Summary of this week:

The Pentagon is increasing its Cyber Command from 900 to 4,900 persons
Lots of covereage of Google mapping North Korea
Google+ becomes the #2 social media site in the world
Lenovo sales of PCs is up - slowly moving into dominate position in the PC market
Google Trekker adds 9,500 photos of the inside of the Grand Canyon

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

Monday January 28, 2012

The Pentagon is increasing its cyber command from 900 to 4,900. There are concerns about domestic spying and such.

59% of Android tablets are in the U.S. The Kindle Fire is in the lead in the U.S. with a third of all use.

The low-wage temporary job is becoming normal in America. This is not good.

China may end a 13-year ban on video game consoles.

It is now illegal to unlock your smartphone; in other words, it is now illegal to program your computer. Welcome to America, land of the free and all that stuff that people used to interest people.

Looking at North Korea's "secret" prison camps for subjects deemed necessary to imprison secretly. I don't understand why the world allows North Korea's Kim dynasty to continue.

Submit a photo to Foto Forensics and they will send you results of analysis. Many photos on the Internet have been "enhanced." This post is an excellent discussion of a Victoia's Secret catalog that was significantly enhanced. It looks pretty innocent at first glance.

A look a keyboards for the iPad. The choices are much, much better than they were a couple of years ago.

A world exists that I didn't know about - the drama of the quiet car.

The Lego is officially 55 years old today.

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Tuesday January 29, 2013

Twitter releases details of government requests for information about its users.

It appears that HP will have a Chromebook on the market with a 14" screen.

Coming soon, iPads and iPhones with 128GigaBytes of memory. Do we need that?

Everyone is making much of Google's mapping of North Korea.

Soon the River Thames will have a longer-distance WiFi.

Stanford was able to use a million CPU cores on a simulation problem. That is excellent scale.

New CoolPix cameras from Nikon. GPS and WiFi seem to be standard on cameras now.

I like optical illusions. This is a pretty good one.

Congress appears to be working on laws that will allow high-skilled people to enter the U.S. to work. This is the way it should be. Let's see what happens as our elected representatives in Washington often find ways to do the opposite of what they intend.

VMWare is cutting 900 of its 13,800 jobs.

In a very quiet move, Microsoft is launching Office 2013 and Office 365 today. The release of Office used to be a major event, no longer.

Barnes and Noble will close a third of its retail stores in the next ten years. What happened to the good old book store? I know...but I am sad.

Google+ is the world's #2 social network, or so show the numbers. This post has a good chart of social networks.

It seems that that Subway foot-long sub was only 11" long. How stupid can a corporation be? .

I am probably one of the few people who think this is a good idea - new Ubuntu phones to come with a terminal app so you can type things like ls, cat, make.

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Wednesday January 30, 2013

I remember this, 30 years ago Lotus 1-2-3 was the dominant office software.

ooops, the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet is coming, but all the installed software eats 43GB of storage.

2012 saw a drop in sales of Apple's Mac computers. Has the Mac peaked?

Mozilla named the Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy in 2012. I guess I didn't know there was such an award or title.

Time Inc. is laying off 700 of its 8,000 employees.

The eBook business continues to grow and is making a lot of money for Amazon.

Amazon's stock is at an all-time high, but its revenue was below what was expected.

Android had 70% of the world smartphone market in the 4th quarter of 2012.

Google is giving 15,000 Raspberry Pi units to UK schools. Good for them.

Engadget takes a closer look at Office 2013.

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Thursday January 31, 2013

Google Trekket adds 9,500 photos of the inside of the Grand Canyon. Finally!

Ars Technica is disappointed in the lack of change between Office 2010 and 2013.

Hacking Yahoo mail accounts. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

Chinese hackers break into the New York Times and steal everyone's password. The Times was currently running a series of articles on corruption in the Chinese government. Freedom of the press and all that stuff would be gone if...well you know. And some people wonder why some other people are upset about government infringement on the second amendment. If the second amendment goes, what makes the first amendment safe?

South Korea puts a home grown satellite into space. The space technology club continues to grow while NASA cannot put a man into orbit for another four or twenty years.

Qualcomm has a big financial quarter.

It is official: Apple and Samsung are doing well with tablets while Microsoft is not.

After all this time, Twitter is the fastest growing social media platform.

Hollywood wants FAA aproval to use radio-controlled flying vehicles (drones) to shoot movies. It would be a big help. Look for unemployment in the crane industry as a result.

Unemployment is about to skyrocket with the sequestration; here are top 7 skills for 2013 in the computing industry.

Microsoft will launch the Surface Pro on 8 February in New York.

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Friday February 1, 2013

I have breakfast with a group of gentlemen.

An “I don’t think so” view of online education. MOOC and such are not an answer to everyone. They are, however, an answer to many.

