Archive: February 18, 2005

<<< January 3, 2005

Home

February 19, 2005 >>>


re-engaging

Friday,  02/18/05  07:36 AM

I am reengaging with the blogosphere.  Just coming up for air.  I've been working on a couple of new projects, one of which has become very real, and which I'll be blogging about, and one of which has not [yet or maybe ever].  No excuse, as usual, just a reason.

My thought right now is that I'm going to take a new tack here.  Post more about me, more about my thoughts, and less about the world.  More of a think blog and less of a link blog.  Maybe just less, period.  I think I had set kind of a high standard for myself in trying to capture the world as it interests me each day, and I may simply not have the time or energy for that going forward.

As usual, stay tuned :)

 

 

RSS feed for digital slides

Friday,  02/18/05  07:51 AM

As you guys know I'm a big fan of RSS.  (If you don't know about RSS, please check out my RSS cookbook, as before I promise this will be worth it.  My mailbox is full of thanks from satisfied customers :)  So recently I did something new and cool with RSS; we added the capability to Aperio's digital slide software to create RSS feeds for directories of digital slides.

For a sample feed, try this one:   Pretty cool, eh?  Well I think it is, anyway :)  BTW you can see the directory itself here.

 

 

Friday,  02/18/05  10:15 PM

The Ole filter makes a pass...  (Yes, I have 171 posts queued up to link, and no, I'm not going to link them all at once.)

As you know, I want to visit Titan.  Right now this isn't possible, but as Wired notes Titan's Features Emerge from Haze.  "NASA scientists unraveled more of the mystery shrouding Saturn's largest moon this week when the space agency's Cassini orbiter beamed home some of the clearest photos to date of Titan's surface."  Excellent. 

One of the best hopes for people like me to visit Titan someday is SpaceX, a little company founded by Elon Musk, who was a founder (and my boss) at PayPal.  Elon posts semi-monthly updates on the SpaceX website which are fascinating.  What they're doing truly is rocket science. 

Oh, and BCC reports a huge star quake shakes the milky way.  "One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts."  Whoa. 

On another frontier, Star Wars III aka Revenge of the Sith is going to open at Cannes.  Cool.  May the force be with them.  It certainly was not with Star Wars II which was the lamest in the series by far despite featuring the best effects. 

Joel Spolsky likes Microsoft's AntiSpyware but notes lazy user-interface-manship.  The contra view on this software, which I endorse, is that Microsoft should not give away for free utilities which others are charging for.  At first glance you might think that MS is being magnanamous, however a zero-cost utility from MS will cause all others to exit the market, however superior they might be, and we all benefit from a healthy ecosystem of choices, especially regarding something like anti-spyware. 

Some of you may have seen the SuperBowl ad from GoDaddy.com, featuring a nice looking young woman and I can’t remember what else.  And your opinion of GoDaddy.com might have been formed right there, never to change.  However Bob Parsons, the founder and CEO of GoDaddy, is a blogger (!), and among other things has posted his rules to live by.  I particularly think these three are spot-on: 

8. Be quick to decide.  Remember what the Union Civil War general, Tecumseh Sherman said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

9. Measure everything of significance.  I swear this is true.  Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.  If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while.  I guarantee you problems will be there.

These three rules are THE formula for success in managing software projects.

John Battelle notes videora, a Bittorrent RSS reader.  "I've long theorized that video over IP will come from the bottom up, as opposed to the top down, much as it has with blogs, and with music before that."  I've long theorized the same thing :) 

Oh, and Tivo Surfs the Internet for New Service.  Hmmm... 

The Blogs Must Be Crazy.  [ via Dave Winer

 
 

Return to the archive.