A Random Pattern

Archive for July 27th, 2006

shareboard – collaborative whiteboard and shared document editing space

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

From this search, you can find my new project on Google Code. Uh, my brand new project…

shareboard – collaborative whiteboard and shared document editing space

Actually, you may have noticed from an earlier post that I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. Last I looked, there wasn’t anything out there that met my needs. This time I found something (the Coccinella project), so I may have to rethink.

Anyways, for the last few days I’ve been thinking about building a mini-version of this for the Google Desktop Gadget Challenge. Don’t think I have enough time to complete it for the challenge, given my current skillset. Still, it would be nice to try.

You can see from my comments on this long-ago post with the Google Talk team that I really have been wanting this for awhile.

Anybody have any feedback or suggestions? I’d love to hear what you have to say. Is this needed? Would you use it, and if so how?

Leopard Screenshot Contest

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

Gotta dig this stuff. We’re still holding on until Steve Jobs does the big unveil of the next Mac OS in less than a month, and these fake, dreamy screenshots are helping me survive. ;)

Please, Steve, fulfill some dreams! My personal faves would be much improved metadata[1], as well as collaboration abilities. Here’s the number one winner of the afore-linked contest: First Place, Eric Patterson.

Speaking of which, this person stole my idea! Ok, not really, but I’ve been thinking about this ever since Google Talk came out. Props to Adam Shutsa for the very nice iMeeting concept.

Think you’re not rich?

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

Very provoking Q&A over on Yahoo Answers. Although lots of complications to the answer are skipped over, it’s probably a pretty good gross approximation. Look at this little bit of the answer:

How much money (in US$) would I get if we divided up all the wealth in the world into equal amounts?

…for an individual share value of $6,685.92….

Alright, seriously, go read the answer in full. Then come back here.

Now, think about your net worth. Looking at where my viewership hails from, it’s a pretty good bet that you’re worth more than $6700. Not to mention you probably use / manage between 10 and 100 times that much wealth.

To me, this means I’m WAAYYYY above the wealth of the average human. Huh. Kinda makes you stop and think, I hope. So if you don’t think you have money to give, or that it’s not needed….

WAKE UP!!!! You are living in the lap of luxury, and if you can’t afford to keep up with your neighbors, maybe you’re looking at the wrong people as neighbors!

Microsoft – principled and transparent?!

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

Take a look at this shocking article, Microsoft says Vista to allow Google search engine:

Microsoft says Vista will allow other search engines as default.

“Our goal is to be principled and transparent as we develop new versions of Windows”

I originally had a 12 paragraph reply, which got eaten when my software crashed. I don’t have enough time to rewrite it all, so you’re going to get the short version this time. I don’t expect much complaining about that. :)

Microsoft has a Monopoly, and in a capitalist environment Monopolies have to follow different rules. Microsoft didn’t find this easy: the same ruthless business instinct that got them where they were, made it too easy to keep them there by illegitimate means. Several lawsuits later, Microsoft much more carefully watches it’s step.

Still, this move, as smart as it is, surprises me because it doesn’t seem Microsoft was forceably backed into it. Instead, they used the massive brainpower stored up in Seattle, and realized they probably would be forced to this. So instead they made the ethical, and competitively-friendly decision to allow distributors to preconfigure computers (gasp!).

Alright, this is getting long, and I hope you get the point. Read the article: it’s a nice move from Microsoft, which has slowly been turning the ship the last year or two with help from Scoble and the extensive Office 2007 team. Let’s see if the new blood and brains can perservere, and clean out the old, dirty corporation…