Bad Geek Ideas

Grok Headline matches for Bad Geek Ideas

BugMe! Notepad for Palm OS Earns Highest
Rating 5 "Geek Heads" from Geek.com

BugMe! Notepad for Palm OS Earns Highest
Rating 5 "Geek Heads" from Geek.com 07/22/2004 02:33 AM
Geek.com, a popular Web site for computing and gadgetry enthusiasts, has published a review of Electric Pocket’s BugMe! Notepad for Palm OS 5.x—with the reviewer hailing it as “an application that I absolutely cannot do without.” [PRWEB Jul 22, 2004]

Replay Radio geek solutions to geek
problems

Replay Radio geek solutions to geek
problems 09/21/2004 06:38 AM

The building I work in does not receive Radio receptions real good. The guys and I in the office like to listen to a particular radio show and we knocked our heads together for a while trying to figure out how to improve the reception. Fixing the reception problem proved to be impossible but we did find a geeks way to fix the problem.

I purchased Replay Radio and set it up at home to record the network stream of the program. It saves the recorded stream in MP3 format every 30 minutes and dumps it in a directory that I have mapped to a FTP server. I have a standard FTP client running on my desktop that downloads the MP3 to my laptop which is connected to the network and we load the MP3 up and listen to the program time delay.

My work does not allow for streaming audio. So to avoid confusion I asked permission to do this via our IT department and promised to keep the file sizes under control. They thought it was cool and gave the thumbs up. It worked out so well that several departments do the same thing and we have 2-3 national talk radio programs to listen to each day. Albeit time delay but it works. [Replay Radio]

" Replay Radio is an incredibly easy way to record radio broadcasts. It's like a "TiVo™ DVR" for the radio. Just pick your favorite radio show, or select a station and a time range, and Replay Radio records it for you. Hundreds of shows and stations are pre-programmed, making recording as easy as point and click."

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.

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.

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."

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".

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....

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.

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......

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

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...

Great ideas 101

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

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 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...

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...

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]

Donation Ideas

Donation Ideas 07/20/2002 11:08 AM

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?)

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.

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......

Ideas for Social Software

Ideas for Social Software 12/31/2003 09:38 AM
Seconding Liz's linking to Matt Haughey's ideas for useful social software. Matt suggests "Epinions + Friendster," which sounds a lot like a company that Paul English, Rick Levine and I tried to start a few years ago. Matt puts the problem well: Last summer I moved to a town in a place far away from where I've spent the past few years, and one of the first problems I had to solve was finding the perfect everything. I quickly amassed a bunch of questions that took months of trial and error to answer through a network of new friends and...

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.

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 Saturday's BloggerCon?

Ideas for Saturday's BloggerCon? 04/15/2004 02:24 PM

Due to the unavailability of a more qualified/desirable moderator I have been drafted to lead a session at Saturday's BloggerCon.  Supposedly there will be nearly 100 people in a single room at Harvard Law School from 1:30-2:45 pm and we're supposed to talk about the concentration of readership among a tiny handful of blogs.

An article by Clay Shirky is the original source for the session.

This assignment frightens me for a number of reasons.  First the original proposition does not seem sufficiently surprising.  We are all familiar with the fact that NBC has more viewers than the local public access channel.  Second I'm not sure what issue is amenable to a free-form unanchored discussion among 100 people but this one doesn't seem like it.  That's one of my stock refrains in the online community world, actually, is that the publisher needs to frame the discussion with articles or the whole site loses focus because nobody can figure out what the purpose is.

Anyone have an idea for breaking the participants up into groups of 10, having them do something for 10 minutes, and then report the results to the whole crowd?  I think many people there will have laptops and Harvard Law School has wireless access (MIT does too but visitors have to donate a kidney to the I/S department before they are authorized to use it).

Love is Golden: all ideas have and
always will be.

Love is Golden: all ideas have and
always will be. 12/19/2004 03:53 PM
I am delighted to be able to tell you that I have taken a decision to relinquish Copyright ownership of all Samba-related code that I have ever written.

