Sunday, February 09, 2003

OPML Directories. Marc Barrot, reviving outliners again! [Brain Off] 1:27:39 PM    comment []

Got some flow on the Yahoo post, so I thought I'd follow up. For full disclosure, I am a former "Technical Yahoo!", working on personalization (My Yahoo) and later international engineering. Of course, I don't speak for Yahoo and hope I don't step beyond any confidences by writing about my thoughts and speculations. I value my years there very highly, but left of my own accord to broaden my experiences. My recent work on aggregation and weblogging comes directly from the same motivation :: to enable regular users to build the web, for themselves and for sharing. Don't have the impression that I think Yahoo is out of the running, far from it. Yahoo has the largest registered user base on the Web, perhaps the largest database in history(!). They've made a lot of adjustments over the past couple years, and are ready to grow again. Key thing, they'll have to start moving again. With a big bang. When the dust settles around rich clients, blogging/aggregation, digital Id, and a sweet spot application is devised, expect Yahoo to release something apon millions. That could mean good news for companies diving into the space, as Yahoo is well known to acquire into technologies. [Brain Off] 1:24:37 PM    comment []

Mind bending science Update Hippos Roam Drug Lords Ranch :: that's an invasive species! Hippos are allegedly Africa's most dangerous animal Caffeine tracks contamination :: all that coffee and soda makes for an ideal polution tracking agent in the environment Stones Self-Organize into Circles :: cyclical freezing and thawing account for this. Take that, 2nd law of thermodynamics! Plant Spirals: Beauty You Can Count On :: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, plants are cool. patterns arise just from the rule of packing in the least crowded space. Geographically Correct London Tube Map NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena :: the next iteration of Star Logo. (here's another platform for the unexpected) [Brain Off] 12:49:13 PM    comment []

Here Comes the Wireless Traffic Officer. This is what envisions Lee Bruno in this article on how wireless technology is transforming our businesses and our lives. In Seal Beach, California, Cisco's 3200 series Mobile Access Router sits in the trunk of a police vehicle. It allows the car to remain connected to IP networks, regardless of what types of wireless systems are delivering the signal. This "always-on" network allows police officers in the field to access several types of data and information such as IP-based video surveillance, photos from crime databases, and fingerprints obtained from other officers' scanners and from databases. With the wireless link, officers at the scene of a bank robbery, for example, can view live video surveillance footage from bank cameras to determine how to resolve the situation. Cisco thinks that wireless technology can be beneficial not only to police officers, but also to everyone. Two years ago, Cisco commissioned its own study examining the productivity gains of wireless in working environments. It studied 300 U.S.-based organizations with 100 or more employees that use wireless LANs. The study found that wireless LANs enabled employees to stay connected nearly two hours longer each day, which translated into a time savings of 70 minutes for the average user, thus increasing their productivity by as much as 22 percent. The study concluded that wireless LAN investment had an annual estimated return on investment per employee of $7,550. Here is Bruno's conclusion. There's no reason to believe circuit-switched phone networks will disappear anytime soon. However, wireless is going to become an ever-larger umbrella for delivering voice and data wherever you are -- even if that means your next speeding ticket will be delivered by a police car's wireless router. Source: Lee Bruno, Red Herring, February 5, 2003 [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends] 6:25:42 AM    comment []