OpenRSS » July 29, 2008

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12:55
OSCON 2008 Roundup
» ‎ Slashdot

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An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek wraps last week's event with Inside The OSCON 2008 Conference, which pulls together interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, MySQL's Zach Urlocker and Sam Ramji, who directs Microsoft's Open Source Lab. Best quotes: 'We will make a significant attempt to elevate the Linux desktop to the point where it is as good or better than Apple,' from Shuttleworth; and 'If I would start a business tomorrow I'd do it in the netbook marketplace. I'd build a dead-simple $200 device that targets sports fans, women over forty,' from Zemlin." We discussed Shuttleworth's better-than-Apple proposition while OSCON was going on.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12:17
ComputerWorld Australia: Could Microsoft actually be getting an open-source clue?
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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While he couldn't attend the conference in person, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been following the news about OSCON and thinks that OSCON displayed the friendliest things ever seen to come out of Microsoft towards open source.

Read the rest of Steven's thoughts.
12:17
The Register:Google Code blacklists Mozilla Public License
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Gavin Clarke writes, "The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is the latest casualty of Google's decision to remove open-source licenses from its popular code hosting service.

The search giant has said Google Code is no longer accepting projects licensed under MPL, although existing MPL-licensed code is allowed to stay."

See the entire article.
12:17
EWeek:Open Source Diva: Stop Whining, Start Doing
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Don't complain about your situation; do something about it.

That's the gist of what Danese Cooper, senior director of open-source strategies at Intel, said in her keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention here. Cooper said her talk, titled "Why Whinging Doesn't Work," was initially written for women, and she gave a version of it at a women's conference recently. Cooper said she came up with the idea for the talk after receiving an e-mail from Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, saying, "Can you girls please stop whinging about this?'"

Read the rest of Darryl Taft's piece here.
12:17
ZDNet: The tribes of open source gather at OSCON
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Dana Blankenhorn categorizes the OSCON crowd, i.e. tribe, as visioneers, geeks, suits, wannabees, and users in this overview.
12:17
Ars Technica: Neuros open set-top box puts Linux in living rooms
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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At the OSCON open source convention in Portland last week, Neuros CEO Joe Born explained how Linux-based embedded devices will bring open source to the set-top market and the consumer electronics space. He also demonstrated how to build applications for the Neuros OSD, his company's programmable DVR product.

Read the rest of Ryan Paul's analysis here.

12:00
Teen Social Network myYearbook Gets $13 Million
» ‎ TechCrunch

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myYearbook, a social network for teenagers that launched in 2005, has raised $13 million in a Series B funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, US Venture Partners, and First Round Capital. The new round brings the company’s total funding to $18.6 million.

myYearbook says it sees 10 million unique visitors monthly, and also makes the claim that it is the third largest social network in the US. (Not quite. It is only a fraction of the size of MySpace or Facebook, and Bebo and imeem also attract more monthly unique visitors. According to comScore, myYearbook had 4.5 million unique visitors in June, versus 5.2 million for Bebo and 6.4 million for imeem). When we last wrote about them, there was speculation that the site may have more high school users than Facebook. This is almost certainly no longer the case. Facebook has seen dramatic growth since that time, with 37.4 million uniques in June, with 10 percent of those between the ages of 12 and 17, says comScore. MyYearbook has a larger percentage of users in that age group (23.8 percent), but less than a third as many total.

Still, myYearbook continues to produce impressive stats if you look at Hitwise, with 384% in year-over-year growth.

The site intends to use the money to further expand its feature set and reach out to new members. As part of the deal, Norwest Venture Partners’ Sergio Monsalve will join the company’s board of directors.

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11:59
Good System, Bad System
» ‎ Joel on Software

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“I pass six Starbucks every morning on my walk to work. Just to clarify, that's counting only the Starbucks that are actually on the west side of Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. I think there are some branches on the east side, but that side remains terra incognita for me; for most New Yorkers, micro-optimizing the walk to work is a matter of habit, and I have no reason to cross the street. For all I know, the other side of Eighth Avenue consists of nothing but pachinko parlors and flea circuses. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.”

From my latest Inc. article: Good System, Bad System

PS: I've got a new book out: More Joel on Software is the second collection of articles from the archives of this site.

Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

11:04
Emergency Workaround For Oracle 0-Day
» ‎ Slashdot

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Almost Live writes "Oracle has released an out-of-cycle alert to offer mitigation for a zero-day exploit that's been posted on the Internet. The emergency workaround addresses an unpatched remote buffer overflow that's remotely exploitable without the need for a username and password, and can result in compromising the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the targeted system." Whoever published the vulnerability and matching exploit code did not contact Oracle first.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10:18
姓名@公司名 [Flickr]
» ‎ 车东[Blog^2]

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车东@FlickR posted a photo:

最近加入了不少技术讨论组，群名片都是建议用姓名@公司名这样格式的；最早在99年的时候，收到过朋友的邮件中看到签名有这样的。所以把MSN姓名改成了，“车东@博客大巴“ 的确减少了很多自我介绍的麻烦。

9:37
［五常问答室第129期］我中英文写作水平几乎一样好
» ‎ 张五常作品

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纽约留学生问：

个人拜读过张教授每一篇专栏文章和一些英文论文，您提到中英文写作水平几乎一样，你的中文著作里面有一些比较口语的用法，类似“手起刀落、沙石无数、得个讲字”等用法。你在写英文的时候有可能不费吹灰之力想到equivalent的expression吗？或是说，你有另外一套藏在脑中的英文非正式词汇备用？

答纽约留学生：

严格来说，我没有受过正规的语文教育，中文英文也没有。绝大部分是自学的。你要明白我的背景。

一九八三年十一月我才开始用中文写作，那时差不多四十九岁了。少小时我对中国的诗词与古文背过很多，也读遍了金庸的武侠小说。更重要是一九五七出国之前，我在香港的西湾河长大，结交的是低下阶层。可幸当时的穷朋友不少是能人异士，其中不乏中文水平极高的，受到他们的感染。同时，算得上是粗俗的朋友也不少，所以对广东话的俗语很熟（这些与今天的香港俗语不同）。以中文下笔，借用中国的古诗词或古文是「马死落地行」，因为自己的白话文不够用。我也偶尔用一些广东俗语，增加文字的生动性，不多用，但这里那里点缀一下是无伤大雅的。

我的英语文字倒转过来，完全不用俗语——不懂得用——因为我认真地自学英文时是大学生，仿效的不是什么粗人，而是大学教授或英文大师。是的，我的英文是学院里的文字。少用英文多年了。最近为高斯写那篇很长的《中国的经济制度》，用英文，发觉退化了不少。可幸文气依旧，虽然沙石多，但文章的本身还是好的，请朋友代为修改一下就是了。

本博客管理员公告：
访客想通过“五常问答室”的栏目向张教授提问的，请在下面留言。提问者应注明自己所属的地区、名字。请提问者注意问题的简洁清晰。张教授只会有选择地回答部分有价值的题目。管理员有权对问题作适当的修改。

9:13
How Do Geeks Exercise?
» ‎ Slashdot

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An anonymous reader writes "I have always been thin but all the sitting in front of the PC is taking its toll now that I'm getting older. I have begun to get a little heavier around the waist. I don't eat a lot but the weight seems to stay on these days. Most of the time I don't have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office. And being an introvert, I'm not enamored of the idea of exercising in full view of *shudder* people. I regularly do press-ups (60 per night) and sit-ups (30 per night) and some fetching and carrying, but that is all and these days it isn't enough. I need a solid and effective routine that will tone all my muscle groups efficiently. Do any Slashdotters have a regular workout routine that can be performed in the privacy of the home to stave off those pounds?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

8:01
Perspctv: An Election Mashup That Proves Nothing, But Looks Good Doing It
» ‎ TechCrunch

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With the election rapidly approaching, it’s getting hard to keep track of all of the political news swirling around the web. Perspctv, a new mashup from developer Vineet Choudhary, utilizes 14 web services to try to bring all of the news together in one place.

To monitor current political news, the site searches for the terms “Obama” and “McCain” in Twitter conversations, news articles, and blog posts, and displays updates in real time. Results are presented in attractive graphs, and each candidates’ popularity can be viewed as a function of time.

The site’s most glaring flaw is that it determines popularity by measuring the number of times each candidate’s name is mentioned, without taking the word’s context into account. Obviously, many of these mentions are negative - Obama’s lead across every metric probably isn’t an accurate measure of his popularity. People may just like to talk about him more often.

Choudhary says that he is looking into integrating some kind of natural language algorithm to help separate positive comments from the negative ones, but for the time being we’ll have to settle for this unrefined analysis. And while there may be no significant correlation between Twitter mentions and a candidate’s chance of winning the election, Perspctv is still a good looking site that’s fun to play around with.

