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Alumni Blogs

The CSAA technical blog aggregation includes content written by BYU CS alumni and faculty . The views expressed by the alumni do not neccesarily reflect the views of BYU or the BYU CS Department. Objectionable material will not be tolerated. Report objectionable material to Mike Jones.

To add your technical blog to the aggregation, send mail to Mike Jones. Include the URL of the RSS feed, your name and graduation year(s).

Welcome to adulthood

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Wed, 07/29/2009 - 7:04am

It’s scary at times how well Randall Munroe (author of xkcd) captures our inner thoughts.  ..bruce w..

Brisket-blogging: Sunday morning aftermath

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Sun, 07/26/2009 - 9:56am

OK, I had planned to blog more (and post more photos), but once things got rolling Friday morning, I was pretty much too busy.  Here’s how the cooking schedule turned out:

  • Friday, 6 am to 2 pm: smoked 4 briskets, which I then double-wrapped in foil and put into a 180-degree oven (until Saturday afternoon).
  • Friday, 2 pm to 9 pm: smoked 2 briskets and three elk roasts (ditto foil and oven).
  • Friday, 10 pm to Saturday 5 am: smoked two legs of lamb, a (small) pork tenderloin, and one more elk roast (ditto foil and oven).
  • Saturday, 5 am to 2 pm: smoked three bone-in turkey breasts, which I then put into roasting bags and put into a 120-degree oven to keep warm.

I carved up the brisket, elk, and port starting around 2 pm, put them into foil pans covered foil, and stuck them in a 120-degree oven. I held off carving the legs of lamb and the turkey until just before 4 pm.  Everything turned out well except the lamb — it was (IMHO) overcooked.

At 4:15, nobody had shown up yet (4 pm was the announced starting time), the sky was getting increasingly overcast with rain clearly to the west, and I was worried if anyone would show up. Then people started showing up, and pretty soon we were packed. I’m not sure what the final count was, but I suspect it was over 120; we ran out of name tags (150) and large serving plates (150).

It actually started raining around 5 pm, so I had to move the grill and smoker (which I had set up to use as a second grill) under the deck canopy. But the rain didn’t seem to hurt attendance, and it cooled the temperature down quite a bit. The rain itself was sporadic, coming and going through the evening, though it was pretty steady (and a bit heavy) when everyone started leaving.

Almost all the smoked meat got eaten (I set aside some brisket and turkey for Sandra and me), and I grilled up about 60 hamburgers and the same number of hot dogs before demand began to slacken (there were only a few of each left over). Everyone seemed to have a great time; the kids especially loved all the various bottled sodas.

In all, a success. ..bruce w..

Brisket blogging update: Friday morning

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Fri, 07/24/2009 - 6:36am

All dressed up and ready to smoke.

Yes, I did get up at 5 am this morning and started up the coals in the smoker’s firebox. The flames were visible at first, and given that our deck can be seen by lots of houses (and a few roads) for quite some distance, I had concerns about the fire department being called. Fortunately, no one did so. I then pulled four of the briskets out the chest where they have been marinading, dried the marinade off, and applied dry rub to each. They’re all now in the smoker and will be until 1 or 2 pm this afternoon.

I’m hungry already.  ..bruce w..

Brisket blogging update: Thursday

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Thu, 07/23/2009 - 8:17pm

Spic and span

I’ve just spent an hour or two cleaning both the smoker (which I haven’t used since last October) and the grill (which I haven’t used in since at least April). I now feel quite virtuous, probably unduly so.

I’ve had six (6) briskets, each weighing about 7 lbs, marinading since yesterday, along with 3 elk roasts (probably 3 lbs each). I’ve got two bone-in turkey breasts thawed and in the fridge; I’ll probably start them marinading tonight. I took two pork tenderloins out of the garage freezer to thaw yesterday and forgot about them until this afternoon; they were probably OK, but I don’t want to take any chances, so I tossed them. Sigh. I’ll probably find something else to smoke or grill.

