phyllostachys 83: MC Escher Shows the Way!

Wouldn't it be cool if we could edit Chogger comic strips?

What do you mean "what's chogger"???

If you like to blog, if you like to tweet, and if you like to play with drawing or manipulating pictures, Chogger.com is for you!



..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys 69: Minute Tech 54 Show Transcript

54 - Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 54 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- The iPhone Tsunami;
- Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?
- Jon Morrow guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's Careerist.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

So that's how we're gonna reach 10 million iPhones in '08! You didn't think, as I'm sure I did, that the prediction meant just US sales, did you???

Daniel Del'Re posts for the TheStreet.com that Apple is shooting for an iPhone launch in Japan as it's first stop in an Asian Apple tour. Being the world's third largest economy, Japan is already a very large consumer of Apple products, so the island nation makes for an ideal place to go. Coupled with the fact that Asians are far ahead of the rest of us in the use of wireless devices in lieu of desktop PC's, Japan could be a very good proving ground for the viability of the iPhone in a heavily saturated wireless market.

Stepping back to news from the backyard, Pittsburgh start-up Panasas, Inc. has announced that, along with the University of Nebraska's new Holland Computing Center upgrading it's 1150 node cluster computer from a top-500 supercomputer to a top-20 system containing 60 Teraflops of processing capacity, Panasas' ActiveStor Parallel Storage will be added to the cluster. Panasas' system, which eliminates network bottlenecks imposed on clusters by standard NAS and SAN storage arrays by allowing for parallel access to it's own storage, will work in conjunction with systems integration from Dell, Inc., Cisco and Force10 Networks.
Finally, this just in: Japan's Meteorological Agency has announced a Tsunami alert for Hawaii due to a 7.3-magnitude earthquake centered in Alaska's Aleutian islands. The JMA said that the quake's focus was some 40 km below the seabed, and occurred at 9:30 am GMT.

Tech Question: Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?

What do you think of when you hear the word "audio"? Do you think of that awful sound blasting from your kid's radio? Do you think of the mini-cassettes that you record on at the office? Do you think just of sound that can be heard?

When I think of audio, I think of the political loudspeakers on tops of cars, driving through the streets in Back to the Future, of Charles Winchester listening to opera phonographs in M*A*S*H, of 8-Track tapes sitting nestled under car seats, and of all the podcasts I listen to on my iPod Shuffle. In short, recorded sound.

Is recorded sound the best communications medium?

But of course, radio is audio - and radio is generally live audio being played out in thousands of radio stations world-wide. Television has an audio component, and television is being played live in thousands of broadcast stations worldwide...though increasingly, like podcasts, pre-recorded video is overtaking the airwaves, the cable, the internet.

But, remember, audio, unless it's music, is accessible only to those who know the language being spoken. Music, sans words, is accessible to all...who can hear...and music with words is accessible to all who can hear...and more accessible to those who understand the particular dialect.

Of what use is audio to the hearing-impaired. Do you have friends who're hearing impaired? What communications medium do they prefer?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

I'm working up a review of recent listening's to some of Anna Farmery's Engaging Brand podcasts. In the meantime, a blog link journey led me to Jon Morrow, a twenty-something guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's blog. In his laments about having worked too hard in college to get straight A's, he references Guy Kawasaki's blog post about Hindsight...in which GK suggests, among other things, that college kids oughta spend more time on their parents dime getting more out of the college experience than just hitting the books.

What is the right blend? As an adult who didn't apply himself hard enough in college, I think that as much schooling as soon as possible is the right choice...but here're folks who got lots of schooling and are lamenting the fact. What's the right mix?

Jon Morrow, guesting on Penelope Trunk's blog: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/12/04/twentysomething-why-i-regret-getting-straight-as-in-college/

Guy Kawasaki's blog on Hindsight: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/hindsights.html

Jon Morrow, on his own blog: http://www.onmoneymaking.com/

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- The iPhone Tsunami;
- Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?
- Jon Morrow guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's Careerist.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 57: Minute Tech 42 show notes

42 - Why Do I Like This Book?

Good Morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 42 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, December 1st and 2nd , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- iClone meets iPhone, and Columbus bumps the AMS;
- Why Do I Like This Book?
- 37Roses.com leads to a web journey.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

Happy Birthday, Larry! Enjoy the book "Light on Yoga" by B.K.S. Iyengar. :-)

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.



Tech News:

Now that's an interesting name for a weekend column: Scotland on Sunday, from Scotsman.com. Murdo MacLeod from Scotland on Sunday reports that a Chinese electronics firm has developed an iPhone clone, complete with touchscreen. The expectation from the article, titled "All-in-one 'iClone' from China defies Apple to call its lawyers", is that Apple will find some way to sue the Chinese company, and the article quotes US technology writer Ed Finegold as writing "Forget the iPhone - give me an iClone."

