Monday, 7 July 2003

CSS Bookmarklets. Yet another reason that Gecko is the best renderer of them all. ;-) 10:08:47 PM

Clay Shirky does it again with A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy. Chock full of quotable quotes. Go read it. 10:04:34 PM

Blogging for Dollars Interesting, lots of VCs lately have been asking this question "is there money in weblogging?" How do I know that? They call me up. This week Hummer Winblad asked me that question. How would you answer that? [The Scobleizer Weblog] Is there money in blogging? Shit yes, it's called knowledge management, and is frequently handled these days with Content Management System roll outs for internal websites that cost six to eight figures and are frequently ignored because they are hard work to use. Will BlogTools ever reap some of that pie? Probably not. It is hard for a sub $200/desktop tool to compete with the sales pitch that a CMS provider can dish up. But, then again, instant messaging is being used in the military and most large corporates, whether they know it or not. If blogging style knowledge management is going to take off anywhere, it will be in the small agile companies. 9:08:01 PM

Eclipsing my reading list Notes on the Eclipse Plug-in Architecture. There is a very lengthy explanation of the Eclipse plug-in architecture on the eclipse site that provides a lot of insight for those wanting to write their own eclipse plug-in. [Welcome to the real world] Another must read. 8:58:43 PM

California's Economic Meltdown. My wife has the news on - Governor Gray Davis is being interviewed. I moved out of California almost 6 years ago, so I have not followed his recall election problems very closely. That said, it sounds like Davis is being used as a scapegoat. Consider this: there has been absolute gridlock in the state legislature (both Democrats and Republicans) in dealing with California's unsolvable economic problems: California state bonds continue to be downgraded - how will California raise money if they can not sell bonds? Many states are facing insolvency, but California is arguably in the worst shape because of their huge expenses and huge job loss rate (reduces tax revenues) California is strongly affected by the massive fraud at the federal government level - as Senator John McCane repeatedly points out, the American people are getting cheated by the large scale buyout of the U.S. Congress (and I would add the Bush administration's sellout of the American people to political backers). The only way I see out of this slowly building catastrophy is the effective conviction and jailing of both executives who illegally buy influence and by Congress people who illegally accept soft money. - This will not happen - they will continue to change the laws to their own advantages and to keep themselves out of trouble. Corporate fraud (again, the perpetrators seem to get a free ride if they have strong political connections) - reduces taxes, reduces the value of the U.S. stockmarket, sets a bad example for kids growing up: they see illegal behavior, greed, and avarice paying off. It is sad, but I think that California is going down for the count. No matter what state you live in, please vote wisely for polititions who stand up for what is good for the average person (not the economic hyper-overlords). There are good and decent candidates in both the Republican and Democratic party so it pays to choose carefully. (I voted for President Bush - but, I feel like I have been let down because he seems to have broken most of his campaign promises - I think that Bush is a good man, but has let people like Karl Rove lead him on a path that is bad for the American people). [Mark Watson's Blog] Funny that the worlds leading democracy is failing just a few years after seeing it's most feared enemy go down. Due mainly to inability to deal with rampant incompetence, nepotism and bribery. From what I am seeing China faces the same problem as well. Will America have the flexibility to rebuild itself that Russia did not? 8:51:26 PM

Notebooks Back to nerd stuff. I've been looking for a replacement for my Thinkpad T20.  First of all, I love my T20.  I have done so much work with this machine.  But its getting old, has some quirks, and the current plan is to bike to work as much as possible.  To that end I've been searching around for the ultimate teeny tiny laptop.  So far I have not found the ultimate machine - though some are tempting! 1. Sharp Actius.  2.1 lbs.  This is a Curusoe 1GHz chip running Windows XP Home edition.  The form factor is awesome.  Took me a while to get used to typing on the keyboard but after trying for a few minutes I got pretty fast.  It can do 1024x768 resolution on a 10.4" screen.  Around $1,400 2. Sony Vaio TR Series.  Cool looking form factor.  A bit heavier than the Actius at 3.11 lbs.  Sony is already sold out so this must be a hot item.  Can't even find a price but I think they are over $2000.  Runs a Centrino 900 MHz chip.  Also comes with built-in camera. 3. Fujitsu Lifebook P5000.  Successor to the 2000 (3.4 lbs) model.  A beefier CPU (900 MHz Centrino), can run XP Pro.  Has a 60GB disk, 512MB ram and its $2000 (configured as I would want).  "Under 4 lbs.". 4. Apple 12" PowerBook G4.  A pretty stoked little system, but now we're up to 4.6 lbs.  Under $2000. 5. And then there is the Thinkpad X Series.  A stoked 1.4 GHz with 512 MB Ram at 3.6 lbs.  $1904.00.  The new T40 is around 4.5 lbs. 6. Dell as the X200, which is 2.9 lbs and run a PIII 933 MHz chip, and with 512MB would be around $1900. So nothing is ideal.  I love the super small Actius.  Its the lightest that I've seen, and its not the most expensive.  But it would have to be resigned to email, text editing, and Groove.  Remote Desktop for software development would be reasonable too.  For around $2000 there are a lot of choices in the mid 3 lbs range, some of which look like they are powerful enough to do real software development work.  But that's $600 and they still aren't that fast.  Over 4 lbs isn't going to cut it in a backpack on my bike.  Small, cheap, fast.  Pick two.  Right now I'm leaning toward the lightest possible system, being the Actius, but I want to know if I really shouldn't run XP Pro on it.. [John Burkhardt] Do any of these babies run linux? 8:07:28 PM

© Copyright 2003 Brett Morgan.