Here’s my current cooking schedule:

  • F-1 (very early Friday morning): light charcoal in the smoker’s firebox. Build up the fire.
  • F-0: put four (4) briskets on to smoke. Rotate positions through the day.
  • F+8 or so: take the four briskets out; put on the remaining two briskets, plus the three elks roasts. Double-wrap the four briskets in heavy aluminum foil and stick in the oven at 180 degrees.
  • F+16 or so: take out the remaining briskets and elk roasts, wrap them, stick them in the oven (fortunately, we have double ovens). Pour a lot of charcoal into the firebox to keep the smoker warm (and preferably hot) through the night.
  • S-0 (very early Saturday morning): clean out ashes and build up the fire in the firebox again. Put the turkey breasts in to cook (I will probably pick up a third on Friday).
  • S+6: Take the turkey breasts out. Pull the first four briskets out of their oven and use that oven to finish the turkey breasts, if necessary. Put the leg(s) of lamb and anything else I’m going to smoke on the smoker. Slice up the four briskets into foil serving pans and put them on top of the smoker to keep them warm.
  • S+10 (about 4 pm on Saturday): Slice up the remaining briskets and the elk roasts, as well as the turkey breasts. Pull the lamb and so on out of the smoker once they’re done. Slice them up. Put everything back into the oven to stay warm. Pull the drip pans out of the smoker and put charcoal into the main body (I’m going to use the smoker as a second grill). Light it. Likewise, put charcoal into the grill and light it.
  • S+11 (about 5 pm on Saturday): Start grilling hamburgers, hot dogs, and veggies.

Alternately, I may actually start smoking the turkey breasts on Friday evening and stay up late (or get up through the night) smoking them. The turkey breasts are the most difficult; I’ve got to run the smoker at a hotter temperature in order to cook the meat through without leaving the breasts in there so long that they dry out.

I’m starting to stage the stuff (charcoals and woods, soda, plates, cups, plasticware) that’s been collecting in the garage for the last week or so into the house and/or onto the back deck.  Should be a busy 48 hours or so. ..bruce w..

Hills of Gold - Photos

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Mon, 07/20/2009 - 10:16am

I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with my brother and his family in the Bay Area. The highlight of the weekend was a Saturday night stargazing session in the wilds of California east of Hollister.

During this time of year, California is in its “dry season” and most of the grasses have gone brown and dormant. This can give the rolling hills of the central range a golden color that can make for some great photos.

These were taken with my trusty Nikon D40 about 15 minutes before sunset.

LEGO Space Shuttle

Ben Watson ('04) - Sun, 07/19/2009 - 9:51am

Over the last year, I’ve (very slowly) been working on a LEGO model of a NASA Space Shuttle. It’s finally finished, or as much as it will be. I need to move onto other things now.

It’s about 38” long. I have no idea how many pieces—many thousands because every surface is tiled over. The flaps and rudder move and the cargo bay opens up to reveal a detailed interior.

You can see it on BrickShelf or MOCPages.

I’ve started thinking about my next model, but haven’t done anything beyond prototyping. I’ve got other projects at the moment, so it will probably be a long time before it’s done.

No tag for this post.

Brisket blogging ahead: VLSB scheduled for 7/25

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Sat, 07/18/2009 - 1:57pm

That's about 20 lbs of brisket right there.

I’m doing what my co-blogger Bruce Henderson likes to call a “VLSB” or “very large scale BBQ” next Saturday, July 25th. It’s been almost 10 months since my last one — far too long — but this should make up for it by being the largest one yet; I fully expect 80-100 people. I’m not sure why I get such a kick out of cooking for such large groups of people (and my wife is even more puzzled), but there you have it.  Here’s a lengthy blog post about a VLSB I did three years ago (which is where the photo above comes from).

My current plans are to smoke 30 lbs of beef brisket, 2 or 3 bone-in turkey breasts, 1 or 2 boneless legs of lamb, at least one large chunk of elk, and maybe a few pork tenderloins (I’ve got some in the freezer; might as well use them). I’ll also grill about 70 hamburgers and an equal number of hot dogs and sausages. And I’ll grill veggies as well: asparagus and small sweet peppers. I may even grill up some fresh pineapple. It’s just fun.

