rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Wednesday, 22 May 2002

Mike Walsh asks, is Google the answer to everything?: "Just a Delphic Oracle like gaze, as the system [Google frontpage] waits for your question." "The elusive answer to everything might not be on Google, but that in a way, is an answer of another kind. The mistake made by many portal empire builders in planning for content was trying to anticipate every question a user might possibly have. You were looking for movie listings, they were offering steak knives. The trick for marketers and website owners, is not giving up on answering people's questions, but knowing when to speak up when spoken to. " 2:42:38 PM  comment []      ThinkGeek : Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap Niki: haha v. interesting - caffeinated soap. apparently caffeine is absorbed through the skin. an alternative for people who need a coffee in the morning 2:25:31 PM  comment []      USA Today: "Morgan Stanley estimates that US companies threw away $130 billion in the past two years on unneeded software and other technology." [Scripting News] 9:44:41 AM  comment []      Pittsburgh Launches Large, Free, Public WiFi Network - cool. I wish someone in Sydney would do this. Still, probably something to discuss at the upcoming australia.internet.com conference on it. [slashdot] 9:41:17 AM  comment []      Google Catalog Search. Google does it again, this time with a mail order catalog search tool. I think this sort of thing will go down very well over in the US, not so good for global customers. Still, interesting. Looking deeper, this is some seriously cool shit! Search for notebook in the Dell catalog, and you get a list of what look like scanned pages from the Dell catalog - with the words highlighted! (example) The amount of automation required for this is mind boggling. It certainly looks like the Google PhDs have been earning their keep the last few months churning out new inventions like this one. 12:28:51 AM  comment []      Tim Jarrett quotes Justin Hall: "A friend at Deloitte & Touche asked me to talk with these kids about my career as a freelance writer. And so I stood up in front of them and shared. 'I'm homeless, in debt, and my clothes smell because I live out of a beater car.' And they looked at me confused and a loud little girl with long thin braids in a bright pink parka down in front during the second section said, 'Why should we listen to you then?' and I said, 'because I do what I want and I love my life.'" Amen. I truly feel sorry for people without passion for what they do, and often wonder how they keep doing it. [Scripting News] 12:17:18 AM  comment []      Amazon II: Will This Smile Last?. Amazon, attempting a return to greatness, is winning plaudits from investors for the speed at which it has cut costs over the last year while maintaining sales growth. [New York Times] 12:08:03 AM  comment []      If you want to pay lots of $$ for an IDE, Borland Announced JBuilder 7 and Optimize-it 4.2, Ent. Studio 4. If you want a good IDE, get IDEA. [The ServerSide] 12:06:03 AM  comment []