Summary of this week:

Cable TV companies are about to charge more for Internet access
Google buys an old building in San Francisco
Hackers love health care sites
Microsoft launches OneDrive - new name and new features
Google expands its fiber network - not the the rust belt, not to the major East Coast cities
Google project Tango 3D sensing phone
Microsoft cuts the price of Windows 8 for cheap computers

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

Monday February 17, 2013

How to make money while losing customers. The cable companies will charge more for Internet access. They still own the cable coming into your home. More on the story.

Lending more credibility to the legal woes of Flappy Bird, Apple and Google are not allowing games with "flappy" in the title.

Apple is looking at medical devices and cars as a way to make money. Cars are dying. People are aging. Hence, the medical field is where the money is.

Boasting the world's highest broadband speeds, South Korea's Internet access is also heavily censored.

International alliances: Germany and France working on a network that would hide their data from US surveillance. What do you call this? An intra-nation network?

A woman was arrested for not returning a video she rented 9 years ago. What is remarkable about this stupid incident is that almost every major web site is reporting it. A very slow news day.

Philips has built a system that tells you where to go in the store to find your desired item. Stores will not use this system. The store owner wants you to wander about the store. You are likely to find something else to buy during your wanderings.

And, just in time, our government may regulate how retailers track us in the store.

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Tuesday February 18, 2013

A look at a plan to use hundreds of small satellites to bring uncensored Internet to everyone on earth.

Google Glass enters the operating room. THE application of wearable, augmented reality computing is in maintenance work, and the medical field is all about maintenance work.

Is it time to move solar power from silicon to gallium arsenide?

Co-working was up about 80% in 2013. Is this is the future of work or just something cool for the richest 10%?

Sony has sold over 5million PS4 consoles since November. The definition of success has changed.

Guess what? Burdening the middle class with huge college loans hurts the housing market. What Harvard economist couldn't see this one coming. It was predictable and predicted.

Dick Cabela dies at 77. He founded the retail and mail order giant that bears his name.

This post advocates government regulating the coding boot camps. One reason these camps succeed is that thousands apply and only aa couple dozen are accepted to each camp session. They are training exceptional people. Hence, those people landing jobs is not a surprise.

Google buys an old building in San Francisco. Some of its employees will work here. Some of the hated Google shuttles with disappear. Housing costs in the city will continue to rise. The old families will continue to hate Google and its nouveau riche.

Red Flag Software, once the world's #2 distibutor of Linux, closes.

Intel launches the Big Data Platform to make it easier to move into big data platforms.

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Wednesday February 19, 2014

Want to get rich? "the best startups are good ideas that look like bad ideas."

Finally, a guide to Google Glass etiquette.

A list of the best jobs for 2014: software developer is number 1.

Hackers are attacking health care organizations. Why? Because that is where the money is.

Iran hacked the US Navy, and it took the Navy months to recover.

Take the above two links and tell me how healthcare.gov is secure. Please, someone tell me.

And let's have more...a security hole in an ASUS router is exploited on tens of thousands of systems.

The case for Silicon Valley to move to Oakland. Good luck with that one, but it may work.

The Microsoft OneDrive is in the cloud today and offers several new features in addition to the new name.

A parable about the difficulty of learning, and without that difficulty you aren't learning.

A request for a black MacBook Air from Apple. Maybe they wouldn't sell a lot of them, but a little variety would be nice. A large part of the success of the iPod was that it came in white with white ear buds. That distinctive color gave it the cool factor that other music players lacked.

Why look out the window of your private jet when you can look at a super wide screen instead?

The state of the practice in laptop computers. A picture of today.

A comparison of four leading cloud services: Google, Microsoft, Box, and DropBox.

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Thursday February 20, 2014

I was ill today, so no Internet viewing.

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Friday February 21, 2014

Still a bit sick from yesterday.

Hackers steal 309,000 social security numbers from the University of Maryland. And there are some people who believe the Health Care dot Gov is secure. I don't understand how this works.

Google is expanding its fiber network. Note - none of the cities are in the rust belt or the major East Coast metropolitan areas.

