Update: SMART Ideas 4.1

Grok Headline matches for Update: SMART Ideas 4.1

SMART Ideas revved to version 4.1

SMART Ideas revved to version 4.1 04/23/2004 12:04 AM
SMART Technologies has released version 4.1 of its SMART Ideas concept-mapping software in English and French for Mac OS X (10.1.5 or later)...

Sexy, smart, and cheap date ideas.

Sexy, smart, and cheap date ideas. 08/13/2004 02:42 PM
Friday night is date night.

The MUG update: ideas for last-minute
gifts

The MUG update: ideas for last-minute
gifts 12/22/2004 01:43 AM
Leading off the news at The Macintosh User Group (MUG) Center this week, editor Chuck Joiner notes that the site features a page full of gift ideas for the Mac user in your life. He welcomes additions to the list. You might also find something among the new vendor offers also just added to the site -- the special deals are available only to MUG members, and the additions include offerings from O'Reilly, Micromat, the Apple MUG Store and more.

Update: Smart Scroll X 1.2.1

Update: Smart Scroll X 1.2.1 03/14/2005 05:07 PM
The window scrolling enhancer adds Grab Scroll, High Gear for scrolling, scroll key compatibility with Mozilla themes, and more.

Smart Box Design Rolls Out Farkle for
Palm OS Handhelds, a Lively Mobile
Rendition of the Classic Dice Game,
Featuring “Smart” Opponents

Smart Box Design Rolls Out Farkle for
Palm OS Handhelds, a Lively Mobile
Rendition of the Classic Dice Game,
Featuring “Smart” Opponents 09/13/2004 12:34 PM
Smart Box Design announces the release of Farkle, a Palm OS version of the classic dice rolling game. Farkle offers players an opportunity to challenge friends or compete against a variety of “intelligent” computer opponents with a wide range of personalities—from cautious to daring—that will determine the level of risk each opponent is willing to take when deciding just how far to push their luck. [PRWEB Sep 13, 2004]

Economy of Scales: Smart AV Smart
Console

Economy of Scales: Smart AV Smart
Console 12/24/2004 12:16 PM

Once a week, createdigitalmusic's Peter Kirn highlights drool-worthy music and audio creation equipment, from essential to oddball. This week's computer audio control surface, invented by a former magician and priced like a yacht, hits the oddball end.

How smart is Microsoft's smart phone?

How smart is Microsoft's smart phone? 04/13/2004 08:56 PM
ZDNet Apr 14 2004 0:41AM GMT

Bad Ideas

Bad Ideas 04/09/2005 12:48 PM

« Hung between the squeaky piggies and nylon chew bones were an altogether different kind of squeaky chew bone. I wondered if they were beef flavoured and if they were a hot item with women who want to have their dog chew on them in front of an annoying boyfriend as a way to run them off. :) »

Another product of a bad idea: the new Fi zz Lime Cider. It tastes like someone poured cider into your G&T. There's a reason why it's the "World's first lime cider".

IDEAS

IDEAS 12/02/2003 01:22 AM
IDEAS - Internet Documents in Economics Access Service
http://ideas.repec.org/

Welcome to the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available on the Internet. Over 200'000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 110'000 can be downloaded in full text! This site is part of a large volunteer effort to enhance the free dissemination of research in Economics, RePEc. IDEAS is a service providing information about working papers and published research to the economics profession. IDEAS stands for "Internet Documents in Economics Access Service", which is not very good English, but you get the idea... The data available here are contributed at no charge by volunteers and made available freely. This service uses the complete data from the RePEc database, which includes bibliographic data contributed by over 330 archives, including many of the major research outlets and publishers.

Big Ideas

Big Ideas 07/25/2004 12:25 PM
Big Ideas. "Eating, sleeping, procreating, laughing - and trying to create a world in which we can do these things unmolested - have all been far greater drivers of human ingenuity than time machines or battery-operated scooters." - "We may no longer hold high hopes of the state, but if the study of individuals reminds us of our common humanity and prompts us to reassess the merits of the collective, let’s welcome it."

Novel Ideas

Novel Ideas 06/10/2004 09:03 PM
Technovelgy lists inventions from science fiction novels, including the Tasp, the Delpi Pool, Retinal Projection and the Invisible Teenager.

Product ideas

Product ideas 07/02/2004 04:17 PM

With every WWDC, Apple announces more and more cool stuff for developers that make writing apps ever easier.

So that makes me wonder about the process of deciding what apps to develop. Assuming you have a ton of good ideas for apps, there are two basic ways to approach the decision:

1. Pick one that should be easy to implement because Apple has already given you most of what you need.

2. Pick one that should be difficult to implement because you have to invent a bunch of stuff from scratch.

For instance... when NetNewsWire 1.0 shipped, there was no WebKit for displaying HTML. There was an XML parser, but there was no object-oriented, easy-to-use Cocoa XML parser. The Cocoa bindings technology didn’t exist. HTTP networking was poorly supported. The XML-RPC support (for weblog editing) was so crashy at the time that I had to write my own XML-RPC client.