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7:27
How To Lose Your Cuil 20 Seconds After Launch
» ‎ TechCrunch

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The hype cycle now lasts less than a day. Take yesterday’s over-hyped launch of stealth search startup Cuil, which was quickly followed by a backlash when everyone realized that it was selling a bill of goods. This was entirely the company’s own fault. It pre-briefed every blogger and tech journalist on the planet, but didn’t allow anyone to actually test the search engine before the launch.

The company’s founders have a good pedigree, and have developed a unique way to index the Web cheaply and at massive scale. But creating a big index is only half the battle. A good search engine has to bring back the best results from that haystack as well. Here Cuil falls short, as we pointed out an hour after the site launched and we could actually check it out.

The story quickly turned from Google-killer to Google’s lunch (make that an amuse bouche). The results Cuil returns aren’t particularly great, and sometimes completely off the mark. For instance, a search for “Cuil” doesn’t even bring up a link to itself on the first page of results. (See screen shot at end of post).

And when Cuil tries to pair images with sets of search results, it often chooses seemingly random images to accompany a set of results. For instance, “Wordpress” is associated with what looks like a TV newscast team and “TechCrunch” is paired with a Gmail logo. And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our “About” section.

The backlash goes beyond the blogosphere. Friendfeed founder and former Googler Paul Bucheit started this thread of deservedly harsh comments on FriendFeed:

Paul Buchheit posted a message
“Maybe Cuil isn’t supposed to be good. They must know that the results are bad, but they launched anyway. Maybe they aren’t trying to build a full search engine, but just want to demo their crawling+indexing technology with the expectation that someone will buy the company and plug in better ranking.”
. . .
—Where “someone” = MSFT, who has already shown that they are willing to pay a lot for non-functional search engines. - Paul Buchheit
—That is what I was thinking, too. - Robert Scoble
—You’d think they’d work toward getting something relevant if you search on “cuil launch” - Michael Markman
—It’s the only thing that makes sense when you look at how bad the results are. You don’t roll out something like unless you are just showing off the interface. - Kevin Bondelli
—Would also explain the weak branding. Who cares, if it’s just going to get plugged into something else? - Chris Baskind
—Not very good results at the moment I will say - shinchi via twhirl
—It must be so hard to launch something in a realm where there isn’t much tolerance/patience for incremental improvement. The bar in this space is high and consumers are very picky. Look at Yahoo. Their search is actually pretty damn good. However, they keep losing share. - Sacca
—agree with Sacca - also, I thought the people behind Cuil had already sold some search technology to Google and hence they wanted to try it out on their own this time - so if anything they’d have more intent than others not to flip. - Adam Kazwell
. . .
—Google Killer? I do not even need to look to know the answer - Mike Reynolds
. . .
—It’s embarrassing IMO. The results are thin and the images completely wrong. Not good is one thing … Cuil seems a cut below not good right now. - AJ Kohn
. . .
—IMHO there have to be better ways to show off your very own crawling+indexing technologies than opening up to the public and getting thrashed for not delivering what people expect when you dub your service search engine. I have a hard time believing that the cuil/cuill guys did not know what they were doing though … Were they pushed to release by financiers? Were they in dire need of usage data? - Mustafa K. Isik

If you are going to feed the hype cycle, you’d better be able to deliver. Because it only lasts about 20 seconds if you don’t.

(Photo by Steve Jurvetson).

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7:20
ABA Judges Get an Earful About RIAA Litigations
» ‎ Slashdot

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I was afforded the opportunity to write for a slightly different audience — the judges who belong to the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association. I was invited by the The Judges Journal, their quarterly publication, to do a piece on the RIAA litigations for the ABA's Summer 2008 'Equal Access to Justice' issue. What I came up with was 'Large Recording Companies vs. The Defenseless: Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigations,' in which I describe the unfairness of these cases and make 15 suggestions as to how the courts could level the playing field. I'm hoping the judges mod my article '+5 Insightful,' but I'd settle for '+3 Informative.' Here is the actual article (PDF). (If anyone out there can send me a decent HTML version of it, I'll run that one up the flagpole as well.)" Wired is helping to spread the word on Ray's article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
6:41
Practical Jetpack Available "Soon"
» ‎ Slashdot

