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Monday,  03/01/10  11:08 PM

March, whew.  And I am back in Vista, for the week, double whew.  Living in a hotel room and eating out constantly is definitely taking a toll.  After this week I have less need to be in the office, but will be spending time on the road elsewhere...  so be it.

Among the positives of being on the road, I've discovered I really like elliptical trainers.  Might have to get one for home (if I'm ever there long enough to use it :)  And while working on elliptical trainers, have rediscovered how much I hate dislike CNN.  They don't even pretend it's actual news anymore, it is like some weird reality show.

Will Obama still be blaming Bush in 2012?  Yes. 

Technoccult: The philosophy of punk rock mathematics.  "The point of punk ... was that ANYone could get the experience of being in a band, of performing in front of peers, of expressing yourself, without there being a prerequisite to participate.  This blew my mind, and it was that conversation that turned me from a nascent douchebag into a self-aware poser.

There's a new Tivo in town, the Series 4 aka XL.  I'm not clear on the advantages over the Series 3, maybe 1080p output?  I continue to love my Series 3 a lot, but not sure what else I would want... maybe a 3rd tuner?  Or more disk space!

 

 

Kooza

Wednesday,  03/03/10  11:35 PM

Yesterday night I was talking with a friend about Las Vegas, and how fun it is, and especially the shows, and especially Cirque du Soleil.  (And in the back of my mind I was thinking I *still* prefer their traveling shows under the big tent, where I first saw them and where my mind was blown by them :)

... so this you will not believe ...

Tonight I’m riding down PCH, enjoying the night, and I reach Del Mar.  And I look over and see this giant striped tent.  Wait a minute, I know that tent!  Holy crap, it's the Cirque du Soleil!  So I Google and find:

Cirque du Soleil's Kooza

Their latest traveling show is in Del Mar *now*!  How cool is that?

Yes of course I must see them!

 

 

Wednesday,  03/03/10  11:44 PM

(yawn) man I'm a bit tired but I will make a filter pass (yawn) ...

Craig Mod: Books in the age of the iPad.  [ via Daring Fireball

JPL asks Is that Saturn's moon Titan, or Utah?  "Planetary scientists have been puzzling for years over the honeycomb patterns and flat valleys with squiggly edges evident in radar images of Saturn's moon Titan. Now, working with a 'volunteer researcher' who has put his own spin on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they have found some recognizable analogies to a type of spectacular terrain on Earth known as karst topography. A poster session today, Thursday, March 4, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, displays their work.

Facebook for WebOs gets a much-needed update.  Indeed, and I love it.  Especially the way friends' Facebook profile pictures are now automatically mapped to their phone numbers from my Exchange database. 

I'll leave you with this pretty excellent Rube Goldberg machine, featured in an OK Go music video.  Stick with it because it keeps getting more and more radical... anything which features a pachinko machine has to be great, and there's at least one piano destroyed, as well as a TV sledgehammered... and it all ends with the band getting shot with paint.  Yippee.

 

 

Friday,  03/05/10  04:24 PM

Greetings y'all, made it through another busy week with only a confused ego and a cold.  Could have been much worse :)  And so now I look forward to a weekend off - recovery time for both :) - and then off to New York for week of visits with customers and prospects...  but first, this!

9.8 Trillion. I'm with Ann Althouse, this number IS seriously incomprehensible.  Yet no less alarming for being so...  we are definitely entering uncharted territory with this administration, and who knows what will happen. 

This is seriously cool...  find your computer's location with Windows 7 and Geosense.  This FREE software let's your computer triangulate your location from relative WiFi signal strengths just like some cellphones (the ones that don't have "real" GPS built in).  I downloaded and tried this and it really works.  I mean really really; when I was in a hotel in Vista it nailed by location exactly, and in my house at home it actually reported my street address.  Spooky but cool. 