(When I was a boy, we used to have walk ten miles through the snow before we could retain an object. If we wanted to use autorelease we had to go without lunch.)

You can’t draw a conclusion from one example, but I’ll give it a try anyway. The conclusion might be that #2—pick something difficult to implement—is the better choice.

I say that because it gives you a chance to be first at something, to do something new. If it’s a good idea and you’ve done a good job, your chances of success are good.

On the other hand, you could probably do three easy apps in the time it takes to do one difficult app. So there’s definitely that to consider.

However, while I can’t talk about most of what happens at WWDC, I can tell you it’s utterly predictable that, in six months or less, there will be 15 apps that do X, 20 that do Y, and 30 that do Z—just because X, Y, and Z have been made so darn easy to do. But those aren’t apps, they’re statistics.

Too many ideas in one place?

Too many ideas in one place? 05/10/2004 03:01 AM

Jonas has another thing to say.....

Back to The Future.

Dave Winer:

Supernova and the recently announced Web 2.0 conference are throwbacks to the priorities of old conferences, of the eighties and nineties: sponsors, speakers, panels, audience.
Execs from high tech companies pay sponsorship fees, not disclosed, and guarantee that the content is paid advertising and that nothing real is said on stage. If you don’t pay the sponsorship fee, you don’t get a speaking slot. If you offend a sponsor, you don’t get invited back.

I agree with Dave and Marc. Conferences like these are more or less paid-for sales events, highly priced ones at that. Speaker selection and attendee lists reflect this trend, as well. We have at our hands what can be simply described as a traveling circus of speakers, echoing a number of messages which have been carefully selected and tailored to support the barely buried ulterior motives of sponsors and organizers.

This is less so an issue with the speakers. Most of which are genuine and looking to spread not a sales message but to educate and entertain.

I disagree with Dave on the next part:

The organization of the conferences, with speakers and panels, guarantees that the audience falls asleep or is frustrated, waiting to make their point until they get to ask questions at the end of the session.

Not so, I say. Conferences do their best to deliver a lively and inductive message. Supernova, Web 2.0, and others, make generous use of the traveling circus, add promises about financial gain or new discoveries and developments, and keep attendees on their toes.

This is, where the true problem lies. The infusion of new material, different speakers, or dissenting opinions is dangerous to the ideas of events with an agenda. A controlled message requires controlled ideas. The circus, by means of exposure, has since created celebrities of their own makings, another benefit to the organizers – big names draw big bucks, and big recognition for the advertised services.

[a preponderance of evidence - What Willis Wuz' Talkin' 'Bout]

The properties of ideas

The properties of ideas 10/29/2003 12:12 AM
Thomas Jefferson said: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself, but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses...

Gift ideas

Gift ideas 12/11/2003 01:09 PM
For that special someone. Kinda/sorta nsfw and/or offensive.Via Bifurcated Rivets.Again.(flash?)

The Year In Ideas

The Year In Ideas 12/13/2003 12:45 PM
popo writes "The New York Times Magazine has a review of the year's most original and interesting ideas. They include "The Tornado in a Can" ("A contained ...

Surfing for ideas on the Net

Surfing for ideas on the Net 06/01/2004 05:21 PM
Source: CBS.MarketWatch.com - ...fund managers are finding alternative investments to play the positive sentiment surrounding the [Google] IPO....

Blogging Ideas

Blogging Ideas 06/02/2004 05:01 PM
I've just agreed to be the official blogger of for the first day of Boston.com's Ideas Boston 2004 conference. The redoubtable Scott Kirsner will be blogging the second day. The blog should show up on Boston.com somewhere. Looks like a great conference and it should be fun to blog......