I would like to take this as an opportunity to formally request the Samba Team to reopen the case for forming an ASF-like "Samba Software Foundation".

Holiday Gift Ideas

Holiday Gift Ideas 12/09/2003 02:37 AM

A few people have asked me to highlight some fun tech gifts, so I threw together a list of relatively inexpensive, general 2003 Gift Ideas.

Web of Ideas: The Shape of Knowledge

Web of Ideas: The Shape of Knowledge 02/01/2005 09:09 PM
On Wednesday I'm going to lead the postponed session in the semi-regular series at the Berkman Center. This time, I'm going to try out a presentation I'm giving in a couple of weeks at a conference. The topic has something to do with taxonomies and tagging. (Yes, it will repeat some material in the dinner talk I gave last week, and a bunch of stuff from the Library of Congress speech. But it will have new stuff on tagging.) It's 6-7:30pm at the Baker House (map). It's open to the public and pizza will be served....

Mac Founders Push For New Ideas

Mac Founders Push For New Ideas 01/06/2004 10:45 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 (Wired News via MyAppleMenu)

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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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.

Update: SMART Ideas 4.1

Update: SMART Ideas 4.1 05/06/2004 10:07 AM
SMART Ideas is a cross platform concept-mapping program with multi-level diagrams, links and file attachments, multiple views, integration with the SMART Board interactive whiteboard, and more.

The ideas that conquered the world

The ideas that conquered the world 02/05/2005 09:14 PM
"The Neocon Reader" is must reading for liberal losers who want to get their mojo back.

Nine Crazy Ideas in Science

Nine Crazy Ideas in Science 12/02/2003 12:27 AM
Slashdot Dec 1 2003 6:52PM ET

Book giving ideas

Book giving ideas 12/19/2004 03:21 PM
Not from me this time, though if I read more new books I would recommend some too you. This one comes from the New York Times: 100 Notable Books of the Year. This year the [New York Times] Book Review has selected 100 Notable Books from those reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 7, 2003. Sadly I've only read one on the entire list, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America, which was great. 2004 has been my most pathetic year for reading. I used to read the number of books I've read this year in a week back in the day. Hopefully 2005 will be different.

Ideas for Buyers and Renters

Ideas for Buyers and Renters 08/22/2004 09:19 PM
An idea to make it easier to purchase a house, and another idea to make it easier to pay rent.

New ideas for Clyde regeneration

New ideas for Clyde regeneration 08/04/2004 02:39 AM
Plans to transform wasteland along a large stretch of the River Clyde are due to be announced.

Business Plan Ideas

Business Plan Ideas 01/13/2003 09:56 AM
Never done a business plan? 90% of the small business that fail in the first five years never bother to write a simple business plan. There is no better time spent in those critical early years than writing a strategic business plan.

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.
Grok Description matches for Bad Geek Ideas
GrokA matches for Bad Geek Ideas

What Might Have Been: Microsoft Almost
Bought SAP

What Might Have Been: Microsoft Almost
Bought SAP 06/07/2004 06:45 PM

What would happen if Microsoft bought
AMD?

What would happen if Microsoft bought
AMD? 12/08/2003 08:04 AM

Lookout Software Bought by Microsoft

Lookout Software Bought by Microsoft 07/16/2004 08:47 PM
Software Reality Jul 17 2004 0:10AM GMT

GridIron and Microsoft Unveil GridIron
X-Factor for Microsoft Windows Media
Encoder

GridIron and Microsoft Unveil GridIron
X-Factor for Microsoft Windows Media
Encoder 04/18/2005 01:56 AM
Investors Business Daily Apr 18 2005 6:22AM GMT

Virtual PC 7 The first major update to
Virtual PC since Microsoft bought the
emulation program from Connectix

Virtual PC 7 The first major update to
Virtual PC since Microsoft bought the
emulation program from Connectix 01/03/2005 07:57 PM
MacWorld Jan 3 2005 11:05PM GMT

I just bought a Mac

I just bought a Mac 09/26/2004 05:22 AM

That's right, I bought a Mac. A cheap iBook, to be exact. I'm not planning to write software for the Mac, but I do want to keep up with the goings-on in the Mac world, and I could also learn a lot from the Mac UI. See, there's one thing that Apple consistently gets right that Microsoft consistently gets wrong: style.

