December 31st, 2007
December 21st, 2007
Now, that’s progress
The IE team announces that IE8 passes the Acid2 test. Nice.
Posted by Doug | 2 Comments »
November 13th, 2007
Mini-Podcast…
…aka, 20 seconds of GarageBand testing.
tags: garageband, macmini, podcast
Posted by Doug | 1 Comment »
November 11th, 2007
One Pageview is Worth 10 Grains of Rice
FreeRice is a brilliant way of harvesting “dead time” on the web. Instead of playing Desktop Tower Defense or clubbing a penguin 300 yards, you can improve your vocabulary and “donate” free rice to the world’s poor.
The idea is simple enough: for each right answer (read: one pageview in the online economic model) the web site donates ten grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
The site is unbelievably successful. Here is what the WFP said in a press release (emphasis mine):
Yesterday marked the one billionth grain of rice donated to WFP through an innovative, dynamic online campaign – enough to feed more than 50,000 people for one day.
Awesome!
“Every grain of rice is essential in the fight against hunger,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, adding that hunger claims more lives than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
“FreeRice really hits home how the Web can be harnessed to raise awareness and funds for the world’s number one emergency. The site is a viral marketing success story with more than one billion grains of rice donated in just one month to help tackle hunger worldwide.”
Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about FreeRice over on Read/WriteWeb, which is where I first saw coverage. Marshall wondered about the legitimacy of the site. Well, it’s for real…and making a difference.
Now, go and donate some rice. 
tags: non-profit
Posted by Doug | No Comments »
November 10th, 2007
The Original 24 Pilot
November 3rd, 2007
History in Motion
In just under six hours, a army of automobiles will descend upon Victorville, California to race across a 60 mile urban course. Not for the filming of another “Fast and the Furious” flick, or an impromptu rally race, but something a little more historic: in this competition, the contestants have more in common with an android than Andretti. No flesh-and-blood motorists are at work here, only serious supercomputing power. It’s the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge!
Two years have passed since the last Grand Challenge, which saw a host of robotic cars negotiate a dusty desert, but today’s event requires them to behave just as a licensed driver would. If any of the race crews are successful, we could see automated troop transports and MEDEVAC vehicles helping soldiers around the world very soon, with obvious applications for your commute down the road (no pun intended). Catch the webcast of the race and watch the future roll forward!
tags: darpa, grand-challenge
Posted by Jamie | 1 Comment »
November 2nd, 2007
Cordoba Weblogs “Evento”
Last night a bunch of bloggers here in Cordoba, Argentina got together to drink beer, eat pizza, and talk about technology (among other topics).
Tons of fun.
Saludos en particular a Pablo (que buen marketing de tu blog!), Nicolas (vamos con la fuerza Mac), Daniel (sÃ, soy una masa…y humilde!), and Diego (que maestro de CakePHP).
Special thanks to Franco Giménez for putting it together.  Hopefully I can be around when they throw another event.
tags: blogging
Posted by Doug | 3 Comments »
October 25th, 2007
Facebook is NOT worth $15 Billion
I know everybody is throwing around this insane figure of Facebook being worth $15 billion. It is not true.
Nick Carr gets it right:
Welcome to Fantasy Island.
Extrapolating Facebook’s true worth from Microsoft’s investment is a ridiculous exercise, for two main reasons. First, the investment is part of a broader deal, the details of which are unknown.
…
Second, and more important, Microsoft’s investment is not financial but strategic. The company is currently engaged in a multi-front competitive battle under conditions of great uncertainty.
Facebook may end being sold for $15 billion or go the IPO route and end up with a market cap greater than $15 billion…but this deal should not prove/show/lead to the conclusion that Facebook is worth $15 billion.
Posted by Doug | No Comments »
October 4th, 2007
What a bargain: $9,250 per song
If this isn’t evidence that copyright law is dangerously out-of-whack here in the United States:
Thomas, an employee of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, an Indian tribe, was ordered to pay a 9,250-dollar fine for each of 24 shared songs cited in the case, including Godsmack’s “Spiral,” Destiny’s Child’s “Bills, Bills, Bills” and Sara McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery.”
It could have been a lot worse.
The fine could have reached 150,000 dollars a song if the jury had found “willful” copyright infringement.
I understand that she needs to pay more than 99 cents (what it might have cost her on iTunes)…but nine grand a piece? That’s a bit like getting a $20,000 parking ticket.
tags: No Tags
Posted by Doug | 1 Comment »