bruceb news

[Originally posted March 13, 2007]

From Max Barry’s marvelous book Company, about corporate life in the weeks after the computer network goes dead:

“Two weeks ago the network went down; soon after Senior Management assured the company it would have the problem fixed within a few days; now everyone is realizing it is never going to happen. Work-arounds are springing up everywhere you look, like new grass after rain. In the absence of e-mail, employees are discovering the art of speaking into phones. They are realizing that discussions that previously required three days and six e-mails can, with phones, be settled in minutes.

[…] continued

Google Australia launched Gday today, a new search engine that allows users to search content on the internet before it is created.

“Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.

“We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web � tomorrow�s share price movements, sports results or news events.

[…] continued

Dilbert – Christmas Day 2007

Hope you, your families, and your computers have a wonderful holiday! All my best wishes for a happy new year! I’ll be off in the corner wondering what was in Scott Adams’ mind when he published today’s Dilbert . . .

I got a kick out of this – a short history of the OK button, helping to explain why your computer doesn’t constantly call you a dolt.

An important announcement today: Spinal Tap is going to reunite and appear at Wembley Stadium on June 7, as part of the worldwide Live Earth concerts.

Director Rob Reiner has prepared a 15-minute film explaining what the band has been doing since its last appearance:

“Nigel has been raising miniature horses to race, but can’t find jockeys small enough to ride them; David is now a hip-hop producer who also runs a colonic clinic; and Derek is in rehab for addiction to the Internet.”

You’re probably as excited as I am. If you don’t recognize why this is so important, you owe it to yourself to rent the 1984 documentary about the band. […] continued

A potentially world-changing announcement from Google today – the launch of Google TiSP, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users’ plumbing systems. A simple fiber-optic cable running through any toilet on a municipal sewage system can be used to make the connection with a TiSP Access Node.

Google intends to continue development on a high-performance version of TiSP tailored to small and medium-sized businesses, including 24-hour, on-site technical support in the event of backup problems, brownouts, and data wipes.

Complete details and installation instructions are on this page.

If you have a minute, you might want to look at the link provided for details about professional installations, and follow some of the links on that page as well. […] continued

Ze Frank has just finished a year of producing The Show, three-minute video monologues that appeared online five days a week. Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and others are writing paeans to a project that blossomed into something unique and special. The audience turned into a community making creative contributions and The Show became a conversation – consistently interesting and frequently hilarious.

The Show has ended but the episodes are archived – dive in anywhere. The Slate article has a good overview and lots of links to memorable episodes to get started. Personally I’m a big fan of the Scrabble episode, and Fingers In Food makes me laugh out loud every time. […] continued