After working with OS-X for a few hours, switching back to Windows is like partying with Charlize Theron then coming home to Kathy Bates. Sure, Kathy Bates is exceptionally talented, but sometimes a little glamour is exciting.

"he bought some ads "

"he bought some ads " 11/03/2003 09:33 PM

Cnet have bought mp3.com?

Cnet have bought mp3.com? 11/14/2003 05:52 AM

MusicNet Bought Out; Will Try, Try Again

MusicNet Bought Out; Will Try, Try Again 04/13/2005 01:28 AM
Back in the late 90s, as the recording industry noticed (way too late) that the world was passing them by with file sharing, some politicians began to realize that the industry wasn't doing anything other than whining about how the market had changed on them. After some quiet threats from these politicians, the industry realized it had to at least go through the motions of offering music downloads, and so they created and funded two online music services that were both clearly designed to fail miserably, MusicNot and PressPause... er... MusicNet and PressPlay. Since they were terribly designed with high prices and poor selection (the perfect combo!), users pretty much ignore d them. PressPlay was eventually sold off to what's now Napster and MusicNet has chugged along supported almost entirely by AOL, who has rebranded much of the service as their own. Now, however, the company has been sold to some private investors who claim they're going to revitalize the service. Considering the number of weak, expensive, difficult to use, incompatible music download stores out there, it seems unlikely that a company like MusicNet will break the mold any time soon.

Got an iPod, then bought a Mac?

Got an iPod, then bought a Mac? 03/14/2005 05:23 PM
We want to hear from you. What do you love about your iPod and how did it change the way you enjoy your music? Did you love your iPod so much that you decided to buy a Mac? How did your Mac change the rest of your life? Tell us about the fun new things you’ve discovered you can do on a personal computer. Are you doing more with your photos? Shooting and editing movies? Recording your own songs? We want your personal story of your move to Mac — what you do with it and how it’s made your life all around better. [Mar 11, 2005]

Bought a G5 right before the update?

Bought a G5 right before the update? 11/25/2003 10:22 PM
If you purchased a G5 right before yesterday's update, you don't need us to tell you that life sucks. If you want to help heal the wounds, take a look at Apple's price match policy. As long as you didn't get the 1.8GHz, it looks like you can get the difference back. The price match is only good for 10 days before the update, so if you bought before that, life still sucks.

Like Pixels? Check out MacDesign

We bought it to help with your homework

We bought it to help with your homework 05/07/2004 12:02 PM
Hey, Hey, 16K! What does that get you today? Perhaps the best bit of nerd nostalgia since the NESBuckle? Catchy song, dodgy animation, and the disembodied floating head of Clive Sinclair... what more could you ask for? Other than your old C64 back... [via AccordionGuy]

LiveJournal Bought Out

LiveJournal Bought Out 01/06/2005 09:19 AM
LiveJournal, the blogging site, has been bought up by Six Apart, the company behind the MovableType weblog software. The buy-out will see staff working with Danga, the company which previously owned LiveJournal, move to San Francisco to work with the new owners.

LiveJournal's creator, Brad Fitzpatrick, said the move will mean "nothing earth-shattering" for the existing service. However, users are to get access to trackback for the first time. "They're not buying the site to spam you, screw you, destroy the community, or convert you en masse to their other paid services," Fitzpatrick said. "They just want to double our efforts and have a part in all types of blogging. "

Six Apart CEO, Barak Berkowitz, added: "We are now the only company to offer the full range of weblogging tools to the market," he said. "We welcome LiveJournal users to the Six Apart family, and promise to keep the LiveJournal culture and quality which has earned their devotion."

Fitzpatrick promised development of LiveJournal will continue after the move; prices would not rise and free accounts would not be scrapped, he said. Since it started up five years ago, LiveJournal has built up a community of over five million users - it currently claims to have just short of 2.5 million actively-updated blogs on its servers.