Ideas for Better Conversations

Ideas for Better Conversations 04/06/2005 05:53 PM

The Idea: A summary of the importance of conversation as a catalyst of cultural evolution, the seven purposes of conversation, some 'cultural anthropology' on how conversations 'operate' today, and a first stab at some rules or principles we could learn and adopt to produce better, more effective and productive conversations. In my article Seeing the Big Picture (Building a Bigger Frame) I argued for the need for more expansive thinking to encompass, understand and build on different points of view, rather than reinforcing and polarizing those points of view through parochial and antagonistic argument. One of the crucial tools we use to exercise and expand our thinking is conversation, and it occurred to me that if we want to learn to think in ways that transcend the old, learning to converse in ways that transcend the old might be a good place to start. Humberto Maturana has said: Human existence takes place in the relational space of conversation. This means that, even though from a biological perspective we are Homo Sapiens, our way of living - that is to say, our human condition - takes place in our form of relating to each other and the world we bring forth in our daily living through conversation. If you're like me, you've engaged in your share of eavesdropping in public places -- restaurants, bars, elevators, cocktail parties, subway trains. What is disturbing is not that the subject matter and arguments are usually inane (though they are), but that the syntax, the flow, and the composition of the conversational threads are so awkward, sloppy, selfish and extravagant. It's been said that conversation is like a dance: It requires some grace, some courtesy to avoid stepping on your partners' toes, and agreement on who (at any point) is leading and who is following. Perhaps this is why conversations that involve three or more people at once are often so clumsy, more like a sequence of two-person conversations one after the other with (to strain the dance analogy) different people constantly butting in, usually before the song in progress has properly ended. Recently I read a wonderful quote that went something like this: Are you listening or just waiting your turn to talk? Sound like someone you know? A recent article< /a> by Australian Open Space practitioner Alan Stewart suggests five purposes for conversation: learning, reassurance, building trust, "working out what is important" and entertainment. Here's (I think) a more complete list from one of my 2003 posts: Educating: teaching or learning something useful or interesting Conceptualizing: Thinking out loud, organizing and articulating thoughts, challenging, understanding something better, reassuring Rehearsing: practicing to improve language skills Socializing: finding people with similar ideas, interests or ambitions Convincing: selling, seducing, persuading, engaging, building trust Assisting: helping others or getting help Entertaining: amusing, escaping, overcoming boredom, indifference, loneliness, shyness, or low self-esteem It's humbling to note that Bernd Heinrich provides examples in Mind of the Raven of all seven of these purposes to various raven vocalizations. And in his examples, ravens seem to be decidedly better at it than most humans. Perhaps that's due to the fact they've been around longer than we have, so they've had more practice at it. It couldn't be just that they have better manners, could it? ;-) In his article Stewart says: From circles of elders around ancient campfires to the conversations in the cafés and salons that spawned the French Revolution, people have always gathered for real conversation about questions that matter. In those times and places where innovation is born other simple conditions are also present. In addition to pursuit of a question that really matters and commitment to creating the space and time to explore it, it is crucial that mutual listening and a spirit of discovery infuse the conversations. A certain type of "magic" appears—the magic of a new collective intelligence arising from the individual minds present in the conversation. The wisdom needed to address the concerns of any group is already "in the middle of the circle" waiting to be tapped. These webs of conversations and the action commitments that naturally arise from them can serve as the energy generator, the amplifier, the core unit of change force for co-evolving the future in any system. He quotes Konrad Lorenz' on the hazards of conversation: "Said is not heard; heard is not understood; understood is not agreed to; agreed to is not carried out". This is a more concise way of laying out the enormous intellectual and emotional challenge entailed in conversation that I described in my That's Not What I Meant article . Here is a recap of my amateur observations about conversations from that post: Linguistics professor Deborah Tannenbaum says women and men (with some notable exceptions) converse in entirely different ways, and they converse differently with members of the opposite sex than with members of their own. Conversations have a myriad of complex but unspoken cultural norms, styles and rituals (taking turns, pausing, nodding, apologizing for interrupting or misunderstanding etc.) When two people with different norms, styles, or rituals try to converse, or when a third person ignorant of the styles or rituals shared by the other two tries to enter a conversation, the result is both comical and tragic. A form of violence, even. Most people don't appear to listen to what they themselves are saying. Many conversations include someone saying "I didn't say that" when in fact they did. I suspect if people listened to a tape or video recording of their conversations they would be stunned. They might never say anything again! Most of the real communication in a conversation is not in the words. It's in the nuances of body and eye language. It's in the tone of voice. It's in the pauses. It's in the physical proximity or distance of the conversants. Many effective conversations appear to be really interviews. That entails specific roles for the two conversants, with the interviewer's role being the more difficult and more important. If one person is mostly asking questions and the other person is doing most of the