PS also I love the irreverent tone of the dialog boxes, check out the installation at right - "I authorize you to slap me if I violate the terms above" - I love it :)

[ Update: also works perfectly in New York, even when I'm not connected to a WiFi network!  How the heck can it do that?  But it does... ]

Fully agree with this: Andreessen's advice to old media: burn the boats.  "...he points out, that the iPad will have a 'fantastic browser.'  No matter how many iPads the Apple sells, the Web will always be the bigger market.  'There are 2 billion people on the Web,' he says. 'The iPad will be a huge success if it sells 5 million units.'"  They won't take his advice - it is a classic innovator's dilemma scenario - but taking it would be the only thing that could save them.  On any device, even on the iPad, there will always be a web interface with more content then the local app environment. 

Good move: Palm introduces WebOS plugin development kit.  "They call it a 'plugin development kit', but what it really means is that developers can write compiled C/C++ apps for WebOS now."  The more Palm can do to encourage app development, the better; this seems like their biggest weakness... 

See you in the air - flying Virgin to New York Sunday...

 

 

Ten Candidates (New Yorker, 3/8/10)

Monday,  03/08/10  11:02 PM

 

"ten candidates"

and the winner is...

 

remembering Daniel, year 6

Sunday,  03/14/10  10:09 AM

This is being typed through a fog of tears.  It is the sixth anniversary of my friend Daniel Jacoby's death, it is a Sunday morning, and I am thinking of him and counting my blessings.  I always say that Daniel left a lasting impression on me, that as a result of having known him I think like him a little, and it seems that with each passing year I learn more and am able to think more like him.  

A few weeks ago I nearly died, I was hit by a car while riding.  That was a formative experience, and now, thinking about Daniel, I can see this helped me to think like him even more.  I've just had the most amazing week, traveling in New York, and coming home yesterday to ride the Solvang Century.  And here I am, alive.  I am trying to maximize each day knowing it could be my last.

On March 13, 2004, I received an email from Daniel, subject: death announcement.  It begins: "By the time you read this I will be pushing up the daisies".  We all knew Daniel had not being doing well but this email was a shock, and just sitting here six years later I can still feel the adreneline I felt then, the sadness, the sense of loss.  I did not know then what a rich and amazing source of happiness and gain his death would turn out to be.  The email contains these lines:

I hope each one of you does something meaningful with your life. 
Not just conquests or making money but something that changes someone elses life for the better.

Words to live by, or perhaps to die by.  Certainly Daniel did many things that changed many lives for the better, mine not least.  Onward!

 

week of 3/8/10, redux

Sunday,  03/14/10  10:43 AM

Well I had the busiest week ever, whew; last Sunday I flew to New York and spent a whirlwind week meeting with customers.  Squeezed in between were some great dinners and a visit to the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art, which unexpectedly featured some amazing pieces by Auguste Rodin (link is to some of my pics.)  After a delayed return flight which turned into a red-eye last Friday, I rode the Solvang Century yesterday in 6:43, after 0:00 sleep (more on that to come).

... in the meantime it's all happening ... here's a filter pass ...

Happy π day!  3/14, get it? 

Puppy!  In which Joel Spolsky announces his retirement from blogging.  I'm going to miss Joel - assuming he's really retiring, which only time will tell - he certainly wrote some great stuff over the years.  I do find it rather funny the way people have to declare transitions like this.  Why not just stop writing, and leave the door open to start writing again later on?  That's what I've done, and so far at least I've always come back. 

This is so true: In the land of Twitter, blogging is king.  "Perhaps the smartest thing that Twitter did was to enable easy linking from tweets."  Perhaps. 

The Secret Origin of Windows.  A great insight into the early days of Microsoft...  "Windows needed to be finished, not further tweaked in any way that jeopardized getting it out that summer without further embarrassment."  Wow, what a cool picture, would you buy an operating system from those guys? 

iPad Pre-Orders: For Idiots Only.  And so we have confirmed what we already knew, there are a lot of idiots out there.  Count me among them; my iPad is safely ordered.  WiFi-only model, minimum configuration.  Stay tuned (delivery 4/3)! 

