Summary of this week:

NVIDIA worst company to work with - Linus Torvalds
Microsoft shows its own tabelet - the Surface
Research In Motion lays off 6,000 people
Europe's ITC rejects ACTA

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

Monday June 18, 2012

A look at the study of the humanities in college and how digital technology plays a part.

Google is receiving more and more requests from governments to take down content on its social media sites.

Microsoft is to hold an announcement event today. The strong rumors are about a tablet in cooperation with Barnes and Noble.

According to Linus Torvalds, NVIDIA was "single worst company we've ever dealt with."

HP teams with RED Cameras to build a super video editing computer.

Despite media claims to the contrary, kids today have the same attention span as always. The more things change, the more people stay the same. We seem to hate that as if we can change mankind with a few cool gadgets and more chemicals.

I want one of these: a Post-It Pad table.

Great video from Coca-Cola.

Another attempt to convert the physical motion of walking to electricity. There are many such applications available. I hope some of these efforts come to fruition.

Mozilla is make a browser for the iPhone.

Are these digital or cyber vigilantes? Companies that have been hacked are attacking back.

Honda continues to experiment with personal mobility devices - here is the new uni-cub.

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Tuesday June 19, 2012

Looking at the future of work and the future of the office. The one thing that kills much of this is the tendency of organizations to move their office building. Employees settle in a place near work, and ten years later the office moves 30 miles.

Let's move up to some real computing power: the Intel Xeon Phi 50-core circuit card.

Microsoft indeed will sells its own tablet and call it the Surface. There are many stories about this today. Here is one. No available date announced; no price announced. If Microsoft wants to make a dent in the market, they need to sell these for about $200. This post shows the covers that are keyboards. Microsoft has some nice ideas here, but they have to cut the price.

Thoughts on the great German energy experiment. Can they power an industrial nation on solar cells? If anyone can, the Germans can. If they succeed, I don't expect the experiment to scale to other countries.

Police are starting to video themselves all the time. My hope is that a public servant will behave better than average knowing that everything they do is being recorded.

Oracle had a big financial quarter.

I guess Facebook, with its bad IPO, isn't dead. The stock is up 20% in two weeks.

Here we go, the UN is trying to grab the Internet.

Ray-Ban shows a pair of folding aviator style sunglasses. I have work Ray-Ban glasses since, lets see, I guess since 1975. Wow. That is a long time.

A look at one of those companies with an unknown name that tracks all your personal business transactions. These companies are not new (remember those junk mailings you used to get based on your magazine subscriptions?).

An in-depth look at the recently upgraded MacBook Air.

This may be worth a look: bright.com a new job searching site that uses more smarts to make better matches.

This must be about a government project: how to spend $6Billion on a radio and fail. Your tax dollars at waste.

I am not sure what this all means, but Apple is set to have the highest net income of any company in the history of the world.

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Wednesday June 20, 2012

This post gives concrete examples of why the government-run "public" schools are failures. Expertise does not qualify a person to be a teacher. You have to have the correct union endorsements. I have a PhD in engineering and I am not qualified to teach math at any level in government-run schools. Albert Einstein, remember him, he know something about physics, was not qualified to teach science at any level in government-run schools. See the post for more examples.

Hands on with the Microsoft Surface. The impression is that this is a good product. Let's see the price.

Microsoft's major customers - those companies that make PCs - aren't happy that Microsoft is now making a PC.

Everyone loves Google and Apple maps - up until now. A U.S. Senator, who else, wants to limit these new maps.

Google's Schmidt argues that the digital age is leaving much of the world behind. Yes, it is.

Research in Motion is laying off 6,000 people. This is why I hate stupid management mistakes - people suffer because of them.

These charts show how the number of government employees (Federal, state, and local) has declined in the past couple of years. It also shows how the number grew up to those record levels. Government work is inefficient. That is due to poor managing. Again, this is why I hate stupid management mistakes - people suffer because of them.

