Summary of this week:

Apple introduces the iPhone 4

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday June 7, 2010

Apple introduces the iPhone 4. Maybe the best news is that the price of the earlier iPhones drops. Some notes here.

This seems a bit odd to me, but Apple may soon show a track pad peripheral. You replace the mouse on desktop Apple computer with this thing. It provides multi-touch control. What interests me is the possibility of handwriting recognition. I want that on the iPad.

The Internet of things is fast approaching. IBM launches new software to help connect sensors to the Internet. Security?

This isn't practical, but it sure is neat. This guy put an iPod Nano inside an 8-track cartridge. You put the modified cartridge into an 8-track player and it plays the Nano's music. If you don't remember 8-track audio, this won't interest you.

A Romanian scientist claims to be able to store one million GigaBytes on a CD-sized optical disk. That is one PetaByte. Who cares? How about Google, the Library of Congress, movie studios, oil companies, and so on.

Wow! These two workspaces, separated by an HDTV, will fit some marriages, but not all marriages.

The Dell Streak. A little tablet, computer, phone, something-or-other device.

Is the iPad just a new TV? It is a great device for watching videos in your hand.

Connect 12 video monitors to this card. Now all I have to do is go buy another 11 video monitors.

This story is bizzare. A 22-year-old Army analyst was giving classified information to Wikileaks. He claims to have given away 260,000 classified Department of State messages. How did he have access to that information? How is it that no one noticed any of this?

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Tuesday June 8, 2010

Crazy day

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Wednesday June 9, 2010

Another crazy day in a blessed life

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Thursday June 10, 2010

After a couple days of crazy work hours and driving the beltway - I think I worked 26 hours in two days - I am back to some what of a normal schedule.

Here is a photo of a rock - no, it is a little moon of Saturn. It seems that there is much activity about Saturn. Our planet is quite stable in comparison. We are blessed.

The State of California has a fiscal mess born of Union contracts. One casualty is the library system of the state's universities.

I like this one - a portable device to help infants breathe. It is aimed at developing countries.

This is sort of a new but old device - a film camera that rotates and makes panoramic photos.

Panasonic makes the Toughbook portable computers. Those things are tough, and that fills a need for a few customers. So, Panasonic is making these things a little lighter. Field engineers shout a hurray!

Very cool. Use an old Macintosh as a stand for an iPad.

Here is another monitor that is fed data and power via a USB. This one is from 3M.

Yet another Android-powered tablet comes along. I hope some of these will make it to the marketplace.

And yet another tablet computer - this one opens like a book. I like that it keeps the open book concept - familiar and comfortable. I hate that it keeps the open book concept - surely there is a better idea out there.

Motorola is doing very well in the marketplace with Android phones.

I like this idea - a light bulb with rechargeable batteries in it. The "bulb" really uses LEDs, so there is some extra space in there for the batteries. Still, this is like the big lights in office buildinds that have batteries so that when the power goes off people can still find their way to safety.

Maybe this one will be practical one day - transluscent windows that are also solar panels.

Bill Gates and others want energy research tripled. Drop the "green" tag and get to work. Other less-famous people have been clamoring for this for years.

Put next to one another, these stories are...uh, fascinating and frightening:
There are a lot of iPad users in the White House
There was a big iPad security leak
I wish the folks at the White House pay attention to security and all, but I doubt it.

Another nice workspace from LifeHacker. This one features a folding table.

One of the stimulus bills (I lose track of them as there are so many) promised $$$ to doctors and hospitals for new computers. Well, the regulations are so strict that few if any such places can get the money and the computers. Oh well.

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Friday June 11, 2010

Are high-tech tools in the classroom worth the money? A good teach can captivate a room of interested kids using only a bag of rocks. Bad teachers haven't yet mastered a piece of chalk. Perhaps we spend money in the wrong places.

Some fascinating experiments in robots docking together (self-assembling), driving, and then flying.

This doesn't sound exciting, but could be a major breakthrough in computing for the next 20 years. A new method of cryptogrphy allows inserting information in to a database without unencrypting either the new information of the database.

The U.S. government has 400 MILLION pages of documents that were classified more than 25 years ago. By law, we have to read them and unclassify them. Someone has a job for life.

Microsoft XP still has security problems. Microsoft has problems with the way other people announce the security problems. Especially when the announcer works for Google.

Boy, does NASA ever have problems caused by Congress and the current Administration.

Moving to the computing cloud? Will there one day be a massive data spill from the cloud?

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Saturday June 12, 2010

Broadband access remains relatively expensive in the U.S.

Oooops, a study shows that using biomass for fuel pollutes more than burning coal. Well, you see, coal was once biomass a long time ago, and then it was compressed over a long period of time. Maybe that is a good thing to use after all.

The Guardian does a mashup of Twitter traffic during World Cup games. Oh, by the way, the games today ended in low-scoring ties. Boring. Come one coaches, turn the players loose and let them attack. Stop sitting back and playing for ties.

North Korea a good place to outsource? I am not sure about that one. Would you trust your data with those guys?

This is a bit beyond clever and goes to, well I don't know what this goes to, but anyways a guy gave "legs" to his iPhone and iPad and they walk.

Once more Microsoft declares that it will no longer put Windows XP on new computers.

A Salem, MA high school is forcing all students to buy Apple portable computers. That is a bit odd for a high school.

A neat concept for a tablet computer.

Access, content, and access to content. These are different things. In the past, the content and the access to content were mixed. Now they are separate. What do you pay for?

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Sunday June 13, 2010

Writers, do you hate what you have written? I wouldn't use the word "hate," but there is a point where I don't like what I've written. That dislike makes rewriting easier.

Some of the benefits of blogging and writing - I realize how blessed I am.

I like this post - writing short is much more work than writing long.

If you want to write, learn to write sentences. In my "career" in government, the vast majority of senior level government employees could not write a sentence. Procedure: (1) decide what you want to say to the reader (2) write it. The same basic procedure goes for paragraphs, pages, chapters, books, and the like.

Augmented reality and its possibilities in the military. There are also fantastic possibilities in medicine (a surgeon aided by computer vision), care for the elderly (hard to see objects highlighted by computer vision, even sports (a batter in baseball is aid by computer vision seeing what pitch is coming).

Can typing faster help you write more and earn more money? Yes it can. Will it? Maybe, but maybe not. Sorry folks, no secret here.

This one may prove to be practical - a solar-powered light bulb. It only costs $15 in quantity of one, $10 in quantity ten.

One minimalist moves from 50 back to 75 things. There is some clarification in what to count in the things. Still, there are good messages here.

I love this - an interactive schedule for the World Cup tournament.

And a nice way to show a bad situation - the debt of European governments.

If you like Wal-Mart or dislike Wal-Mart, here is an excellent video on the opening of every one.

An intelliegent traffic system is being developed in Europe. This would work in America as well if...the system provides information but doesn't report back where an individual is, is secure (ha).

Yet another "artificial intelligence" software package that helps you make money in the stock market. Such has been around for years. There is software out there that works. The people who have it, however, are not telling others. They are using it themselves.

I have tried MS Office online. I wasn't impressed. Maybe I don't know how to use it correctly. I could not print and could not upload and download files.

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