Category: observations

IBM Think Research | Cooling Off Hot Laptop Models

When it was launched in 1999, the ThinkPad A20 was the only portable computer on the market to have a thermal hinge and a small fan in place, making it one of the lightest and quietest

*boggle*

Slashdot | BT Loses Case Over Hyperlink Patent

. . . . British Telecom has lost their patent suit against Prodigy over an old patent that BT hoped would cover the use of hyperlinks on the modern WWW.

Read the judge’s decision here.

I’m struck by the similarity of how BT designed their hypertext system with the reminiscences of HyperCard: both came close to predicting or co-evolving with the world wide web but just missed. In HyperCard’s case, it was derived from a box-centric mindset where the network was secondary: the stack, as a complete artifact, made sense, as opposed to the page as Berners-Lee decided.

BT’s system of links referenced the physical data store, down to the sector, rather than just a file reference, as an href does. The reliance on a “central computer” stems directly from a telco mindset: see any article about the ongoing war between the netheads and bellheads for details.

Perhaps that’s the real test of a new idea: if there are several similar versions, the itch they seek to scratch is real. Whether any of them succeed remains to be seen. It may take another wave of innovation to finally get there.

tiny pineapple | blog

I don’t know about you, but I will henceforth always refer to the media conglomerates as “the industry of the disc.” And I if anyone ever crosses me, I swear I’ll “return the impossible life to them!”

Yesterday’s comments were spare and unclear: I could blame this hellish cold, but anyone reading the other entries here will wonder what my excuse is for those.

So I have thought about Zoë and what it might mean, with the aid of store-brand TheraFlu. I like the possibilities it offers for seeing your email as another kind of content that you can navigate non-linearly. I like how it pulls out information like contributors’ names, mailing list names, threads. It views email as an organic, unending thing, as opposed to a bunch of separate artifacts.

It eschews filters, which I’m not sure I like. I think we all get some email (perhaps administrative mail from some process or updates from services) which we filter out of our inbox: Zoë doesn’t support that.

I haven’t lived in it yet, so I can’t say anything about stability, but it is an early release (version 0.2.2).

Added benefit: take the rdf file that Zoë creates and let NetNewsWire handle it for you.

The whole shebang is licensable under Apple’s Apple Public Source License version 1.2. I am not a lawyer, so I won’t presume to know more than where to find it, but even if the terms are not as unencumbered as the BSD and GNU licences, sorta free is a good start. I’m not seeing that kind of openness from The Leading Brand. Their notion of licensing is a little different.

Zoë

Zoë is a combination of Google and the fundamental building block of the web: the hyperlink. First Google. [ . . ] But once again, the only UI manifestation of it is this humbly looking text field saying: “Do you need something?”.

I am late to get on the Zoë train, but I guess that has a lot to do with it’s hard-to-define nature. It’s like the 5 blind men and the elephant . . . to one, it’s an email server, to another it’s a search engine, to the third an email client . .. .

I wish I had some of my massive email archives from CNN or FizzyLab to dump into it . . . . but even the small amount of stuff I have on hand is enough to see what it can do.

If I was writing the brochure copy, how would I define Zoë?

It’s a web application that enables you to navigate, search, and explore your email with an easy to understand interface and a lot of parsing intelligence.

But seeing is believing: it’s so easy to set up and run (I got it running on OS X and FreeBSD in minutes), you ought to take a look.

gladwell dot com / The Naked Face

That’s when I realized, “I’ve got to unpack the face.’

Fascinating article. I’m trying to understand the relationship between that and this.

From bradandkathy.com: Chernoff faces are simplified, cartoon-like faces that can be used to graphically display complex multivariate data. They draw upon the human mind’s innate ability to recognize small differences in facial characteristics and to assimilate many facial characteristics at once.

from Frank

Forbes.com: Will Apple Put Intel Inside?

And therein lies the biggest reason that Apple will stick with the PowerPC chip for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t want to go head-to-head with Microsoft.

“By saying its machines are a separate OS on a separate platform, Apple can say it doesn’t compete directly with Microsoft,” says Kevin Krewell, analyst with MicroDesign Resources. “Moving to an Intel or AMD platform would put them directly in Microsoft’s crosshairs, and that is something Apple should not want to do.”

Apple gives break to multi-Mac homes – Tech News – CNET.com

Under the plan, which will coincide with next week’s release of Mac OS X version 10.2 (also known as Jaguar), consumers can buy a $199 a copy of the operating system and install it on up to five Macs in a single household. [ . . . ] “This is a great way to allow honest people to remain honest,” Bereskin said.

Thanks to Wade for the tip.

HyperCard Forgotten, but Not Gone

IHug [Int’l HyperCard User Group] wants to see HyperCard ported to run on Mac OS X, and the incorporation of overdue features, like fully integrated color. HyperCard is still, at heart, black and white.

IHug campaigned vigorously for several years, with little luck. Their efforts culminated in a meeting with Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of worldwide marketing, who reportedly ended up asking them, “But how do we sell it?” Clearly, Schiller wasn’t convinced by iHug’s answers.

I loved HyperCard. It was easy, useful and in many cases all you needed. Even when it wasn’t it could get you a lot of the way there.

Perhaps IHug should turn Schiller’s question around, and ask why doesn’t Apple make HyperCard open source? They don’t care about it, and IHug does. If they’re willing to do it with Darwin et al, this should be an easy one.

Thanks to Frank for this one.

In depths of World War One, as the red-faced, potbellied generals dithered safely behind the lines and British losses mounted frighteningly , Churchill referred to the brave British Tommies embattled in the muddy trenches as ‘lions led by donkeys …’

lions led by donkeys

There’s another aspect of this discussion of the Seattle job market and how tough it is right now.

Even during the boom and now following it, the executive corps of many tech companies was filled with people who had very little or no experience as managers and had never experienced a down market. Couple that with business plans and internal goals that had nothing to do with the longterm survival of a business, and you have a real mess.

As a hiring manager, I had hiring goals or headcount requirements I was to meet, not that I couldn’t go over, as is usually the case. I was expected to hire people, and not doing so was not perceived as prudence but lack of effort or commitment. That, as they say, is no way to run a railroad.

The people now doing the hiring as the same as were there in the boom times: the best way to get rid of any “retaliation” would be to turn them out on the street and hire professionals.

The hiring process at many tech firms seems to be a simple keyword search, with no analysis of what the applicant’s actual strengths are. Inexperience then looks more like incompetence . . . . .