Tuesday, January 20, 2004

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Outsmarting Wal-Mart I've been using Wal-Mart as a convenient, free staging area for uploading and "sharing" digital photos. But, as my sister Noelle quickly pointed out, they prevent you from downloading them. However, I noticed that I could download my own photos. So, the trick is to let your friends and family (well, family anyway; they are probably the only ones who care enough to even possibly want to download any photos) all log into the account directly. I set up a special account for this purpose, one which is totally separate from my real Wal-Mart e-commerce account, and thus has no associated credit cards. 11:03:18 PM    comment []

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Bruce Eckel on humility in software development: "a desire to "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" is an indication, to me anyway, of a depth of understanding of how hard it is to just get something working, and how likely it is that you'll fail." 10:49:20 PM    comment []

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Protection Against Furnace Failure These FreezeAlarm thingies are a really good idea: they will telephone you if the power fails, or if the temperature gets too low. In other words, they will notify you if your furnace fails and your pipes are in danger of freezing. However, they cost about $200! Heck, I recently bought a modern computer for $200; they just shouldn't cost that much! Here's my idea...you can buy a wireless digital thermometer--outdoor sensor, plus indoor base station--for $40 or so. They use 909 MHz or something like that; anyway, its not 802.11. So, I would like the base station to be a USB device. That way, it could transmit warnings to a software monitor which could both telephone and email in the case of an event. You've taken the cost of a modem out of the package, though you've added the cost of a USB transmitter. Anyway, it seems like something like that, if it became a high-volume item, shouldn't cost more than $60-80. That last part--a high-volume item--may be the key. I think home insurance companies should plug them, offering their policyholders the chance to buy them at wholesale cost (so now we are down to $40), and, ideally, offering a discount for using them. Hmmm, I do see a problem: if the power fails, a computer can't phone you. Unless, of course, you have a UPS with it. 10:47:19 PM    comment []