Saturday, July 31, 2004

DubaiDesertClassic

Amazing pictures from the Dubai Desert Classic golf tournament where Tiger Woods was invited to take swings atop the Burj al Arab hellipad.

This seven star hotel skyscraper - rooms start at $1400 per night - is located in Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates with lots of zany development dreams. Big pockets help make big dreams real, so it is quite possible that the tallest building on earth and a world map raised from the ocean could happen. For more information-

A Short History of Dubai Property Part 1, 2

or this recent Washington Post article,
Making the Desert Boom The idea behind The World is that it will look as much like the world as possible. When finished, this collection of hundreds of man-made islands, dredged up out of the Persian Gulf off the coast of Dubai, will be shaped like the seven continents of planet Earth.

 

Joi Ito's Moblog: 0.2mm 128K RFID

whoa 0.2mm 128K RFID
 

The Etherkiller

hahaha The Etherkiller via Blake
 
Friday, July 30, 2004
a simple notion,
the world's reward -- LYRICS or MP3
 

Great Hackers

Great Hackers
via blogdex... there are too many good blockquotes from this article, but here's one:
To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is.
 

System Administrator Appreciation Day

hot pictures from System Administrator Appreciation Day TODAY
 

This kid's Dinner with #1 on the Forbes

intern blogs about dinner at Bill Gates' mansion Obviously it goes without saying that it's a pretty big deal to be eating with Bill Gates at his house. So much so that most full-time employees don't get this opportunity until you reach a level that is at least pushing general management via Jonathan
 
Thursday, July 29, 2004

We can all be super-powered individuals in the future. (read book)

In other old news, God invented the moon and that bubble gum smell.

 

EE Times -That sucking sound? It's your cell

it's not in the hardware, baby!
That sucking sound? It's your cell
a must-read from EE Times via slashdot
 

Indian school kids

 

Weaving Factory photo - oochappan photos at pbase.com

here is a Weaving Factory in India click next in the top right
 

Shinjuku photo - Tomas Cermak photos at pbase.com

why don't you just go to Shinjuku?
 
the less it weighs, the more it sells for
 

signalgrau designbureau

signalgrau designbureau via dustin
 

Extemporaneously Speaking about

a unique entry by Dave Tracker exclusive and unedited for RWIR

Extemporaneously Speaking about

Stem Cells

1. What are stem cells?

Stem cells are a type of repair cell in the body. They have the ability to change into many types of cells to help repair or re-grow a part of the body. These cells can split and each half can become another stem cell or any type of cell the body needs such as a brain cell, blood cell, or muscle cell.

 

2. Why are they important for research?

These cells can be used to create many types of cells or even to create whole organs.  Embryonic stem cells can be used to create almost anything because they are undifferentiated, whereas adult stem cells have already specialized and therefore are more difficult to manipulate and keep alive in a lab.  With the ability to grow cells, scientists believe we will be able to cure ailing organs by adding a few cells with the ability to rebuild the entire organ.

 

3. What are some things that can be done with them?

Stem cell usage, especially embryonic stem cells, has the potential to cure diseases from heart disease to kidney failure.  Virtually any part of the body can be rebuilt with stem cells.  The periodontal ligament , bone marrow , diabetes, strokes, burns, arthritis, and Parkinson’s disease are just a few of the potential applications.  Stem cells researchers believe there may be potential help almost any injury or disease. To find out more check out Research as U-Wisconsin.  There is a tremendous upside to stem cell research and much work is being done to over turn G.W. Bush’s decision to stop government funding of stem cell research.  Check out NIH stem cell  or sign the petition.

 
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Done with the test, I feel better about it than the last time I took it. Thanks everyone for your support. Time for some quick R&R, then I'll be back.
 

How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)

can't.... stop.... reading.....
How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic WebA work of fiction. A Semantic Web scenario. A short feature from a business magazine published in 2009.
via blogdex
 

HBS Working Knowledge: Strategy: A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward

Strategy: A Better Way to Negotiate: Backward "When you map a negotiation backward, you envision your preferred outcome and think in reverse about how to get there," says Harvard Business School professor and negotiation specialist James K. Sebenius. From Negotiation.
 
Tuesday, July 27, 2004

A lot of people ask me how I have so much time to blog. Well, blogging to read what I'm reading has become habit. If I'm on the internet, I'm blogging. If I'm not blogging, I'm probably not on the internet.

Big Quantitative Analysis II test tomorrow, so I'll probably be off-line until then.

 

Lindsay Lohan continues to use the Danger hiptop.

