This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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“The Road Ahead” 10 years on
(Geoff Richards, bit-tech.net)
Gates turns 40 and, clearly feeling on top of his game, he collaborates with Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Nathan Myhrvold, and Peter Rinearson, to write his vision for the future – titled The Road Ahead. The book is pitched as Bill’s “bird’s-eye view of the undiscovered territory on the information highway – an authoritative, thought-provoking, and very readable travel guide for the journey. In this optimistic and refreshingly realistic book, Gates looks ahead to show how the emerging technologies of the digital age will transform all our lives.”
It occupies the top slot on the New York Times’ bestseller list for more than seven weeks and goes on to sell over 2.5 million copies.
[…]
Well, William, it is indeed now ten years later. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and see how many changes you correctly predicted and how many were wide of the mark.
(via Digg)
Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams
(Robert Britt, LiveScience)
After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.
On the company’s web site, if you click on “Telegrams” in the left-side navigation bar, you’re taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:
“Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative.”
(via Yahoo! News)
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Aphrodite: July 1994 to February 1998 – Power Macintosh 6100/60 – Hard drives named Mercury and Venus
Ares: February 1998 to February 2001- PowerMac G3/233 – Hard drive named Mars
Zeus: February 2001 to February 2006 – PowerBook G4/500 – Hard drive named Jupiter
Cronus: February 2006 to ??? – iMac 20-inch 2GHz Intel Core Duo – Hard drive named Saturn
Options:
ATI Radeon X1600/256MB VRAM
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 2x1GB
500GB Serial ATA drive
I ordered it a few hours ago. It should ship in 3-4 weeks. It was the hard drive that caused it to be so long. If I’d gone with the smaller drive, it would have shipped in just a few days.
Going with a desktop instead of a laptop was a tough decision. When I got Zeus I swore I’d never have a desktop as my primary machine again. Laptops were the way to go! But at this point I have a laptop from work when I really need the portability. (Although it is locked down a bit so really is only for work, and of course it is Windows… ick!). And I really wanted the big screen. And the power/$ is a lot more for the desktop. And as Ivan pointed out, I really abuse my portable devices. I can barely go a couple months without dropping them or otherwise hurting them. So… a maxed out iMac it was.
This was the big purchase for the quarter, and probably for the half. Maybe for the year. There are a bunch of other things I would love to buy, and really want, but this is it for now. I’m done.
This will be a long 3-4 weeks (plus shipping time!). I have managed to cobble together Zeus by propping one corner up with a stack of quarters and with some strategically placed tape, so now I don’t actually have to squeeze the left hand side for the screen to work any more, but that won’t last very long. And it is still painfully slow. Even with running some software in Rosetta I should see around a 10 times increase in speed over my old machine. The clock speed is only 4 times my current clock speed, but it is a dual, so that is really more like 8 times the clock speed when that is taken into account (kinda sorta not really but close enough)… and it is also jumping two chip families ahead. Not to mention I’ll also have four times the amount of memory I have here, and 8 times the disk space. And I have been significantly bound by both physical memory and hard drive space (for virtual memory as well as files) for quite awhile now as well as by CPU. A significant amount of the time I have both CPU and physical memory maxxed out, and swap space for virtual memory would fill up the drive to almost 100% while the machine was thrashing and slowing to a crawl. And I will also have a working CD and DVD drive again for the first time in over two years. Yum!
This will be a nice upgrade.
I also ordered a bottom of the line minimal Windows laptop for Brandy today. She is without any computer ever since I took Zeus to Seattle (and Zeus was not working well enough anymore for her to use anyway, what with having to hold it just right for the screen to work) and she’s been going nuts without. We’ll replace that later this year sometime after Apple comes out with the Intel replacement for the iBook. At least that is my plan. We’ll see how that actually goes. :-) Brandy should have her computer by Monday at the latest. So she’ll have hers long before I have mine. But then again, I have my work laptop and Zeus at the moment, she has nothing. So I guess that is OK. :-)
I may be in transit at the Atlanta airport, but that didn’t stop me from checking out the new Apple stuff and posting about it all on my Treo. My old G4 original Titanium powerbook is barely still alive. Slow, overloaded, and now perminantly docked to a monitor because the screen is flaky. Once things have stablized at the new place, orders will be placed. But for now I still must wait. Sigh!
I’ve been meaning to write an update on this almost since my post back a little over a month ago. As you all may remember, I dropped my Treo in a bucket of dirty mop water. It stayed there for a good half hour before it was rescued. I was convinced it was dead.
Well, in fact, about a week of drying later, I put the battery in, and while a little wet, it worked!!! I was shocked, but yes, it was a fully functioning Treo!
Uh, well, mostly. Every once in awhile it just resets randomly. At first it wasn’t that often, but now it seems to be happening pretty frequently. I may have to use the insurance I have on the thing, pay the deductable, and just get a new one. But I’m not giving up on it quite yet!
I just got a bluetooth headset for it for XMas, and a few days earlier I’d finally gotten MobiTV up and running and working on it. And after having not had it set up for a bit, I put SnapperMail back on it and am getting my personal email on it again. So it deserves a shot darn it! I can live with the occational random reset! :-)
Seriously though, I imagine I’ll have to do the replacement thing sooner rather than later and be on to yet another Treo. This one has managed to live through a lot though, what with me dropping it in the pool once and in mop water a second time. It is remarkable it works as well as it does!
This time I am in town, and we’re coming up on a launch:
STS-114 Mission Status Center
(SpaceFlightNow.com)
1214 GMT (8:14 a.m. EDT)
T-minus 90 minutes and counting. Countdown clocks continue to tick down to T-minus 20 minutes where the next hold is planned. Countdown activities remain on track for liftoff at 10:39 a.m.
