Okay, I give up (for now). I don't have time to reinvent the wheel. Bernie sold me on Tumblr plus Disqus for all my blogging needs. All my new posts will be going on my Tumblr page at:
Jeff Hawkins, perhaps best known as the inventor of the PalmPilot, talks about how brain science is going to change computing at TED. This talk is from 2003 and it's a quick (20-minute) introduction to his ideas about neuroscience. He challenges our assumptions about what defines intelligence. As a result, he hopes to bring about a dramatic change in the way we think about the brain.
If the TED primer catches your attention, go watch his recent presentation from the RSA Conference 2008. This talk is longer, has much more detail, and has more of a technical slant. He talks about work being done at his company Numenta to model the brain in software. He also shows some of the amazing results they are getting by applying Hierarchical Temporal Memory.
I added his book, On Intelligence
Paul Stamets discusses some very interesting applications of fungi at TED. The title of his talk is 6 ways mushrooms can save the world, which sounded a little hyperbolic, but it at least piqued my interest. After watching the talk, I have to admit that Paul's research into mycelium is fascinating. Imagine introducing fungi spores to a nasty diesel fuel spill and converting it into a green mass of plant life. I kid you not.
I only wish I had watched his talk earlier. A few weeks ago, I received a mailer from Harvey Mudd College inviting me to a conference that included a talk by Paul. I didn't make it, but in retrospect I should have made more of an effort to go. Here's a blurb about it.
I added one of his books, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
The Yubikey is similar in concept to the authentication token generators distributed by VeriSign, PayPal, and others. Okay, so how does the YubiKey compare?
With VeriSign-style devices, you look at a display, which shows you a six-digit number that changes every thirty seconds or so. When you want to authenticate yourself to an application (e.g., a VPN client or a web form), you manually transcribe that number. This works fine and I do it all the time.
With a YubiKey, instead of transcribing a number, you press its button, which causes the device to "type" your authentication token. First of all, this automated entry is much easier than transcribing. Also, because the process is automated, the authentication token can be much longer, and much more secure, than manually transcribed ones. The YubiKey actually generates 44-character long tokens.
A second advantage of the YubiKey is form factor. This device is freaking tiny. I doubt you could make a USB device any smaller. It weighs only two grams.
The third, and most important, advantage of the YubiKey is that you don't have to trust (or even establish a connection to) a third party like VeriSign in order to perform authentication. Yubico's business model is to sell the keys and distribute the authentication software as open source. Anyone can build YubiKey authentication into their own products or services.
It works particularly well as an OpenID authentication mechanism.
Unfortunately, you can't use a YubiKey in situations where you are unable to physically plug in a USB device. This includes kiosks, but more importantly mobile devices like the iPhone. For those, you might have to stick to traditional token generators or clever things like Perfect Paper Passwords.
Steve later covered the Yubikey in more detail in Security Now podcast #143. But, by that time, I already had my own Yubikey attached to my key ring.
Microsoft Research recently announced the WorldWide Telescope. It's a rich internet application, built on top of the .NET framework, which allows you to interact with all kinds of astronomical imagery and data over the web. I originally heard about this through a TED talk by Roy Gould and Curtis Wong.
Applications like this are nothing new to astronomy buffs. Heck, even Google had a summer intern build Google Sky. But, like so many applications, I think this one will come down to execution. I haven't tried it yet, but from the demos it looks really slick.
Microsoft Research says this project is built on work started by Jim Gray. Jim was a prominent computer scientist who did a lot of work on databases. Sadly, he was lost at sea in January of last year. As part of an interesting experiment, I played a very small role in the search effort by reviewing satellite imagery of his last known location via Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Speaking of Korean lessons, I thought I would pimp one of my favorite Korean language resources: KoreanClass101.com.
I discovered this site via SurvivalPhrases.com where I started listening to the free Korean lessons hosted by Keith Kim. Honestly, I thought SurvivalPhrases.com was going to be lame, but it surprised me. The material was simple, but useful, and everything was broken down in a systematic way. Most of all, I was impressed by Keith's personality and pronunciation.
Out of curiosity, I checked out a couple of the other languages on SurvivalPhrases.com. I found that they all used the same lesson template, but the speaking ability of the hosts varied quite a bit. This made a tremendous difference in my ability to understand the material. Ultimately, it made me appreciate Keith's speaking ability even more. I decided to see what else he had worked on.