A look at Intel's plans for the Next Unit of Computing (NUC). It has a bright future. Some of us need a computer on our desk, not just a gateway to the Internet.

The EU is funding research to determine if tweets are lies or disinformation.

LaCie now has 5TeraByte disk drives for less than $500. You can bundle them in all sorts of ways. This is a great time to be producing content because there is a place to put all of it.

Our military is experimenting with jolts of electricity to keep sleep-deprived troops awake. Of course, our military could be experimenting with management techniques that would not deprive troops of sleep. Problem eliminated instead of solved.

Even a few members of our ruling party do not like the FBI's use of National Security Letters.

Sports Illustrated, once the great American sports magazine, launches a streaming video service called 120 Sports.

It has not made it to the desktop, but it is everywhere else. It is Linux, and there are jobs if you know it.

Google may make that nagging login to WiFi hotspots automatic.

This must be a slow news day as everyone is carrying this story: Steve Jobs will be on a postage stamp in 2015.

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Saturday February 22, 2014

Seth Godin has a few good suggestions for reinventing the Olympics.

WhatsApp was bought for $19billion, and that makes all startup owners whose companies are only worth $1billion feel bad. The definition of success has changed.

Maybe the PC isn't dead yet: HP's PC business grew last quarter.

Apple's big new growing business is boring old retail.

Our Department of Homeland Security has killed their idea of building a national license-plate tracking system.

More inside information on the absurdities that are the TSA.

The idea to break California into six states is moving forward. This will be a disaster for some parts of the state and a wonderful thing for other parts. It will also cause other states to split because that will even out the number of new Democratic Senators with new Republican Senators.

More women than men have enrolled in Berkeley's Intro to Computer Science. I like to hear that. Let's hope that the culture there allows the women to stay with the program.

Microsoft has lowered the price of installing Windows 8 on less-expensive computers. This is an incentive for computer makers to lower the price of their machines below the $250 threshold. We consumers win again.

Net neutrality? Verizon is dropping Netflix packets every day.

ooops, today's Bill Gates as still at Harvard. A student uses the Harvard computers for personal profit and is kicked off.

A sample of the output from Google's project Tango supersmartphone (is that a new word?). Excellent results combining 2D imaging and with 3D spatial data.

More evidence that the tech giants of Silicon Valley colluded to keep tech salaries down.

LeBron James could be in a Space Jam remake. This makes sense as James' children are at the age of kids going to see such movies. This is a long honored tradition in Hollywood. You see young stars making "daring" movies. As the stars age and have children of their own, they make movies that their kids can watch.

A new term for me: the techhole. I guess that means being a technology jerk.

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Sunday February 23, 2014

This is what we should be doing with technology: a 3D custom-printed exoskeleton allows a woman to walk.

The world of the secret menu at food chains.

In praise of the humble library. We have a good local library here in Reston, Virginia. Many communities in America are blessed with such.

Coming in June(?), the Google watch.

Ford may drop Microsoft in favor of QNX for the operating system of their Sync telematics system.

Venezuela is in turmoil, and many of its Internet services have been turned off.

A look at Cisco's Tactical Operations team that flies into disaster areas to restore basic services.

This may sound silly, but is essential for writers. It is a little typing test. Practice your typing — I don't mean write, I mean find an online typing tutor and practice and improve your speed and accuracy. It makes a difference as a writer.

For those of us who always strive for brevity, writing long can be a great challenge.

You have published your first book. Congratulations: you are ahead of the vast majority (99.9999%) of people who say they want to write a book. And then again, your struggles only begin.

Becoming a writer may be difficult as friends and family want to stop you. Becoming something means that you are changing. Changing yourself frightens those around you as they love you as your are now and are not so sure they will love what you become. Assure them that you will still love them no matter how you might change.

Breakthroughs are often proceeded by something breaking. Take care with the shards of glass on the floor.

Having an editor publish your story.

Some writing tips from grinding it out in graduate school. These are general thoughts, not just from an MFA program.

Tips on using Evernote for fiction writers.

Here is a good explanation of the different types of dashes.

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