talking, it's an interview, not a conversation. Conversations with more than two people are generally either parallel sequences of two-person  conversations, or moderated conversations, where one person is clearly directing the conversational 'traffic'. Conversations would, I think, be much more effective if we had a ritual of having each conversant state upfront what their personal objective for the conversation is. I appreciate that in some cases this must be done tactfully: "I've wanted to meet you since Mr. A told me that you... ", or "I'm looking for some help with..." In the absence of such a protocol, a lot of initial conversations exhaust an enormous amount of participants' energy trying to figure this out tacitly. From watching online chat (the only written medium that in my opinion is fast and immediate enough to really qualify as 'conversation') and listening to young people especially talk, what people seem to want most from conversation with friends is reassurance. Everyone is always fishing for compliments and confirmation, and, unless and until they clearly know and trust the offerer very well, dubious of the offerer's motivation when they get them. Few people, it seems, are really looking for advice, debate, or 'constructive criticism' in a conversation. But many seem enthusiastic to offer these things anyway! You can tell almost immediately whether participants in a conversation trust each other or not. If you want to observe conversations where there is trust, go out for dinner a lot, and avoid offices and bars. I'm coming to believe that good conversation, like good collaboration, is a skill, and, just as a lot of practice dancing badly does not make you a better dancer, just talking a lot does not necessarily make you a better conversationalist (in fact I suspect it may make you worse at it, by entrenching bad habits). If it's a skill it should be possible to learn it and teach it. And, while the seven 'purposes' of conversations bulleted in red above might require somewhat different skills, I suspect that there is a basic conversational 'skill set' that is common to all purposes. The following list of 'rules' or 'principles' or 'elements' of good conversation constitute my first attempt at identifying what we would need to learn, and teach, to be better conversationalists. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the quality of the conversation will inevitably be at the level of the poorest conversationalist, just as the performance of a dancing couple will reflect the least-accomplished partner. This list is the result of thinking out loud, and I'm sure it is far from complete. Please join the conversation! We need to learn to do three things simultaneously: (a) listen intently and carefully to what others are saying, (b) think the arguments and concepts through in our own mind (and draw our own conclusions), and (c) articulate what we are going to say before we speak. This is extremely difficult, especially in a large group. If all participants do not do this, the result is a vicious cycle of poor conversation: not listening (and disengaging), not thinking, and not articulating properly, leading to more 'not listening'. We need to limit how many words we say before we allow, and encourage, others to speak, to keep the conversation 'in sync'. We need to allow pauses in the conversation, for people to catch up, and think coherently about what direction the conversation might most effectively go next. We need perhaps (I'm not sure) to allow and encourage people to pull themselves periodically out of the conversation and facilitate it as if they were non-participants: summarizing, time-checking, asking questions, drawing people out, even suggesting how the conversation might be made more productive. Is that presumptuous and manipulative? We need, as I suggest above, a 'ritual' (protocol) by which each participant and new entrant in a conversation begins with a brief upfront tactful statement of their personal objective for the conversation. We need another 'ritual' that would allow participants whose objective in the conversation is not being met to leave without excuse or apology and without other participants (even if there is only one!) taking offense. How else will selfish conversationalists ever learn? Back to the dance analogy, we need to evolve (or rediscover) tacit ways to cede and request the floor without interrupting the conversation or its flow, and tacit ways to invite or welcome others to join a conversation without side-tracking it with formal introductions. Could we evolve, as birds seem to have done, some graceful (good conversation, it seems to me, has a lot to do with grace) wordless gestures that would accomplish this, and allow us to signal that we would like to speak, who (if we have the floor) we are inviting to speak next, when we are finished speaking, that we understand, that we don't understand, that the speaker should let someone else talk, etc. We need to learn to read and understand body language, and to express body language unambiguously. It's an essential part of the conversation, and suppressing it or distorting it muffles the conversation. There is a new technology just announced that captures every conversation you participate in, records it, compresses it, and transcribes it. I'm ambivalent about this. Recording of conversations makes me shudder, yet it might allow us to retrieve information (contact information, context information) later that could be enormously valuable. We need to decide how to extract the benefits from such technology without incurring its risks, and without its trust-threatening and conversation-dampening attributes. We need to learn to be much better story-tellers, and more improvisational. We need to learn effective listening techniques, and critical thinking skills. Prevailing wisdom is that we need to be more respectful, more polite in our conversations. While I don't doubt this would be helpful, I'm not sure it can be taught or mandated. What are the 'model behaviours' that set an example for respect and politeness in conversations? What can we do to tactfully nudge those (especially when it's our boss!) who fail to demonstrate respect and politeness even when others are behaving in an exemplary way? OK, I've said (more than) enough. Thank you for listening. Your turn to speak.