I did some searching and discovered that Keith was actively involved with another website called KoreanClass101.com. I'm not sure how, but both sites seem to be related to each other. Perhaps both are owned by the same company? Anyway, I started listening to the lessons on KoreanClass101.com and I was really impressed by how organized and detailed they were.
KoreanClass101.com has tons of material. Some of it is free, but they also have premium materials at a reasonable price. The main content comes via podcasts. I've listened to the newbie series and am currently working my way through the beginner series. The podcasts are great. They generally start out with a short dialog between some native speakers. Afterward, Keith and his cohost, Seol, break down the dialog in excruciating detail, which is a great thing for n00bs like me. Seriously, they even explain that the speaker is just pausing to think when they make the sound, "mmm..."
Besides the podcasts, there are all kinds of other resources: blogs, transcripts, vocabulary lists, video clips, etc. These people really find every way possible to help you learn Korean over the internet. I highly recommend them!
presentation. I particularly agree with the simple solution he suggests at 13:40, which is "to put a price on carbon". I completely agree with that and it echoes what I said in my comments about The Story of Stuff.
Sweet! If you do a Google search for "will's blog", I am happy to report that I am the very first link! ... on the 13th page. I guess Google's PageRank algorithm wants more of you to link to me. It's understandable though. I'm competing against some pretty well known Wills.
At some point, I'm going to have to start archiving my blog posts. Otherwise, my website is going to get out of hand. I'm thinking about doing something like Google Reader where you can keep scrolling down and AJAX will keep adding more posts to the browser.
I just finished integrating some Google tools with my website. This was mostly a chance for me to play around with a few new services and see how they work.
First, I added an advertising bar from Google AdWords. Advertising drives most of the innovation on the internet today, but somehow I doubt much of that money will make its way to me. Still, I get a kick out of seeing what Google thinks of my website by looking at the ads it chooses.
Next, I added visitor tracking from Google Analytics. This is a service that allows website authors to learn more about the people who visit and how they interact with the website. It shows me how many visitors I've had, where they come from in the world, how they found me, and lots more.
Finally, I used the Google AJAX Feed API to add a News section to my website. On that page, I'm displaying my Google Reader shared feed. Now, whenever I read something interesting with Google Reader, I can just click "Share" and that post will show up on my news page. How cool is that?
Cecil Adams over at The Straight Dope answers a reader's question about blue blood. Apparently, the horseshoe crab is one of the creatures that have blue blood instead of red. This is due to the use of hemocyanin (copper-based) instead of hemoglobin (iron-based) as an oxygen transport protein. Neat.
I was just doing some spring cleaning on my bookmarks list and I rediscovered a couple of interesting sites. These sites were useful to me while doing user interface design at work this past year.
At the time, I was working my way through Filthy Rich Clients, which is a book about doing amazing things with Swing. If you do any Swing development, definitely put Filthy Rich Clients on your reading list. Even if you've been using Swing for years, you'll learn many great techniques that will make your user interfaces put these fancy AJAX websites to shame.
The first website I wanted to share is ColorSchemer. This utility was directly recommended from the pages of Filthy Rich Clients. If you've ever been searching for just the right color(s) to use for your website or application, go check this out. It helps you generate good looking color schemes. And, if you're a little lazy like me, you can take advantage of the color schemes that others have already shared.
The second website I wanted to share is GUIdebook. This site has several screenshots from old versions of operating systems and applications. It helped me because I wanted to borrow some user interface controls that I remembered from an old version of Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately, this site doesn't have a whole lot of content, but I really like the concept. It's definitely worth a peek, if for nothing more than nostalgia. Please, let me know if you know of something better.
The economic outlook for the next year or two looks gloomy. Mike and Mark over at Manager Tools remind us in their latest podcast that companies will begin hiring more selectively and firing more liberally. But, not to worry, you've been updating your resume quarterly, right? Right? If not, go listen to this. Then, listen to this. Finally, if you need a great way to invest $50, go do this.
I recently stumbled upon The Story of Stuff via Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog. The Story of Stuff website contains a 20-minute presentation by Annie Leonard about the life of stuff: following consumer goods from resource extraction through disposal. Coincidentally, today is Earth Day.