My favorite part is finding how many different brands and flavors of bottled soda I can buy. I’ve got about 140 bottles out in the garage already, including a case of cane-sugar Coca Cola in 12 oz. bottles (bottled in Mexico). So far, I haven’t been able to find any Orange/Grape/Strawberry Crush, though; I’ve checked two of the three major grocery chains here with no luck so far. I’m about to head over to Sam’s Club, since they often carry cases of assorted Jones Soda flavors.

I’ve got to fly to NYC and back on Monday/Tuesday on business, but other than that, I’ll largely be focusing on the VLSB this week. Check back for more updates. ..bruce..

What Did Sergey Aleynikov Really Do At Goldman?

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Tue, 07/14/2009 - 2:00pm

In interesting and complex story is unfolding, centered on Goldman Sachs, the large and highly profitable company that we all worked so hard to fund with bail out dollars. The story started as a small, throw-away technical story about a former Goldman employee named Sergey Aleynikov, who left the firm and was accused of taking source code with him. From a Reuters story on the subject from earlier this month:

That wealth is generated on computer systems that can handle greater trading volumes at ever increasing speeds. These platforms often rely on algorithms — a sequence of instructions used for calculation and data processing — that can spot unseen opportunities in the market and give their users a huge advantage measured in milliseconds.

Sergey created highly reactive real time trading code that likely was looking for “pockets of predictability” in the somewhat noisy sea of trades that happen every day. These are transient opportunities to make a small amount of money on trades that last for only a few moments to less than a day. On their own they are very small, but when orchestrated by high speed computer and constantly running, they can represent a substantial and steady stream of income for the firm or trader that is running them.

Where this starts to get strange is what Goldman did next, and how federal law enforcement became involved. This except from Zero Hedge:

Sergey Aleynikov was arrested at Newark airport by FBI agents, as he was coming back from a trip to Chicago, on what are basically industrial espionage charges. Sergey, or Serge as his Linked-In account identifies him, was VP of equity strategy.

In the 5 days immediately preceeding his departure from “Financial Institution” (potentially GS), Sergey allegedly downloaded 32 megs of ultra top-secret quant trading proprietary code, that, according to Special Agent McSwain’s affidavit, he then proceeded to encrypt and upload to a website in Germany, with a UK owner.

From the affidavit: “certain features of the [code], such as speed and efficiency by which it obtains and processes market data, gives the Financial Institution a competitive advantage among other firms that also engage in high-volume automated trading.The Financial Institution further believes that, if competing firms were to obtain the [code] and use its features, the Financial Institution’s ability to profit from the [code]’s speed and efficiency would be significantly diminished.”

Let me clarify - in the matter of a few days, Goldman Sachs was able to get federal law enforcement to arrest a programmer that had left its employ to work for one of its competitors. Those familiar with the workings of our justice system might be surprised at the speed at which this went from “we think he is up to no good” to “enjoy your jail cell, Serge”. Since when does the FBI take marching orders from Goldman Sachs?

This becomes important because in the present day program trading (under the control of machines running programs like this) account for as much as 49% of all trades on the NYSE, with Goldman’s programs taking up at least 60% of that volume according to Zero Hedge.

A few days later Bloomberg weighs in wanting to know just exactly what Goldman’s code was doing that could so manipulate the markets? The video says, “It is amazing within one day of Goldman calling they had FBI agents at his driveway doing surveillance. The next day they arrested him…”

Last but not least, in the tin foil hat area of this evoloving puzzle is a set of wild speculation that was posted first on the daily KOS and later re-cycled via Denninger’s market ticker, including such charges as:

…GS, through access to the system as a result of their special gov’t perks, was/is able to read the data on trades before it’s committed, and place their own buys or sells accordingly in that brief moment, thus allowing them to essentially steal buttloads of money every day from the rest of the punters world.