Dave Winer ordered one in a moment of insanity

Here's a question: Does HTML5 really beat Flash?  The answer, "no".  Of course in the case of iDevices and Apple's support for Flash, it isn't a performance issue at all, it's a business issue.  Flash could be way faster and it wouldn't matter. 

Google Apps Marketplace makes its debut, surprising noone.  The smartphone competition is a war between platforms, not devices or applications.  How interesting !? 

Cool!  Google Maps gets bike lanes / directions.  I tried it out in Thousand Oaks, and it found the bike lanes, yay!  One quibble, really they should have called it "cycling", not "bicycling". 

Congratulations to Sandra Bullock, who won Best Actress last weekend for her performance in The Blink Side.  Finally an actress I could root for...  check out her reaction to winning a Razzie for the same performance. 

How Did A Film No One Saw Win An Oscar?  I was wondering the same thing.  The Hurt Locker?  Never heard of it before, and certainly didn't see it.  That's what happens sometimes in these popularity contests... 

Ars Technica: How ad blockers hurt revenue.  Well, duh.  But this is a Prisoner's Dilemma, and I doubt too many people will inconvenience themselves with crappy ads if they don't have to.  Cue the violins. 

As you know, our "healthcare reform" is really "insurance reform"; we aren't changing healthcare so much as the way we pay for it.  President Obama understands this, but his public statements are pure hyperbole as he confuses Cause and Effect.  "Any company will - and should - raise the prices of its goods or services until they reach the point where they are constrained by competition. Our government has followed a perverse policy with regard to health care, by limiting the extent to which health insurers can compete against each other and thereby constrain each others' prices. The obvious solution, if we want to rein in health insurance costs, is to 1) broaden competition in the industry to the maximum amount possible, and 2) repeal all mandates that require insurance companies to charge for coverages that many people don't want."  Exactly, but neither of these two steps are part of the plan. 

Nancy Pelosi on healthcare: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."  Uh, that makes sense, yeah, by all means let's vote it in before we've seen what's in it.  Yikes! 

OMG, Tron Legacy looks amazing.  I echo Kottke; F**k yes.  BTW I just happened to be listing to Falco's One Night in Bangkok while watching this.  Worked perfectly :) 

Mike Taylor wonders Whatever happened to programming?  "I want to make things, not just glue things together."  Same.  C++ spoken here :) 

In tectonic news, the massive mag 8.8 earthquake which shook Chile moved the city of Conception at least 10' to the West.  That's ten feet.  Whoa. 

Adding insult to injury, a 7.2 aftershock hit in the middle of inaugural ceremonies for present-elect Sebastián Piñera.

Three minutes of Moths hydrofoiling.  Yay!  And absolutely does not violate "the inverted pyramid for video" dictum; it gets going right off the bat.  Awesome! 

Who needs a tuxedo: all-back Penguin discovered.  He might be a non-conformist, but I think he looks rather sharp :) 

Some cycling news: Alberto Contador wraps up Paris-Nice.  It was in this race in 2007 that he first showed world-class form, winning that last stage up to Eze in an impressive blast up the hill. 

And here we have Magical Street Graffiti.  Wow, these *are* amazing, and all the more so for being viewable from multiple angles. 

And finally, ZooBorn of the Week, a baby dolphin!

 

 

Solvang Century, x4: in 5:45 on 0:00 sleep

Sunday,  03/14/10  11:56 AM

Yesterday I rode the Solvang Century, for the fourth time.  That's the most I've ever ridden a single event; I first rode it back in 2007, before I was really into riding Centuries and such...  at that time just finishing was my goal, and I was most proud of myself for having done so.  I've since moved on to various "ultra" events but I still enjoy Solvang; I enjoy having 4,000+ riders on the road, and the little towns in Santa Barbara County's wine country, and now I pretty much ride it for time.  This year I managed to ramp up the difficulty factor by returning from New York Friday night on a late flight which was delayed into becoming a red-eye; for the record it took me 6:43 elapsed, 5:45 riding time; pretty good after 0:00 sleep!

