Computer

June 30th, 2008 by alephnaught

where

I’ve been playing with where for two days now. Where is an application for smart phones, including the RIM Blackberry, that creates a widget environment for GPS location information. So, for example, there’s a GasBuddy widget, which shows you the prices of gasoline at nearby stations, including the distance to the station from where you […]

June 27th, 2008 by alephnaught

Whither Instant Messaging and Twitter?

Twitter’s IM feed has been down for ages. For me, this is a real problem for two reasons. Since Twitter is all about what you’re doing / thinking / feeling at a given moment, access to tools while mobile is critical. I hate SMS. I love GoogleTalk on my RIM Blackberry. Using the Twitter IM […]

Posted in Computer,

May 19th, 2008 by alephnaught

Switching blog tools

I haven’t posted anything new, although so much has changed in my life lately.  Why? Turns out the company (and author) of the blogging software I’d been using, iblog, has left it in a semi-finished state that won’t run on Leopard (MacOS X 10.5); I’ll never buy anything from them again and suggest you don’t […]

November 4th, 2007 by alephnaught

13949712720901ForOSX

13949712720901ForOSX You can read about why this string is important here.  Suffice it to say that this seems like a nice, non-violent way to support the port of Java 6 to the Mac platform.  Although, I suspect Apple has it almost ready anyway – they delayed the Leopard launch to get the iPhone done, and […]

Posted in Computer, Tags: , ,

October 27th, 2007 by alephnaught

Chicago Metra comuter train schedule stuff

I’ve written a little web app to find the next four trains running between two stations on the Chicago Metra comuter train line.  I also loaded CalTrain, a little Blackberry application, with the lines I and a friend usually take (the application can’t handle a large set of data for some reason).

October 1st, 2007 by alephnaught

GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit

Title: GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit Author: Robert Hanson, Adam Tacy Paperback: 600 pages Publisher: Manning Publications (June 5, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 1933988231 ISBN-13: 978-1933988238 Finally, a technical book again! I liked this one – I wanted to build a simple interactive site for finding the next Chicago comuter trains based […]

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September 19th, 2007 by alephnaught

The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life

Title:  The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life Author: Paul Carr and Graham Pond Paperback: 222 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin (April 17, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 0312376480 ISBN-13: 978-0312376482 I’ve “walked around” in Second Life once – Second Life is a simulated place on the internet. The book was somewhat useful, but I skimmed some […]

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July 7th, 2007 by alephnaught

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

Title: Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web Author: David Weinberger Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Perseus Books Group; 1st edition (March 2002) ISBN: 0738205435 ISBN-13: 978-0738208503 This was the last book I asked my team (and I) to read at work as part of our little internal MBA program. We never got […]

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March 30th, 2007 by alephnaught

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Title: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Author: Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (December 28, 2006) ISBN-10: 1591841380 ISBN-13: 978-1591841388 This was a good book and worth the cost and time to read. The book begins with seven aspects of what Tapscott and Williams call “the collaboration economy”: Peer […]

January 14th, 2007 by alephnaught

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution

Title: Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution Author: Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson Hardcover: 234 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (August 8, 2006) Language: English ISBN-10: 1591398398 ISBN-13: 978-159139839 This is a great book once you have some knowledge of what architecture and strategy are. I think a […]