Summary of this week:

McDonald's finally tries a mobile app
Google moving into thermostats and other home appliances
A must see Apple family Christmas ad

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

Monday December 16, 2013

Only one of us would have a Arduino powered Christmas tree with 3D printed ornaments. Don't know Arduino? Your not one of us.

Run a startup, pursue a PhD, and have a family all at the same time. I did the same. It can happen.

A commercial version of the $40 Indian tablet hits Europe - the UbiSlate starts at 40pounds.

In case you haven't noticed, there is no more privacy on the Internet.

McDonald's is finally testing some mobile app ideas. They are way behind Starbucks on this.

Amazon is pushing hard to sell more and more Kindle devices.

The ruin of the light bulb. Congress is so smart, ain't they?

Tim Cook makes news everywhere with his speech at his alma mater Auburn University.

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Tuesday December 17, 2013

You must see this Apple ad for family at Christmas. And then tell me you didn't cry at the end.

Something else to see for another reason: the next time you meet someone who hates their physical appearance, show them this. Show them how fake all these photo models are.

We continue to expand what we can make from 3D printers.

Krispy Kreme donuts move into India and go egg-free for the vegetarians. Krispy Kreme used to be the second rate donuts that sat in the corner of the IGA store in rural Louisiana. Somewhere along the line they became hip and made a zillion dollars.

A former NSA co-worker talks about Ed Snowden - the genius he knew. My guess is that Snowden was a very clever technician, not a genius. There are countless clever technicians in government, at least those were the types of people I met in 28 years of working in the government. Geniuses? No, didn't meet any government employees I would call geniuses. I met a few contractors who were in that neighborhood.

Google is working on thermostats and other home appliances.

Big article on the big business that attention deficit disorder has become. Drug companies have blitzed us with ads for decades with the result that our children are over medicated.

Apple's 64-bit processor in the latest iPhone surprised tech competitors.

Comcast is putting money into Khan Academy. Better online education will increase demand for Comcast. Smart move.

Google and Facebook are moving down the ISO stack trying to control the physical cables that support the Internet.

Some of the woes that farmers have with Obamacare.

This story has been around for a week and won't go away, so it must be interesting to a lot of people. This person worked hard and was able to connect a 27-year-old Apple computer to the Internet.

Our President will meet with a dozen high-tech CEOs today. They will discuss project management 101. What a good way to spend your time (not).

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Wednesday December 18, 2013

I spent the day driving. No Internet viewing.

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Thursday December 19, 2013

You can now put a wooden back onto your do it yourself Moto X phone. I love the appearance. I hope this doesn't work as people will be wasting good wood and chopping trees that we need to stay upright.

The completely redesigned, made in Austin Mac Pro (home supercomputer) is now available. Oddly enough, this offers the least usage for me of any Apple device, but it is the one I desire the most.

If you buy everything - the upper high end - complete with massive wonderful displays, it will cost $14,000.

In addition to the Mac Pro for Christmas, here are a few other things that may not be practical but are probably a lot of fun for at least five minutes:
This car has 500,000 Lego pieces and runs on compressed air. Yes, it actually runs.
LG shows its 105-inch curved-screen UHD television.
And Samsung has its own 105" UHD television with curved screen.

The Tech CEOs who visited the White House blasted the President about what the NSA is doing to them.

And loud murmers from the meeting claimed that Health Care dot Gov took too much of the agenda.

California's universtities are bumping along with their experiments with MOOC. They are cutting back here and pushing there. Such is what happens in the early stages of anything.

Target says that 40million credit card accounts could have been hacked. And some people think that Health Care dot Gov is secure.

Beyonce sold 5million music albums online in five days. The definition of success has changed.

Research into the use of MOOCs shows that a tiny percentage of registered students finish a course. Big numbers at registration mean almost nothing.

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Friday December 20, 2013

The Obama administrators muddy the waters again with another excemption to their self-inflicted health care storm. You need to hire a lawyer to understand if you are violating Federal health care law, that and a team of accountants and tax experts. The best intentions often go nuts in Washington, D.C.

Linux has never fulfilled what some people promised. It has exceeded what others have promised as the operating system seems to be everywhere but where those some people promised, i.e., the desktop.

The Wall Street Journal is launching a new technology coverage service.

How about splitting California into six states? Why not, and while we are at it...

Mark Zuckerberg gives $990million to (his) charity.

Scientific data disappears after time in the digital age. Researchers are not archiving their data to media that will last.

HP fixed the problem with their power adapter and its Chromebook 11 is available again.

Last Christmas, Apple had a short supply of iMacs. This year Apple has a short supply of Mac Pros. Oh well.

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Saturday December 21, 2013

This is a big story this week, but I am not sure why. Google was working on Android, but scrapped it and started over when the iPhone appeared.

A little solar fire starter. If you are hiking in sunny areas, this could save you.

Microsoft ups the SkyDrive space for Windows phone users, adds 20GigaBytes.

This story is everywhere: The NSA paid RSA to leave holes in their encryption scheme.

The blog is dead, long live that thing that comes next.

The Wipebook - sort of like a dry erase board in a notebook. Great for kids and adults, too.

A hands-on look at the new Mac Pro. No performance specs yet.

More protests in San Francisco against the Google shuttle bus and the Googlers. Let's see, this is America. If you don't like someone you curse them in writing, destroy their property, and keep them from going to work. I thought San Francisco was the heart of diversity and peace, love, and all that. Perhaps I was misinformed.

This is new: cracking encryption by listening to the faint sounds your processor emits.

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Sunday December 22, 2013

The Amazon Storybuilder - a free tool to help you create plots.

Nice list: things everyman should own. I would add one musical instrument and a Bible (yes, the Holy Bible, the original one).

Will self-education make you rich?

More on San Francisco and the invasion of the tech geeks. Yes, the media exagerated on this one, too.

The biggest tech failures of 2013. Excellent read. Yes, at the top of the list is Health Care dot Gov, and that shows that big tech failures are not failures of technology but collosal failures of some people trying to manage other people who work with technology.

Lessons on marketing from Ron Burgandy.

A Japanese team wins the DARPA humanoid robot challenge.

Must see video: put gyros and sensors in a cube and it walks and balances. A sufficiently high level of technology that truly resembles magic.

Excellent piece about either you are rich or in tech or you are just on the outside.

A few ideas on changing things enough to move past boredom.

On writing the first line in a novel.

The best way to improve your writing is to - wait for this - write and write and write and write and read some in between.

An annotated list of some of the better books on writing from 2013.

What it takes to make a living as a writer. Lots of hard work, and that includes doing things you don't like to do.

On writing the first page of a novel. Begin the story instead of talking about the beginning of a story.

Writing pieces that change lives. I may write something that changes a person's life, but setting out with that as a goal is a bad idea.

Sometimes us introverts just have to go inside away from everyone else.

The world of grant writing.

One of these days I will go on one of these writing retreat cruises or some such thing.

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