It would mean that Goldman was able to “see” transaction order flow - bid, offer, and execute messages - before they were committed in the transaction stream. Such a “SNIFF” would be COMPLETELY UNDETECTABLE by the sender or recipient of the message.

The implication of this would be that they would be able to front-run any transaction where the data was visible to them, thereby effectively “stealing pennies” from each transaction they were able to front-run.

Which are very heavy charges indeed. There is something strange wrapped inside this story, and if we are all lucky it will emerge over time. With this now a legal matter, this may end up unfolding in a direction that powerful forces such as Goldman and the NYSE would rather not have it go. Within the court system, much of what Sergey knows in relationship to this matter is now discoverable and available to be cross examined. All it would take would be for some enterprising legal mind to start pulling this thread and a great many interesting facts may come to light.

We may find that our hard earned tax money that did not go to send us back to the moon instead went to help firms like Goldman Sachs further loot and launder what is left of our shattered economy, all the while keeping their government cronies on warm standby to beat down anyone who might spill the beans.

Global Recession - CO2 Reduction?

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Wed, 07/08/2009 - 9:28am

Scientific minds will note that there are some interesting things going on at the intersection of climate science and economics. With an ongoing global recession, industrial production and output is down between 5% and 15% across the developed and industrialized world. For example

United States: -6.3%
Canada: -5.4%
Russia: -7.9%
Germany: -3.8%
United Kingdom: -4.9%
China: +6.1%
India: -6.1%

That is a lot few cars, refrigerators, container ships, aircraft and everything else being made. As a result less energy is being used and fewer things being transported around, burning fossil fuels.

For climate change advocates, this is very good news - as it likely means that the big dangerous greenhouse gas, CO2, is being emitted less than it was a year ago. But word comes from a foreign exchanged focused blog, Reserved Place, about the actual trends in carbon dioxide. Seems that the author or an associate decided to dust off some college research and update the figures with most recent data on carbon dioxide levels at several measuring stations. The results are a bit surprising; no noticeable reduction in CO2 appears on the charts yet.

Below are two graphs published on their site showing CO2 trends at Mauna Loa and the South Pole, with prior recessions circled in green:

Something here clearly does not add up. If industrial activity and robust consumption are the cause of global warming, these charts should show a noticeable downward deflection. Perhaps this recession will help honest researchers better understand the Earth’s carbon sources and cycles - if they would just put politics aside for a while and focus on the facts.

If We Had Some Global Warming….

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Wed, 07/08/2009 - 8:04am

Hat tip to my long time friend Wayne de Geere for sharing this one. It sums up my outlook on people’s fear of climate change.

For more entertainment on this subject, you can check out their blog, Minnesotans For Global Warming.

Podcast #20: Viruses and Other Malware

Charles D. Knutson ('84, '89) - Tue, 06/30/2009 - 4:51pm

Dr. Charles Knutson and Joe Brockbank discuss malware, including viruses, worms, adware, spyware, Trojan horses, and other annoying evil software phenomena.

We want to thank our musical guests Jake White and Michael Kelsey.

Photos from the 2009 Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon and Half Marathon

Ben Watson ('04) - Mon, 06/29/2009 - 8:42pm

On Saturday, my wife ran in the Rock and Roll Marathon in downtown Seattle. I roamed around and took pictures of Qwest and Safeco fields and snapped a few of the race itself. Bib numbers I captured (where I could read them) are: 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 1275, 1347, 1350, 1356, 1412, 1470, 1490, 1498, 1539, 1573, 1580, 1611, 1690, 1695, 1707, 1710, 2042, 2449, 2470, 2494, 2513, 2575, 2642, 2723, 3512, 3610, 4318, 4498, 5227, 5335, 6671, 7412, 9335, 11419, 12487, 13512, 13610, 23556, 25480, 28560, 29588, 34389, 35366, F1, F2, F4, F5, F7, F8, F9, F14.

If you see yourself in any of these, I’ll e-mail you what I have for no charge. I won’t do any processing on them, other than what I already have, however.

Gallery

No tag for this post.

