As several of my colleagues have reported, we’ve just concluded the SEC (Sun Engineering Conference) down in Santa Clara. I don’t have a lot to add to what they said, except to note that it’s nice to attend as a participant rather than an organizer. (I ran a number of similar conferences over the last…
Read More In San FranciscoThis is my first attempt to blog using my Treo. The thumb keyboard is ok: the biggest problem is simply navigating around complex CSS-structured pages on a small screen.
Read More blogging on my TreoAs yet another coating of snow gets dumped on the Boston area, I have fled to warmer climes – California, as is my wont; Silicon Valley, to be more precise. I shall be down in Santa Clara for a few days, then move up to San Francisco for the CEC conference that a number of…
Read More Fleeing the snowI stumbled across this piece in Jamie Zawinski’s blog pointing off to a longer article entitled Groupware Bad. He discusses the history of collaboration and calendaring software, and why it sucks. (There are a bunch of really interesting responses on the blog; see also here.) Direct and to the point (and, apparently, widely linked). Money…
Read More On creating software that people want to use…After getting my Treo 650, I found that I couldn’t access any data (GPRS) services – mail, messaging, web surfing, etc. This was odd, since the folks at the Cingular store had sold me a data plan to accompany my chosen voice plan. I spent several hours last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the phone…
Read More PS on the Treo 650Amazon.com is showing the trailer for the forthcoming film of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As is usual with such things, the trailer has a manic feel and seems to focus on special effects, but there are quite a few elements which I can’t place at all in the story. I’ll reserve judgment. (What…
Read More HHGTTG trailer and business opportunitySalon‘s Andrew Leonard has a nice interview with Iain Banks today. Among other things, Banks explains why it’s taking so long to get The Algebraist published in the US – he’s switched publishers (again), and is working with a small outfit called Night Shade Books in San Francisco. Checking their website, I see that they…
Read More Salon on Iain Banks and "The Algebraist"I’ve been doing a lot of OS installations recently (Solaris, various kinds of Linux, even WinXP), and I’m gradually coming to realize that the shift from “preparing a system” to “using a system” comes after I’ve populated the Bookmarks toolbar of the browser (Safari or Firefox) with my favourite links. While there are usually a…
Read More What's on YOUR bookmarks bar?During my day trip on Friday I was reading Glen Duncan’s Death of an Ordinary Man. I was drawn to it by the review in last week’s New York Times, and found it totally mesmerizing. The story is simple: the disembodied spirit of a man who has just died floats above his funeral, and follows…
Read More Book notes: Death of an Ordinary ManAs I blogged a couple of days ago, my experiment with a “back to basics” cellphone didn’t work out. So today I stopped by the Cingular store at Coolidge Corner to replace the Motorola V551 with a Treo 650. Herewith a few comments, observations, complaints. First and foremost, it’s a PalmOS device. Over the years…
Read More Treo 650