Monday, June 03, 2002

"What Social Science can tell you about flirting and how to do it" [Daypop Top 40] interesting, tho a little late for me :) 1:00:23 PM

O'Reilly.  Cory Doctorow.  "My Blog, My Outboard Brain"    I consume, digest, and excrete information for a living. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] This article describes the benefits of keeping a blog. Mostly it confirms what I thought -- the more effort you put in (in terms of categorizing and commenting) the more reward you get. The benefit to other readers comes when you show them how you connect the dots. And, when others benefit from your blog, you benefit from their attention. 11:37:23 AM

US Confirms: Global Warming Will Take A Toll. The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently released the Climate Action Report 2002. The report considers in depth the effects which Global Warming will have on the US, and it's being called a significant reversal of administration policy. For the first time, through this report, the Bush Administration is acknowledging that human actions, specifically the emission of greenhouse gases, are responsible for the effects of Global Warming which are currently being felt across the US, and around the world. The report contends that the environment in the US will be substantially changed over the next few decades, with high likelihood for disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more heat waves, and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes. However, there are no new plans for dealing with these problems. In fact, the report recommends adapting to these inevitable changes. [kuro5hin.org] So, this seems really ominous -- the picture is bleak enough that Bush has been forced to reverse his stance (but not his approach) on global warming. If this is some attempt to recoup his environmental credentials, it seems like he didn't go far enough to be credible. 11:34:12 AM

Speaking of Qpass.... Qpass was one of the early Internet companies going after payments for digital content. They required heavy duty integration and up front license fees for content providers to sign up. In the hey day of the Internet bubble, that got them traction with folks like the New York Times (see story below). As a professional in the payments industry, I usually sign up for almost everything new -- I didn't ever open a Qpass account. Some time ago, according to the Qpass web site, they've morphed into targeting wireless carriers and providing commerce solutions to them. The morphing began some time ago -- the most recent press release is just about a year old -- an agreement with Cingular Wireless for micropayments. Perhaps it's time we start doing a market map of the mobile commerce space? Who really is doing meaningful work on mobile commerce? Anyone want to help develop such a map? Send me email here: To get us started, here are the results of a Google search on "mobile commerce". I've also started a page here for noting Mobile Commerce Resources. [Scott Loftesness] 9:38:44 AM

JBoss 3.0.0 is out - go get it, test it and improve it! (Also read Marc Fleury's announcement mail - love him or hate him, he's always fired up) I am truly excited about 3.0, it is a fundamentally solid product.  EJB done right, J2EE from the top to bottom, so much ingenuity in all the stacks that one paragraph is not enough.  We (JBoss Group) have released a free documentation book for 3.0 a getting started book of about 100 pages that will unlock many of the secrets of 3.0 for you.  This is alien stuff, this is killer stuff, I know it, I am proud of it. Let it fly, and let it fall flat on its face with bugs, help us fix them, fix them, even pay us to fix them, just be a hero. 3.0 is here, long live 3.0. [rebelutionary] 9:32:11 AM

Rebelutionary: Here's a directory of all the Java and J2EE related blogs I know about. [Sam Ruby] 9:26:29 AM

Microsoft remodels Mac OS X Office. Service Release 1 for Office v. X is a free download that offers more than 1,000 tweaks, bug fixes and performance enhancements--including a new MSN Messenger. [ZDNet Tech News] 9:24:39 AM

Web browser feature I want:. I hate keeping bookmarks. Often, I'll find myself having visited a site a lot through links from other sites, but never remember its URL because each individual time I visited, the site wasn't important enough to remember. I want the web browser to keep track of what sites I visit frequently, and put them in a list for me. And I want the feature to be smart enough to work without me having to perform any configuration, or maintain any lists manually. [Charles Miller] I think similar things about email clients. Entourage is the best email client I've ever used (yes, it's a Microsoft product, only for OSX and nothing like Outlook). The second best is Evolution (I think because it's developed by people who use email a lot like I do) - I'm sure it will improve over time. However neither has all the features I want yet, things like: Remembering the last 10,000 people who have emailed me with a LRU algorithm (keeping ones that email me often). Entourage does this well, but the size of the list and access to it are nowhere to be seen. Learn over time which people I email a lot, and who email me a lot - make them 'higher priority' in my list of mail somehow. Threaded mail view for certain folders like mailing lists (Evolution has this) - which moves updated threads to the top of the list (Evolution didn't do this last I checked). Threaded view is useless if someone replies to a thread and it's buried because the initial message was a week ago. Customisable views across all my calendar, email etc - Entourage does this brilliantly with only one flaw - no regex! Be able to quickly tell my email program to 'forget' this piece of mail for a certain number of days. In Entourage this takes about 10 clicks (therefore I don't do it very often). Intelligently learn my email patterns. (Not sure how this would work :)) Be able to pull information out of a group of emails on a standard basis (useful for form submissions etc) into a computer readable form (like a CSV). Probably more that I can't think of at the moment. [rebelutionary] 9:24:04 AM

NYT.  The secret to the success of Netflix -- a need to route around BlockBuster at the major studios.  >>>As it turned out, Mr. Hastings said, movie studios saw Netflix as a way to help diversify a market dominated by one huge seller, Blockbuster. In fairly short order, the company signed revenue-sharing deals with nearly every major studio. This arrangement enables Netflix to carry more than 11,500 titles.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 9:17:08 AM

Germany, IBM Sign Major Linux Deal [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] IBM + Linux (and open source in general) is turning into a sweet treat that's hard to beat! 9:04:30 AM

Business Week.  Productivity, wage growth, and corporate profits.  Business Week is slowly zeroing in on the new economy.  With Merrill Lynch predicting 4% productivity growth through the rest of the year, who will get the gains?  Indidividuals.  Individuals will snap up 3% of this.  Pricing pressure will keep inflation in check.  Corporations will grow profits on the remainder, probably topping out with growth at 5% a year on average.  Note:  a small reduction in employee wage growth can translate into a large increase in corporate profits due to the different basis used. >>>This time, rising real wages are absorbing much of the productivity gains. BusinessWeek estimates that if real wages had been flat over the last two years, corporate profits would have been boosted by about $145 billion, or 20%.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 9:01:03 AM