I posted a bunch of pictures in case you're interested...

Here's the route, the "usual", with about 5,200' of climbing...  most of it comes near the end, climbing Foxen Canyon, and in my long history of doing this ride I've bonked and cracked badly on that part...  but not this time.


the route: 99 miles, 5,200 feet

A highlight of this ride was passing through the Santa Rita Hills, home of the world's greatest Pinot Noir; here's a picture of the awesome Sea Smoke vineyard, nestled up in the hills at the West end of the valley...


the awesome Sea Smoke vineyard

Overall it was a fun ride, I'm glad I did it.  If nothing else it helps get me into shape for the Solvang Double Century in two weeks...


still smiling after 70 miles, only Foxen Canyon left...

Cheers all and see you out there...

 

OMG, I just got born (New Yorker, 3/15/10)

Monday,  03/15/10  11:06 AM

 

"dude, awesome!"

 

 

Paris in 26 Gigapixels

Monday,  03/15/10  11:42 AM

I'll be the kazillionth blogger to link: Paris in 26 Gigapixels.  Very cool, both the technology and the picture itself.

What did you look for first?  For me, it was the Auguste Rodin museum, and then the Musee d'Orsay :) as pictured above.  Way cool...

 

week of 3/15, redux

Saturday,  03/20/10  06:21 PM

Greetings blog public, this is coming to you from Washington DC, where I find myself after a busy week and a flight out yesterday.  I am in town for a DICOM Working Group 26 meeting and the U.S. and Canadian Association of Pathologists annual conference.  It will be quite a week.

So I'm looking out my hotel window, and atop a nearby hill I see this beautiful cathedral.  So I walked over.  And there it was, the National Cathedral, in all its glory, looking for all the world like an old European church from the 17th century.  Who knew?  Anyway it was cool.

And now, a filter pass!

Health Care reform passes, but at what cost?  "This bill is unlikely to achieve most of the objectives that have been set out for it.  In the end, then, we're left with a highly expensive, fiscally dangerous expansion of health insurance that locks even more people into a broken system.  That's an achievement, all right, but not a particularly good one."  What we have here is insurance reform, and although it is badly needed, this bill is badly done. 

Victor Davis Hanson says we've crossed the Rubicon.  I'm afraid he's right...

The Yike Bike, a strange new bike designed to be easily collapsed for storage.  Huh.  It doesn't look like a winner to me, somehow... 

NASA Mars Rover Getting Smarter as it Gets Older.  "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, has a new capability to make its own choices about whether to make additional observations of rocks that it spots on arrival at a new location.  Software uploaded this winter is the latest example of NASA taking advantage of the twin Mars rovers' unanticipated longevity for real Martian test drives of advances made in robotic autonomy for future missions."  Wow, seven years.  And the original mission lifetime was 90 days! 

Yes, of course there is a Tag Heuer version of the Tesla Roadster.  And yes, of course it looks cool; dare I say, this is the best treatment I've seen...  vastly better than that weird orange that Tesla seem to like, even with the carbon fiber accents... 

John Battelle on the iPad media frenzy, and specifically Wired's 'iPad demo': "What I find interesting is the media's response to the iPad (and I include tech blogs in the category of "media").  Overwhelmingly, the media wanted to believe that a hip magazine like Wired (caveat, I was a co-founder) would, natch, have the hippest iPad demo, a demo that, natch, would prove the viability of ... the media's own threatened business model!  The truth, however, is a bit more complicated."  Indeed. 

So this is cool: the wooden Canada Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai was designed by the Cirque du Soleil!  How cool is that? 