View: LiveJournal announcement
View: Six Apart press release
View: Movable Type homepage


Read full story...

Tweenies maker bought for £3.1m

Tweenies maker bought for £3.1m 09/13/2004 03:18 AM
Entertainment Rights buys the maker of popular BBC children's television show The Tweenies for £3.1m.

What if Intelliseek Bought Technorati?

What if Intelliseek Bought Technorati? 04/04/2005 04:28 PM
The more I think about Intelliseek, the more I think they'll either try to muscle Technorati out of their market or they'll buy 'em. Intelliseek's BlogPulse Conversation Tracker is the sort of tool that I expected Technorati to build last year. In fact, I've joked about trying to build it myself using their API. (Could I sell it to them if I did?) And the BlogPulse Trend Search is kinda cool too. Just for kicks, I did a Trend Search...

Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2
Billion

Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2
Billion 03/22/2005 04:56 PM
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc., the nation's fourth-largest search engine company.

MGM studios to be bought by Sony

MGM studios to be bought by Sony 09/13/2004 08:13 PM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's last major independent, is set to accept a Sony offer worth $5bn.

OD2 bought by US rival Loudeye

OD2 bought by US rival Loudeye 06/22/2004 12:27 PM
newmediazero Jun 22 2004 5:13PM GMT

Why Oracle bought Oblix

Why Oracle bought Oblix 03/30/2005 02:07 PM
It's gratifying to see Oracle endorsing several aspects of our analysis of the SOA management market with its purchase ...

UK biotech firm bought for £1.5bn

UK biotech firm bought for £1.5bn 05/18/2004 02:50 AM
The UK's largest biotech firm, Celltech, agrees to be taken over by Belgian drugmaker UCB.

Why Tibco bought Staffware

Why Tibco bought Staffware 04/24/2004 06:18 AM
BPM vendors and their stakeholders will be delighted that Tibco Software paid a 40-percent premium to buy Staffware ...

The House that Jack bought

The House that Jack bought 04/14/2005 06:56 PM
Access to a who's who of "superlobbyist" Jack Abramoff's GOP allies in the House.

Store-Bought Halloweenies

Store-Bought Halloweenies 11/01/2003 10:45 AM
RetroCrush recognizes the least popular discount Halloween costumes of the '70s and '80s, including this gem: "What kid didn't want to be 'Leather Guy' from The Village People? At least it's already got a built in protective vinyl coating." (11-01)

Ask Jeeves if it's just bought Tukaroo

Ask Jeeves if it's just bought Tukaroo 06/10/2004 11:38 AM
Spot on

Arcolectric bought out of receivership

Arcolectric bought out of receivership 12/26/2003 01:49 AM
Scotsman Online Dec 26 2003 0:37AM ET

has reportedly been bought and sold

has reportedly been bought and sold 12/10/2003 05:47 AM
Grover Norquist and the Islamists .. A Troubling Influence

frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11209
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Ask Jeeves To Be Bought By
Interactivecorp

Ask Jeeves To Be Bought By
Interactivecorp 03/22/2005 09:41 PM

Why Yahoo! bought Oddpost

Why Yahoo! bought Oddpost 07/12/2004 12:38 PM
Adding a new twist to my mention of Oddpost in last Wednesday's item, More on rich clients, Yahoo! just bought the ...

I will not write about the Giftmas gifts
I bought

I will not write about the Giftmas gifts
I bought 12/22/2004 12:59 AM
Because there are family members reading this little site now (and have been for a while). However, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised at how "normal" the two retail establishments I visited this evening were. Neither felt crowded, featured those annoying bell ringers, and the checkout lines were minimal. Maybe I should have waited a few more days... :-)...

Sega to be bought by arcade giant

Sega to be bought by arcade giant 05/19/2004 10:35 AM
ZDNet May 19 2004 1:51PM GMT

Bad Geek Ideas

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: microsoft bought bought webtv womens gridiron in the usa lingere gadgetopia site:stargeek.com