Where Do Your Great Ideas Come from?

Where Do Your Great Ideas Come from? 02/05/2005 09:32 PM

Some more 'fun with numbers' today. A while ago I mentioned IdeaChampions' When & Where Do You Get Your Best Ideas? survey. If you haven't taken the survey already, you can still do so. But before you click to post your answers, write them down. Then you can use this article to create your Personal Creativity Profile, as I've done above. The Profile will tell you: When and where you get your best ideas How your sources of great ideas differ from others, and why How you can make more time and space for creative activities The chart above compares my scores on the 36 questions with the normalized* answers of other respondents. If you want to create your own chart like this, using Excel or a similar spreadsheet software, here's how to do it: From the IdeaChampions' survey page, copy the 36 questions, and paste them to the first column of your spreadsheet using Paste SpecialText. Copy your scores into the next column. Then copy the normalized average scores from the bottom of this post into the third column, using Paste SpecialText. Highlight the entire table you've created and sort it in ascending order by your scores. Then add a row at the top of the chart and type in column headings. Then highlight the entire table you've created and Insert a bar chart, which should look something like the chart above. Interpreting your Profile: In my case, brainstorming, creative thinking techniques, talking with customers, taking time just upon waking, taking breaks, and listening to music are my six 'sure-fire' ways to generate creativity, so I should learn to draw on one or more of them whenever creative thinking is needed. I should keep a pencil and paper beside the bed for waking-hour inspirations. And since I take a lot of breaks and walk around, I should get wireless headphones so my music goes with me. I should study creative thinking techniques so that they become second nature. And I should spend more time talking with, and listening to, current and potential customers. What's more, the last three of these six creativity sources are unusual to me, and not effective for most others, so if I'm in a group creativity setting I should be cautious about suggesting others take breaks or listen to music. I should be sensitive to the fact that happiness is an essential precondition to creativity for most people, though it isn't for me, and also that most others will be more creative if they take a walk, read books, talk with friends, or spend time thinking just before bed, even though those techniques don't work particularly well for me. There are some other interesting differences between my creative places and times, and those of most others. I find flying and commuting very stimulating -- perhaps it's the movement, and the fact that my commutes are off-rush-hour and hence fast-paced and relaxing. I find television stimulates my thinking more than it does for most others, but that's probably because of what I watch -- documentaries, mysteries, in-depth investigative reports and foreign programming. And the least effective three sources for me -- internet surfing, vacationing and exercising, are all fairly intense, focused activities for me, that don't leave many 'cycles of brainpower' for creative thinking, though I can appreciate that others who find these activities more recreational could also find them more creatively stimulating. Next I asked myself how I could find more time and space for the creative activities that work best for me. To answer this I added another column to the spreadsheet, and entered for each of the 36 activities the amount of time each week I currently spent on each. I again used a scale of 1-5 for this: Activities that consume >20 hours of time a week -- 5 Activities that consume 15-20 hours a week -- 4 Activities that consume 10-15 hours a week -- 3 Activities that consume 5-10 hours a week -- 2 Activities that consume <5 hours a week -- 1 Now I added one more column that showed, for each of the 36 activities, my rating (1-5), divided by the amount of time I spend at it each week (1-5, using the scale above). If you do this and re-sort the 36 activities in ascending order of this last 'Personal Score/Time Spent' column, the resulting chart looks like this: What this second chart reveals is what, ideally speaking, you should try to spend more time doing (the activities at the top of the chart, which you've rated as a source of great ideas, but which you spend relatively little time doing) and what you should try to spend less time doing (the activities at the bottom of the chart). In my case, I should 'get out more' -- spend more time brainstorming with others and just moving around, and less time in front of the computer. I also need to use creative thinking techniques more often. My 'catch-all' #36 'other source' answer was spending time in the hot tub, which I suppose must somehow work for me the way showers work for others. What is it about being in the water that gets us thinking creatively? No wonder dolphins are such imaginative creatures! Though to my surprise, others' top 'write-in' answer for question #36 was 'on the toilet', so perhaps we should see whether porcelain has some mysterious power to spark ideation. While others spend their time in airport lounges, airplanes and traffic either bored or fuming, I find these activities 'transport' me and get me thinking very creatively. Because it's dangerous to write while driving, I've learned to use mnemonic devices to capture and remember ideas that occur to me until I can safely write them down (works in the shower, too). If I could find a dictating machine that worked with my voice-recognition software I'd probably use it instead -- maybe even write a whole paper or blog post simply thinking out loud while I drive. It's quite possible, though, that since much of my travel is early-morning, it's actually that time of day that's responsible for the flurry of ideas, rather than the movement. Though since I'm a night-owl, usually miserable in the morning, I'm not sure that my body clock, or the ones around me, could handle it if I tried early-to-bed, early-to-rise. It hurts just thinking about it. What works for you, and why? Are there times and places and techniques that aren't on this list at all that seem to surface great ideas for you? In what ways does your ideal environment for idea generation differ from mine, and from the other survey respondents'? And are there ways you could be spending your time a little differently to allow your right brain to get some more exercise? * How I normalized the 'average' answers to the survey: First of all, I double-counted the '5' scores, the proportion of people who found each time or place a 'sure-fire' source of great ideas, because I think that's just as important as 'average' score. Then, because when you average scores you get most of them clustered around the 3 average, I 'stretched' the results so that the top-scoring source (brainstorming) received a normalized score of 5 and the lowest-scoring source (being sad or depressed) received a normalized score of 2. Finally, I rounded the results to the nearest 0.5. The results then more closely map, in standard deviation and distribution of results, an individual's scoring. Here are the normalized scores in order for the 36 questions (for copying and pasting into your own spreadsheet): 4.0 4.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.0 4.5 3.0 3.5 4.5 4.0 5.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 4.0 3.0 2.5 2.5 3.5 3.0 3.0 4.5 4.0 4.0 2.0 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 3.5 4.0

Donation Ideas

Donation Ideas 07/20/2002 11:08 AM

Widget ideas

Widget ideas 04/11/2005 04:59 PM
Tom and I were talking about how useless most of the currently existing Dashboard Widgets are, and this guy agrees: What I'm afraid we're going to see is a huge influx of extraordinarily useless stuff—more iTunes controllers, duplications of existing...