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Ifandbut was one of several readers to point out the arrival in Oshkosh of the first practical jetpack. It was invented by a New Zealander Glenn Martin, who has been working on the idea for 27 years. He plans to sell the gizmos for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100K. While previous attempts at jetpacks have flown for at most a couple of minutes, Mr. Martin's invention can stay aloft for half an hour. Both "practical" and "jetpack" may need quotation marks, however: The device is huge and it's incredibly noisy. And, "It is also not, to put it bluntly, a jet. 'If you're very pedantic,"' Mr. Martin acknowledged, a gasoline-powered piston engine runs the large rotors. Jet Skis, he pointed out, are not jets, and the atmospheric jet stream is not created by engines. 'This thing flies on a jet of air,' he said. Or, more simply, it flies."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

6:26
IBM’s “PENSIEVE” Project to Digitize Business Cards
» ‎ TechCrunch

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Take a look at the video above (which oddly reminds me of the early 90s) and you’ll see that IBM has taken a page from Evernote’s book.

Its research labs have been working on a project codenamed “PENSIEVE” that promises to algorithmically construct digital address books from photographs of business cards and the people they represent.

While not production ready for at least another year, PENSIEVE will get rid of that stack of business cards sitting unhelpfully on your desk. Instead of chipmunking business cards away, PENSIEVE users can take photos of them with their camera phones upon receipt. Later, when they plug those phones into their computers, PENSIEVE will analyze the photos and extract contact information - name, phone number, address, etc. - and associate their data with any photos you took of people on location. That data gets integrated into your digital address book, making it searchable, shareable and generally more useful.

IBM won’t offer PENSIEVE directly to consumers; the company plans to distribute the service through its telco partners. Pricing details are also not available, since they are bound to be determined by the mobile providers themselves.

We’re told the service will sync with common address books (Outlook, etc). Let’s just hope the data doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

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6:00
5% Layoffs Rumored At MySpace (Updated - MySpace Clarifies, Says Performance Driven)
» ‎ TechCrunch

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MySpace has starting laying people off, we’ve heard from a source close to the company. The final tally may be 5% or more of total staff, with engineering, sales and customer service taking the biggest hits.

MySpace parent company Fox Interactive Media recently missed their revenue target for the last fiscal year and fired their chief revenue officer Michael Barrett. The layoffs may be tied to that missed target.

On the other hand MySpace has undergone massive headcount growth over the last two years, sometimes adding as many as 100 employees per month. Two years ago MySpace had 300 employees; today it is rumored to have 1,500. This may be simply an exercise in pruning.

We’ve contacted MySpace for comment.

Update: I spoke with Amit Kapur, MySpace’s Chief Operating Officer, about the rumors shortly after writing the post. Kapur confirms that they are letting people go, but clarifies it’s entirely performance driven, not layoffs. He would not state the number of people who will be let go, but said it was “less than 5%” and that it is part of their standard yearly performance reviews.

“All of the employees we are letting go will be replaced,” he said, and “we are also rewarding top performers.” “This is an important way to drive a streamlined business,” he added. Kapur is also highlighting the upgrades being made to the MySpace management team. MySpace is continuing to hire aggressively, and plans to add up to 300 people in the coming months, he said. He also pointed out that MySpace is moving into new offices, with plenty of room to grow.

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6:00
A Step Backward For Voting System Transparency
» ‎ Slashdot

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Verified Voting is reporting that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) introduced the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act (S. 3212). While having many commendable features, this bill also has a few stinkers, including language that would exempt from any verification requirement those paperless voting systems purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA's accessibility requirements. This would leave millions of voters (particularly those with disabilities) dependent on insecure paperless electronic machines for years to come. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow, so if you have an opinion, now is the time to make yourself heard. Rush Holt has a much better bill.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5:46
New York Times:Open:OSCON 2008 Day 01 Sessions
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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While all the other “nytimers” are running around having interesting discussions, I thought I’d do a quick blog post.

Yesterday’s OSCON sessions were great overall, but there were a couple that really stood out for me.

Read about the sessions that most interested Nick Thuesen.

5:21
Wikileaks Releases ACTA Negotiations As "0-Day"
» ‎ Slashdot

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An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has released a new document about the ACTA negotiations occurring in Washington over the next three days. This might be the shortest time between authorship of a document and its publication on Wikileaks so far. The brief 3-page memo, dated today, could add quite a bit of oil to the fire of the ACTA debate. It is titled Business Perspectives on Border Measures and Civil Enforcement and it contains a set of proposals to the 'ACTA negotiators' issued by 'Concerned business groups operating in ACTA nations.' Among many highly invasive methods and approaches proposed in this memorandum, the reader can find detailed demands for: full disclosure of relevant information by Customs to trademark holders so that they can mount private investigations; disclosure of identities and other information about copyright infringers; and increased inspection of goods. This document is especially important to raise public awareness on these negotiations and their implications for the future." We've been watching ACTA develop for a few months now.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5:16
InformationWeek: OSCON Pt. 5.0: Sam Ramji's Wonderful, Terrible Job
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Serdar brings us all the way to Friday:

There's a part of me that thinks Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Open Source Lab, has the worst imaginable job at Microsoft. But he doesn't see it that way: Where other people would see such a position as being crushed between two wholly opposed forces (Microsoft and open source), Sam sees it as a way to build a bridge that didn't exist before -- and maybe to transform Microsoft all the more from within.