The perfect rule for texting etiquette.  Ask permission if you would also ask permission to visit the bathroom.  One on one or small group, yes, big group, no.  I love it. 

Feeling groovy; here's a cool electronic microscope picture of a record's groove.  Be sure to check out the comments, too; I love that someone thinks they've detected Misty Mountain Hop

Here's a question: Is Facebook better than sex?  Here's an answer: No.  I think people use Facebook largely because of sex, however. 

Marc Cantor: the history of Avatars.  How cool; I *totally* remember mediaband.com back in the day, with the Marc Cantor theme song and his cool little avatar...  if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear the theme song too... 

From Google: Now it's easy to switch from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.  "Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates your company's email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps."  Wow.  If I was gutsier or my company was smaller, I would try this.  If. 

Congratulations to Oscar Friere for winning Milan - San Remo.  Good for him, he still has it, and good for Rabobank, who were due for a victory.  298km by the way, a war of attrition. 

This is beautiful: Nature by Numbers.  Absolutely, you *must* watch it, and you will thank me. 

Looks like Michael Lewis has created another megahit: The Big Short.  An expose of the current "financial crisis", in the same vein as his awesome Liar's Poker; Cory Doctorow loved it.  Not out for the Kindle yet however...  So I have to wait! 

Jean-Louis Gassée: Who will buy Palm?  "If you’re in a hurry: no one."  Man, this is too really too bad.  But I cannot disagree.  Still, I can love my Pre!  [ via Daring Fireball; John Gruber comments "from a man who knows what it's like" (because of Be) ] 

ZooBorn of the week: a baby squirrel monkey


Wrapping up (yawn); this is so true... 
Some days you make the coffee, and some days, the coffee makes you :)

 

 

self aggrandizement (NY 3/15/10)

Saturday,  03/20/10  07:30 PM


The blogger's progression...

(for Josh :)

[Update: self-reference :]

 

week of 3/22, redux

Sunday,  03/28/10  09:50 AM

And so I am back from a week in Washington DC, an amazingly busy and productive week attending the U.S. and Canadian Association of Pathologists annual conference, squeezing in a couple of DICOM meetings, a visit to the National Cathedral, a visit to the National Zoo, and an unbelievable celebration dinner at which a magnum of 1996 Araujo Eisele was consumed which could possibly be the best wine I have ever had...

(and not to mention back from riding a double century yesterday)

...but while all that was happening for me, all this was happening for you:

Well, the health care reform bill was signed (aka insurance reform), so What Happens Now

My little city of Westlake Village has applied for Google's Fiber for Communities program; the entry included this video to make the case: Why the City of Westlake Village is the right choice for Google's Fiber for Communities project.  Yes, that is Westlake Major Pro Tem Ned Davis dressed as The Flash, alongside current Major Mark Rutherford.  Pretty cool - I hope we are selected! 

Bringing improved support for Flash to Google Chrome.  And so we have Apple vs Google playing out in Flash support too.  No way Apple are going to support Flash on iDevices, but I guess Flash will be everywhere else.  Question is will it matter? 

Hendrik Hertzberg: Some Nukes (making the case for nuclear power)...  Hendrik is an Obama apologist and I often disagree with him, but in this instance he is dead on.  Let's hope we get some change on this issue. 

As you know I love Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, and as another example why I offer Battle of the Bands, his column in the March 22 issue.  "In the space of thirty-one days, from the end of January to the beginning of March, Carnegie Hall held an unofficial orchestral Olympics, presenting thirteen concerts by symphonic ensembles from six states and three foreign countries...  The impulse to pit one orchestra against another is as regrettable as it is irresistible."  I swear I am becoming a classical music (and opera) fan simply by reading Alex' columns ;) 

Tim (XML) Bray is a Sun employee who didn't want to get absorbed into Oracle and so has joined Google, he will be blogging about it from the inside.  A preliminary assessment: Life at Google

Way cool: the virgin flight of Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise.  This was a "captive carry", meaning the spaceship itself didn't fly, except as a passenger of WhiteKnightTwo, it's mother ship, but still it was another forward step along the long road to space travel.  Onward! 