Something I didn’t know about (the late) Ed McMahon

Bruce F. Webster ('78) - Tue, 06/23/2009 - 2:34pm

Ed McMahon -- veteran of two wars

He served in two wars (WW II and Korea), flew 85 combat missions in Korea, and achieved the rank of Colonel in the USMC:

When the United States began gearing up for World War II, McMahon wanted to become a Marine fighter pilot. Since the Navy’s V-5 program required two years of college, he enrolled in Boston College. When the Navy relaxed the two-year requirement, McMahon dropped out of school and signed up. In early 1943, he first went to a civilian-run Wartime Training School in Texarkana where the Navy evaluated cadets’ potential by checking them out in a Piper Cub. Then came the three-month Preflight School at Athens, Georgia. McMahon received primary training at Dallas and intermediate training at Pensacola. McMahon received the single engine carrier syllabus and was assigned to the Marines. After receiving his commission and wings in early 1945, McMahon was sent to the Corsair Operational Training Unit at Lee Field, Green Cove Springs, Florida. Upon completion of training, he was “plowed back” and became an instructor in the same unit. On the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, McMahon received orders to join the Marine carrier program on the West Coast. His orders were cancelled and he returned to civilian life.

After McMahon graduated from Catholic University, he got a job in television in Philadelphia. In two years, he had become Philadelphia’s top TV personality. In 1952, McMahon got his big break when he was offered a job in New York with CBS; however, he was recalled into the Marine Corps due to the Korean War. After several months of training at Miami and El Toro, McMahon arrived in Korea in February 1953. He flew 85 artillery-spotting missions in the Cessna OE Bird Dog before returning home in September 1953. . . . McMahon remained active in the Marine Reserves retiring as a full colonel in 1966.

Makes me look at him in a whole new light.  ..bruce w..

Iterative Tree Traversal With XPathNavigator

Eric Jarvi ('00) - Wed, 06/03/2009 - 12:12pm

Without going into the gory details of why I had a need for this, here's a C# code snippet for iterative tree traversal of elements in an XML document using XPathNavigator that takes advantage of parent pointers. 

[ download source ]

test.xml

    1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

    2 <test>

    3  <a/>

    4  <b/>

    5  <c>

    6   <c1/>

    7   <c2>

    8    <c2i/>

    9    <c2ii/>

   10   </c2>

   11  </c>

   12 </test>

test.cs

    1 using System;

    2 using System.Xml.XPath;

    3 

    4 public class IterativeTraversal

    5 {

    6 

    7     public static void Main()

    8     {

    9 

   10         XPathDocument doc = new XPathDocument("test.xml");

   11         XPathNavigator nav = doc.CreateNavigator();

   12         nav.MoveToFollowing(XPathNodeType.Element); /* skip xml decl */

   13         XPathNavigator startPosition = nav.Clone();

   14 

   15         bool leaf = false;

   16         bool searching = false;

   17 

   18         do

   19         {

   20             leaf = true;

   21             if (nav.HasChildren)

   22             {

   23                 nav.MoveToFirstChild();

   24                 if (nav.NodeType == XPathNodeType.Element)

   25                 {

   26                     leaf = false;

   27                     nav.MoveToParent();

   28 

   29                     /* begin processing interior node */                  

   30                     Console.WriteLine(nav.Name);

   31                     /* end processing interior node */

   32 

   33                     nav.MoveToFirstChild();

   34                 }

   35                 else

   36                 {

   37                     /* parent was a leaf element, this child was not*/

   38                     nav.MoveToParent();

   39                 }

   40             }

   41 

   42             if (leaf)

   43             {

   44                 /* begin processing leaf node */

   45                 Console.WriteLine(nav.Name);

   46                 /* end processing leaf node */

   47 

   48                 if (!nav.MoveToNext(XPathNodeType.Element))

   49                 {

   50                     do

   51                     {

   52                         searching = false;

   53                         nav.MoveToParent();

   54                         if ((!nav.IsSamePosition(startPosition)) &&

   55                              (!nav.NodeType.Equals(XPathNodeType.Root)))

