Software, Methods
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Moving away from Microsoft
Interesting story coming out of a Columbia Law School blog Freedom Now… The United States Department of Justice announced today that it would be making a radical purchasing decision: stop dealing with the firm it considers an illegal monopoly. No more Microsoft Word at Main Justice. So they will spend $13 million to acquire Word…
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The Tower of Babel: Nation shall speak Peace unto Nation
Appropriately enough, the BBC picks up on a New Scientist story about a “Tower of Babel” device that gives users the illusion of being bilingual. My colleagues teaching Modern Languages are going to hate this but Douglas Adams would have loved it… Users simply have to silently mouth a word in their own language for…
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BBC unveils radical revamp of website
Share, Find and Play. The world moves apace… The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com. Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation’s entire…
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BBC unveils radical revamp of website
Share, Find and Play. The world moves apace… The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com. Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation’s entire…
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WikiCalc… This is Cool
Skip this posting if either HTML or Spreadsheet formulae frighten you. Run away bravely if you aren’t even sure what that might mean. Dan Briklin, the guy who developed VisiCalc is building a web-based spreadsheet. It looks as though it might be seriously cool. The next release wikiCalc will have numeric values, text values, and…
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Good Programming: Google vs Microsoft
From the excellent Joel on Software: A very senior Microsoft developer who moved to Google told me that Google works and thinks at a higher level of abstraction than Microsoft. “Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement,” he said. That’s true. Google also uses full-text-search-of-the-entire-Internet the way Microsoft uses little tables…
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Amazon Bookclubs?
I found this comment (see below) posted by Evan at dronamraju.com on the subject of aggregation. This may, or may not, be Evan Williams of Blogger fame… Looking at aggregation more generally, there is another aggregation component that is not quite a solved problem: effective aggregation of user profile/preference information. So on one side you…
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Amazon Bookclubs?
I found this comment (see below) posted by Evan at dronamraju.com on the subject of aggregation. This may, or may not, be Evan Williams of Blogger fame… Looking at aggregation more generally, there is another aggregation component that is not quite a solved problem: effective aggregation of user profile/preference information. So on one side you…
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The Rise of Smart Buildings
As building automation systems (BAS) that control heat, air conditioning, lighting and other building systems get smarter, they’re converging with traditional IT infrastructures. Emerging standards are enabling data sharing between building systems as well as with other business applications, improving efficiency and real-time control over building operating costs. Information security concerns, immature standards, the reluctance…
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The Rise of Smart Buildings
As building automation systems (BAS) that control heat, air conditioning, lighting and other building systems get smarter, they’re converging with traditional IT infrastructures. Emerging standards are enabling data sharing between building systems as well as with other business applications, improving efficiency and real-time control over building operating costs. Information security concerns, immature standards, the reluctance…