Google acquires JotSpot

One of the Wiki 2.0 services, JotSpot, has gone and gotten acquired by Google.

http://www.jot.com/

http://mannby.jot.com/WikiHome

"You should look for an unproven team"

"[Y]ou should look for an unproven team with unproven technology in an unproven market, cause that’s the billion dollar deal!"

- from http://www.venturevoice.com/

Thanks to Q for the link.

FLY Pentop Computer

We've played around with one a bit at the office, and I'm sure I would have been crazy about it if I were younger.

It uses an image sensor, and reads little dots on specially printed paper, that allow it to determine its location, and uses this to location information to follow pen strokes and convert them to text and symbols.

You can draw keyboards and drum sets and tap them to make music; you can draw calculators and use them to calculate (the pen speaks the numbers back at you); and it comes with pre-made games and puzzles, such as an interactive map on which it asks you to locate as many states as you can in 60 seconds.

It's quite amazing what a full computer experience it is able to generate using just pen input and spoken output.

The only real drawback is that you can't disable ink drawing without putting in a ball-point pen without ink, which means you dirty up the game pads it comes with, for no reason, except to make you buy new ones. You can retract the pen, but this disables the FLY pen, because it uses the pen tip as a tap (~mouse click).

It's actually amazing what $130 can get you, at least if you don't get caught up buying additional games for it.



The FLY is based on Anoto's technology, licensed by Leapfrog.

Scoble on Zune vs. iPod

"Little things like iTunes knows to put the matching icon up on the UI for the kind of iPod you use. Even the right color."

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/10/26/my-thoughts-about-zune-vs-ipod/

Another Apple Device UI Patent

http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-filing-shows-touch-sensitive-bezel-on-ipod-like-device/

IBM Sues Amazon

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20481.wss

Apparently, IBM has received a patent, among others, for "Ordering Items Using an Electronic Catalogue."

New MacBook Pros

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Firewire 800 is back....

PS3 Approaching

The BBC has an article with some details about the PS3, set to launch on November 17th in the US. Apparently it will have a free on-line service with the ability to pay for games. Apparently Wipeout is not on the list of games available at launch. Dang.

Mac Market Share ~6%

The Macintosh market share seems to be climbing:

http://macosxrumors.com/articles/2006/10/19/apples-u-s-market-share-for-macs-reaches-6-1

VOX

A friend of mine invited me to VOX, and I'm trying it out as a blog. The main feature of interest to me is the ability to manage visibility of blog postings (private, friends & family, public).

http://mannby.vox.com

Technorati Tags: links, notes

More iPhone Rumors

Rumors now have two iPhone models coming, possibly in January.

US Population to Hit 300 Tomorrow Morning

The BBC has an article saying the US population will hit 300 million tomorrow morning. Apparently we were 200M in 1967, and 100M in 1915.

Here's a graph of the population since 1900.

It would be interesting to collect such graphs for all countries, and map them against religion, GNP, surface area, etc. I'm sure someone has done it already.

I had expected the graph of the Swedish population to be flatter than this, but it actually is incredibly flat by comparison.

Technology Meets Sensationalism

I just saw this on Slashdot. Apparently Hans Reiser, maker of the very cool file system, ReiserFS, which I use on my servers at home because of its ability to deal efficiently with very large numbers of small files, and because he has some very cool plans for supporting innovating ways of addressing files, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

E-Book Readers

The New York Times has an interesting article about the Sony Reader, set to be released this month (but unavailable until perhaps until Nov. 30th, as the SonyStyle site now says).

Amazon is apparently working on an e-book reader as well, and Apple is rumored to be in talks with book publishers (iPlots?).

There is also a product by iRex using the E-Ink technology.

TV-on-a-Stick

Pinnacle has an interesting new product that lets you tune into HDTV broadcasts using a key chain USB device.

The Hole in the Wall

Here is a reference to a fascinating experiment performed by sticking an Internet-enabled computer in a wall in New Delhi.

Surfing on Sound Transit

This post is being posted from a Sound Transit 545 with WiFi.

Pretty cool, except my eyes can no longer take the shaking.... ;-(

Technorati Tags: notes

Wired Covers Independent Bookstores

Wired has an article about independent bookstores and on-line competition.

Code Search

Now Google has joined Krugle in searching code online.

People have been having some fun with it....

Grey’s Anatomy @ Grand Central Building

Today, Grey's Anatomy is shooting at the building in which Exbiblio is located.