November 25, 2003

Finance for Geeks

Eric Sink, the man behind Marketing for Geeks, has just published an article for MSDN called Finance for Geeks, which is an overview of accounting principals from the “technologists” perspective.

Definitely worth a read if you’re starting a software company or working with finance systems.

November 24, 2003

Home-Brew PVRs on Linux

Joe Stump over on the O’Reilly DevCenter puts together a well-rounded overview of The State of Home-Brew Personal Video Recorders on Linux (Think: Open Source TiVo). The article also includes a good threaded discussion as well. Well worth a read.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to investigate putting together my own PVR. I was inspired mainly by a recent InfoWorld article on the savings you can expect by build your own systems.

I’ve set my budget to be about $400 and so far I’m leaning toward using MythTV and ideally the KnoppMyth Bootable CD MythTV Install to make things easy, which is based on the amazing Knoppix Live CD Debian Distro.

November 23, 2003

Google to Atom

The Well-Formed Web has made available a
Google2Atom web service that will generate an Atom feed from a Google search query

However, you’ll need your Google API key to generate the feed.

November 22, 2003

JiWire: WiFi Hotspot Directory

I haven’t looked for a WiFi hotspot directory in quite some time, but I was just alerted to JiWire via Street Tech this morning and I must agree with Gareth that it is indeed comprehensive.

In fact, I learned that my local public library has its own free public hotspot!

November 20, 2003

Stolen Domain Names

It’s appalling to hear that VeriSign (aka Network Solutions | Internic) is STILL letting people steal domain names!

“…it appears that it is still possible to steal domains with the minimum of effort. We have been contacted by the owner of the valuable domain DVDmovies.com who was amazed, only last month, to find that his domain had been moved and registered with another company, without his knowledge.”

“That the registrar at fault was no less than VeriSign – owner of all .com and .net domains – makes it worse. The fact that the company was also recently chastised by the US Appeals Court and ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the owner of Sex.com for wrongly transferring his domain makes it all the more incredible.”

November 19, 2003

Presentation Layer of Search

Raul Valdes-Perez, president of Vivisimo is quoted in
an article at New Scientist about improvements to the user experience of search interfaces. In particular he is talking about Google News, MSN’s newly announced Newsbot and Vivisimo as yet to be released spontaneous clustering approach.

“[Raul Valdes-Perez] says that the engineering of search and rank algorithms “has gone about as far as it can go”. Now the way to improve the user experience is to work on the next layer of algorithms that determine the presentation of the “search and rank” results.”

November 19, 2003

Web of Human Knowledge

Ross Mayfield links to a fascinating article on
Boxes and Arrows by Alex Wright about Paul Otlet: The forgotten forefather of information architecture.

“In 1934, years before Vannevar Bush dreamed of the memex, decades before Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext,” Paul Otlet envisioned a new kind of scholar’s workstation: a moving desk shaped like a wheel, powered by a network of hinged spokes beneath a series of moving surfaces. The machine would let users search, read and write their way through a vast mechanical database stored on millions of 3×5 index cards.”

November 18, 2003

Popularity Metrics

In Tim Bray’s latest essay on search he points out what I feel is an often overlooked aspect of Google’s PageRank when it is applied to enterprise search:

“[PageRank] Won’t Work for You If you’re writing or deploying a search engine for your Intranet or product catalogue or portal, Google’s PageRank trick probably won’t work, because most Intranet and catalogue and portal pages don’t point at each other. The Web is unique in that it has millions of authors independently making decisions about what’s important; aggregating those decisions is what makes PageRank so powerful.”

November 17, 2003

Disposable Email Addresses

I order to protect myself from a potential deluge of spam from suspicious service offerings, I wanted to use a disposable email address.

Of course Google turned up a gem, which I had heard of before, but never used called Spamgourmet

Their service is simple, but clever and best of all free! Basically, after you register a valid email address, you can then create a temporary email address, with a limited message forward limit, at any time.

November 14, 2003

Sleep Is Now An Option

Well, in light of the fact that within a few months, sleep will likely become a scarce commodity for me and Catherine. So, I think perhaps I should investigate the “Sleep Is Now An Option” drug.

Provigil … was a drug originally developed to treat narcolepsy, the inability to stay awake. Now Cephalon, the maker of Provigil, has received a letter of approval from the FDA extending the approved uses of the drug to treatment of jet-lag and swing-shift syndrome.
In reality the drug is set to replace the caffeine in No-Doze as the all-nighter anti-sleep aid of choice. In fact, it’s much better than No-Doze – with Provigil, you can literally stay awake for days, alert and with a remarkable lack of side effects. “(via SciScoop)