Wonderfully made…

I was reading an article in Discover magazine (unfortunately not available online) this morning by Douglas Fox about the work of Kwabena Boagen’s work on computer chips – he’s trying to re-architect the concept of how a computer chip should work.  The problem is efficiency: computer chips are amazingly fast and accurate, but in order [...]

The Dark Side

My transformation to The Dark Side is mostly complete: I now have a Macbook.
Work: iMac
Home: Macbook
Pocket: iPhone
Too many forces pulling me to Macside; the Emperor, Darth Jobs, is pretty persuasive. The educational discount helped, too- oh, and the free iPod Touch.

TV Y2K?

Bob Sullivan makes a pretty convincing case about why the digital TV switchover day could be a major, major headache.  It also explains why Obama thinks it should be delayed.  Two problems really, the coupon program is way behind and, more importantly, the antennae issue.  Digital is far more picky about signal strength than analog, [...]

GPS Tracking

This is amazing to watch.

HD crash and the virtual world

My laptop HD crashed a week ago, and it made me realize just how much I function “online”.  Fortunately, it’s all covered by the extended warranty I got (laptops: one of the few items where an extended warranty is warranted).  While I lost a few items – nothing crucial – I was struck by how [...]

Serious Speed

MSNBC reported a new internet speed record.  This is just incredible how fast things have become in such a short time.  It’s amazing that my short lifetime can encapsulate the Vic3 to Duocore Pentiums; from 14.4k baud to Nine GIGAbits per second over 20,000 miles.

iphone

Of course, I’d heard of the iphone when it was announced, but I just watched the keynote from Macworld when Steve Jobs announced and demoed it. I have to say that it is more than just an impressive gadget, it is an ongoing salvo against Microsoft and the way that computing is done. [...]