November 13, 2003

Irish Eyes Are Smiling

It’s official, Guinness is good for you!

November 13, 2003

Further info on Wallop

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch interviews Microsoft social computing group researcher Lili Cheng, which reveals some more insight (including screen shots) into MSFT’s social-networking software code-named “Wallop“:

“We’ve been really interested in blogs, wikis, authoring and syndication around RSS, and social networking software in general,” Cheng tells Microsoft Watch. “We were imagining how these things could combine. And Wallop is our first experiment in this space.”

“A lot of these ideas (RSS, wikis) are more novel and intriguing,” she says. “They are about aggregating sites and getting more information out. It matches the way people communicate.”

November 12, 2003

Pacman via Excel

I’m truly amazed! I wish I knew Japanese to provide more details, but apparently Nobuya Chikada has created an excellent remake of the classics Pacman and Space Invaders in Microsoft Excel (Yes, I said Excel!) Do check it out. (Link via Les Orchard)

Note: you’ll need to lower your Excel macro security level to get it to run (at least that’s was what I had to do in Excel 2003), but it’s certainly worth it!

November 7, 2003

Google Deskbar

I usually don’t like to add too much extra paraphernalia to the default Windows desktop. However, after about an hour of sporadic usage, I think the Google Deskbar is on its way to becoming required gear for me.

“Google Deskbar enables you to search with Google from any application without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Installs easily in your Windows taskbar.”

November 6, 2003

Morphix Modular Live-CD Linux Distribution

Morphix is similar to Knoppix in that it’s a complete bootable Linux Distro on CD. The main difference however is that Morphix is modular — with ISO packages ranging from light-weight GUI to gamer

“Morphix is a modular distribution, with live-cd support (you burn the CD, you put it in your CD-Rom drive, you boot and it works… no harddisk-installation necessary, doesn’t touch your data). Also, installing Morphix on a harddisk is a breeze, if you want to. Just click on the icon on the desktop, or choose the installer from the morphix/babytux submenu.”

November 5, 2003

Ask Microsoft?

I just read this via /. about Microsoft’s interest in other search engines:

“Microsoft had also been linked with buys of any of the remaining search players, including Ask Jeeves and Looksmart, though the company has recently dumped Looksmart after deciding its results did not match up to those of its other search partners, notably Overture.”

November 5, 2003

Stopping spam with the Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy

This seems like a smart approach: Stop spam at the SMTP-level with Whitelists and Bayesian filtering using the Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy (ASSP):

“The Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP) Server project aims to create an open source platform-independent SMTP Proxy server which implements whitelists and Bayesian filtering to rid the planet of the blight of unsolicited email (UCE). UCE must be stopped at the SMTP server. Anti-spam tools must be adaptive to new spam and customized for each site’s mail patterns. This free, easy-to-use tool works with any mail transport and achieves these goals requiring no operator intervention after the initial setup phase.”

November 5, 2003

Google is no sure thing

Quotes from an article in The Economist about Google’s ability to sustain its market-share.

“For Google to stay permanently ahead of other search-engine technologies is almost impossible, since it takes so littleÂ—only a bright idea by another set of geeksÂ—to lose the lead.”

“Yahoo!, in fact, will probably be the first to attack. It now … has under its own roof all the elements of the business model that made Google such a success.

November 4, 2003

Tomacco Plant

LOL! This happens to be based on one of my favorite Simpson’s Episodes, but apparently a fan has created a real-life Tomacco Plant! There’s a link to a KPTV News Report and a thread on Slashdot regarding this “amazing science development”.

Mmmmm, Tomacco!

November 4, 2003

Enterprises Want Search

Cathleen Moore’s article in InfoWorld this week regarding the necessity of a Enterprise Search strategy should be considered “stating the obvious”.

Some excellent quotes from the article:

“The explosion of corporate content “both in the physical form of documents, records, and data, and in the human form of personal knowledge” has pressed companies into a crisis: Find a way to tap into and effectively leverage that knowledge, or watch your company’s most vital assets wither on the vine.”