Read the whole story
5:16
InformationWeek: OSCON, Pt. 4.2: openSUSE's Eleventh Hour (And Twelfth, And Thirteenth...)
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Aside from having one of the niftier names in the industry, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier has a pretty nifty job, too: He's the openSUSE Community Manager at Novell (NSDQ: NOVL), where he oversees the folks that help make what will ultimately turn into the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise. I grabbed a few minutes of his time to follow up on things I'd talked to him about back at theRed Hat (NYSE: RHT) Summit.

Thursday, and the prolific Serdar continues his coverage.
5:16
InformationWeek: OSCON, Pt. 3.1: MySQL's Day In The Sun
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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On Wednesday I sat down at OSCON with a slew of people from Sun Microsystems to talk about key parts of their empire, both new and old. First up was Zack Urlocker of MySQL (whom I'd observed at the Monday Participate 08 panel), one of the newest additions to the Sun galaxy, and an acquisition that's caused a great deal of worry amongst existing MySQL users.

Serdar reaches the middle of OSCON in this Wednesday report.
4:46
InformationWeek: OSCON, Pt. 2.2: Participate 08 (Sponsored By ... Microsoft?)
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Let's rewind a bit. My Monday afternoon at OSCON 2008 was taken up by "Participate 08," a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)-sponsored discussion panel chaired by a whole panoply of folks -- including, yes, an open source liaison from Microsoft. The whole thing was neither a "corporate apologia" (as one wag put it from the audience) nor a pile-on where Microsoft got the worst of it. Their approach was only one of a diversity of perspectives, and sometimes not even the most eyebrow-raising.

Serdar Yegulalp continues his OSCON reports.
4:46
InfoWorld:Mobile computing now an open source driver
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Mobile computing has become a dominant focus in the open source arena, a theme on prominent display at a major open source technology convention last week.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., highlighted mobile efforts along with Linux, Web computing, and languages. Mention of various mobile efforts abounded, including LiMo (Linux Mobile), Intel's Moblin, and the Google-backed Android platform.

Read more of Paul Krill's summary of Mobile at OSCON.

4:33
Software, Tools, Or Techniques For UI Review?
» ‎ Slashdot

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Comatose51 writes "Does the Slashdot crowd know of any software, tools, or even techniques for reviewing the UI of an application? Right now at our company this is a long and arduous task of looking at slide after slide of pages and menus from our UI, and taking notes and arguing over what should go where or how the UI elements should behave and interact with the user. It takes many, many hours to do this and with all our UI developers involved, it adds up. This has to be a common and recurring problem so there must be a better way to do this. If there is open source software to help, great, but any helpful suggestion would be appreciated."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

4:11
Read Original article: ä¸æ¬æ¸ä¸å¥è©± via ...
» ‎ CNBlog: Blog on Blog

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Read Original article: ä¸æ¬æ¸ä¸å¥è©± via ilyagram.

