Things That … Make You Go Hmm

Kobe Bryant in court today: OJ media de ja vus?

default — by TDavid @ 5:53 pm PST

Kobe Bryant preliminary hearing set for Oct 9 - this was quite a media event. Will this be larger than OJ? I saw the comparison in a couple of news articles and sincerely I doubt it. Rape is bad, yes, but murder is far worse, so journalists who draw these correlations and comparisons should proceed with caution. But as far as media coverage is concerned, this trial could prove to be every bit as intense as OJ’s trial was, not to mention we now have the web and blogs and technology to foster more coverage and faster coverage. This is an interesting kind of justice because star power can be great for generating $ dollars $ but already one sponsor is jumping ship and other could follow citing morality clauses in contracts. We all thought we knew Kobe Bryant but do we ever really know these stars?

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Review: Amphetadesk

Hmm Reviews, blogs and podcasting — by TDavid @ 4:56 pm PST

Amphetadesk is a news reader and aggregation program which is available for download in Windows, Mac or Linux. It sits quietly in your system tray as a fuscia/cyan-colored pill that you can right click on. In the background it will load various weblogs and/or news generated from RSS files that you define. This will allow users to see the headlines and perhaps read some of the text from their favorite weblogs. This review is based upon version 0.93.1 which was last updated (best as I can tell) Oct 31, 2002.

Out of the box Amphetadesk doesn’t come with comment functionality but you can add it by editing the AmphetaDesk/templates/ default/index.html template. Part of the fun of reading weblogs is seeing what comments others have regarding them, so it’s nice to see the ability to add comments. Trackback functionality, however, doesn’t seem to be an option at this time without hacking.

While I was typing this entry (the very first time) I stopped to refresh the channels list and it loaded into this same javascript window (which has no navigation bars, doh!) so I couldn’t go back and lost everything I had typed I bet if I had been able to go back, however, that the IE cache would have been destroyed and everything I typed would have been lost. I looked through the built-in settings and I didn’t see a built-in way to force Amphetadesk to always launch the results in a new target window, but there might be an easy way if you hack it. So a word to the wise: don’t refresh the channels while you are typing your blog entries into a javascript window with no navigation menu.

Support-wise, well, it’s free software so there really isn’t any (I don’t expect any support for free software). You can join a mailing list to find out about hacks and new announcements but I don’t know about anybody else but I’m not too down with mailing lists any more. They do have an RSS feed which is loaded by default when you first run the program.

There are other news reader / RSS aggregation programs that you can try, but for Amphetadesk’s ease of use, simplistic but useful features, and price (free, donationware; you can optionally donate to the author if you like) it’s well worth downloading and trying. Grade: B-

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SBC to add 6,000 locations for total of 20,000 wireless access points

default — by TDavid @ 2:38 pm PST

Good news for the wi-fi camp: SBC Communications is laying out a strategy to deploy mor than 6,000 locations with a total of 20,000 access points. Other wirless providers include: T-Mobile (in many Starbucks), iPass (mostly hotels), Wayport, Boingo, Gric. If you haven’t taken your laptop or wireless enabled PDA or pocket PC with you on a trip, then you might want to investigate these services first.

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Google adds more free services and features

default — by TDavid @ 10:40 am PST

Google adds another cool feature! Google is now offering newsalerts (beta) which will allow you to get email notification of current events by keyword. news.google.com is already my favorite news portal — is it yours?

Google adsense allows mainstream sites (no adult or personal sites, see full site elligibility here) to add targeted text-based advertisements either in a horizontal over vertical bar and pays based on click-thrus. I added to one page yesterday on one of our sites and according to the stats have made a couple bones already

Search by synonyms! Now you can search using the tilde (the character next to the 1 on your keyboard that looks like this: ~) for synonyms. Say I want to search for scripting I would type ~technology and the query is like this

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August 5, 2003

Linking to some websites can mean jail time

default — by TDavid @ 10:52 pm PST

(story: CNN.com - Man jailed for linking to bomb sites - Aug. 5, 2003) Check this part out: Austin told the judge Monday he “wasn’t really thinking” when he created the Web site. “I’d be devastated if someone used this information to harm others,” he said Doh! So what was this guy thinking at the time? Er, I’ll just link these bomb sites and talk about overthrowing the government and the FBI won’t mind. He’s not even old enough to chug a beer, but he’s out preaching anarchy on the web. So Columbine.