   56                         {

   57                             if (!nav.MoveToNext(XPathNodeType.Element))

   58                             {

   59                                 /* no next sibling, search for parent's next sibling */

   60                                 searching = true;

   61                             }

   62                         }

   63                     } while (searching && !nav.IsSamePosition(startPosition) && !nav.NodeType.Equals(XPathNodeType.Root));

   64                 }

   65             }

   66         } while (!nav.IsSamePosition(startPosition) && !nav.NodeType.Equals(XPathNodeType.Root));

   67 

   68     }

   69 }

First Bing.com commercial

Ben Watson ('04) - Wed, 06/03/2009 - 11:18am

Working on Bing.com for the last 9 months or so has been exhilarating. Finally, we can show the world the great stuff we’ve been doing. Here is (I think) the first TV commercial about Bing.com, running as of today.

I kissed Google goodbye more than a year ago and haven’t looked back. I think once people start using Bing, they’re going to do the same.

No tag for this post.

Lawn Mowing and Estimation

Dan Shellman ('97) - Tue, 05/12/2009 - 5:53pm
I hate mowing the lawn.

I was out mowing the other day and was pondering upon how much I dislike it. I really shouldn't hate it so much, since it's good exercise, it needs to be done, and it makes my lawn look nice (well, "nicer" would be more accurate), but I do. My pondering included thoughts of hiring a professional company and wondering how much it would cost me. I wondered how they would estimate the cost. You see, my lawn, though not necessarily large (well, *I* think it's large), is very hilly (welcome to West Virginia, they tell me).

I wondered how you would go about estimating the cost: whether by size or by time. The way I think, the biggest cost to lawn mowing has to do with time. Specifically, I would expect that it would have to do with direct labor cost (how long someone spent mowing) and how much gas was expended. For some reason, I focused on the gas aspect (given gas prices) and wondered about the best way to estimate its cost.

If you do it by size, it's pretty easy to estimate, given that you can visually estimate the size by merely looking at the yard, itself. However, if you estimate based upon the time it takes, it's easier to run into tricky mistakes. Looking at my lawn, for example, with all of its hills and crooks and crannies, you'd think it wouldn't be too hard. But, after mowing it, I found that it took a *whole* lot longer than I'd anticipated.

Programming is fairly similar when it comes to estimation, though I think the difficulty is flipped. It's difficult to estimate size, but easier to estimate time (at least for smaller tasks). Estimating size in lines of code, of course, depends a great deal on the language, the programmer, and the task at hand. Not all lines of code are created equal. Of course, there are other size tools, such as function points, use case points, complexity counts, etc. The concept is the same, but the measuring stick is different (not to suggest that any measuring stick will work just as well...hence the number of different measures). There are even complex mathematical models that use size to estimate larger projects, such as COCOMO (there are a number of commercial parametric estimation tools that use their own proprietary models).

Estimating time, at least for smaller tasks, is usually straight forward for a programmer with a little experience. But, then, that's been my experience. Time estimation for larger tasks, though, becomes much more difficult...just ask anyone who has had to fully plan out a large project using MS Project or similar tool. So, maybe it's not so different than mowing a lawn...

Either way you look at it, though, estimating helps to measure cost and effort, helping you know how much of that lawn you're going to finish before it starts raining for a week straight...

Travels, Trials, and Browser Tribulations

Phil Windley - Tue, 12/09/2008 - 1:57pm

Image via Wikipedia

I this week's Technometria podcast, Scott, Ben, and I are joined by Tyler Whitaker and Dion Almaer, who both discuss some of their recent technology activities.

Ben and Dion have recently been hired at Mozilla, where the company is working on new open web tools for developers. They talk about some of their long-term and short-term goals, including plans on ways to make it easier to deal with browser differences. In addition, Tyler discusses some of his recent internet connectivity problems and Scott talks about his recent delayed flight and how a website helped him better understand the cause of the problem, as well as quickly inform him when his flight would be arriving at the airport.

