Summary of this week:

Memorial Day in the U.S.
Sears will use abandoned retail stores as data centers
The decline of the PC is accelerating
iPhone sales in India are booming thanks to pricing plans
The Wall Street Journal will launch its own social network
Nuance and Apple confirm that their partnership is the engine of Siri

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

Monday May 27, 2013

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a Holiday, hence, it is like a Sunday per viewing the Internet.

Samsung is having a big event in London on 20 June - new mobile devices.

And now Yahoo, and everyone else, wants to buy Hulu.

The Apple watch may have appeared in a recent Apple commercial about something else.

Employees at the top tech firms have perks like free cafeterias, but the free bus rides are out in the open, in public where people can see them - and hate them out of jealousy.

Use a Raspberry Pi to power a laptop. Well, it isn't that practical, but an interesting item.

This story has been buzzing around the Internet for the past week. It involves watching odd images as a substitute for a traditional IQ test. It seem to point to the concept that the ability to focus on something means a higher IQ. So now, each of us can recall a time when we focused better than everyone else and, thus, we have a higher IQ than everyone else. Sometimes we can focus on not focusing, so we have a higher IQ. Oh well.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Tuesday May 28, 2013

It seems that moonshine is becoming a legal, big business. It is also known as unaged white whiskey.

A big commercial logistics network is building in China. The goal is deliver goods within 24 hours. Communism? Commerce?

And another note on Chinese government hacking. It seems that China hacked into U.S. weapons builders and stole secrets. People will die because of this.

And the Chinese stole the blueprints to the Australian intelligence service's building.

And there are people who wonder why anyone would object to having all your medical records available in a "secure" place online. I don't understand how they can feel that way in the face of all the experience of "secure" information being hacked over and over and over..

The hatred of Google Glass is a bit over done.

Google will use blimps and balloons to build a wireless network in developing Africa and Asia. This is more information from yesterday's story. Good idea from Google.

Sears, remember Sears, will convert some of its abandoned department store buildings into data centers. Excellent idea.

A tutorial on working remotely. Good advice.

Three personal cloud storage systems. In other words, three disk servers for your home.

Attach a Raspberry Pi and a camera to a weather balloon and you get photos like this.

Nirvana is coming - the ability to move from one WiFi hotspot to another without signing out and signing in and all that hassle.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Wednesday May 29, 2013

Tim Cook had a long discussion with AllThingsD last night.

The revolving door of the rich and privileged continues to revolve from government power to commercial money and back. Apple hires the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Apple sold 6Million Apple TVs last year. Not bad for a hobby project. The definition of success has changed.

Texas has the strongest email privacy law in the nation. Let's get this straight (I have to pause on this one). With Hope and Change in the White House, the FBI reads just about any email it wants without a warrant. That redneck yahoo state of Texas protects all email from state law enforcement. Do I have this backwards or something?

MediaTek is bringing a quad-core processor this summer for low-cost tablets.

Honda is now leasing its Walking Assist exoskeletons to hospitals in Japan.

Bring-your-own-device (fun for us) also equates to buy-your-own-device. That saves the company money and costs me money. What? How did I fall for this trick?

The decline of the PC is accelerating.

Low-power base stations will bring telephone service to areas where electricity is scarce.

Sony is a movie and music company, not an electronics company. Forget the WalkMan.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Thursday May 30, 2013

Is the larger-screen smartphone already dead?

Apple changes the iPod Touch to make it slimmer and a little cheaper.

Coursera partners with ten public university systems to spread MOOCs.

Dell releases a smaller, less expensive touch-screen monitor.

Wikipedia has a Nearby page that tells you about the places that are near your location.

DARPA builds a little sensor package that makes the building of little sensor packages cheaper and faster. This is a big waste of taxpayers' money. DARPA is supposed to do Advanced Research; that is what the "A" and "R" mean in DARPA. This isn't advanced research - it is a lab project for an undergraduate student looking for something to do in the summer.