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Passionate debate over future of RSS

default — by TDavid @ 7:24 pm PST

It seems to me after reading dispute exposes bitter power struggle behind weblogs that folks like Dave Winer, who is sometimes criticized for his passion and the source of people taking things he says too personally. I think that people on the web play the flame card when it benefits them, regardless of the issue at hand, and the ability to debate the issues might be becoming a lost art on the web. The future of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) could very well be determined by this. It’s my opinion that if RSS gets too much more complicated, the name itself will become an oxymoron.

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More ways to get your daily blog fix

default — by TDavid @ 5:10 pm PST

Check your blog using any NNTP mail client (subscription is required) using Genecast but even if you don’t end up subscribing, you might want to at least add your blog. Outlook users might want to check out Newsgator ($29 with Free 14 day trial) which is a blog aggregation service and more.

Oh, btw, it appears Ted, the Amazon employee who reported on what it was like working at Amazon to in fact be a PR stunt. Nice.

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Robots, unemployment and the future impact of image processing

default — by TDavid @ 10:13 am PST

This is a very compelling and yet disturbing essay: Robotic Nation by Marshall Brain. It made me think, what will happen when robots can drive, flip burgers, clean toilets, etc? What would it be like if the unemployment reaches 30-40%? Will this future automation reduce the cost of goods and services? Or will money become unimportant like it is in Gene Roddenberry’s future vision? What about Moore’s Law that says that CPU power doubles every 18 - 24 months? At this rate robots will have the CPU power to perform more and more human-skilled jobs within the next 20-30 years.

The whole subject of image processing is fascinating and I started thinking about how robots could effect my insurance agency and the insurance industry in general. It is no secret that insurance companies are the second most wealthy business in the country. Next to the US government that prints the money, the second entity to fold would be the insurance companies. While single companies might have financial problems, the industry as a whole is very strong and very financially solid.

With no auto accidents, there would be no need for collision insurance, as that covers collision with cars and objects and robots would prevent this from happening. Comprehensive rates could be lowered as well because robots might be better at avoiding rock chips, and as for vandalism and malicious mischief perhaps better robot security system could record and prosecute the offenders. And as for Liability premiums? If you don’t crash and hurt people or property, there is little need for auto liability coverage. This could be devasting to insurance agents who have huge books of autos and rely on these commissions as bread and butter income.

Life insurance premiums would be affected, but not nearly as dramatically. Travel related accidents only account for a small percentage of death claims. Most deaths are the cause of heart-related conditions and cancer. Perhaps these robots could be used to help monitor and reduce these types of deaths? However, if people lived longer then that means they might just be poor longer. Also, since Life Insurance agents don’t make much commissons after the first 1-3 years (like 1-3% usually) on the premium, robots wouldn’t affect this too much.

Would homeowners insurance still be required by banks if robots monitored all aspects of the home? Would robots be able to prevent fires? What about natural disasters? Somehow I don’t think there would be much affect in the homeowners insurance market unless robots could stop mother nature. This means insurance agents should continue to build on their book of home insurance policies.

Commercial insurance would be affected — especially commercial auto. Robots would be making sure none of those expensive accidents happened.

I sure hope that we think enough so as to not invite a Terminator-type future by using something like Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. Roger Clarke writes an excellent essay using Asimov’s laws of robotics as a basis for reality with robots.

My thinking is use robots for medicine, for safety, but I’m concerned about 30-40% unemployment and not at all sure about using robots for replacing low level skill jobs. It’s a deep, very pensive subject, but something our children’s children very well will have to deal with.

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August 6, 2003

Kobe Bryant in court today: OJ media de ja vus?

Review: Amphetadesk

SBC to add 6,000 locations for total of 20,000 wireless access points

Google adds more free services and features

August 5, 2003

Linking to some websites can mean jail time

Passionate debate over future of RSS

More ways to get your daily blog fix

Robots, unemployment and the future impact of image processing

The relationship: blogs and news sites

August 4, 2003

Virus alert: new disguised worm coming to your mailbox

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