Thursday, April 29, 2004
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
BBC NEWS | Wales | North West Wales | 'I got a story I really need to tell': "North Wales deputy chief constable Clive Wolfendale has been criticised for performing a rap to his force's black police association "
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
ThisisLondon: A large cheer for Jeanette Winterson. Blimey, who'd have thought I would ever do that.
Monday, April 19, 2004
Transport for London - Metro articles: "An aggressive beggar and illegal busker who used traffic cones as amplifiers has been jailed and banned from all Tube stations in inner London."
Commentary - Writing on the Brain: "was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy?once you have these in place, you are set to go."
Friday, April 16, 2004
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Steve Gillmor's Blogosphere - Tuesday, April 13, 2004 Entries"RSS Tipping Point " The same title as my earlier paper.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
By now you've probably seen the announcement for NewsGator Media Center Edition - we're very excited about this! There is a lot more info here, including lots of screenshots. Check it out! Here's one as a teaser:
Yep, that's a video stream from a RSS enclosure playing in the lower left corner. One more click of the remote, and it's full screen. (And yes, it's from Microsoft's Channel 9 video feed)
I think by itself, reading RSS feeds on your TV is interesting...but I also don't think anyone is going to use the TV as their sole source of text content - if you don't have a HDTV, it's a heck of a lot easier to read text on your computer screen. BUT...when you combine content like this on your TV, with the synchronization capabilities of NewsGator Online Services, you have a much more compelling story. Read/view some of your content on TV, including multimedia. Perhaps during commercials. :-) Read other (overlapping) content on your desk. Read some of it on your mobile phone. And the system keeps track, the whole time, of what you've read and where - so you don't have to waste time.
Whew! That sounded like a marketing blurb, right off of my own keyboard. Sorry about that. But come on, I have to say cool things about our new products! But maybe others can say it better - here are a couple of quotes from this morning:
RoudyBob - "They are way ahead of the game here."
Omar - "I've been using this for a few weeks and it's damned cool."
Matt - "This is very slick."
And I'll leave you with one more quote, from this morning's press release:
"NewsGator Media Center Edition is a great example of cutting edge ISV innovation on the Microsoft platform," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corporation. "The deep integration of technologies like XML and RSS, combined with rich multimedia, and presented on a device as pervasive as the television, gives consumers access to the information they care about, where and when they want to view it, truly delivering on the vision of a connected home. We're proud to work with NewsGator to help bring this innovative application to market for our mutual customers."
Here is number one:
At least 11 states, including Alabama, North Carolina and Nevada, tax people who possess illegal drugs. Usually, though, you have to be in possession of a minimum quantity (for example, over 42.5 grams of marijuana in North Carolina) to be subject to the tax.
But no need to wait for the police to cuff you before you cough up the cash. In North Carolina, for instance, when you acquire an illegal drug (or even "moonshine"), you can go to the Department of Revenue and pay your tax, in exchange for which you'll receive stamps to affix to your illegal substance. The stamps serve as evidence you paid the tax on the illegal product.
Don't worry that you might get in trouble for admitting you have enough drugs to fuel a rave party for years. You needn't provide any identification to get the stamps and it's illegal for revenue employees to rat you out.
Still, according to North Carolina's department charged with collecting the unauthorized substance tax, only 77 folks have voluntarily come forward since 1990. Most of them are thought to be stamp collectors. (Or perhaps they were just high?)
The majority of the $78.3 million the state has collected thus far has come from those who got busted and were found without stamps.
But even if they had had stamps, it's not like their legal troubles would be over. "Purchasing stamps only fulfills your civil unauthorized substance tax obligation," according to the N.C. DOR Web site.
Here is the full story and list.
"Living Room" Interface Allows Users to Read Selected Content, or Watch On-Demand Video Content
DENVER, CO -- April 13, 2004 -- NewsGator Technologies launched NewsGator Media Center Edition today, which allows users to read syndicated content feeds on their TV with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Both text and multimedia content is supported, with an interface designed to be used with a remote control from across the room. NewsGator Media Center Edition shows information that has not already been viewed on another device by synchronizing user subscriptions with NewsGator Online Services.
Audio and video content is only one click away. Users see visual cues when a feed contains multimedia content; they can then instantly view this content using the remote control. There are a number of featured feeds for the launch, including a video feed from Microsoft.
This is the latest step in the "any time, any place, any device" strategy that distinguishes the NewsGator product line. Users typically use more than one device throughout the day, such as Microsoft Outlook at work, a mobile phone on the road, a web browser in their home office, and a TV in their living room. NewsGator Online Services allows users to read one set of content from any of these devices, without any duplication. The combined power of NewsGator Media Center Edition and Online Services offers customers a productive and fun way to access their personalized subscriptions and information from any device, whenever they need it.
"NewsGator Media Center Edition is a great example of cutting edge ISV innovation on the Microsoft platform," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corporation. "The deep integration of technologies like XML and RSS, combined with rich multimedia, and presented on a device as pervasive as the television, gives consumers access to the information they care about, where and when they want to view it, truly delivering on the vision of a connected home. We're proud to work with NewsGator to help bring this innovative application to market for our mutual customers."
NewsGator Online Services also includes other three content reader editions, which allow users to read content they have subscribed to from any web browser (with Web Edition), any email client (with POP Edition), and from a mobile wireless device (with Mobile Edition), which is a powerful feature for road warriors who use mobile devices to access information while on the road.
The service also provides exclusive, subscriber-only content to its subscribers, as well as the ability to search for content that matches a specific keyword or URL, and return that content in a feed.
NewsGator Media Center Edition is included with the NewsGator Online Services subscription service, and is available immediately at http://services.newsgator.com. Pricing starts at $5.95/month per user.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
The Way We Live Now: Eurabia? n the 52nd chapter of his ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,'' Edward Gibbon posed one of the great counterfactual questions of history. If the French had failed to defeat an invading Muslim army at the Battle of Poitiers in A.D. 732, would all of Western Europe have succumbed to Islam?
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Feature request. OK, you know Microsoft MapPoint or Streets & Trips? Well, next time Microsoft brings 1500 geeks into a town (I hear we're gonna do another Professional Developer's Conference sometime in the first half of 2005, by the way) let's have some new software ready for them. MapPoint Blogger Edition.
Imagine if you had that on your PocketPC or SmartPhone. Now, you're standing in front of the first Starbucks. Why can't you leave a blog on the map? That way when other people are looking up what to do in Seattle, they'll see all the previous posts someone else has left.
Wouldn't that be cool?
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Monday, April 05, 2004
Dalrymple (121/21/Supplements/Book Bulletin): "In walking distance from William Dalrymple's London home is the grave of Sir Richard Burton, the rebellious explorer, linguist and writer. Dalrymple says he and his children had a 'lovely' time discovering it. 'He's buried in this fabulous Bedouin tent,' he says. 'There's a glass plate at the back and you can climb up a little ladder and look in and there's all these little Islamic lamps inside. It's done like a tent and his coffin is the sofa bed.' "
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