望著書背與書標，覺得有那麼多推薦人彷彿想要說些什麼…。

《黑天鵝效應》Nassim Nicholas Taleb 一位交易員與數學教授著。人沒有死一半的，所以沒有能夠同時在平庸世界與極端世界妥協兼容的演算法則；知道自己無法預測不是件壞事，因為，你自己就是黑天鵝事件。《微國家：獨立建國的簡易操作手冊》，一本異質地包含著原作者狂想派對的資料遺跡與台灣出版社（行人！）真誠補遺的混合著作；原作很像一個實用的 why not? 行動手冊，讓人如實地從基層認識起一個國家的組成，與現實官僚系統的（不）反應邏輯。《經濟殺手的告白》，國中/高中的世界史應該要從這本書教起，這樣學生們就會快樂的每天看國際新聞，分析背後的邪惡陰謀。這樣也不會有人「我的志願」會寫，我將來要當總統：你要被暗殺，還是欠下巨債與黑幫（美國）掛勾，過著快樂的生活？《經濟殺手的告白2：美利堅帝國陰謀》，暢銷書之後的系列影集，但是感覺焦距沒有調對，只有看到一點點的魔鬼/細節。彷彿經濟殺手（Economic Hit Man, EHM）就是所有一切國際動盪陰謀的背後被遺忘的中介變項；但是只看到 John Perkins 先生到處演講簽名，然後神祕人士出來交換名片，握手說：「幹的好！」然後影集就結束了。巴西的魯拉（Lula, de Silva）總統也是集團的一部分、他們的一員嗎？達爾富爾衝突（War in Dalfur）背後的豺狼（jackal）在那裡？為什麼會有亞洲金融風暴？台灣為什麼當時沒有被席捲？台灣的長期能源政策被誰掌握？後面是否有貝泰 Bechtel 等國際開發集團的蹤跡？導演，焦距調近一點！

針對後面兩本 John Perkins 寫的暢銷著作，我不由得感受到布希家族令人從心底散發出來的恐怖。這些 EHM 的確締造了傲人的經濟奇蹟，不曉得他們自己創造出來了多少 GDP？第三世界國家於是深深地陷落在美國（帝國）的網絡中。然而，這樣的故事與場景該怎麼解決呢？「讓你們的年輕人作不一樣的夢吧，」印第安原住民的長老這麼說。

所以，我們就來作不一樣的夢吧。不是盲目的經濟成長、不是踩在別人頭頂的權力遊戲
4:11
ilyagram: 在 iPhone 上享受調酒樂趣
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Read Original article: å¨ iPhone ä¸äº«åèª¿éæ¨è¶£ via ilyagram.

週末（股）公司 liu 跟 zonble 還有其他的朋友一起度過了一個愉快的夜晚。從他們剛剛推出的記帳軟體 TapExpense 的甘苦談，一直聊到在個人化的新媒體平台上處理「飲食」的文化體驗。Lukhnos 跟我們分享了許多他在開發軟體摸索過程中，所學到 iPhone 產品開發全然不同的發想與構思方式。

在討論飲食與文化體驗變成軟體的可能上，Lukhnos 提到一套也在 AppStore 販售、定價 9.99 美元的軟體：Cocktails 雞尾酒/調酒。它的清楚定位、設計風格與豐富的調酒食譜內容，讓許多人都大呼值得。

bbum’s weblog-o-mat 有一篇很不錯的評論 Cocktails: Beautifully Designed Mixology Tool，把這個設計的幾個面向刻劃了出來，讓人了解背後的興味盎然。例如：美國禁酒年代對於飲酒文化的打壓、禁酒年代過後大型酒公司遊說通過阻止自己釀酒、調酒的法律（pass laws to prevent the resurrection of the craft alcohol and microbrew markets），一直到最近 10 多年調酒文化才得以復興，這是歷史面向的故事；在實際認識調酒文化上，調酒食譜（cocktails recipe）是不可或缺的一環，傳統上以 Cunningham’s Bartender’s Black Book 《康寧漢調酒者黑皮書》（現在已經是第 8 版了）為經典必讀聖經；但是抱著一本聖經，仍然在很多實作的時刻中有許多沒有辦法做到的事情。

就是在這個時刻，一部讓你可以隨身攜帶、數位版本、可搜尋的調酒食譜，就是令人低迴不已的夢幻產品了。一位讀者這樣說：
…You know, I’ve spent more money on apps through iTunes than I have music and I’d even say more than through traditional websites. I think nothing of spending $10 on an app like Cocktails because I’ll have instant access to something valuable for the rest of the phone’s life.
Cocktails 雞尾酒/調酒另外一個讓人無法抗拒的精緻魅力，是它的有趣設計：瀏覽酒單時能夠根據簡單杯子的剪影來判別與記憶，同樣的酒有不同年份的調法，隨著越回到過往的風格，頁面也越來越泛黃與古意盎然。這也增添了調酒的歷史氣味與文化多樣性的豐富感受。