I’d like to be at home with Brandy and watch from the lanai. But instead I’m at work. While I’m working on a document I have to do, I have NASA TV streaming in a little window. When the time come, assuming the time does come, I’ll step outside to see what I can see.
 Once again, my desires for a new GPS to replace my old one with the big yellow spot in the center of the screen rises up. Garmn released a bunch of new car GPS units a few days ago. At all ranges of capability and price. The top of the line is this one:
Garmin StreetPilot 2720
The StreetPilot 2720 is a premium GPS automotive navigator that offers text-to-speech and traffic interface capabilities.
In addition to the turn-by-turn voice prompted navigation available in earlier StreetPilot models, the 2720’s text-to-speech functionality allows the unit to audibly announce the name of upcoming streets and POIs, letting drivers keep their eyes on the road while navigating through busy traffic and tricky roadways.
For drivers in congested metropolitan areas, Garmin is offering the GTM 10, an optional FM RDS-TMC traffic receiver that receives digital information (where available) on traffic, road construction, and weather-related tie-ups. The GTM10 receives data from selected FM broadcast stations in select cities throughout the United States and Europe. This optional feature lets drivers see congested areas via a color-coded map. When connected to the GTM 10, the StreetPilot 2720 uses this data to automatically calculate and suggest alterntive routes based on the traffic information.
The StreetPilot 2720 also boasts a new WQVGA, color, automotive-grade, sunlight-readable, touchscreen display that automatically adjusts the unit’s backlight for optimum viewing in any amount of light. Drivers can view the map in a three-dimensional perspective, or a top-down track-up or north-up view.
The StreetPilot 2720 comes preprogrammed with City Navigator™ North America v7 NT maps—containing detailed road maps throughout the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. This map database features nearly six million points of interest—including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and attractions.
Garmin has also added the ability for customers to augment the pre-loaded maps with custom POI’s from industry-standard CSV files, such as school zones and safety cameras. In addition, a proximity-alert feature is included to optionally warn the driver of upcoming custom POI’s.
In addition to point-to-point navigation, the StreetPilot 2720 can calculate the most efficient route between multiple destinations—a real time-saver for realtors, sales forces, and errand-runners. Drivers can also tell the unit to avoid specific areas or road segments when calculating a route.
(via GPSInformation.org)
Of course, my lust is quickly quenched by this part: “Suggested Retail Price: $1184.60”. Oops. Not going to be in the budget any time soon. Too many other things WAY ahead of it on the list. Sigh! But someday my pretty! Someday!
I am posting this right now from my dried out Treo 650! I let it dry for just about a week. Then Amy put the battery in while I was still away. It worked!!
Well, mostly. There are a couple of drying spots visible on the inside of the screen. But not bad. Worse, if you are on the phone you can barely hear the other person unless you use speakerphone or a headset. But I usually use a headset now anyway.
So all is good! The Treo yet lives!!
 Must have. Must have. Must have. Even if there is no Mac software yet. Must have. Must have. Must have. Um, well maybe after about five dozen other things higher than this in priority. But I’ve wanted something that did this for years. SlingBox. (Mentioned on like every gadget or PVR site on the web last week when it became available.)
Ivan, since you are almost always the first to try new AV gear, I expect a full report from you by the end of next week. You can watch and control your Tivo at home while you are in your hotel room in Brazil. You know you want that. You know you do.
An interesting idea:
Workflow Feeds with RSS and Atom
(Clint Combs)
Most people use RSS feeds for reading weblogs or downloading podcasts, but I’m experimenting with other uses. I’ve started integrating RSS feeds into a Java-based workflow application and the results look promising.
…
Since I rolled this out it’s had a big impact on how I use the system. Every morning I fire up RSSOwl and leave it running throughout the day. I’ve configured RSSOwl to poll the feed once an hour. Whenever it finds a new job note in the feed it alerts me and displays the new notes with bold headers. While it’s not an immediate sort of prompt (the system can also e-mail and page people) it does provide a great way to organize the ad-hoc data contained in the notes.
The reader shows every note and keeps track of the notes I have and haven’t read. If the note requires more attention I simply click on the link to the job and RSSOwl displays the OSCAR job in a browser window. This sort of interaction draws my immediate attention to notes and lets me forget about them as soon as I’m finished dealing with them. This is exactly the kind of user experience that a workflow solution should provide.
This little personal experiment has been a great success and I’m looking to roll it out to other users and see how they like it. The biggest task remaining is to get RSS readers into the hands of end users. While RSSOwl has worked fine for me, the developer, it’s probably not the best solution for enterprise office workers and print machine operators. I’m looking for a simpler solution.
(via CMS Watch)
Having worked on designing a couple systems that had workflow as a feature (and being in the middle of some workflow feature documentation right now) I can definately see where having workflow task listings distributed by RSS could be cool. Definately rpeferable to email. But as was mentioned in the article, the problem is most people don’t have RSS readers, and would be confused by them if they did.
Email notification is almost a non-starter. It is usally offered because people getting workflow systems insist that it has to be there. But almost always the requests to please turn that notification off start coming in almost immediately. So far the prefered solution has been a web based “to do list” that a user would check in on periodically. Even with that solution, RSS might be a good method of communicating the task lists on the back end from the system that generates them to the systems that shows the to do list.
But providing the task list as an RSS opens up a number of possibilities. Not just your standard reader, but also tickers and the like. Definately interesting possibilities.
The difficulty is just in productizing it without introducing the complexity of additional software to learn or install to non-tech users. Greg is considering a similar problem relating to get a potentially good Wiki based solution for sharing notes in an academic setting. As with a lot of these sorts of things, the technical aspects of the problem often end up being dwarfed by the cultural and social parts of the problem.
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