Summary of this week:

Apple introduces CarPlay
Samsung selfies dominates the Oscars
Radio Shack is closing 1,100 stores - unemployment
The cyberwar is on between Russia and Ukraine
Getty Images releases 35million photos for non-commerical use

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

Monday March 3, 2014

The power of networking or gathering with like-minded people: this group turned into mostly billionaires. Your results may vary.

Apple introduces CarPlay which combines the iPhone and the car and the experience.

And Google is working on such a system.

SXSW is so popular that the die hards are avoiding it now.

Here is the selfie seen 'round the world. The history of mankind has changed in an instant. A free camera snaps a photo seen by a million people in less than an hour.

Samsung is the biggest winner at last night's Academy Awards.

Android tablets outsold Apple tablets in 2013 for the first time. We bought almost 200million total tablets last year alone.

Kickstarter has reached $1billion total pledges.

I find this fascinating: how our man-made time zones disagree with the sun.

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Tuesday March 4, 2014

Today is Fat Tuesday.

Samsung upgrades its Chromebook offerings. Take care, let's not make Chromebooks expensive and let success lead to failure.

The police lie to a judge because of a non-disclosure agreement. Let's mull this one for a moment. The police didn't want to violate their legal agreement with one party, so they broke their legal agreement with another party. Hmmm, I guess that's okay (not). Let's be candid, the police lied to a judge because they are liars. The verb brings the noun.

Ah, and the surveillance state has its twists and turns. Our government sues Sprint for overcharging us for spying on us.

300,000 wireless routers are hacked. Who knows what mischief resulted? But of course Health Care dot Gov is secure (not).

We revisit the size of the committee. Smaller is still better and 7 +/- 2 remains the magic number.

Facebook may buy drone builder Titan Aerospace. The chit chatters are buying the real science and technology companies. Facebook is NOT a science and technology company. Facebook was created to allow rich cut guys and rich hot girls to chat from their dorm rooms. That is not science and technology.

A detailed look at the anemic job situation in the U.S.

Pizza Hut is experimenting with computer tables. Neat, but how much tech do you need to order a pizza?

Schneier on choosing passwords that are hard to guess.

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Wednesday March 5, 2014

Today is Ash Wednesday.

Radio Shack will close 1,100 stores. What a shame. Though not a great place, it was a local place where you could buy some wires, breadboards, and parts to build things.

The cyberwar is on between Russia and Ukraine.

An error in GNU Transport Layer Security has left hundreds of open source packages open to hacking.

Forward to the past and the good old days of Watergate: the CIA is spying on Senate staff members.

Nuance upgrades its voice-recognition software for the Mac. One new feature is the ability to understand recorded audio.

Windows XP still has 30% of the OS market, and support for it is about to expire.

Marijuana possession in our nation's capital is now much less criminal.

It is all in the packaging: Oscar Mayer's lunchable packs for protein-deficient adults.

We finally have the computer-chip business card. At $30, it is still an experiment.

Dish bought up all the spectrum the FCC auctioned using a shell company to hide its identity and intentions.

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Thursday March 6, 2014

Apple moved $8billion in profits out of Australia without paying taxes. Lawyers write laws and then become upset when people follow the laws.

A good description of our personal rules and how they may hurt us.

Now our computer cases have more computing power and utility than our computers.

A Barbie alternative that has realistic proportions. I predict failure. Kids want super-real toys that let their imagination soar.

When Steve Jobs ran Next computing.

The Weather Channel has discovered that the market for mindless morning chatter is bigger than the market for weather information. Gosh.

The Royal Society holds another Wikipedia edit-a-thon to boost the articles on women scientists. Good for them. Other organizations should do the same.

Microsoft stumbles along with the passing of Windows XP. People like XP and don't like what came after. The customer isn't always right, but the customer is always the customer.

Flipboard buys Zite in the world of iPad news aggregators.