亞洲地區的茶文化可是有著相當久遠的歷史，隨著在各地的豐富演變與混搭，創造出了新時代與時尚、風潮、健康等元素結合的可能。有可能讓這樣的文化也在新媒體上重新被人喜愛嗎？
4:10
ilyagram: 阿拉伯/中東沙拉的文化風
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正在過著一個沒有冷氣的夏天，一個有著特殊沙拉的夏天。June 今天參考 BBC Good Food 的食譜，做出了這道 Feta tabbouleh with aubergines 「乳酪麥粒蕃茄生菜沙拉」。根據 wikipedia 的資訊，Tabbouleh تبولة‎ 是阿拉伯/中東風味的開胃菜，主要成份包括： Its primary ingredients are bulgur小麥片, finely chopped parsley荷蘭芹, mint薄荷, tomato蕃茄, scallion (spring onion)綠洋蔥, and other herbs with lemon juice, olive oil and various seasonings時蔬, generally including black pepper and sometimes cinnamon肉桂 and allspice五香.
而這次 June 根據 BBC Good Food 「好食物」所做的沙拉，食譜中的資訊如下：
Ingredients 成分：
* 140g bulghar wheat
* 2 garlic cloves , crushed
* 4 tbsp olive oil
* 2 aubergines茄子 , thinly sliced lengthways斜切薄片
* 410g can chickpeas雞豆/鷹嘴豆 , drained（這個我們沒有加）
* 140g cherry tomatoes , halved
* 1 red onion , chopped
* 100g feta cheese , crumbled
* 1 large bunch mint , leaves chopped
* juice 1½ lemon
這道沙拉，地中海東岸（Lavent）是用生菜夾著吃，美國的作法則是把它做成 Pita 麵包的沾醬。混合最後推出來的，是道既美又很有文化風味與異國感受的居家料理。旁邊那個是沙魚

如此美好的一餐，以為記。
4:10
多背一公斤: 灾区图书室管理员“阅读教育培训”在成都举行
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Read Original article: 灾区图书室管理员“阅读教育培训”在成都举行 via 多背一公斤.
7月26日，多背一公斤和千秋助读行动在成都“民间组织512救助中心”联合举办了面向四川地震灾区图书室管理员的“阅读教育培训”。

随机文章：网易网友线下多背一公斤活动志愿者招募 2008-07-22帐篷图书室里过端午节 (by 加菲猫＆欢欢） 2008-06-13第一个“多背一公斤帐篷图书室”成立啦！ 2008-06-03和灾区小朋友一起描绘美好明天 2008-05-26灾区儿童六一绘画活动志愿者招募 2008-05-23收藏到：Del.icio.us
4:10
车东[Blog^2]: Google Reader的好友推荐分享： Blog内容缓释
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Read Original article: Google Reader的好友推荐分享： Blog内容缓释 via 车东[Blog^2].

前几天我给几个做开发的朋友发了个消息，请他们帮我再次在Google Reader中共享了一篇旧招聘启事，可能他们的Gtalk好友都在Google Reader中看到了。
一篇文章在Google Reader中的确有过时很快的现象，超过1天后可能就被一片被淹没到数百篇未读文章列表后面了。而被好友较多的Blogger分享的时候还会带来一些新的阅读和传播机会；所以Google Reader的好友推荐是这个新的传播渠道已经被很多人运用的很好了，因为大部分人还不知道如何退订Gtalk好友的分享（难道要删除好友？）也有很多朋友（比如Fenng）采取在发表文章几天后自我推荐的方法再次“提醒”自己的好友。

3:53
Pair Up! Cucku Lets You Swap Data With A Backup Buddy
» ‎ TechCrunch

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In the last few years we’ve seen a number of backup solutions emerge that have tried to make the backup process as painless as possible. Local backup solutions like Apple’s Time Machine back up to an external disk and tend to be quick and easy, but they also leave data exposed to theft and natural disaster. Cloud-based storage services like Mozy and Carbonite remove the risk of physical damage to a disk, but it can take days or weeks to recover data after a disk fails.

Cucku, a new startup that launched last week, is trying to merge the benefits of local and remote backup. Using a technology it calls “social backup”, users are able to automatically save their files to a friend’s computer over the Skype P2P network. The software is Windows only for now, with a Mac version planned for the future.

Here’s how it works: Each user pairs off with a friend, who becomes their “backup buddy”. Every time you modify a file on your drive, it gets uploaded and saved to the allotted backup portion of your friend’s drive. Likewise, whenever your backup buddy modifies one of their files, it gets saved to your hard drive. Everything is encrypted, so you shouldn’t have to worry about prying eyes.

CEO Rob Ellison says that Cucku solves some of the problems associated with cloud-based remote backup solutions like Mozy and Carbonite by keeping all of your files nearby. Instead of having to wait a few days for your files to arrive on a DVD, you can just call up your friend and get access immediately.