Ideas are Cheap

Ideas are Cheap 09/01/2004 12:28 AM
I've got a physical product idea that I'll probably never be able to develop, so I figure that I'll just...

Great ideas 101

Great ideas 101 12/03/2003 02:57 AM
Boston Globe Dec 3 2003 1:55AM ET

Bad Geek Ideas

Bad Geek Ideas 12/31/2003 12:19 AM

The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever: I haven't even heard of half of these: Data Play? Magic Cap? Go?

WebTV: A type of internet appliance that used a TV, instead of a monitor, to display web pages. Initially popular with the tech-averse when it shipped in 1996, Microsoft would buy the company for $425 million a year later. But when sales stalled at around a million users, someone woke up and realized that low-resolution TVs are lousy at displaying emails and web pages. Microsoft has since renamed WebTV MSN TV, but it's not any better. If you're reading this on a WebTV - or an MSN TV -- I'm sorry for calling your kid ugly, but get yourself a real computer. You'll like it a whole lot better.

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VCs Don't Invest in Ideas

VCs Don't Invest in Ideas 03/26/2005 01:20 PM
SiliconBeat looks at the overhang in venture capital because interest rates have led to a general glut of capital, and wonders if all that supply benefits demand: So if you think you've got a good idea, you're marginally more...

Ideas for Saving the Internet

Ideas for Saving the Internet 12/31/2003 10:50 PM

101 Ways to Save the Internet: Some great ideas here.

Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages — they should all go into a single app. [...] Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move? [...] Release Episode III on the Net It's going straight to video anyway. [...] Upgrade to IPv6

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New ideas, new code, new standards

New ideas, new code, new standards 08/20/2004 10:26 AM

Here's Greg Elin (Fotonotes), Scott Mathews (Andromeda) and Amy Harmon (NY Times) discussing Greg's new FotoWiki application.

No - Scott's not upset, it was the burning hot chili peppers at Grand Sichuan that got to him. Amy laid off the peppers - as she's about to give birth (go Amy!)

Turns out Amy and Scott are married (little did I know!) I guess they're one of those NYC 'technology couples'.

Anyway - we had a great time last night, Mimi got to sing for everyone. Good start to my roadshow.

I need OSCON talk ideas...

I need OSCON talk ideas... 02/04/2003 11:54 PM
As Jim notes, it's almost time to get submissions in for this year's OSCON. What should I submit this year? I've got a selection of stuff on my MySQL Stuff page. I could update/recycle some of that. But it'd be...

14 Small-Cap Stock Ideas

14 Small-Cap Stock Ideas 01/22/2004 10:18 AM
In a big year for the market, small caps stood tall. Here's a look at the current Foolish 8 stocks.

New Political Protest Ideas

New Political Protest Ideas 06/14/2004 12:57 PM
Signal Orange has an idea to protest the Republican National Convention. Sounds a lot more effect than some other plans going around.

Boston Ideas bl0g

Boston Ideas bl0g 06/08/2004 03:31 PM
Scott Kirsner is blogging the Boston Ideas conference. (I blogged it yesterday, at the same url.) Music, stem cells, the brain, biological computers......

Ideas For The Post Panther Mac

Ideas For The Post Panther Mac 10/29/2003 07:09 PM
The difference between local computers and those on the network must be minimized. (Can Sar via MyAppleMenu)

Blogging Ideas conference

Blogging Ideas conference 06/07/2004 08:58 AM
I'm spending the day blogging the Boston Globe's Ideas Conference. Over the course of two days, we're promised 32 ideas......

Adobe Ideas Conference

Adobe Ideas Conference 04/04/2005 01:01 PM

I'm at the Adobe Ideas conference today, so posting may be a little slow. Or non-existant because this is the first conference I've been to in, oh, 4 years that doesn't have wifi available to the attendees (I had to retreat to Bryant Park for lunch to soak up some free wireless). For all the talk about connectivity during the keynote, there isn't much evidence of it so far. :(

Anyway, Adobe announced Creative Suite 2 today, as rumored. One feature that got the crowd oohing and aahing was the Vanishing Point tool in Photoshop. It lets you map the perspective out on an image and then place text, images, etc in the proper perspective on that map. Perhaps some more later when I get to a connection again.