Instead of using expensive air conditioning, this IBM supercomputer is cooled by water. The resultant hot water heats homes. Of course this works. Why haven't we been doing this simple heat exchange all along? Really, I don't understand.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. Kodak claims that Apple is interfering with its sale of patents.

Guess what? Food production requires a lot of water. This startling (not) bit of information is being demonstrated in Europe as they try to convince people of the evils of their eating. Or something like that.

The belief in hell (eternal punishment) drives behavior more than the belief in heaven. I guess this shows something about the human condition or how we teach about heaven and hell or something like that.

HP will start building servers using low-power Intel Atom processors. The results will be servers that pull less electrical power.

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Thursday June 21, 2012

The International Trade Committee of the European Parliament has rejected ACTA.

Aviary, a photo editor app, is now on the iPhone - free.

Microsoft will update the Windows phone today. Here are some details. The amount of hardware and power we are putting in telephones that we carry in our pockets is amazing.

Qualcomm is providing the processors for it.

I like this from Acer: an Ultrabook that is under $700.

Now that it is a billion-dollar company, Red Hat is ready to conquer the world.

"Essential" gadgets. These are pretty neat, but I wouldn't use "essential" to describe them.

A look at the engineering in Microsoft's Surface.

The Chromium OS is now running on the Raspberry Pi. This is great. This is what it is all about. Provide powerful tools at low cost to people and watch the world change.

This history or military aviation is repeating itself one century later. Now it is the UAVs that are going through the same stages as the early powered airplanes. In 15 years we shall see if people will ride on airliners that have no pilots in the cockpit. Will the millenials have enough trust in technology to do that?

The updated Apple portable computers can drive external displays. Here is an Air driving two big external displays. The MacBook Pro can now run three external displays.

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Friday June 22, 2012

No Internet viewing this morning as I had breakfast with some fine gentlemen.

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Saturday June 23, 2012

Former major league pitcher Curt Schilling has lost all his baseball millions in a venture to make movies.

The price of solid state disks has fallen about 50% in the last 18 months.

IDair claims to be able to read fingerprints from six meters.

A federal district judge has dismissed the patent case between Apple and Motorola.

Fleeting nudity (whatever that is) and cursing are now allowed on television - thanks to the Supreme Court.

The HP Passport 1912nm - it is an Internet monitor for $259. I am not sure what an Internet monitor is, but it is built for hotel lobbies and such.

UniversityNow and some myths of college education.

Another in-depth look at the recently updated MacBook Air.

Why one person won't buy the first version of Microsoft's Surface.

A car accident shows that the current administration is not thinking about disaster readiness and continuity.

I like this one - MIT researchers have a way of amplifying tiny motion in videos.

Why "genius" is so rare - you need that creative personality combined with the ability to sit down and focus for long periods of time.

The desks of ten famous tech CEOs.

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Sunday June 24, 2012

Apple retail stores pay their employees very little.

"The big work is available to you as soon as you decide to do it." Seth Godin

I like this one - a food cart for airliners. It is thinner so you can walk past it (bathroom goers all cheer) and it has a rotating system so that whatever the flight attendant wants is at the top - no bending.

A look at Smart Edit - a program that gives you editorial suggestions on your writing. And the same people have this journal software.

Well, why not? This vest holds ice. You wear it to stay cool in the summer.

Why didn't Dell or HP build the portable computer that Apple built?

Writing on paper with a pen is dying away. I guess that makes me an elite person as I do that everyday.

"Do not wait for permission to do the work you love." Now, don't expect other people to pay you a lot of or any money for this.

Making a living writing short stories. Given the ePublishing, short stories are making a comeback. After all, people read short blogs all the time instead of long newspaper articles. They are reading short stories instead of novels.

A lot of writers aren’t going to like this one, but here it is: clean your workspace.

How does it feel to get tenure?

Some thoughts on analysis paralysis as it applies to writers.

Some infographics about freeelancing.

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