paulenglish.com

2008-05-10T07:25:00.003-04:00

The new Google "Android" platform allows third party developers to build apps on the new Google Phone. Android includes of course the ability for great location-based services and mapping.

Check out these cool Android applications from MIT.

2008-05-09T06:08:00.005-04:00

I have become a major fan of the Ubuntu Linux-based operating system. I have now converted each of my desktop and laptop computers from Windows to Ubuntu. The major benefits are Stability, Safety (not virus-ridden like Windows), Simplicity, and Speed.

Ubuntu can transform a slow buggy Windows computer into a sleek and high performance Linux computer. There are many other benefits as well in terms of usability.

I will keep a set of Ubuntu installation notes of my suggestions and experiences.

2008-05-04T13:14:00.002-04:00

Hello, world written in hundreds of different programming languages. See also 99-bottles-of-beer which implements the infamous song in over 1,000 languages! :)

2008-05-01T20:20:00.001-04:00

Some day I will invent a Discussion Meter.

This device will sit on a table during a business meeting, and it will track how many minutes each person has spoken, number of interruptions each person makes, speech volume (average and standard deviation), etc. More info.

2008-04-24T08:20:00.002-04:00

How far will some Dads go to beat their teens at a video game.

(I wish I had the skills to have done that! :)

2008-04-18T22:58:00.000-04:00

2008-04-14T21:26:00.002-04:00

I watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees at Fenway Park last night, braving the cold past midnight. My son Michael was also at the game, but sitting with his Mom on the other side of the park. Mike and I were texting each other during the game....

Dad: Where are you exactly? If you draw a line from 3rd to home and keep going, you would hit me in the chest, seven rows from the field.

Mike: If u draw a line from u to me id be at the end

2008-04-03T22:55:00.001-04:00

Babies for Obama!

2008-04-02T15:14:00.001-04:00

All religions are fairy tales - except yours. The "except yours" suggestion from W.F. Nisbet -- thanks Bill! :)

2008-03-30T09:56:00.002-04:00

All Religions Are Fairy Tales - billboard upsets Florida citizens, and thus cuts down by 2/3rds the business of a restaurant who happens to be located nearby.

I wonder if a feel good exclusionary religious billboard would have increased business...

2008-03-29T23:29:00.003-04:00

Port-O-Rotary is an old desk top dial phone secretly fitted with a cell phone. All you need to do is insert your SIM card! Check out the ring tone as well as the specs on how they built it.

2008-01-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

Elena's documentary on the role of rape in the spread of HIV/AIDS has been published by Frontline Rough Cuts. This is a very powerful, raw documentary that Elena shot in a rape trauma center in South Africa. :(

2008-01-05T10:18:00.000-05:00

The new SideStep.com has launched this morning based on the Kayak.com codebase. (More info.)

2008-01-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

AT&T just sent me an email asking me to call them about my account.

1. First, a note to phishers. If you are not doing so yet, please start sending emails like this. Ask people to call _your_ number, and when they call, pretend to be AT&T and ask for all kinds of personal info including their social security number. (Note to AT&T and other companies - if you want to minimize phisher attackes, do _not_ put a phone number in your emails, instead, have your emails ask people to call the number on the back of their credit card, to make them feel safe that they will be calling the real number.)

2. It is annoying that when you do call AT&T, they first ask you to enter your credit card number. Then they say "you may be asked for your wireless number again for security purposes". I'm pretty sure they have you repeat it because their IVR is programmed by idiots, and it does not forward the info to their support centers. But nice try there scaring us with the "for security purposes". Thanks again to Bush for creating a fear culture.

Sigh.

2007-12-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

Stephen Wiltshire has a photographic memory. (See also.)

2007-12-27T19:39:00.000-05:00

Sports.google.com does not exist. This is amazing to me.

2007-12-20T20:19:00.001-05:00

Kayak merges with SideStep - see details here.

2007-12-15T08:21:00.000-05:00

The next time someone asks you a stupid question that they are too lazy to otherwise first lookup on their own, you can direct them to this website. (Thanks srevilak for the link.)

2007-12-11T10:29:00.000-05:00

Time Magazine did a nice little story on Kayak.com :-)

2007-11-27T15:18:00.000-05:00

iTunes update sucks. I use my iPod daily, but I only need to run iTunes every couple of weeks, usually when I hear some awesome song on the radio and am then inspired to buy it.

But when I then start iTunes to do this impulse buy, it asks me if I want to install the new version of iTunes. And because their stupid update message doesn't tell me what is in the new version, I have to click "yes" since I don't want to miss any important bug fixes or cool new features.

Mr. Jobs, I just want to do a quick impulse buy of some more iTunes, and send you more money. Why are you making me install new software every time I want to send you money?

So I go through the freaking download/install process (noting that my purchase impulse is starting to wane) and then it says to me "To finish installing the software, you need to restart your computer".

Mr. Jobs, are you kidding me? I just wanted to do an impulse buy of a song I just heard on the radio, I want to send you money Mr. Jobs, and now you are making me first restart my computer?

And then I know what is going to happen. You are going to put the fucking Quicktime icon in my Quick Launch toolbar, which I then have to remove, again. Damn you Mr. Jobs.

2007-11-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

The Flying Spaghetti Monster vs the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Enuf said. (Thanks to Nicole for the link.)

2007-11-06T11:05:00.001-05:00

Road sign hacker - awesome!

2007-11-05T06:14:00.000-05:00

Cool technique for colorizing black and white: works both for pictures and film! (From computer science students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)

2007-11-04T18:22:00.001-05:00

Snope Detector. It would be cool to have email programs detect attempts to forward an email which has been forwarded already to many people, and to look up the claim on snopes.com before allowing the user to forward it again. Or another way to say it-- rather than just having "spam" detection, I want email clients to also have "rumor" detection.

2007-11-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

Social network messaging is annoying because when someone sends you a message, the site sends you an email saying "someone sent you a message" and instead of including a copy of the message in the email, they want you to then login to their site (generating more page/ad views for them) so you can read the message.

At some point I'm going to writeup a spec for a network-messaging-interception program which will grab these emails in real time (maybe using procmail etc), login for me, get the body of the message, and replace the notification message with the actual message. A fancy version could have a coded Reply-to which would allow me to "reply" just using my email client, but then having the special Reply-to recipient program parse the email and post it into the social networking site.