 
Monday, July 26, 2004

Tokyo Times: A for Ayu

Lee Chapman at Tokyo Times is up to B on his A to Z tour of the city

 

DIM: Hijacking IM for Data Transport - In the beginning, IM communication was strictly a human-to-human affair. A few years ago companies starting sending alerts via IM making it a computer-to-human affair. Now, with the advent of Data over Instant Messaging technology, IM is rapidly set to become a computer-to-computer affair.
by Bill Burnham

As you know, I believe in the untapped potential of consumer Instant Messaging. The above blog post (author is a Managing Partner at Softbank Capital Partners bling bling) crystalizes some tech aspects of untapped data capability in the Buddy List, but does not address the fun consumer opportunities I see. Maybe because it is difficult, if not damn near impossible, to monetize the consumer B.L.?

 
ALERT great news via Jeff Nolan
Danger Inc. - Palo Alto, CA; provider of the hiptop® Wireless Solution, which enables wireless operators to quickly and economically deploy compelling new services and products to their customers; $37 million; Series D; Venture Capital, Redpoint Ventures, SOFTBANK Capital Partners, T-Mobile Venture Fund, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Adams Street Partners. **Sharp is taking over the mfg'ing of the HipTop device - via ZAK and JN**

related news - Lindsay Lohan rejoices, goes on a shopping bender.

 
(Jane Jacobs) has also watched other businesses - independent bookstores and hardware stores - become endangerd by chain stores with hardly a peep from residents or local government. "One thing that astonishes me always is how stupid chambers of commerce and boards of trade are about what's good for them," she says.

"Long ago, as a chld, I read a story that's always stuck with me about the man who sold the sun for a guinea." Jacobs tells me of the poor young man who one day finds a golden coin lying in the gutter. In his hunt for another one, he never looks up at the sun again. It's her metaphor for short-sighted institutions that focus on money and ignore things that may be valuable in other ways.

my cameraphone picture of the Jane Jacobs illustrationQuote from a July 24/July 25 article in the Financial Times, Lunch with Jane Jacobs: Street activists's saving grace, by Jeff Pruzan. Jacobs' latest book, Dark Age Ahead, is available everywhere good books are sold.

 

hot debutante alert - but is she a WILF?

Attention high school readers - You should go to Wake Forest for no other reason than the fact that we have hot employees.

 
Sunday, July 25, 2004

"My Beef With Big Media" by Ted Turner

My Beef With Big Media, by Ted Turner
How government protects big media--and shuts out upstarts like me.

Another ranting on regulations article predicting the death of television, from the founder of CNN - a great read. Featured in this month's Washington Monthly link via dailywireless

 

PRODUCERMAG

neat, via blogads -


PRODUCERMAG
is an online magazine about producers.

 
I had a dream last night that AOL started charging for the BuddyList. sigh
 
om malik, big pimpin'
Om Malik just looks like a fucking badass. Here's his site, and check the current issue of Business 2.0 - Om wrote the cover story.
 
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Sort-of long hair gives much entertainment in the macro vision of drip-drying bangs. After realizing this stance in the shower for a few minutes, hunched over and looking close up, I guess that I am mildly retarded.
 
Friday, July 23, 2004

The Social Numerator.
The Human PageRank.

It's like Google's system for determining the relevance of a website, but for social purposes. It tells me how important you are - how much money you have, who you're connected to, your SAT score and how good you can dance.

 

Shamings | The Olympics of Drunken Embarassment

I guess I've never been roommates with Josh, though
Fresh from my roommates that brought you The Shocker and The Mars Party comes Shamings.com, The Olympics of Drunken Embarassment. I like their Origins of Shaming page....
 

Creditel PowerSwipe review by PC Magazine


Creditel PowerSwipe review by PC Magazine You can now use a cell phone to take credit card payments

 

Impressions from a Recent Trip to Ulaanbaatar

Impressions from a Recent Trip to Ulaanbaatar
 
Thursday, July 22, 2004

Party Crasher: Target Opening

I loved this photo, there are TONS more hipsters pictured on Gawker at this Brooklyn Target grand opening

 

Wired News: Debit, Credit or Cell Phone?

Oh my, this is happening sooner than I ever imagined - Wired News: Debit, Credit or Cell Phone? Japan has long been phasing out the hassle of coins and bills with microchip-laden "smart cards," which let people make electronic payments for everything from lunch to the daily commute.
A series of phones going on sale this summer in Japan, for use on NTT DoCoMo's wireless network, are the world's first with an embedded computer chip that you can fill up with electronic cash.
 

pictures of mold, maybe?

A few days ago I noticed something interesting amazingly colorful growing near a few of the trees on our Quad.





Scientists think that there are about 100,000 species of fungi. Rust, mold, yeast and mildew are included in this kingdom Fungi are organisms that scientists once confused with plants. However, scientists have found that, at the cell level, the fungi are more like animals than they are like plants. For one thing, fungi cannot synthesize their own food like plants do, but instead they eat other organisms as do animals. - and, of course, mushrooms!