Should ideas be considered as sources?

Should ideas be considered as sources? 09/09/2004 05:30 AM
While programming you should do lot's of decisions. The reason why you choose to implement something and something not is essential. Should it be considered as "sources" and also included with src distribution?

South Pacific ideas?

South Pacific ideas? 12/17/2004 06:36 PM

I'm considering a trip to the South Pacific in late December/January.  Never having been there I would appreciate advice from those who have (you can use the comment section below).  Here are some things that I would like to be able to do there:  snorkeling over coral reefs that grow up very close to the surface in calm water; beginner surfing lessons; bicycle riding on quiet roads and/or mountain biking on not-very-technical trails (not super hilly); meeting interesting well-educated locals and/or tourists; renting and flying a small plane or helicopter with an instructor; reading a book on a balcony or deck overlooking the water.

As far as practicalities go, I'd like to stay 3-5 days in any one place and not spend too much time transferring from island to island.  It would be good to find some places with enough infrastructure to support comfortable mid-range hotels.  I don't want to slum it with the backpackers but I don't want to spend $1000/day to sit on a beach either.  From my cursory reading of the guidebook it seems that a lot of these islands are so underdeveloped that creating a Western-style hotel environment is very expensive.

Where to start, then, amidst the millions of square miles of the South Pacific?

Mac Founders Push for New Ideas

Mac Founders Push for New Ideas 01/06/2004 05:42 AM
The crew that put together the first Mac is celebrating its 20th birthday, but some are disappointed over the apparent lack of innovation in personal computers. By Daniel Terdiman.

Wild & Crazy CPU Ideas

Wild & Crazy CPU Ideas 07/09/2004 08:14 PM
Well, nobody could call this anything but far-fetched, but it makes for good late-Friday relief: Paul Murphy thinks Apple should switch over to SPARC processors. Hey, I’m down with that, think of the employee discounts.
Grok Description matches for Update: SMART Ideas 4.1
GrokA matches for Update: SMART Ideas 4.1

Motorola's Smart Phones combine the
power of PC

Motorola's Smart Phones combine the
power of PC 05/09/2004 07:31 AM
News Today May 9 2004 11:42AM GMT

3G Players Combine

3G Players Combine 12/05/2003 06:42 AM
3G Dec 5 2003 5:34AM ET

Combine XML and databases

Combine XML and databases 09/03/2002 11:37 AM
CNET Sep 1 2002 10:09PM ET

4G to combine WiMax and 3G, says
Forrester

4G to combine WiMax and 3G, says
Forrester 06/11/2004 08:11 AM
vnunet.com Jun 11 2004 11:32AM GMT

10.4: Use Automator to combine PDFs

10.4: Use Automator to combine PDFs 06/17/2005 04:40 PM
There have been numerous hints here about how to combine PDFs into a single document. Well, Automator now handles that task very nicely. You can select the documents that you want to combine in the Finder and then Control-cli...

Microsoft and Apache Combine?

Microsoft and Apache Combine? 07/24/2002 09:59 AM

Ubuntu and UserLinux to Combine?

Ubuntu and UserLinux to Combine? 03/23/2005 04:48 PM
Slashdot Mar 23 2005 8:00PM GMT

Combine PDFs using Preview

Combine PDFs using Preview 12/16/2003 11:18 AM
I stumbled upon this accidentally - if you select more than one single-page PDF in the Finder and open them in Preview, they become a single multi-page document which can then be saved. Cool! [robg adds: I thought we'd compl...

I.B.M. to Combine Server and Chip Units

I.B.M. to Combine Server and Chip Units 01/29/2004 01:47 AM
By Bloomberg News.

Intel to combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth in
Centrino 2

Intel to combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth in
Centrino 2 02/19/2004 02:06 PM
IDF Next-gen ProWireless module

Lucent, Top Mobile Combine Wi-Fi and
Cellular

Lucent, Top Mobile Combine Wi-Fi and
Cellular 11/12/2003 02:59 PM
Lucent has already demonstrated that 3G networks can be used to backhaul Wi-Fi: Now it says it is partnering with Top Mobile, which builds a product that integrates the two types of networks and supports authentication, authorization and accounting. Such a combined product might be useful to deliver Wi-Fi to commuters on a train, for example. The backhaul could be done via the cellular networks rather than satellite....

Outsourcers combine to take on IT
services giants

Outsourcers combine to take on IT
services giants 09/02/2004 02:11 PM
IT services giants will come under pressure from outsourcing alliances as companies team up to beat the big guns.

"Mate-a-movie. Combine two or more
movies into one."

