Summary of this week:

Microsoft and NBC finally split and kill MSNBC
Marissa Mayer leaves Google to be CEO at Yahoo
Microsoft previews Office 2013
Firefox 14 released
Microsoft has its first red financial quarter in its history

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

Monday July 16, 2012

Fast tracking, high speed video camera can catch the rotation of a ping pong ball. This would be an exellent teaching aid in baseball, tennis, and other sports where the rotation of the ball is critical and extremely difficult to capture.

Microsoft finally sheds itself from MSNBC.

Cheap labor in China? Not cheap enough as factories are replacing people with machines.

Amazon is working on a larger Kindle. While Apple is working on a smaller iPad . I guess the two will meet in the middle?

This iPad lover also praises the new Google Nexus 7.

Research in Motion to pay $147Million in patent case.

Lockheed Martin powers a UAV from the ground via a laser. The age of inifinite aloft time is approaching.

Will Google become an extension of your mind? That is a bit overblown, but the software company is finding ways to keep all your information and keep it handy.

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Tuesday July 17, 2012

This story is everywhere on the Internet today: Marissa Mayer leaves Google to be CEO at Yahoo.

Microsoft Office 2013 is coming. You can download a preview of it today. In another report, Microsoft will concentrate development efforts on their cloud-based offering Office 365. No new version of Office for the Mac coming, but a major upgrade will be here.

Intel continues to up the storage and drop the price of its solid state disks.

Production on the Raspberry Pi is up to 4,000 units a day.

Nvidia gets a $12Million contract from the Department of Energy to help develop exascale computing.

After almost a dozen years, Wikipedia is running out of volunteers.

Maybe we will be more welcome to those immigrants who earn advanced technical degrees in the U.S.

A dozen major universities are joining Coursera and online education.

A guide to using social media for communications during an emergency.

I like this concept - using marine "robots" to clean up trash in the ocean.

"You may not have the authority or the control to decide who gets to talk to your customer before you do. Doesn't really matter, though, because the customer thinks you do." Seth Godin.

2012 is the 30th anniversary of the "clamshell" design for portable computers.

This is an ugly story that keeps growing: the FDA spied on its employees - paranoia.

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Wednesday July 18, 2012

Sometimes it is much better to put all your information out there. Case in point, WikiLeaks data has enabled researchers to predict attacks in Afghanistan. The U.S. government hated those leaks. Now, however, ...

Panasonic updates its line of compact cameras. More on the Lumix LX7 for $500. I think this is the evolution of the camera I use.

Here is what Steve Wozniak carries in his backpack - all day every day.

The shipments of the Google Nexus 7 tablet seem to be inconsistent.

The Chrome browser is rapidly gaining market share in the iOS world.

Restoring sight to the blind. This is still limited in its use and very costly, but it is a start.

The New York metropolitan area has the highest demand for H-1B workers in the U.S.

A big update to the operating system that ships with the Raspberry Pi - Raspbian.

Firefox 14 has been released.

There is a lot of gold and silver (yes, those expensive metals) going into electronic devices every year and precious little of it is recovered when the device is tossed.

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Thursday July 19, 2012

October 26th - the Windows 8 launch date.

Fraud in science (and engineering). I abhor those who are dishonest. Has anyone ever calculated the cost of dishonesty in science and everything else?

Microsoft updates Bing maps with more high-resolution imagery taken from low-flying aircraft.

Nokia financial report: bad news.

Senator Schumer of New York wants the Department of Justice to drop its eBook suit against Apple.

The future of manufacturing is in America. That is if we can capture the potential of smarter software and robotics. Those things will work, but won't create many meaningful jobs for people with a bad high school education.

Very few Americans are contributing the vast majority of the money to political campaigns. Still, you only get one (legal) vote.

"These Designers Did for Fun What News Sites Can't Do to Save Their Business" It is the same old story, the same old lesson that some people refuse to learn. Hire specialists to do a special job. There is no substitute for knowing what you are doing.

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Friday July 20, 2012

President Obama wants Congress to pass comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. Such comprehensive and vague instructions are common during election years. In a few weeks, the candidate will proclaim that he has asked for something and is waiting on Congress and Congress needs to get to work and all that stuff.

Yet another government-backed, taxpayer-funded solar power company closes.

Warehouse “robots” at work. Such is the future of manufacturing in the U.S. Note how few people there are. If you have a job making the robots, you are okay. Otherwise, the jobs continue to disappear.

Apple continues to build facilities on its Maiden, North Carolina property.

Progressives in office continue to spread the progressive agenda. In this case, the current administration wants to create a “Masters Teachers Corps” of excellent school teachers who will in turn teach other teachers how to be excellent as well. Let’s back up a moment and look at the words. Notice the resemblance between “excellent” and “exception?” Creating a “corps” will not spread excellence. Sorry.

Microsoft has its first quarter ever where they lost money. Much of the loss is attributed to accounting tricks and purchases and all that stuff.

And now we have a Chromium browser for the Raspberry Pi. The inexpensive hardware is meeting its goals - omething powerful at a low price. It allows you to stand on the shoulders of others.

Facial recognition software is spreading. Some people think it has gone too far. If you are in a public place, someone is taking a photo of your face. There are, however, ways to hide your face from the cameras and those methods are neither expensive nor sophisticated.

A look at the next revision of Apple’s OS X and how it will further integrate cloud storage.

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Saturday July 21, 2012

I was at Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia today with no Internet access.

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Sunday July 22, 2012

Create a “no meetings” policy and ways to avoid meetings.

How to be creative? Work at it.

A week in the life of a guy who lives in his van.

One writer’s list of ten books on writing that every writer should read. Please stop reading now and then to actually do some writing.

There are some financial benefits to working at home.

Getting into the mood for writing. For me, the first ten minutes are the worst. Once I get that far I am cruising.

"Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do with it."

Some thoughts on breaking rules in your writing.

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