But remember folks, this is the issue that most are forgetting when they think a competitor has a chance at becoming the new king of the iPod or iPhone castle: it's not the device, it's the service. In a word, iTunes. Media delivery. That's Apple's not-so-secret ingredient.

In space news, the European Space Agency's Columbus module for the International Space Station is set to be launched later this week on STS-122, Space Shuttle Atlantis. The Columbus module will be attached to the new Harmony module, which was delivered to the ISS during the previous shuttle mission. Relatedly, an article by Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post describes how NASA has decided to deliver this module rather than another module called the AMS, or Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The Columbus module is set up to "allow scientists to conduct long-term biological, fluid and materials science research in weightless conditions, " while the AMS is an automated device which would detect cosmic rays outside of earth's atmosphere, aiding scientists in the study of dark matter and antimatter. The ESA has built both modules and would like to see both sent aboard the Space Shuttle on separate missions, but NASA has decided to stop Shuttle flights as of 2010, and the AMS is not schedule to be on any of the 10 remaining flights.


Tech Question:

Why do I like this book? I'm holding here in my hand a book. Okay, I'm really typing, and the book sits next to me. This book is Light on Yoga, by B.K.S. Iyengar. I have not yet read this book, even though I bought it probably 10 years ago. It along with thousands of other books are helping hold my house down. Why? Because I like books.

Devices & services like the Amazon Kindle, the Sony eReader before it, and Audible's audio books, have begun to cast a pall over the longevity of the bound book. What is the likely span that we'll still have bound books? Will they merely be a legacy product that we provide to those without access to digitized information?

While I have not fully read this book about yoga, I have read sections of it, and it's 544 pages comprise a vast overview of yoga...which I've thus far failed to introduce into my life. Therefore I'm giving the book to my Tai Chi teacher in the hopes that he'll review the contents and incorporate some of this into our lessons - he has an intense ability to review martial arts, philosophy and various related books and incorporate bits and pieces into his lessons and lectures.

That is the value of a bound book. I can buy it. I can peruse it. I can give it to someone more inclined to use it as it was intended to be used. Can you do that with a Kindle book? Can you do that with an Audible recording? Can you do that with an iTunes song or video? No, you cannot. And that is the continuing value of bound, paper books, at least for those of us fool enough to pick them up whenever, wherever we see them. :-)


Podcasting - Blogging News:

Blog reading is interesting in part because the ideas can lead to informational journeys across the web. Yesterday, I was reading a post by Jennie Roth, on her 37roses.com blog, which I mentioned as part of episode 41's review of the TechBurgh video podcast. This post was about the man who, along with co-host Kaylynn, is the producer of the TechBurgh podcast, Andy Quayle. Andy is from the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish sea, between Scotland and Northern Ireland. He is therefore "manx", which is the description for people from Man...and the blog post is therefore titled "andythemanx"...perhaps a playful play on "andy the man"?

Anyways, the blog links to a YouTube video that Andy suggests, that's a longish video about the Isle of Man, targeted toward tourists, businesses and potential emigres. Having watched the lions share of the video, my interest was merely piqued, so I trudged on over to wikipedia dot org and read first the article on "manx", and second the article on "Isle of Man". Fascinating information about a subject that I had absolutely no previous knowledge. Did you know that the northern portion of Man is primarily flat...north of the 621 meter mountain Snaefell...having been covered by glaciers that spread out from Scotland during the last ice age? And Interestingly, the Church of England diocese is called the "Diocese of Sodor and Man". Sodor....where have I heard that name? Thomas the Tank Engine? :-)

Go to a blog today and begin your own journey...it will be the first of many.


Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- iClone meets iPhone, and Columbus bumps the AMS;
- Why Do I Like This Book?
- 37Roses.com leads to a web journey.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 55: Minute Tech 40 show notes

40 - How Do I Track Those Calls?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 40 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday, November 29th , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- AT&T - did they deep-six iPhone sales for the holidays?
- How Do I Track Those Calls?
- Yahoo's Experts get slammed.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.


Tech News:

Bloomberg reports today that AT&T's chief Randall Stephenson has let the apple out of the bag by saying that Apple will be releasing a 3G-capable iPhone in 2008. Granted, Stephenson is not an Apple employee and is therefore perhaps not subject to the purported reality distortion field...but don't you think he'd consider it wise to not let this information slip until after the Holiday buying season? C'mon now, really!

