The World Wide Telescope is a project from Microsoft Research that made Robert Scoble cry, is now being featured on the latest round of TED Talks. This product looks truly amazing and will probably change the way we see our little spot in the universe. I can’t wait to give this a try with my 5 year old son when it is released this spring!
Egadget.com has a video that show the Optimus Maximus OLED Keyboard being installed, setup, Configurated, and used! A couple of years ago, Art Lebedev Studio showed a prototype of their Optimus Maximus keyboard with OLED keys that can display any image you want. Of course the default is numbers and letter, but the keys can also be customized with icons of your choice or predefined ones for your favorite applications.
You gotta love the Mac rumor mill! Gear Live is reporting that Flash on the iPhone is just around the corner and will be available along side Apple’s release of the iPhone SDK near the end of this month. I can’t wait to start hacking some cool Flex apps if and when the Flash Player is made available on the iPhone.
So I’ve started a new job today (will blog about that later) and my new employer has just sent me a brand new Windows laptop. It’s been about 2 years since I last developed using a Windows machine, so am wondering what essential software I should be downloading to install? What handy utilities and applications do you use in your day-to-day work?
One of the knocks I have heard against Silverlight has been around how long will it take Microsoft to obtain the same penetration as the Flash Player and if not how long, how will they do it?
If Microsoft is able to acquire Yahoo!, it certainly puts them in a much better position to quickly drive adoption of the Silverlight plugin. Based on Alexa traffic ranking, if Microhoo becomes reality, Microsoft will own 3 of the top 5 web properties on the internet. Yahoo is ranked one with a reach of 28% of all global Internet users. Live.com is ranked number four with a reach of 25% and MSN.com is ranked number five with a reach of 17%. Do the math and you get 70% of all global Internet users visiting a Microsoft property every day!
Now of course, MS would have to integrate some Silverlight apps into the popular Yahoo properties, but really that shouldn’t be all too hard.
My pal Steven Baker just filed this bug with the Rails team - #10919 (incorrect pluralization). Pretty funny stuff - check it out!
This morning while at my favorite coffee house, the cute young barista walks over to my table and says “I really like your sweater”. At this point I’m thinking cool! Then she follows up her compliment by asking me where I bought it because she wants to get one just like it for her dad!
Holy smokes - when did I get so old!
I just came across a Project Maestro video on YouTube where the clever people at Cynergy Systems have created a Minority Report style user interface and pointing device. Written using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and a finger tracking, Wii Remote hack the demo is truly remarkable. It would be really cool to hear from the Cynergy people to see how hard this would be to do in Flex?
Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion shows how you can Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader. In his article he explains how many under-utilized featrues in Google’s Reader product can help you sift through today’s information overload. Google Reader is - in my opinion - the best RSS reader I have used over the past 4 years. If you’re not yet using RSS, I would certainly suggest giving Reader a try.
Open Source Living is a great place to find some of the web’s best open source software. There is a lot of really high quality open source (aka free) software on the web these days. If there is a software package you’ve been thinking of purchasing, I’m sure you will find a great free replacement at this site.