Cucku may have a leg up in terms of convenience, but it has some major technical hurdles to overcome. For one, users will need to give up significant chunks of their hard drive space to make room for their friends’ data - when that “low disk space” message pops up, your precious backup will likely be the first thing to go. And what happens when your friend goes on vacation for a few weeks and doesn’t leave his computer on? There’s also the issue of bandwidth, which all cloud services suffer from - backing up more than a few gigs can take weeks or months.

Cucku’s basic consumer offering probably won’t catch on, but its pro package does stand a chance. Unlike the regular version, which requires 1-to-1 backups (you can only swap data with your Backup Buddy), the Pro version will allow users to back up multiple computers to the same drive. Users will be able to create a dedicated server for backup purposes, which will allow large groups of people to back up to a “cloud” that is still physically accessible.

There are a number of other sites that have attempted to use P2P backup, including Wuala and AllMyData, which has adopted a more traditional could-based model.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

3:50
Hackit: Crap modding
» ‎ hack a day

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Filed under: misc hacks, HackIt

When Boing Boing Gadgets posted about this $13 robot hand music box, we immediately thought "OH EXPLOITABLE!". Over the years, we've acquired quite a bit of cheap trash just operating under the assumption that we would turn it into something else. Most of our acquisitions are Woot's fault. Just this morning we were dismayed to find out that the purveyor of cheap electronics had already sold out of animatronic Elvis heads. Now that would have been fun. We've purchased things like Tony Hawk helmet cams, jumbo remotes, Bluetooth headphones, Gyration mice, IMFree chatpads, and many other items of questionable use thinking that some day we'd use it. How about you? What sort of irrational purchases have you made and what would you do with a $13 mechanized hand?

[Just as we were wrapping this up, Woot posted a $49 HMD; you better believe we bought that.]Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

3:43
VIA Nano CPU Benchmarked, Beats Intel Atom
» ‎ Slashdot

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Vigile writes "Back in May, when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology. Since then, Isaiah has become the VIA Nano processor, and Silverthorne changed to the Intel Atom — and now we can finally see tests comparing the two technologies. The Nano's out-of-order super-scalar design is definitely an architectural leap over the Atom's in-order single-issue design, but with Intel including HyperThreading technology in their CPU the competition is closer than expected. The Nano does win the performance tests by a considerable margin, but what might be more impressive is seeing the Atom use only 4 watts of power under full load!" As reader Mierdaan points out, that's 4 watts more than at idle, for about 60 watts total.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
2:55
Sen. Ted "Tubes" Stevens Is Indicted
» ‎ Slashdot

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Many readers are letting us know about the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms. We discussed the raid on the senator's house a while back. Everyone's favorite technologically challenged senator is the longest-serving Republican in the history of the upper house. An Alaskan paper gives deep background on the probe that has ensnared Stevens and a number of other Alaska political figures.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

2:46
[Quotable] NetNewsWire, JotSpot, Git, Google, old Texas sayings, etc.
» ‎ Signal vs. Noise

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Avoid the middle of the road
“As a company, you have to be the most of something—the most exclusive, the most affordable, the most responsive, the most friendly. Companies used to want to be in the middle of the road — that’s where all the customers were. But now, in an age of hyper-competition and non-stop innovation, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. What do they say in Texas? ‘The only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.’”
-Bill Taylor, author of Mavericks at Work

Put your business model in beta
“So my advice to startups in this particular category is if you’re going to put your product in beta — put your business model in beta with it. Far too often we are too product focused and not business-model focused. That’s one thing I definitely would have done differently with JotSpot.”
-Joe Kraus, CEO of JotSpot

Work in small bits
“When dealing with git, it’s best to work in small bits. Rule of thumb: if you can’t summarise it in a sentence, you’ve gone too long without committing.”
-Git for the lazy

The schizo thing about software development
“Here’s the schizo thing about software development (at least on Macs): 1. Everybody praises apps that don’t have a ton of preferences and features. 2. Everybody asks for some new preferences and features. (Okay, not everybody. Not you, I know. I mean everybody else.) To make it worse: 1. Everybody thinks they’re representative of the typical user, so what they want ought to be a no-brainer. 2. And they act like you put skunks in their fridge if you don’t do whatever-it-is. (Okay, again — not you. You’re cool. I’m talking about the others.) The problem is 100 times worse when it comes to deleting features.”
-Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire

Major in learning
“It’s easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many required skills will change: developers today code in something called Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities.” Google’s advice to students

Learn from mistakes
“If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
-An old saying in Texas

OpenRSS » July 29, 2008

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