 
Pictures of the new Danger Sidekick via Jonathan
 
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Love Song

I was sitting outside of the dorms last night and I had my Treo 600 cell phone face down on the grass. The speaker phone was facing up, and of course I was listening to those hot MP3 mashups from osymyso.... I had the vision for a TV commercial.

This is a storyboard I made to try and pitch the idea.

just me, my tripod and a few minutes in stills

Love Song is a thirty second branding exercise

 
Tuesday, July 20, 2004

duke students all get iPods

Nevermind Wake Forest University's fantastic laptop initiative. IBM Thinkpads? How passe. Duke freshmen all get iPods On Monday, the university announced a deal with Apple to distribute 1,650 of the hand-held gizmos to first-year students. Duke will get a discount and give them free to freshmen -- My thoughts are, What a miserable idea! If only a school had chosen to adopt Danger mobile phones instead... link via BoingBoing
 
In 1898, with the improvement of printing techniques and the increase in transportation speeds, the cost of postcards were lowered from two cents to one, and postcards began to scatter from Coney Island at an astonishing rate: on a single day in September 1906, an astonishing 200,000 postcards were postmarked from Coney Island.

via PBS The Kodak Camera Starts a Craze via BoingBoing

 

part blog, part wiki?

part blog, part wiki

I've been tossing this ideaI want a MT plugin that will let a select group of my closest, most trusted friends correct typos in text and URLs on my blog posts and republish their changes without my intervention around in my head for a few months now - Part blog, part Wiki. There are a lot of topics I like to write about, and often my blog entry reflects the first time I'm introduced. New companies, music groups, ideas. I write them down with some reference notes I can trust in the future.

My readers often know more about these topics than I do. So, it makes sense for you to contribute, and not just in a comments form. Would you hyperlink and research and add images for the sake of knowledge? Or is that what your own website is for?

At the very least, yeah, you could correct my speeling spelling errors.

update- Mahlen thinks some hacks to JSPWiki could do it.

 
Monday, July 19, 2004

trend watch - Paul Williams and The Victory Trio

Which folksy gospel bluegrass group is currently a mock pop sensation in a few of London's hipster clubs?

trend watch - Paul Williams and the Victory Trio

Paul Williams and The Victory Trio bring fierce conviction, along with a touch of righteousness and didacticism, to these stark, old-timey spiritual testimonials.

In the '50s and early '60s, singer, songwriter, and mandolin great Paul Williams served in formative bluegrass bands the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers and Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys. Paul Williams's self-appointed mission has been to spread the bluegrass-style gospel, and though nearly every bluegrass artist worth his salt gives an occasional tip of the hat to gospel, Williams lives and breathes it.

Paul Williams - Old Ways and Old PathsDo yourself a favor and check out the song Stay by the Brook. There's a 30-second sample on Amazon's Old Ways and Old Paths album page (track 4).

 

osymyso music home

very cool mash-up MP3 downloads at osymyso...
now listening: Intro-Expansion 01 via Chad Pugh
 

sean stewart - the beast

cool, a retrospect from someone behind that A.I. Web Game On January 2-4, 2001, a small and very secret team met in the offices of Microsoft's Game Group to plan and design a massive, web-based scavenger-hunt/soap opera.
(Jordan Weisman's) belief, which we all shared, was that if we put a clue in a Turkish newspaper at dawn, it would be under discussion in a high school kids basement in Iowa by dinner time.
Jerry Lee Lewis, the story goes, was touring with Chuck Berry. In theory they were each headliners, and the idea was they would take turns opening for one another. In practice, Lewis refused to be the opening act. Pressure from the tour promoters grew, until finally Lewis was forced to open. He played, by all accounts, a blistering set, and at the end of it, he poured lighter fluid all over his piano and set it on fire in the middle of the stage before stalking to the side and snarling, "Let's see the son-of-a-bitch follow that."

We used up a lot of lighter fluid on the Beast. Good luck, whoever's coming next.
 

PhoneGaim

PhoneGaim.com Linspire, aka Lindows, has a VoIP client cum AOL Buddy List based on the open source GAIM/libfaim engine.
 

Anik F2 Launched on Ariane 5

The world's largest commercial communications satellite, Telstar's Anik F2

July 17th, 2004 - Anik F2 Launched on Ariane 5 The world's largest commercial communications satellite, Telstar's Anik F2, was launched atop an Ariane 5G rocket today. via Jonathan

 

SNARKMONEY ALERT sex phone via VoIP

SNARKMONEY ALERT

Who is doing 1-900 sex lines, outsourced to India or Thailand on VoIP?

Who is doing straight sex phone via VoIP? ie, you're not routing the traffic through an interner carrier... the call originates from the desktop, or Vonage etc

Are there going to be private VoIP exchanges for 1-900 calls,

and would Dubai Internet City DIC offers foreign companies 100% tax-free ownership, 100% repatriation of capital and profits, no currency restrictions, easy registration and licensing accept this company as resident?