Looking at the technology gap between U.S. companies and the U.S. government. The Iron Law of Bureaucracy rules the U.S. government. The solutions are here and are not complex. Pushing the solutions through the bureaucracy requires leadership - something notably lacking in Washington D.C.

The White House thinks that online health records are a good thing. Let's not let real-world experience ruin their fantasy.

ooops, for example today, Drupal.org was hacked with users' information compromised.

Google has updated the Gmail interface. I guess I'm not on the update list as mine looks like it did yesterday.

A practical Google Glass app - it counts cards for you, i.e., it lets you beat Las Vegas. No doubt the casinos will ask you to remove your Glass upon entering.

Linux Mint 15 is released.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Friday May 31, 2013

Apple iPhone sales are booming in India in part thanks to payment plans.

New Zealand is in the middle of a slow-slip earthquake - a big one.

A Federal Judge orders Google to comply with Federal Bureau of Investigation searches even though people doubt if the program is constitutional. Hmm, seems to be a lot of use of the word "Federal" here. The Federal government says that what the Federal government wants is legal. Where are the private citizens represented?

NHK pushes the next generation of broadcast cameras.

Strong rumor - Samsung will switch from ARM processors to Intel in its next tablet.

Anyone traveling to Mars will be hit with a lot of radiation. Of course, you shield the spaceship to protect the occupants. And of course, all that shield wieghs a lot and makes it difficult to escape Earth's gravity.

This is how to build a data center in a tornado-prone area.

Will programming be the core skill of the 21st century? I think it will be important, but clear thinking is more important.

An academic paper on cheating in baseball and other big-time sports. Disgraceful, but I am merely naive.

The Wall Street Journal will launch its own social network. A Facebook for ... well for whom?

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Saturday June 1, 2013

The Mac Pro is in low inventory hinting that it will finally be updated at the coming WWDC.

Nuance and Apple confirm that Nuance provides the engine for Apple's voice understanding software.

The US Justice Department continues to sue Google for warrantless access to citizen's information. Now who is working for whom? Isn't the Justice Department staffed with "public servants" and Google staffed with "profit-seeking entrpeneurs?"

The TSA has finished removing the nude body scanners from airports. And how much taxpayers' money did that exercise waste? And who was fired for implementing a stupid idea? The answer to the second question is much easier to know that the first.

The financial reality of not being able to pay for just what you want to watch on cable TV. The bundles are here to stay.

Has good old email beaten all the social networks?

The Irish ambassador to the U.S. educates the Senate on Irish tax laws. Hmmm, the Senate had all the wrong figures. Who would (not) have guessed it?

Google says it won't put facial recognition software on Glass. But remember that people have already hacked Glass and can install what they want on it.

It is still more hype than reality, but wearable computing is coming. If you think not, realize the computing power of new hearing aids.

Email me a t d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Sunday June 2, 2013

The U.S. and China will officially meet to unofficially discuss how each is unofficially hacking the other.

Intel's Haswell processors actually hit the market this week - 50% more battery life with better processing.

Protests in Instanbul and Facebook and Twitter are closed to stop the spread of the word. Almost like in America where the IRS throttled the Tea Party in the last Presidential election. oops, that isn't supposed to happen here, is it?

Acer joins the move away from MS Windows with an Android desktop machine.

Look at this pi chart of OS users - Windows 8 has a little sliver, tiny compared to even Windows XP.

The creator of Ubuntu Linux gives iOS and Android the credit for pushing MS Windows out of its dominant position. Ahem, MS Windows still dominates the PC.

Some thoughts on writing fast. I guess I do this all the time as I usually write a 3,000-word short story in two hours.

Chapter by Chapter - software that combine separate Word files (chapters) into one file. Works better than Word's Master Document feature.

Tips from one person who moved from part-time to full-time writing.

Choose your failures wisely.

Some ideas for creating a web site for your book.

Some of the problems you can create for yourself as a freelancer.

The key question for one successful writer: ask why.

Writing for no pay may be better than writing for low pay.

Do you write remarkable stories or lead a remarkable life - or do you do both?

Nice infographic on how reading different genres can improve different aspects of writing.

Email me a t d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page