"Mate-a-movie. Combine two or more
movies into one." 11/14/2003 04:05 PM

10.3: Combine TextExtras and 10.3's
completion features

10.3: Combine TextExtras and 10.3's
completion features 11/06/2003 11:12 AM
Mike Ferris' TextExtras (amongst a zillion other things) provides keyword based expanion (e.g. typing adr followed by escape could be expanded to your full street address) and a completion mechanism that searches the current ...

Web services management vendors combine

Web services management vendors combine 09/13/2004 05:31 AM
Web services management and security provider Digital Evolution on Monday is announcing its acquisition of former competitor Flamenco Networks, which has provided specialized network infrastructure for implementing SOAs (service-oriented architectures).

Bodies combine over cafe 'slum'

Bodies combine over cafe 'slum' 03/25/2005 06:28 AM
Two bodies announce they will work together on the £2m appeal to replace the summit cafe on Snowdon.

Intel to combine networking chip groups

Intel to combine networking chip groups 12/10/2003 12:40 PM
The Intel Communications Group, which offers networking chips, will absorb the chipmaker's unit that creates chips for wireless networks and cellular phones.

Intel to combine wireless,
communications businesses

Intel to combine wireless,
communications businesses 12/10/2003 01:55 PM
Miami Herald Dec 10 2003 1:12PM ET

Yahoo!, Cisco Combine Antispam Efforts

Yahoo!, Cisco Combine Antispam Efforts 06/05/2005 11:28 PM

Intel to combine wireless,
communications units

Intel to combine wireless,
communications units 12/10/2003 01:55 PM
SiliconValley.com Dec 10 2003 1:12PM ET

Security landscape shifts as
technologies combine

Security landscape shifts as
technologies combine 08/30/2004 01:55 PM

Soldier Back From Iraq Seeks Combine
Ride (AP)

Soldier Back From Iraq Seeks Combine
Ride (AP) 09/17/2004 12:33 PM
AP - Spc. Matt Dubbs knew exactly what he wanted while on leave from his tour of duty in Iraq — to ride a combine at Husker Harvest Days.

Yahoo To Combine Blogs, Social
Networking (TechWeb)

Yahoo To Combine Blogs, Social
Networking (TechWeb) 03/17/2005 04:08 AM
TechWeb - Yahoo said it will launch in beta at the end of the month a service that combines web logs with social networking.

McDATA, NetApp Combine IP, Fibre Channel
Storage

McDATA, NetApp Combine IP, Fibre Channel
Storage 07/02/2004 02:33 PM
Internet News Jul 2 2004 5:42PM GMT

Easily combine multiple disc albums in
iTunes

Easily combine multiple disc albums in
iTunes 06/30/2004 11:32 AM
When selecting albums to play, especially on the iPod, where you can only select one thing to play, listening to albums with multiple discs becomes a nuisance - if not an impossibility. Now, combining discs by hand can be te...

Microsoft, Developer Combine Anti-Spam
Standards (Reuters)

Microsoft, Developer Combine Anti-Spam
Standards (Reuters) 05/25/2004 02:54 PM
Reuters - The backers of two anti-spam proposals said on Tuesday they would work together to provide a single standard that would make it easier for Internet providers to block unwanted junk e-mail.

Jabra headsets combine iPod, mobile
phone audio

Jabra headsets combine iPod, mobile
phone audio 01/06/2005 09:11 AM
Mobile phone headset maker Jabra on Thursday unveiled its C120s and C220s, two new corded headsets designed to combine the audio from mobile phones and from iPods or other music players. The first stereo headsets from Jabra, the devices plug directly into the mobile phone and offer an adapter to connect to standard music devices like the iPod, saving you from having to switch from earbuds to headset when you get a call.

New Tinted-Glass LCD Monitors Combine
Eye Protection and Exquisite Design

New Tinted-Glass LCD Monitors Combine
Eye Protection and Exquisite Design 07/27/2004 02:12 AM
Prestigio introduces 15-inch and 17-inch LCD monitors featuring tinted-glass screen coating that ensures a more accentuated image, better focus, and eye protection. Affordably priced, the displays come with an exquisite design ideal for demanding and style-conscious consumers. [PRWEB Jul 27, 2004]

Cognos and Macromedia combine Web
Services with Rich Internet Applications

Cognos and Macromedia combine Web
Services with Rich Internet Applications 08/20/2002 06:49 PM
IDGNet New Zealand Aug 20 2002 4:06PM ET

Braille Voyager and Supernova Combine to
Make a Winning Package

Braille Voyager and Supernova Combine to
Make a Winning Package 06/03/2004 02:00 AM
In the interest of extending the companies’ longstanding relationship throughout the European market into the United States, Dolphin Computer Access Inc., has teamed with Optelec, the North American division of the Tieman Group, to offer blind and visually impaired computer users fantastic deals on the Voyager series of Braille displays. [PRWEB Jun 3, 2004]

Update: SMART Ideas 4.1

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