Interestingly, yesterday evenings roundup from thestreet dot com, Cramer's "Recap: Gone Bottom Fishin'"....Cramer is talkin all about going by his 1990 playbook and buying up financial sector stocks such as Citi Group and Goldman Sachs. He states that in 1990 Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia bought a stake in Citi, and that now, in 2007, an investment fund from Abu Dhabi is buying a similar stake in Citi. So, we're talking about bottom fishing. Remember folks....bottom fishing. In the very next breath...or paragraph...Cramer says oh, yeah, and also buy some Apple, RIM and Google. Are these bottom fishing stocks? Perhaps after the recent pullback, they are...but during the pullback would have been the opportune time to sing the buying song. Note that with Apple, pullbacks only seem to last a week or two...then something pushes Apple back up to new highs.

And the most recent bit of news - Pittsburgh software and podcast hosting company Wizzard Software's CFO John Busshaus was named Pittsburgh CFO of the year by the Pittsburgh Business Times. Narrowed down from a group of fellow nominees, Busshaus was noted for having "guided the company through four successful acquisitions in less than one year, as well as two capital raises (private placements) worth approximately $10M".

A link to the related article is in the show notes: Wizzard CFO Busshaus


Tech Question:

The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "How Do I Track Those Calls?".

When taking calls and helping people resolve their various issues, whether it's dealing with a product from your company, or a document that their trying to type up, or a random object for which you're rendering help, it's good to have ways to identify the caller so that you can both track the progress of their issue, and later you can extract data about their call to provide call analysis for the management of your organization, to show the effectiveness of your service.

How do you track this information?

Well, you can use paper tablets, just writing down the information...and after a month of writing, you have a pile of paper tablets with gobs of information that you cannot readily access.

A slightly better solution is to use tabulated paper sheets, with categorized information boxes in which you can write down the caller's details. This format allows for some categorization of information...but still requires later data entry into a spreadsheet program to allow for analysis.

An infinitely better solution is to just enter information as it comes in into a spreadsheet program, such as Excel, Open Office, Apple's Numbers or Google's Spreadsheet. This way the information is in a ready format to be crunched at day, week or month-end. With this you can analyze for duration of calls, types of calls, geographic location of callers, and, with a bit of metadata about each caller, the product or systems that seem to be exhibiting the most calls.

The next step up is to have a database back end with a dataentry front end. The database will have far more capacity for information entered, will likely have more multi-user ability if you have multiple people taking calls, will probably be added to nightly server backup schedules, should your back end servers lose power, and allow for front-end calculations to show data analysis to both the call reception staff as well as the management, with built in business logic/programming.


Podcasting - Blogging News:

As I use many of the major "portals" for news: news.google.com for general, business and science headlines, and Yahoo's finance site for finance news and research, I tend to see the posts by Yahoo Finance's various "Expert" columnists, Penelope Trunk, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and Ben Stein, to name a few.

These columnists have very good columns on everything from personal finance to leadership to stock picks. To write this sort of thing, you have to be either living in the thought clouds or surrounded in part by those who are, so that you can either draw from examples of things you see around you or write from personal experience. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher from 2,600 years ago, a contemporary of Confucious (Kung Fu Tzu), wrote some pretty amazing head-in-the-clouds things about leadership, character and general outlook in his Tao Te Ching verses. Do you think he worked in kitchens or dug ditches or waited tables through his life? Not likely.

In order to have people who write good articles, or philosophical treatises, you have to allow for them to have slightly higher existences than we do. If they then choose to contribute their up and down wisdom to the web-aether, and we who are far lower benefit from their writings, so much the better for civilization. I'm referring to all of this because Ben Stein and Rob Kiyosaki have had some pretty negative comments written in response to their recent articles. Comments are good...and we need to support the freedom to always be able to comment on other's writings...but many of these have been strident criticism of the foundations that have brought these various columnists forward. I, for one, am very thankful that they are taking the time to spill part of their souls onto digital paper for the benefit of others. And if they reap an outsize monetary benefit from this....well then, perhaps we each need to take a hint and start thinking, writing and publishing for the good of our peers.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- AT&T - did they deep-six iPhone sales for the holidays?
- How Do I Track Those Calls?
- Yahoo's Experts get slammed.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 42.26: Minute Tech 026

Show notes/transcript for Minute Tech 26:

26 - What is Lampwork glass?


- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.


Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, November 9th, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 26 - What is lampwork glass?

Tech items:

Apple's iphone goes on sale today in Germany and the UK. While they don't expect quite the sales volume as the US had, I think that the intent of the halo effect is both well understood and works well...

