Summary of this week:

The FCC will run a nationwide alert on Wednesday afternoon (yawn)
Barnes and Noble introduces their Nook Tablet tablet
Panasonic introduces ruggedized tablets ToughPad
Adobe lays off 750 people
Polaroid tries again with a digital camera with built-in printer
Citizens are finding Federal GPS trackers hidden in their vehicles

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

Monday November 7, 2011

Taking a look at liquid cooling systems for today's hotter processors.

This seem just plain goofy to me, but that's me. The FCC has been running commercials about a nationwide Emergency Alert System test that will occur Wednesday at 2pm EST. They don't want to cause a nationwide panic. I think they would be more concerned about a nationwide yawn.

This story raises the question, who would win a war, computer hackers or people who actually kill other people?

More evidence that the floods in Thailand are hurting the PC market - not enough disk drives available.

Ericsson predicts more cell phones, more mobile broadband, more data traffic and so on. If anything, they are underestimating growth.

LG has a new thin portable computer on sale in Korea.

Dish Network claims it can bring nationwide LTE service from a satellite.

A look at the result of stupidity at all levels in government. The bills are coming due and the people who sat in the seats of government are no where to be found. They screwed the system and ran away untouched. Justice?

Fujitsu has a new 16-core processor from which they build supercomputers.

Oklahoma had the biggest earthquake ever recorded there on Sunday morning.

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Tuesday November 8, 2011

Barnes and Noble introduced their tablet computer - the Nook Tablet (not much originality there). There are many reports about it. Here is one. Here is another.

This is crazy, but so is U.S. immigration policy. These guys want to build a floating platform that will sit 12 miles off the California coast (international waters, doesn't need Visas). Startup companies will work there. I like it.

I like this one, really using the cloud for computing. A programmer lived with just an iPad. He went online to do all his work in the cloud. I have gone to using Google Docs more and more to write. I suppose that is cloud word processing or something.

The Microsoft Kinect is one year old. People have done som uch with it that it seems much older.

Kodak continues to sell intellectual property and some divisions in order to stay afloat.

Honda continues to improve its Asimo robot.

Panasonic shows a couple of "Tough Tablets" ruggedized Android tablets for military and other outdoor, harsh uses.

A security flaw has been found in iOS.

Oooops, security holes in the computer systems that control the utilities at Federal prisons. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

We may have found something to replace the dreaded chemotherapy.

Now we have a quad-core processor in a cell phone - the HTC Edge. When will we have multi-core processors in toasters? I may have already missed that announcement.

Some hard disk drive production has resumed in Thailand.

This is a catastrophe, one that was predictable and predicted. 10% of China's farmland is polluted with heavy metals.

From Seth Godin, plans are great, but missions are better.

Regardless of technical tools, most kids can't search because they haven't learned the critical thinking skills. It is called problem solving.

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Wednesday November 9, 2011

Here is the, get ready for a really long five-word product name, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime. It uses a quad-core processor.

Here is Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad-core processor (what is inside the above ASUS blah blah blah tablet). Its performance is five times the Tegra 2.

The iCloud could be the biggest service since iTunes?

Some clever stuff from Starbucks and iPhone and Android. What is buried in here is that the Starbucks mobile payment app has been used 20 million times since January 2011.

A sleep sensor that you don't have to wear. Interesting for those of us who don't sleep well.

The Russian Internet content monitoring system has been built and will go active in December.

And Sri Lanka joins the group of nations that censor the Internet for its subjects.

Here is some evidence that the U.S. citizens are sick of bland, lots-of-words-without-saying-anything comments from politicians.

Adobe lays off 750 employees.

Young Americans are not paying for television. Cable and dish and such use is declining rapidly among the 20-somethings.

People once thought that you made your great contribution to the world before 30. The thinking has changed. Someone had the nerve to do an actual study with actual numbers.

Polaroid is trying again. They have a digital camera with a photo printer built in. It is unfortunate that the quality of the print and the camera is low. Will convenience rule over quality?

Firefox 8 is out. I am using it right now.

Russian and Chinese satellites are going to the moons of Mars. NASA? I guess they are busy planning their latest lobbying campaign for Congress or something important like that.

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Thursday November 10, 2011

A look at the ASUS ZenBook - this is the ASUS Ultrabook model. Looks nice.

