01 October 2002

Pictorial Odometer KODAK.com -- Matt Frondorf is a statistical photographer. He is driving from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate, taking a picture every mile. The snaps hang in a nicely designed Flash app on the Kodak site.

Understanding and Controlling Software Costs Tony Bowden -- Here's a paper from Barry Boehm and Philip Papaccio in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering in 1988 is most notable for the size of its bibliography, which has 126 references!

Why Sexy Women Appear in Advertisements SALON.com -- "It pays to place shapely young women on-screen mugging next to anything from flashy gizmos to fizzy sugar water. The pairing is arbitrary, but it engages a set of brain mechanisms that evolved originally to select mates, learn from serendipity, and remember intense experiences on which future survival might hinge."

Sighting: Proxim Learning Center PROXIM.com -- Proxim's Learning Center covers the basics of networking as well as the specifics of wireless network architecture.

The Music Industry Wants a Free Helping Dan Gillmor -- After giving Jack Valenti a soapbox to make a statement, Dan Gillmor explains the music industry wants total control. So the movie and music companies are going back to Congress for another helping. They are asking for laws that would force technology innovators to restrict the capabilities of devices -- cripple PCs and other machines that communicate so they can't make copies the copyright holders don't explicitly allow. Amazingly, the entertainment industry also wants permission to hack into networks and machines they believe are being used to violate copyrights. Here is what it all means. To protect a business model and thwart even the possibility of infringement, the cartel wants technology companies to ask permission before they can innovate. The media giants want to keep information flow centralized, to control the new medium as if it's nothing but a jazzed-up television. Instead of accepting, as they do today, that a certain amount of penny-ante infringement will occur and then going after the major-league pirates, they call every act of infringement -- and some things that aren't infringement at all -- an act of piracy or stealing. Saying it doesn't make it so.

BT Returns to Irish Mobiles ENN.ie -- Matthew Clark reports BT will re-enter the Irish mobile market. I would be very impressed if that meant BT is studying ways to facilitate wireless roaming.

Showering WiFi from Streetlamps DENVER, Colorado -- Wireless ISP Aerie Networks of Denver uses equipment to run a high-speed wireless Web network in some areas of the country. Its patented equipment consists of radio receivers mounted to utility poles that shower an area with Internet access.

Developing the Irish Spamtext Channel THE REGISTER -- Karlin Lillington identifies with Vodafone Ireland spamming. She has received unwanted SMS spam from 02. "The worst was their happy new year wishes sent twice in a row at about 4 am." Two years ago, I asked Barry Maloney, then the Digifone CEO, whether his company could guarantee that they would never send unsolicited text messages to me. He would not make that promise then, and the rebranded company is clearly on a path to availing a spamtext channel to the direct marketing industry.

Minimalist Forum LOGI3.com -- Jarrod Piccioni's Textbased.com Minimalist site has added a forum used by developers parsimonious with their page weight when discussing minimalist design theory and sharing links.