: building a tool that is specific enough to be useful, but not too specific. A hammer is a wonderfully versatile tool, but a ball-peen hammer is really only useful for metal work.
My interest in all this is in the ecology of formats, standards, and protocols and in what makes some things work while others just sputter about.
On demand internet TV has been just around the corner since the dawn of the popular internet, but like flying cars, it’s still not here. The problem is how TV streams clog the internet’s tubes. Bandwidth may be cheap, but there’s still never enough of it. Well, that’s true if your metaphor for the internet […] » about 300 words
It’s been more than a year since I first demonstrated Scriblio (was WPopac) at ALA Midwinter in San Antonio. More than a year since NCSU debuted their Endeca-based OPAC. And by now most every major library vendor has announced a product that promises to finally deliver some real improvements to our systems. My over-simplified list […] » about 800 words
Speaking Thursday at the Boston Library Consortium‘s annual meeting in the beautiful Boston Public Library, my focus was on the status of our library systems and the importance of remixability. My blog post on remixability probably covers the material best, but I define it as: Remixability is the quality of a system or data set […] » about 200 words
Contentsbsuite FeaturesFixed/Changed/AddedInstallationUpgradingCommandsClear bsuite_speedcacheRebuild bsuite tag indexOptionsMinimum userlevel to view bsuite reportsOutput default CSSDefault pulse graph styleSuggest related entries in postTag input formatHighlight search words and offer search helpFilter incoming search terms using comment moderation and blacklist wordsIgnore hits from registered users at or above userlevelIgnore hits from these IP numbersTag SupportUsing bsuite FunctionsKnown BugsMoney GrubbingWork […] » about 800 words
A recent comment here reminded me to check in on our options for flying cars, now at least seven years overdue. It turns out that Moller International, the folks developing the M400 Skycar aerodyne, are accepting deposits: As a result of the recent successful hovering flights of the M400 Skycar, Moller International is accepting deposits […] » about 400 words
I don’t know what’s funnier, that Amazon sells skulls (just $132, get one now!), or that they’re classified as “office products.” Extra: more office weirdness in this video. Australopithecus Afarensis Cranium, Cranium, Australopithecus Afarensis, Australopithecus, Afarensis, office products, skull, skulls » about 100 words
Now that I’ve moved I’ve finally set up my Fonera. I had hoped to offer a story about the process, but it was so simple I can’t really say much more than “I plugged it in, I registered it, it worked.” The Fonera is a tiny little router/WiFi access point that looks worlds better than […] » about 500 words
O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference isn’t until the end of May, but Google just released two sweet new map-related features: GeoRSS support and MyMaps. The GeoRSS support means that any application that can output it’s geocoding — as simple as <georss:point>45.256 -71.92</georss:point> — can now be linked to a live map with no more effort than […] » about 300 words
My own feelings about Twitter have gone back and forth across indecision street for a while, and despite a moment of excitement it’s still not part of my life-kit. So I was amused to see Blyberg pointing out Kathy Sierra’s poo-poo-ing of Twitter. Ironically, services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling […] » about 200 words
It should be no surprise that journalists are talking about citizen journalism, but what of the disintermediation of other industries? Man-on-the-street Mark Georgiev told Marketplace: I didn’t want a certificate, I didn’t want any kind of accreditation, I really just wanted the knowledge. And I also wanted to work at my own pace. Georgiev, the […] » about 300 words
Matt tells us the office pranks he masterminded a couple weeks ago got reported in Saturday’s Daily Mirror (scan above): JOKER Matt Batchelder had the last laugh after he was left out of an office conference trip. Alone at his desk for a week, the snubbed computer geek dreamed up a series of pranks to […] » about 200 words
[Update: Keith pointed out that my small disclaimer at the end isn’t clear enough. This post is copied, stolen, cut and pasted in its entirety from Keith’s blog, ISTP Dad. I was glad to learn of the story, and this was meant to be ironic and funny.]
An editorial in the Washington Post is explicit about a topic close to my heart: students think plagiarism is fine, and teachers (high school? college?) realize that there’s not much point in assigning papers if they expect 100% original work.
…the educational system needs to acknowledge what the paper is today: more of a work product that tests very particular skills — the ability to synthesize and properly cite the work of others — and not students’ knowledge, originality and overall ability.
The comments on this editorial are worth a read as well. Not everybody agrees with the sentiment.
(Cut and pasted verbatim from ISTP Dad.)
It’s sort of late by now, and others have been offering their congratulations to me for a while (thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you), but I only just got the paper copy myself and this morning had a chance to browse the list.
Mover & Shaker alumnus John Blyberg asked me if I preferred moving or shaking better, but now that I’ve seen the names and read the profiles, I can say I’m just proud to be among such a distinguished group.
Congratulations all, and thank you to all who nominated me. I am honored.