Apple is moving up the Greenpeace rankings for "green" companies. I wouldn't care much for this, but earlier this week there was note of how 10% of China's farmland is now dead with heavy metals. Less toxic chemicals in consumer electronics leads to less toxic chemicals in Chinese farmland leads to less chance that China will start invading countries to get farmland to feed its people.

I hate to see this - people are finding GPS trackers hidden in their cars where they don't belong. Then they see Federal agents sneaking around parking lots full of cars. When citizens distrust the people we hire as public employees the nation collapses.

It isn't out yet, but Amazon really believes the Kindle Fire will be a big seller. They have increased production orders to five million units.

NASA continues to go around in circles. They will test fly the Orion crew capsule without anyone on it in three years. This is some kind of good news?

Smart phones (iPhone and Android) now have the majority of U.S. mobile game business. What's next?

These prototype electric vehicles went 60 miles on about a dollar's worth of electricity. They aren't practical, but they are advancing the science.

The SD Association is working towards greater security which will enable more financial transactions.

Fedora 16 is out.

And Oracle releases Solaris version 11.

George Will on the irresistable money that comes from college football.

The urban beehive is making a comeback. I didn't realize that it had gone away.

This is the replay of how an essay was written. The software will playback the editing sequence. This could be a good educational tool for writers.

Microsoft is teaming with the Federal government. One part of the program is the government will give taxpayers' money to families with at least one child on free lunch so they can have subsizied broadband. Another part of the program will be to sell the same families $150 computers (also with taxpayers' money). Microsoft will build a new computer that will only cost $250. We shall see how this yet-another entitlement program works.

Want to boost your IT job skills? One word - Hadoop.

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Friday November 11, 2011

Today is Veteran's Day in the U.S. It started as Armistice Day as a celebration the end of the great war.

The Guandong Province of China is about to have a minimum wage raise. This area is know as "the world's factory." Look for price increases in just about everything.

NVIDIA has a pretty good financial quarter.

A team will attempt to build a Babbage Analytical Engine.

Here is a look at Intel's "Haswell" chips. They are putting more and more powerful GPUs on the CPU chip.

A German governemnt group is about to sue Facebook over its use of facial recognition software. In Germany, you must inform users about how you are going to use their data. This means that if you are going to try to recognize faces on their Facebook account, you have to inform them. Facebook isn't doing this. Hence,...

Linux Mint is now the second most popular Linux distribution. A couple of months ago, I ran an experiment of trying Linux Mint from a USB stick.

The perspiration in fingerprints can show drugs in your body.

The National Emergency Alert System test on Wednesday of this week failed. Oh well, it was sort of on the radio station that I was monitoring. It was garbled and cut in and out and really was sort of goofy. The linked article has more details on the failures. I guess I don't understand how hard it is.

The Motorola Droid RAZR has already been root hacked.

Colt is making a few more Gatling guns. I grin.

A web site that will turn your LinkedIn information into a visual resume.

The Location Independent blog is up and running again after a silent year.

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Saturday November 12, 2011

A look at Toshiba's Ultrabook machine.

Several companies band together to define a 3D glasses standard. I guess we should have one. I am not a fan of the 3D thing.

Apple is having a product recall - the five-year-old iPod Nana (1st generation).

The Chevy Volt had a fire, so now the Federal government is investigating the case. Our Saviour Has Arrived (OSHA).

A job fair in San Jose trying to woo Indian tech workers back to jobs in India.

It seems that Google will launch a music service next week.

I don't know what this has to do with replacing sportscasters (a good thing in my opinion), but this is impressive work in tracking moving objects in video.

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Sunday November 13, 2011

Three writing examples from Louis L'Amour. He was pretty good, that L'Amour fellow.

The "imaginary friend" and how they relate to the ideas of personas. Business has been using personas for years. They help understand the customer.

Some work habits that work better for some writers. Try them. If they work for you, continue them. If not, forget them.

A lesson for blogs that applies to most areas of the digital publishing world - write more, shorter pieces.

Phrases to remove from your writing - unless they are the perfect ones for the case at hand.

Here is a nice home workspace. The best part is what you do not see. The computers are in the other room on the other side of the wall.

Some notes on publishing eBooks. I have placed some 60 short stories on Smashwords.com. See here and here for my experiences.

A look at William Zinsser's classic "On Writing Well."

Yet another list of places to look for Freelance Writing jobs.

I love this qoute: “It ain’t so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich.” - Josh Billings.

Some financial matters to consider before quiting your day job to be a freelance writer.

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