Ten things I’m looking forward to in 2007

Just your typical wish list for the coming year, in no particular order. (Once again, my resolution list isn’t that interesting: Achieve two more ranks in Karate, which would bring me to 5th Kyu, and spend as much time at the dojo as possible).

The impeachment of George Bush (yep, still hoping).

A few democratic candidates that [...]

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Idiot

Recently, this quote caught my attention. Attributed to the Editor of Vanity Fair magazine (Graydon Carter) on Ring Of Fire:
“You know how President Bush sounds like whenever he explains something that he understands, whenever he feels he has to give an explanation? He always sounds like he’s talking to idiots.
I think the reason he sounds [...]

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Have you had enough?

Be sure to check out Have You Had Enough, a great remake sung by Ricky Lee Jones and The Squirrel Nut Zippers. Download the song or, better yet, get involved and find out what you can do about saving our country before our current administration drives it so far into the ground there’s no getting [...]

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Good wiki

For those of you thinking about setting up a Wiki web server, I recommend you take a look at PmWiki. Recently I needed to set up a couple of user-driven web sites, so Wiki software was the natural choice. After looking around a bit, I settled on PmWiki for a couple of reasons: 1) It’s [...]

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Better fax support for OS/X

I’ve always been a bit puzzled as to why Apple doesn’t put just a little bit more effort into its fax support in OS/X (well, perhaps they will in 10.5 — there have been good strides in the past few releases). OS/X’s support for faxing is probably just fine for occasional office or personal use. [...]

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Cool content stuff

Now I’m sorry I missed Charlene Li leading this panel on the impact of technology on content and media:
The goal of the panel: to give “traditional media” attendees an idea of how new technologies are changing the way consumers interact with media. As readers of this blog, you are probably already experiencing the changes personally [...]

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The worst customer service in the world?

When we dropped Vonage because of incredibly poor call quality, we knew we were in for a treat going back to Verizon customer service. We’ve got great call quality once again, of course — but it took two weeks, a mistaken visit from a Verizon technician (who realized he had nothing to do once he [...]

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Quantum technology is here…

Well, perhaps it’s not quite ready for public consumption. Nevertheless, D-Wave has succeeded in raising a reported $17 million toward some very serious research into quantum principles — research that will, if they succeed, completely change computing as we know it and solve some serious (but long-term) problems we’ll be facing. Scientific American wrote a [...]

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Windows on Apple hardware

Like many people the shipping broker Colin Nederkoorn would rather use OS/X, but wanted to run Windows XP on nice Apple hardware too. He started by offering a modest cash prize to the first person that could achieve it. Other people, equally interested in the solution, contributed to the prize.
Last Thursday, two software developers in [...]

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Don’t call me (again)

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the National Do Not Call Registry is doing its job. The article states that the majority of Americans that have registered their phone numbers with the registry are receiving fewer telemarketing calls:
Approximately three-quarters of all U.S. adults (76%) say that they have signed up for [...]

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Is community better than institution?

The web has become ubiquitous. Everyone with access to a computer can contribute their thoughts to the global community. Will it spell the end of institutional information?
I was recently invited to join the Newsvine beta. It strikes me as something inspired by Wikipedia, another community knowledge site. Essentially a blogsphere where individuals can write their [...]

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Cryonauts?

You can’t take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it. — Antonia Regalado, W.S.J.
Apparentloy Mr. Pizer has more faith that his frozen, dead corpse will someday be more than meat in a cryo-locker. According to this Wall Street Journal article, he’s breaking new ground [...]

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    This is me. Martial artist, zen student, programmer, writer and author, technologist, father of two, photographer and a resident of Los Angeles (well, the outskirts of it).

    I also publish Rational Scrum and am President & CEO of Hyrax International LLC, delivering comprehensive process improvements to its clientele. Specialities include audit and assessment of program areas such as project management, quality assurance, risk management and customer satisfaction as well as delivering focused initiatives to improve customer efficiency.

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