Quote of the Day

Tam in the comments on Les's post about giving up cable and almost giving up internet access, too:

"Okay, yeah, see, that's just crazy talk right there. :p

Keep your priorities straight, man: I can order bottled water from the internet, but I can't get books out of my faucet."

You Can't Use Facebook To Serve Court Docs

sarahcuda Judge: Chase Bank Can’t Use Facebook To Serve Court Docs pandodaily.com/news/judge-cha… via @pandodaily - WOWWed, Jun 13 19:39:42 from Tweet Button

But "it’s a commonly used serving method in Australia, New Zealand, and more recently in England." That's the "wow" part for me.

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Smart.

timbray Just proposed “451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons”, see goo.gl/86x9eMon, Jun 11 21:40:21 from YoruFukurou retweeted by andrewchen

And Before I Forget...

Happy World IPv6 Day!

100Mbps for Every 1,000 Students

A study finds that schools need 100Mbps for every 1,000 students. At my work, we currently have 20Mbps for every 1,000 users. Unfortunately, we only have about 150 users in my office. I'd comment more on the article, but I only have the bandwidth to pull up the headline.

How To Make Money Blogging

An interesting read that says monetizing your site isn't the hard part any more. There are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions. All you need is 100 million active users. I'm no Uncle, so I'm a little short of that number.

Business 3.0

The goal used to be to "cut out the middleman." Now the middleman is a requirement.

12 Signs You Need An Internet Break

12 Signs You Need An Internet Break... #10 hits a little too close to home.

Could You Go Offline for a Year?

Could You Go Offline for a Year? Yes. I could also go without electricity or air conditioning, but why in the world would I want to do that? I remember my early days at work where we either figured something out, found the answer in a thick manual, or got in a queue with tech support. Now I can google an answer faster than I could try one thing, find the manual, or dial the support number.

Netflix Diversity

I wondered how they handled the different people in a household using the same Netflix account:

"Take as a first example the Top 10 row: this is our best guess at the ten titles you are most likely to enjoy. Of course, when we say “you”, we really mean everyone in your household. It is important to keep in mind that Netflix’ personalization is intended to handle a household that is likely to have different people with different tastes. That is why when you see your Top10, you are likely to discover items for dad, mom, the kids, or the whole family. Even for a single person household we want to appeal to your range of interests and moods. To achieve this, in many parts of our system we are not only optimizing for accuracy, but also for diversity."

An SEO Expert Walks Into A Bar

lukevenediger An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, tavern, pub, public house, Irish pub, beer, drinks, alcohol.Thu, Apr 05 02:44:01 from WindowsLive retweeted by mrolafsson

Men are from Wikipedia and Women are from Pinterest

MarcusLilley 87% of contributors to Wikipedia are male and 87% of Pinterest users are female, startling stat #ftmedia12Wed, Mar 07 09:13:05 from TweetDeck retweeted by tim

The New iPad

andrewchen pro tip: want to order the ipad3? Skip the website and use the "Apple Store" app insteadWed, Mar 07 15:05:11 from web

NoteSlate

Since the new iPad was announced yesterday, I thought I would check on our old friend the "too good to be true" NoteSlate. The last update on their blog was more than a year ago (17 FEB 2011) and no new tweets in months, so still vaporware.

I know I declared it dead, but I can't help still hoping.

An Open Letter to Chris Dodd from ESR

Sing it, brother! Quoting:

"I can best introduce you to our concerns by quoting another of our philosopher/elders, John Gilmore. He said: “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches, it’s also a sort of reactive social organism composed of the people who keep those wires humming and those switches clicking. John Gilmore is one of them. I’m another. And there are some things we will not stand having done to our network.

We will not have it censored. We built the Internet as a tool to make every individual human being on the planet more empowered. What the users do with the Internet is up to them – not up to Hollywood, not up to politicians, and not even up to us who built it. Whatever else we Internet geeks may disagree on among ourselves, we will not allow our gift of fire to be snuffed out by jealous gods."

Via Slashdot

Forget Silicon Valley

Chattanooga is the new hot bed for geeks. Y'all come on over to Tennessee and get your 1 gigabit internet connection.

Hope they expand that network on up to my house in Knoxville.

Who killed the internet?

The answer is funny and sad.

Utilities Bills vs. Technology Bills

I'm a geek, but maybe I am a frugal geek, because my utilities are much more expensive than my monthly technology cost unlike the findings in this article. If you don't like words, there is a good infograph there, too.

It helps that my company provides my smartphone service, but we have the basic internet service with Knology and no home phone. We don't spend a lot on apps or other services - including an on-line backup service. (I've been tempted, but I use a combination of Dropbox, Windows Live Mesh, and USB hard drives to do the heavy lifting there.) It also helps that my daughter is only three - she probably won't need her own smart phone for another 6 months. ;)

Another factor is that my house is one big energy sink when it comes to heating and cooling. My base usage is a small number compared to the heating and cooling costs. I need a smaller house.

Interesting Shift

I knew we had rolled out more laptops than desktops in the last year, but I just did the math. We are buying two laptops for every desktop.

There are a few things that would skew that number (executives getting replacements first, desktops are more likely to be redeployed to the shop floor where as old laptops are generally retired, etc.)

I am little surprised none the less.

Not Sure Which is Scarier

asymco From comments: "consumerization" is actually going to reveal itself as "commoditization" of IT as an industryWed, Jan 11 05:42:28 from Twitter for Mac

Of course, my background is on the infrastructure side, which I've felt like has been a commodity for a long time. In the past you outsourced infrastructure to a different company, but kept the techs (maybe the same set of techs!) on-site. Then you outsourced some of your infrastructure support to India. Now you put applications in the cloud. I guess it really doesn't scare me - everything changes and IT faster than others.

I'd still love to get our e-mail in the cloud. I've got plenty to do and off loading e-mail would be a good one.