 

we are girls from Brazil, and we are on-line to love

we are some girls from Brazil, and we are on-line to love.

 
Sunday, July 18, 2004

Roden Crater Project

I just got a message on Orkut from someone asking, Do you know James Turrell? Can you tell me what it takes to get invited to the Roden Crater?
 
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Oldie but goodie, The Google File System PDF download
 

tmg | PROJECTS | Tangible Bits Exhibition

very future - I/O brush RealVideo download or I/O Brush home pageIO Brush is a new drawing tool aimed at young children, ages four and up, to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials via mathowie
 

A Young American Outsources Himself to India

The New York Times: A Young American Outsources Himself to India At one table, five friends from Singapore sat with a 6-foot-3, 23-year-old anomaly: Joshua Bornstein, perhaps the only native-born American among the Bangalore-based employees of Infosys Technologies. via Brian Carlo
 
Friday, July 16, 2004

blended thoughts on a new economy + digital post boxes

Blended: the very new economy, via TJ.

I think that a good idea for a product would be mailing addresses* like the fake PO boxes at the Empire state building that Seth talks about in places like Colorado, Dubai and Singapore that scan and digitally deliver your snail mail over the internet.

Your articles would be:

  1. Photographed at the final destination in their original envelope, so that you still get the messy stamp feeling.
  2. Professionally opened, so as not to damage their contents.
  3. Scanned page-by-page at a resolution of your definition.
  4. Delivered via e-mail and RSS.
  5. Archived by date and return address in a web-accessible database.

This must have been done before with fax, right? E-mail me if you know.

 

A lot of people say that they get their best ideas in the shower.

I get mine brushing teeth.

 

picture via ricksterbot's metalinks at www.collegehumor.com

via ricksterbot www.collegehumor.com

 
Thursday, July 15, 2004

Joi Ito's Web: Brainstorms 2004 dinner interview notes - Ted Turner

My vision comes from thinking. I don't watch TV.
Ted Turner at Brainstorms 2004, interview notes here

 

Buck Truck, The Rappin' Trucker

Buck Truck, The Rappin' Trucker - via BoingBoing

 

nPost.com Interview with Narendra Rocherolle of Webshots

March 1, 2004 Interview with Narendra Rocherolle, CEO of Webshots
 

Webshots co-founder hit jackpot with sale to CNET

Webshots co-founder hit jackpot with sale to CNET Online technology news provider CNET Networks Inc. said Wednesday that it will pay $70 million to acquire Webshots, a digital photography Web site that was salvaged from the ruins of bankrupt ExciteAtHome for $2.4 million 21/2 years ago.
 

this is sippey.com: cost per influence and meme arbitrage

cost per influence and meme arbitrage and this is the birth of 2004 new media marketing theory
 

WSJ.com - Microsoft to Link Message System With Yahoo, AOL

very big news? Microsoft to Link Message System With Yahoo, AOL Microsoft Corp. announced Thursday a deal that will allow users of its corporate instant-message software to communicate with services from rivals America Online and Yahoo Inc. link via Mark Hughes
 

buzzmarketing.com -- The Authority on Buzz Marketing

it's not a new idea, but Mark has some cool new theories and examples from history

I rapped with Mark Hughes from BUZZ MARKETING what he was a part of as VP Marketing at Half.com is truly impressive for about two hours last night. Great guy, very cool. He's working on writing a book that should be really, really solid for new media models (like blogs and away messages!).

 

TimesDispatch.com | Could it be his fortune to ace pop quiz?

Could it be his fortune to ace pop quiz? featuring Austin Harris, WFU 2004, currently working as an analyst for Merrill Lynch in NYC.

Watch The WB next Tuesday,
July 22, at 9:00 p.m.

 
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Feld Thoughts: Software Durability and Societal Infrastructure Software

Software Durability and Societal Infrastructure Software ... the title just sounds smart
 
I have about four weeks left where it is totally acceptable for me to be a irresponsible blogger. You can damn well bet that I will take advantage of that.
 

Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women Gadgets, Culture, General Neophilia. For and by women
 

BuddyGopher press

I am working part-time again at the library on campus, and today The Washington Post came in.

page C1 of The Washington Post's STYLE section on July 9th, 2004

During my interview with the writer, I made it a point to try and explain the phenomenon of away messages in a campus environment relative to their social scheduling functionality. I think Laura already had that impression. One thing, though - We're always on! Please don't call us Generation Y. I used my mouthful of a BuddyGopher description, One-to-many bite-sized blogging for the college masses! , but that didn't make her print.

Props to prior art on the Always On generation Google Results for "always on generation". For a larger scan of the Washington Post print article, see BuddyGopher ~ Got Press?

:-)Oh, and yes, we really do love Away Messages.

 

Google Acquires Picasa