I'm a fan of the art of presentation, so I took Garr's advice and watched The Story of Stuff. Leaving content off the table, I thought it was a very good presentation. It was well structured. The pacing was snappy without leaving your head spinning. And the visuals nicely complemented and enhanced the presentation. Kudos.
That being said, it took only a few minutes for my liberal rhetoric gag reflex to kick in. I think it was about the part where she offhandedly complained about some corporations growing to become larger economies than governments. As if large (read bloated) governments were something to aspire to? But, I digress.
My biggest complaint is her derogatory focus on "the golden arrow of consumption". I'll grant you that America consumes disproportionately more resources than other countries. Sure, it would relieve some pressure on the environment if we consumed less. But, that is completely irrelevant in a macro analysis of the materials economy. Suppose that every country consumed proportionately, but the world's population increased by an order of magnitude. Things wouldn't be better. There might be less consumption per capita, but there would be more total consumption. The same problems exist.
Ultimately, the only (just) way to curb consumption is to create an economic disincentive for consumers. That is, the cost of stuff has to start going up, and up, and up. Things have to get expensive enough that people just don't want to, or can't, buy them. Hmm, I would like that new iPod, but it costs $1,000, and I'm not sure I want it that much. What constitutes a fair mechanism for creating those economic disincentives will depend on what socioeconomic camp you hitch your wagon to.
Despite its propaganda, I think The Story of Stuff does do an important service. It raises awareness about the environmental problems emerging because of increased global consumption. These are things that all people, especially business and political leaders, need to be thinking about. So, for that reason, I think you should watch The Story of Stuff. Just take it with an appropriately sized grain of salt.
Attention Los Angelenos! A friend of mine is involved in a commercial for Pampers/Unicef and she passed along a casting announcement. Here's what they're looking for:
Moms: 25-35 yrs oldThere's compensation, so let me know ASAP if you or anyone you know is interested.
Babies: Soon to be born or Newborn
(Must be at least 15 days old by May 5th, 2008)
We’re looking for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation moms & babies from: Africa (African American), Central America, South America, India, Asia & Middle Eastern Countries
Oops! My last deployment broke the Atom feed, but it's all fixed now. You may resume your RSS reading.
I just deployed a new version of my blog. This time I made a few cosmetic changes and one big under-the-hood change. The cosmetic changes include:
The big under-the-hood change only affects the admin view. I moved from doing normal HTTP refreshes--the default provided by the Ruby on Rails scaffolding--to AJAX updates. This makes it much faster to create and edit my posts. It is also more efficient from a bandwidth usage standpoint.
If you're wondering what the admin interface looks like, I'm hoping to create a site where you can register for your own instance of my blogging software and play with it. I even got a cute domain name for this project: ipostedit.com. Get it? I Posted It!
I just updated my blog with a couple new features:
First, I added an Atom feed, allowing anyone to follow my blog using their favorite RSS reader. I used to use NetNewsWire to follow blogs, but now I use Google Reader.
Second, I went to Icon Archive and added some of the iSimple System Icons. However, I'm thinking about swapping them out for the Aesthetica 2 Icons, which are not angled. Also, Aesthetica 2 has some nice blog-specific icons that I like.
If you've visited here before, then you are one of the very few people who may be wondering where all my old blog posts went. Here's the deal. Up to now, I've been using my own installation of WordPress to run my blog. At first, things worked pretty well. It was simple to install and simple to write posts. There was a lot to like about WordPress, but as time went on, I realized it was missing some features that I wanted. Some features I noticed on other platforms; some features I haven't seen anywhere (yet).
This got me thinking about all the technology behind blogging and how it could be made better. I decided that I needed a sandbox in which to experiment and test my ideas. So, being a typical software developer, I created my own blogging platform using Ruby on Rails. Of course, RoR is famous for letting you build a blog from scratch in 15 minutes. That's the main reason I chose to use it: I could get something very basic up and running in a short amount of time, then iteratively add more interesting features.
RoR worked more or less as advertised, allowing me to create the example blog in no time. However, after that, it took me some time to familiarize myself with the Ruby language and the Rails framework. I spent the better part of the weekend tweaking the example blog and integrating OpenID authentication. Overall, I'm very happy with how quickly I was able to build a simple but very useable web application.
My old blog posts are still sitting in the WordPress database, but I hope to migrate them to this new platform sometime soon. It might take me a while though, because now I have a new sandbox in which to play!
