Congratulations to my friends Ed and Christine on their new baby girl Julia Grace Hackney

This article on CNet almost sounds like it’s from 1999: “The nation’s oldest “hot spot” network plans to give away Wi-Fi equipment starting Friday, in an aggressive push to increase the number of urban areas that offer wireless Web access.”

This is a fascinating article from NY Times: “A dog collar equipped with a wireless microphone that records a pet’s barks, interprets them as emotions and transmits them as text messages like “I’m bored, let’s play.” (I think I already know that bark all too well ;) …

However, “…could meow-activated cat doors or drug-sniffing police dogs whose barks can be decoded be far behind? “If you can classify the morphology of the signal, it can be synthesized,” said Marc Hauser, a professor of psychology and neurosciences at Harvard University who imagined a system that would let pet owners track down runaway dogs. Playing aloud recorded samples of Rover’s bark while canvassing the neighborhood would elicit responses from nearby dogs, whose voiceprints could then be analyzed instantly for a match. If this sounds far-fetched, remember that Americans spent $30 billion on their pets last year, more than twice as much as in 1994.” Woof!

John starts blogging pre-Jack: 10 days until the baby’s due date … kind-a like vapor-real-ware ;-)

Brian Kernighan (Unix, C, Bell Labs fame) has set “to demystify computing for a classroom full of liberal arts undergraduates at Princeton.” Damn … that would be a cool course to take for anyone!

I must add this to my to-test list: “POPFile is an email classification system that has a Naive Bayes text classifier and a POP3 proxy. It works with any mail client using POP3.”

After reading Top Ten Digital Photography Tips on O’Reilly I picked up The UltraPod II tripod and I must say that it is indeed a “compact, versatile, ingenious device”. In fact, I stuffed it into my CamelBak and took it on our ride in SoMo yesterday, where it worked very well.

Eric Myer Photography: Stereotypes

“PRISMIQ has developed a high-end yet affordable networked set-top box that supports your personal media (such as MP3s and digital photos), digital television, IP-based video on demand, musical/digital jukebox, and web
access.”

All for $249.95 … not bad …

and … “[PRISMIQ has a] flexible architecture that can support a variety of additional components like a Personal Video Recorder (PVR). Our unique hardware and software solutions are built from the ground up to take advantage of the home network from Ethernet, to WiFi, to HPNA, to HomePlug. We put the fun in your home network.”

Wow … less than two weeks to go before our wedding and it seems like there are still more things to plan… eek!