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Tags: itconversations mozilla firefox

What's on My Desktop? Four New Apps for Staying Connected

Phil Windley - Mon, 12/08/2008 - 7:19pm

Image by flibblesan

One of the things I love about going to conferences is that there are usually a lot of Mac users there and that means getting the goods on what new Mac software people are using. My last trips to Defrag and IIW were good in that regard as I found out about a few new things that I'm enjoying.

The first, and probably the most useful, is Snackr. Snackr is an RSS reader that displays the most recent articles from feeds you subscribe to as a rolling ticker on the bottom, top, or side of your display. Want to focus on something? Just click the "hide" icon and it scrolls up. Click on a headline and the article appears. It's made RSS feeds an interstitial activity instead of something I have to remember to do and consequently I'm reading a lot more interesting things.

Another tool I discovered was Tweetdeck. I've been a longtime (if anything associated with Twitter can be termed "longtime") Twitterific user, but Tweetdeck seduced me with it's ability to create panels for Twitter searches. I wanted to follow all the tweets about IIW and Tweetdeck allowed me an easy way to do that. Along the way I got hooked on it's built-in URL shortening panel. I went back to Twitterific and missed that, so I went back. Some people complain that Tweetdeck is too heavyweight and it can be. I run it in single pane mode a lot when I'm on a single monitor.

I like Delicios, but frequently fail to bookmark things. I don't know why, but Pukka has helped. A little scriplet in the browser bar pushes data to Pukka and it does the rest of the work after I enter tags. I know, the bookmark page will do all of this, but it disrupts my browser flow. And I like the sound Pukka makes.

The last app (actually a service) that I discovered was Dropbox. Yeah maybe I'm the last to the block on this. Dropbox's integration with OS X is what sold me (it also works in Windows and Linux). I get a folder that I just put things in and they get synced to the cloud. Right-clicking on them gives me the public URL I can send out to people in email or Twitter for sharing.

That's all it takes: four new apps and I'm a happy camper.

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Tags: twitter blogging rss bookmarks delicious

A Billion Mice

Eric Smith ('93) - Thu, 12/04/2008 - 10:07pm

On December 3, 2008, Logitech (my employer) announced that it had shipped its billionth mouse. While I didn’t contribute much to that as an employee (I work in a non-mouse division), I have helped as a consumer: I think I personally own four Logitech mice.

As part of the company internal celebration, there was a video contest with fairly liberal rules: One minute in length or less, something to do with mice.

Here is my prize-winning entry:

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Retailers Struggle to Join the 21st Century: Instant Price Match

Phil Windley - Wed, 12/03/2008 - 4:13pm

This ReadWriteWeb story reports that barcode scanning applications on devices like the iPhone and the G1 are causing a stir among offline retailers.

I've seen such an app on the G1, but don't remember what it's called. On the iPhone there are apps like Checkout and Snappr. The big announcement today was that Amazon is releasing their own app called "Amazon Remembers" that's supposed to work from a picture of the product--not just a barcode.

The story on ReadWriteWeb reports:

Although consumers may be catching on to this barcode-scanning trend, some stores are still in the dark. For example, a Target store in Michigan recently requested a shopper to stop scanning merchandise, saying it went against store policy. The customer reported the event to the application's makers, Big in Japan, whose app Shop Savvy is a popular download for Android handsets.

Big in Japan called the Target store in question and spoke to the manager, who indicated that she was not aware of the policy. We also contacted Target's corporate headquarters to confirm Target's policy, or lack thereof, but we first had to explain the application to the company representative. They had never heard of such a thing before! (As it turns out, Target has no policy whatsoever on barcode scanning their merchandise.)

The same customer also noted they had visited Sam's Club, where they demonstrated the application to a store employee who seemed "confounded that such technology even existed," wrote the user.

From Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications? - ReadWriteWeb
Referenced Wed Dec 03 2008 15:07:57 GMT-0700 (MST)

Trying to fight instant price match is like trying to hold back the Mississippi. Retailers aren't going to be able to support artificially high prices based on information asymmetry anymore. I don't have an answer for them. But telling people they can't use their phone inside the store isn't going to cut it.

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