Archive: May 5, 2005

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Fivesday

Thursday,  05/05/05  11:05 PM

Well, I'm back.  Whew.  Lots to talk about, but I'll have to dribble it out over time.

So today is fivesday!  Yep, 05/05/05, pretty cool.  Kind of like foursday and threesday.  What's weird is that when I posted about foursday I reported watching the final four, but also about reading The Phantom Tollbooth, and the character named The Dodecahedron.  So that makes a pretty decent segway to fivesday :)

There are actually five "regular" solids, and this is the most interesting.  I'm sure you can name the others right off the top of your head, right?

More to follow...

 

Thursday,  05/05/05  11:43 PM

BW: Vonage raises $200M in venture capital.  This makes over $400M total.  Man, and I thought PayPal raised a lot of money.  Well, I guess they're thinking big, overthrowing the world's telecom industry is going to take some money :) 

I've been messing around with Skype.  Pretty cool.  Like they say, "Internet telephony that 'just works'".  It does.  I've found that the voice quality is highly dependent on the mic you use - no surprise.  A crappy desktop mic from Radio Shack doesn't cut it, but a quality headset works great.  The best thing is that they've really wired the echo cancellation, you cannot hear yourself at all, even if you put the mic right next to your speakers. 

Have you noticed that Google has become slower?  Noticably, for me.  They've added too much crap, and are no longer a skinny fast search engine. 

I don't know what to make of Google's Web Accelerator.  Yeah, it might be faster.  But I really don't want all my web traffic passing through their site.  Same reason I haven't even tried their desktop search.  If this was offered by a small third-party, I'd try it in a heartbeat, but I do not trust Google anymore.  [ Xeni notes it is an anonymous proxy, too.  Yeah, anonymous to the sites, but not anonymous to Google. ] 

John Battelle says this is evidence for Google's Web OS.  I don't know about that.  I don't see people writing applications for Google.  Yet. 

I have about 20 domains that I maintain, for myself, my companies, and some charities.  I've been using register.com for about four years, after having used Network Solutions since time zero (remember interNIC handles?).  I thought register.com was a great improvement.  But now I've switched to GoDaddy.  The difference between $35/year and $8/year is pretty compelling.  Also register.com's site is slow, probably because of all the ads clogging their pages. 

Slashdot notes searching by image instead of by keywords.  I need to tell you about a project I'm working on which intends to do exactly this - content-based retrieval of images.  This is a hard problem - I do not fear other approaches as competition, I fear my own inability to execute.  Anyway stay tuned and I'll tell you about Picton

OMG they're starting to cast Blog, The Movie.  [ via Dave Winer ]  Who would play me? 

 

Megan's book drive

Thursday,  05/05/05  11:53 PM

Here's some parental chest beating!

From the Acorn (our local paper in Thousand Oaks, Calif):

"The Assistance League of Conejo Valley, a chapter of National Assistance League, recently received more than 200 new books donated by the students of Miss Rose's second grade class as Westlake Hills Elementary School.

"Megan Eichhorn, a student in the class and daughter of Assistance League member Shirley Eichhorn, wanted to help the League.  The students collected new books to put in backpacks that the League distributes to children in need in the Conejo Valley.

This really was Megan's idea!  And she convinced her teacher to do it.  And they made it happen.  That's my girl.  She's only seven (well she turns eight tomorrow) and she's already changing the world.  Watch out for this kid.

Also - thanks to my friends who generously donated books - especially Nick and Shelley DeNicholas.  You guys are awesome.  How great would it be if you were a poor kid to get a brand new backpack with some books in it?

 

desperately seeking summer intern

Thursday,  05/05/05  11:58 PM

Desperately Seeking Summer Intern
Hot Startup Needs Sharp Programmer

Aperio Technologies, located in Vista, CA, is looking for a student who’d like to work as a summer intern, programming .NET applications in C#.

Aperio provides systems for virtual microscopy.   We make instruments which scan microscope slides at high resolution (100,000dpi) and build software to manage, display, and analyze the resulting [very large] digital images.   Please see our website at www.aperio.com for more information.

Desired qualifications:

  • Smart!
  • Experience with VS.NET and C#
  • GUI experience helpful
  • TCP/IP network experience helpful
  • Reasonable at foosball

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to develop and enhance the console software which provides the operator interface for our ScanScope instruments.   The console software communicates with the instruments using TCP/IP sockets.   You would join a small team of crack coders building cool systems which make cancer researchers and clinical Pathologists more accurate and efficient.  

If you are interested please send an email with your qualifications and experience to ole@aperio.com, or call (760) 539-1107.

 
 

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