Privacy becomes a luxury affordable only to the super rich.

Getty Images makes 35million photos free to use for non-commercial purposes.

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Friday March 7, 2014

The SAT has been changed again to reflect what kids learn in school (imagine that). They are also changing because they are losing market share.

At least for now, it is legal to fly a commercial drone in the US.

I love this qoute: "On my morning bus into town, every teenager and every grown-up sits there staring into their little infinity machine," The "little infinity machine." Tony Kornheiser calls them "your Google machine."

The Silicon Valley 100.

We now live in the age of surveillance by algorithm. It's nothing personal; you simply score high on some algorithm of suspicious behavior.

There is a big stink about who is and who is not the creator of BitCoin. We still are not certain.

What you get when you combine the Playboy and Hello Kitty logos.

Some cosmetic designs for smartwatches. Watches are pieces of jewelry, and any tech company that forgets that will repeat the great Texas Instruments digital watch fiasco of the late 1970s.

The arches of New York City. Hidden in cities are beautiful pieces of design.

EdX is expanding the list of organizations that can offer its free online courses.

The HP 8: a $170, 8" Android tablet.

How the Intelligence Community is moving to a shared cloud for IT.

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Saturday March 8, 2014

Facts and fancies about caffiene. Our grandparents drank more coffee than we do. I doubt that as my grandparents were very poor, and not poor by today's standards but poor by the standards of 1915.

Tennessee is moving legislation to allow government to compete with private broadband suppliers.

More advances in exoskeletons. This one doesn't seem too practical.

The ASUS Chromebox will be here in only a week at only $179.

The price of powerful portable computers continues to drop: the Dell Precision M2800 at $1,200.

Everyone is talking about wage inequality, but no one seems willing to do anything. Here is Schmidt of Google talking, but how much does Google pay the guys who cut the grass and drive the shuttle busses?

Advances in commercial imaging from space.

A recent study shows that it is worth the money to buy everyone a walking desk. Don't you just love those recent studies?

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Sunday March 9, 2014

And we all lost an hour of sleep last night as we sprung forward. Thank the unending wisdom of Congress.

More confusion and uncertainty with health care. Our President doesn't seem to understand the connection between uncertainty and unemployment. One reason companies are not hiring people is the companies don't know how much an employee will cost.

Leo Babauta on writing.

How email could appear on the screen. Alas, it doesn't, but maybe Google will notice things like this and...

Hide a USB stick in a cash belt. This is actually a great idea for travellers.

Facebook is bringing back its F8 developer conference this year.

Given the cost of living, tech jobs in Austin are the highest paying in the country.

Under the category of, "why weren't they doing this all along?" The Linux Foundation's Intro to Linux course will be free online.

How some people are making lots of money with Vine.

Chatting on the Internet is not the same as chatting face-to-face. Here are some tips for the Internet.

Some thoughts on travel writing.

Reflecting on writing from a writer who is spending time in Paris to get some sort of inspiration. Sounds like fun if you can tolerate the French, but really, stay in Tickfaw, Louisiana or where ever you are. There are plenty of inspirations everywhere.

A writer should always have the means to record an idea and observation. I carry a pen and cards in my shirt pocket. Some use a notebook, some us their smartphone as a voice recorder. Whatever means - do it.

Thoughts on deleting many of those words you have written. Try this reframe: you are not throwing away the words—you are putting them away for now. Computers are a big help with this as you can keep your initial (long) versions of your writing forever.

Working past ideas to completing writing projects. For some people, the actual writing is painful, but if you don't actually write you aren't actually a writer.

Learning to use social media to promote your writing.

One writer's path to a writing life that pays the bills.

Suggestions for starting as a freelance writer. It is unfortunate that the preferred method is to hire the writer of this post, pay her money, and she will "help" you.

Yet five more writing exercises. You can never have too many.

The title of this post is misleading, these are good tips for writing at any time in any state of mind.

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