A look at poverty clusters in rural areas.

Samsung’s Super Bowl commercial that shows how silly the NFL’s trademark protection is. Here is the power of the Internet. You don’t have to watch the super bowl to watch the super bowl commercials. They are all on YouTube and other places already. Skip the game and watch YouTube Sunday night.

Intel is showing dual-core processor powered Android smartphones.

PNG is now the most popular image format on the Internet surpassing GIF.

Instead of a new iPad mini, what if Apple introduces a bigger iPhone? I still don’t know why tablets and laptops don’t have cell phones built into them.

A self-balancing unicycle.

More news on the North Dakota oil boom. Wal-Mart is the center of everything there.

Excellent video on a Day in India. Ah, the food and the tea.

Windows 8 only has a 2.2% market share.

One person’s experience of using Office 2013 for three months. Microsoft is offering an intriguing version of the product for students, faculty, and staff of universities (that includes me). You can load the software on two computers (PC or Mac). If you are on a Windows 7 machine, you can use an online only version. Hmmm.

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Saturday February 2, 2013

Things look bad for the investigation of the 787 battery problem - it could take months. Here is a prediction of the project retrospective: Boeing tried to cut weight from the plane. They tried too hard and went with lighter more risky technology. They failed and had to redesign and retrofit planes.

The news of Chinese hacking continues: Twitter also hacked with thousands of accounts compromised. The Washington Post also claims being hacked. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records? Oh, 250,000 Twitter accounts hacked.

What I can't understand is with all this hacking that demonstrates insecurity, people are still pushing smart meters that open your home to the Internet of hackers.

Two thousand schools worldwide are using Chromebooks. That is a small number, but twice what it was three months ago.

Google's stock price hit an all-time high.

Yet another problem with the recently proposed Federal gun control laws: the IT needed to administer the laws does not exist.

"brogramming" vs software engineering. The (not really) age-old debate continues. What is more harmful now is that the "bros" are pushing female programmers away with obnoxious behavior.

Facebook reports that 7% of 76million of its accounts were fake.

A look at the world of professional video game players.

The sixth volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English is now finished. American slang.

It seems that Google Glass will use bone conduction audio instead of speakers.

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Sunday February 3, 2013

Dozens of Harvard students are caught in a cheating scandal.

San Diego is removing its traffic light cameras. Good for them.

How McDonald's is becoming the Internet for the poor. Public libraries usually have free Internet access, but they aren't open as long as McDonald's.

Seth Godin on football, mass media, and other things that will never be the same again.

A writer finds story ideas in the 90-year-old notes of a sorority. Stories are everywhere; stories are the lives lived by all of us.

Immigration reform cannot move past the H-1B visa. Why bring in foreign talent when there are so many unemployed American engineers and scientists? No one can answer that question other than, "the Americans aren't qualified." That is a subjective statement, and for everyone who says it someone else will walk in the room with ten qualified Americans.

Google's Eric Schmidt confirms that China has the most sophisticated and far-reaching government-sponsored hacking of other governments and private companies.

American Airlines and the Boeing 777-300ER. A new plane, a new look, but can the Airline act like a customer-friendly business?

A telepresence system that uses iPads for display, microphone, and camera. This unit is elegant, but too expensive to be practical.

Just what a writer needs: attend a writing seminar on a cruise ship. Of course, if you can afford a cruise, why worry about making money as a writer?

Some reminders about travelling cheaply and what you should bring with you. This is NOT like going on a cruise ship.

More lessons from published authors. Write, write, write some more, and keep writing.

I like this post: the three natural laws of freelance writing.

Thoughts on writing in the second person. Here is the Wikipedia article on the topic.

Whoa! Look at this. Turn your browser into a notepad with this simple “URL.” This actually works.

Cures for “techno stress.” Writers, pay attention. If your health goes, you don’t write and you don’t earn any money and you don’t provide food and shelter for your family.

A conversation with Seth Godin on how he writes and does other things.

Tips on conducting meetings of a writing group.

The notion of a career insurance policy. Save your money (half your salary) and know how to do a lot of different things.

A great mashup of Google’s street view shows you pictures of the area surrounding an address.

Tips on earning a living writing blogs.

A look at the Geek Desk. It is a computer desk that adjust height from sitting to standing.

Writers writing about the importance of keeping a journal. Keeping a journal, and actually writing in it everyday, is one practice that I recommend for every writer and everyone else.

Don’t worry, just keep writing.

The Wall Street Journal claims that it too was hit by Chinese hackers.

Unemployment in the U.S. is still practically 8%. This would normally be reported as a catastrophe, but with the current President, everything seems okay. Here are the 18 biggest layoffs of 2012. If sequestration occurs, these will seem inconsequential.

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