Summary of this week:

The unpaid internship is ruled illegal
Microsoft sells its Surface to school at less than half price
Google goes to court to try to explain its relationship with the NSA
FBI admits that it uses drones to watch US citizens
The President of all the United States never visits about half of them
Lenovo updates its line of laptops with new Intel processors

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

Monday June 17, 2013

People are still talking about the NSA and its access to the servers of big companies.

Slow down there. Ford has learned that many customers prefer knobs and buttons over touchscreens in cars.

The SCO vs IBM case has reopened.

The unpaid internship is now illegal. This is a big deal as many people have used this route into real jobs. What will happen next?

Here is a home project: turn that old iPad into a second display for my MacBook Pro.

It appears that Intel will have 8-core Haswell processors in 2014. Don't buy that computer this year (have you ever heard that advice before?).

Samsung releases new solid state disks for ultrabooks and MacBook Airs.

Supermoon - June 23rd the moon will be its closest in 14 months.

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Tuesday June 18, 2013

Microsoft is selling its $499 Surface to schools for $199.

Chromebooks are appearing in more stores. I saw them in Staples last week.

The new MacBook Air - with its extended battery life, it is the ultimate all-day coffee shop computer.

Looking forward to 2015 when commercial UAVs will come to the US air space. Yes, this could be wonderful or the government could abuse this.

A look at all the fear and loathing of Silicon Valley this summer. Potential also brings potential problems.

Digg is to have a Google Reader replacement on June 26 (less than a week before Reader goes away). I have switched to Feedly for a week and have survived.

The San Francisco 49ers sign a deal with Yahoo for their new Silicon Valley stadium.

This story is making the rounds on the Internet today: the government searches driver license databases to try to identify faces. Of course it does. If the government has some of your information, it will use it. See, for example, the IRS.

Adobe lurches forward with its subsciption-only Creative Cloud.

Nvidia's graphics processors are being used in neural networks. Why not?

Texas is the first state to require a warrant to read your email. I must have this all backwards. I thought the rednecks in places like Texas wanted the government to watch all the bad folks all the time while the liberals from places like Illinois took care of the little people.

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Wednesday June 19, 2013

A look at Qualcomm's processors that reside in Android phones.

It appears that Qualcomm processors are coming to the Microsoft Surface RT.

iOS devices can be hotspots. They generate a password for use. Researchers have learned how to crack those passwords in a minute. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

Look for a LEGO movie in 2014. Why not?

Thoughts on advances in image searching from Google.

More on Google's experiments with WiFi carrying high-altitude balloons.

PC sales are dropping, but Chromebook sales are rising.

The number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA is steadily rising. I wonder how many of these are the phoney plots that the FBI created to trap potential terrorists.

Google wants to talk about its relationship with the NSA and is filing First Amendment challenges to the FISA law.

Solar-powered cell phone charging stations are appearing in New York City. Given another storm, people will be able to charge their phones.

Those computers with the new Intel chips do have a much better battery life - testing shows.

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Thursday June 20, 2013

From George Will's editorial today: "Soon the crucial distinction will be between those with meaningful college degrees and those with worthless ones. Many colleges are becoming less demanding as they become more expensive: They rake in money — much of it from government-subsidized tuition grants — by taking in many marginally qualified students who are motivated only to acquire a credential and who learn little." Persons earned useless college degrees 30 years ago, but today such scrap paper has proliferated. It is a shame that "universities" have been able to convince young persons, and their parents, that studying latter-day modern art history is worth $30,000 a year in tuition.

You can buy yourself a better reputation online.

Zuckerburg engages in chat about immigration reform. It is a tangled web, and any attempt at comprehensive "reform" will probably result in another 2,000-page law that we'll have to pass to learn what is in it.

If you want to stream lots of video through the Internet, you have to pay extra.

LinkedIn went off the air for an hour or so.

The server market is in decline, so IBM lays off 1,500 people in Australia.

This is a sad story. The President of these United States never visits about half of the states. The have and have nots divide increases.

Financial web sites aren't secure. This is not a surprise. What is surprising to me, and maybe one day I will get over it, is that people still want to have national electronic health records.

The Director of the FBI admits that they use drones to watch citizens.

The PDP-11 lives on. If you don't know what I'm writing about, don't worry.

We are moving into a world where people no longer ask permission.

Apple's iOS 7 design is copying a device Walt Disney invented in 1933.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is buying $30Million worth of iPads. I don't ever want to hear anyone say that we don't spend enough money on education ever again.

Google continues to try to distance itself from the NSA.

Archeologists find more ancient ruins with LIDAR scans.

Researchers in Tokyo have a camera system that follows small, fast-moving objects like a ball.

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Friday June 21, 2013

The great Apple eBook trial has reached closing arguments.

Apple iTunes owns 75% of the global digital music market - $6.9Billion a year. All from a silly iPod.

The Kobo mini-eReader - at $40 the cheapest eReader on the market.

An almost ready car from Volvo - you exit at the store door; the car finds a parking spot and parks itself. When? When?

Prediction or just a wish? The FAA will soon let us humble subjects use electronics during takeoff and landing.

Like Apple, Lenovo puts new Intel processors into its portable computers.

Microsoft is offerring $100,000 to anyone who can find holes in Windows 8.1.

Ikea is now the second biggest producer-user of solar energy in the U.S.

The 7 works of science fiction that have inspired our geeks and nerds to do great things.

The New York City tech sector is growing much faster and bigger than expected.

Google is still in trouble in the UK for collecting data that is flying about in the public airwaves.

WhatsApp has 250Million monthly users. What is WhatsApp? Are you kidding me?

Owners of the recently updated MacBook Airs are having WiFi problems.

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Saturday June 22, 2013

The "secret" accessing of gmail accounts was used against a WikiLeaks manager.

Tim Cook's stock pay will depend on the performance of Apple and its stock.

More details on how the NSA is watching citizens without a warrant. The actions are legal, but the law that made them legal is probably unconstitutional. Now that the law has been given a lot of unfavorable publicity, someone will challenge it in court. We shall see what happens.

Marissa Mayer has cut 1,000 jobs at Yahoo.

Instagram now allows short videos - 5million uploaded in the first 24 hours.

FreeBSD is 20 years old.

ooops, the email addresses and phone numbers of 6million Facebook users slipped out due to a software error. Is everyone ready for national electronic health records?

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Sunday June 23, 2013

Here is a font that is very difficult for current computer technology to read - surveillance proof?

A detailed review of the recently updated MacBook Air with 11" screen. Sweet little computer.

It is only a toy, but here you have it - a remote control flying car.

Wal Mart is selling iPhones at a discount.

Ed Snowden "flees" Hong Kong for Moscow on a commerical flight. How do you flee on an open commercial flight?

More news from Snowden leaks: the US government hacked into Tsinghua University - China's top tech college.

Some thoughts on writing for the web. It is a little different than writing for paper, but clear writing is still the key.

More on independent punlishing and traditional publishers.

To connect with more readers, try to connect with fewer readers.

For some of us writers, there are days when we cannot write. We must write or die. Then there are other days.

To help stay organized as a writer, make a timeline of your story. I plan projects for a living. We always make things like timelines. I guess this is a big revelation to many writers.

Don't concentrate or think too much when writing the first draft. Write the first draft!

How noise can increase productivity. As always, try different places with different amounts and types of noise. Stay with what works and avoid the rest.
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