How cool would it be to be Richard Branson, who is wealthy enough and energetic enough to start stuff like this?  Really cool :)

The story of bottled water.  Entirely a marketing concept, as most tap water is at least as good (if not better) than bottled water, especially in the United States.  Ironically the people most likely to drink it are "greens" who would be horrified if they understood the environmental impact of bottled water vs ordinary tap water.  Clean plentiful running water is one of the miracles of our civilization. 

With Apple's iPad imminent, a great cluster of articles from Wired: How the Tablet will Change the World.  The main article is great, as is all the side takes; my favorite was Marshall McLuhan's...  On a meta level it is interesting how readily Wired has embraced the tablet as a potential delivery channel, and yet Wired remains a magazine with value as a magazine; although their ads are down I could seem them lasting a lot longer in paper form than, say, Time. 

Pretty nice point from Jeff Atwood: the opposite of Fitt's Law.  It isn't only important to make things users do all the time easy, you want to make things users hardly ever do hard. 

This looks amazingly cool: Photoshop CS5's new Content-Aware Fill.  I use the world's oldest version of Photoshop (v6, from ahem 2001), perhaps *finally* I have a reason to upgrade.  [ via Slashdot

The Tivo Premiere makes its debut, and is reviewed by Engadget.  In the kiss of death department, note this: "Let's talk about that lag for a moment, since it's inescapable: it feels like the entire UI reloads every time you do anything."  Sigh.  A sluggish UI will kill a consumer product faster than anything. 

From Technology Review: the Slow Rise of the Robot Surgeon.  "Robot-driven procedures are popular, but surgeons say the technology isn't evolving quickly enough."  That's certainly one point of view, from another, a slow steady rise is preferable to fast growth followed by pullback when there are problems.  Robotic surgery has tremendous value - my daughter Megan had open heart surgery to repair an Atrial Septal Defect when she was four, done by a surgeon with a robotic arm, and it was incredibly successful - but the challenges are significant, too... 

I've posted this before (I think), but it bears re-posting: a graphic which shows all the aircraft carriers in the world.  You can click through for an interactive enlargement - please do - but the thumbnail makes the essential point, the U.S. has twice as many carriers as the rest of the world combined, and bigger and better ones, too...  no other country comes close.  Russia has one, and the U.K. four [smaller] ones.  When you factor in our edge in the planes which fly off these carriers and the ammo they carry, our superiority is amazing. 

Well this is cool: Boonen to ride Tour of California.  Wow, with Cancellara in the mix, looks like Levi will have some serious challengers this year...  I can't wait! 

Steve Almond: Why it's okay to love Styx.  "They've been slagged as embarrassing, over-earnest, everything wrong with '70s music.  Forget that: This band rules."  Indeed, and if you aren't enjoying them, it just means you aren't listening to them loud enough :) 

ZooBorns of the week: thermonuclear otter pups.  ("They are so lethally cute, we have dubbed them the Thermonuclear Otter Triplets.")

 

 

the unGooglable man (NY 3/22/10)

Sunday,  03/28/10  10:28 AM


...I love it...

(I am the opposite, a uniquely Googlable man, thanks to a sufficiently unusual name :)

 

Solvang Double Century, x3: in 11:53 elapsed

Sunday,  03/28/10  11:07 AM

Yesterday I rode the Solvang Double Century, hard upon my return from Washington DC the day before, and I must tell you I had a great ride.  It was a spectacular day, Spring has sprung, and I managed to break 12 hours elapsed for a double for the first time (11:53!).  Solvang isn't the world's hardest double - about 7,200' of climbing - but no double is easy.  Making this one just slightly more interesting, I broke my rear derailleur cable descending Drum Canyon at the very end, and had to ride the last ten miles in my biggest gear.