Yellowstone park is sitting on top of an extinct volcano - did you know that?
one of my scientific interests is the type of thing that could affect us all, volcanoes being one of those things. I keep an eye on volcano news worldwide, and through some of this research had already learned that the geysers at yellowstone are the remnants of an eruption some 70,000 years ago. But did you know that all of yellowstone sits atop a 40-mile wide volcano that blew it's top - and or fell in upon itself, some
640,000 years ago? The entire volcanic field of that region spans some 300 miles, and the recent news is that for the past three years the magma, or lava, chamber under Yellowstone has been pushing up to the tune of 3 inches per year for the past three years - more than three times the rate since record-keeping started in 1923. Probably no cause for alarm - unless you expect to be around for another 50,000 years.

Astronomers have detected a 5th planet orbiting a star some 41 light-years distant from our solar system...which puts it well within the local neighborhood. This seems to signify that perhaps a star with multiple planets may be a common celestial occurrence.


tech question:

I mentioned art glass yesterday. Let's ask my wife Jennifer what lampwork glass is:

[insert]

you can find jennifer on the web at themacmuse.blogspot.com

podcasting/blogging tidbit:

Okay, so some small part of this podcasting is going the way least expected. I really am realizing that this is, in part, therapy for me. In general, the only therapy I need is an internet connection, or two hours in the evening with my family, but us liberal arts majors tend to have many interests, so I need to think through the investing angles too.

I am not at this time an investment professional, and do not hold myself out as an advisor. People may ask me for advice, but I always advise taking whatever I say and then do their own research - they may use the same free online resources I use, or they may use others.

Whatever I talk about, assume that I'm some how involved with it. If I talk it down, think through my comments and may consider that I may be selling; conversely, if I talk it up, assume that I may be buying on my own account, and therefore consider whether my comments are good observation or merely hype.

There are 3 things that're important in all of investing, whether you're jane investor putting her monthly saving into XYZ mutual fund, or BHP Billiton seeking to buy out Rio Tinto for 124 billion dollars:

finding
deciding & holding
maintaining perspective
more on these later.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 42.27: Minute Tech 027

Show notes/transcript for Minute Tech 27:


27 - What is touch-screen glass?

- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.


Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, November 10th & 11th, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 27 - What is touch-screen glass?

Tech items:

Apple iphone sells some 10,000 phones friday in Germany. much speculation that as the German population is 1/4 the US population

phones being sold through t-mobiles stores in germany

what is wplug? western pennsylvania linux users group

founded in fall of 1997 with Jeremy Dinsel, of California university of pennsylvania

Red Hat released Fedora 8, the free version of Red Hat's Linux product, this past week.
Ryan Paul at Ars Technica references the PulseAudio sound daemon as the most impressive feature

Tech Question:

what is touch screen glass?

Apple's iphone and ipod touch uses a scratch resistant glass surface, with a subsurface that detects the users electric field and responds with screen interaction.

wikipedia describes several techonologies that can be associated with a touch screen interface: the Capacitive touch screen panel of the iPhone and iPod touch have a coating that carries a continuous charge that detects touches by unshield human touch, since the human body had a slight electric field (that's how signals get from your fingertips to your central nervous system).

other touch screen technologies:
An infrared surface might either detect thermal interaction with the screen or disturbance of vertical and horizontal light beams.

a SAW or surface acoustic wave technology detects the disturbance of a sound wave that's passed over a surface.

A resistive touch screen has several layers which include electrically conductive and resistive layers, separated by a thin space - when the two layers come in contact, the resulting electrical charge provides the interface.

in related technology, a graphics tablet uses a grid system to transmit coordinates to a receiving circuit in the pen, identifying location information on the tablet, useful for artist to simulate painting or drawing.

podcasting/blogging tidbit:

Attended a pre-wedding party for a lucky Pittsburgh couple at a local Dave and Buster's facility - the attendee's were a sort of who's who of the local university computing establishment. Some of the people I met work at a local software company called Sherpa software - they produce e-mail management systems for MS Exchange and Lotus Notes - their motto is "Your guide to email terrain".

Of two other couples we interacted with, one is associated with IBM via their Almaden research facility in San Jose, CA, and the other with Seagate technology in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, because of Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, has become an interesting computer company town, with offices for Seagate, Apple, Intel and Google, as relatively recent startups like Panasas.

The Register, a British Internet-based technology newspaper, has a podcast called semi-coherent computing, by Ashlee Vance, interview with Dave Patterson
Talking about Dave's history of studying RISC & multicore processing, as a well as his authorship of paper at Berkeley in 1985, with Garth Gibson of Panasas, the seminal paper on RAID storage architecture.

How to make computing more powerefficient, and how many multi-cores to add to pcs? When will software writers say enough cores are enough? And when they do cry uncle, will that stop meaningful software development....or is the accumulation of multi-cores just another facet of Moore's law?



- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.