I came out of the Washington trip on a total high... and it spilled into my ride.  I loved replaying the week in my mind, all the things which happened; it was an amazing week.  Oh and I replayed the music too; when I ride I am music driven...  it was great.

Some pictures:


the route: 200 miles, 7,200' from Buelleton up to Morro Bay and back
initial climb is Foxen Canyon, final one is Drum Canyon


the peloton gets started in the early morning light


grapes sunning themselves in Foxen Canyon; beautiful!


wow, PURPLE; Spring has sprung on the road to San Luis Obispo


turnaround point in Morro Bay with the famous rock in the background
102 miles down, and it's all downhill from here :)


riding along the beach makes me happy


some amazing seaside vistas in Avilla Beach


climbing Drum Canyon, the world's worst surface
actually broke my derailleur descending the backside


one happy camper with another double under my belt
11:53 elapsed, 10:38 riding time (!)

Onward!  Next up the 260km Tour of Flanders...

 

week of 3/29, redux

Wednesday,  03/31/10  09:21 PM

A quick filter pass on my interstitial "week back" between Washington and Europe...

Yay, finally: European Collider Begins Its Subatomic Exploration.  "After 16 years and $10 billion - and a long morning of electrical groaning and sweating - there was joy in the meadows and tunnels of the Swiss-French countryside Tuesday: the world’s biggest physics machine, the Large Hadron Collider, finally began to make subatomic particles collide.

Question of the year: When will IPO fans stop wearing bags over their heads

Probably related to the lack of a strong IPO market: Half of commercial real estate mortgages to be under water by year's end.  Yikes.  That will be our next crisis. 

Steven Fry interviews Steve Jobs in Time: Inside Steve's Pad

"I think the experience of using an iPad is going to be profound for many people," Jobs says. "I really do. Genuinely profound."  That rings a bell.  "I've heard it said that this is the device for you," I reply.  "The one that will change everything."  "When people see how immersive the experience is," Jobs says, "how directly you engage with it ... the only word is magical."

On the cusp of the iPad's release, Dale Dougherty suggests the iPad needs its Hypercard.  "What's missing today is HyperCard, or an equivalent tool that can be used to create a new wave of applications for the iPad. And if Apple isn't thinking about it, you'd expect that Adobe would be..."  Huh, interesting point.  New platforms often take off when there's a new tool that makes authorizing applications easier.  VB enabled the PC, and as Dale points out Hypercard enabled the Mac. 

Eric Sink thinks This is a major wave of change.  "Computers, by and large, are still designed for geeks.  This is why we all buy T-shirts that say 'No, I will not fix your computer'.  The genius of the iPad is that it cannot get things like viruses.  It is a closed platform.  You can't put apps on it.  You can't write and distribute software for it without Apple's permission.  This is why geeks hate it and normal people will love it.

Outrageously complicated Rube Goldberg machines compete for best of the year.  With videos...  I love it! 

An interesting idea: Want me to read your email?  Pay me...  Certainly an interesting way to route around spam.  Would you pay me to send me email?  Ah, I didn't think so.  Aye, there's the rub. 

Brad Feld notes how Facebook notifications that you've been tagged in a picture get a 100% click-through rate.  Absolutely correct. 

Also from Brad: email is still the best login.  Yes it is.  We realized that back in the day at PayPal, and it is just as true today as it was then. 

CNet: Sneak Peak: Pixar's 'Toy Story 3' a very big winner.  "Let me just say it now: 'Toy Story 3' is fantastic. I saw an advanced screening Thursday night, and going back over the notes I took in the dark theater at Pixar's headquarters here, I find this that I wrote about a third of the way into the film: 'I already know it's a BIG hit.'"  Cool.  Toy Story 2 was one of my favorite movies, period.  Can't wait!

 

 
 

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