2007

Here are my weekly notes:

I watched the Super Bowl this afternoon like millions of other people around the world. Still haven’t watched the commercials yet. I’m glad the Colts won, and that Peyton Manning was named MVP.
Apparently Consumer Reports did a “taste test” and found that McDonald’s coffee beats Starbucks. Read the comments in that post…they are enlightening.
Another episode of my HillaryClinton.ca podcast is up!
A big story this week was the new report on global warming. The scientists agree something bad is happening and that something has to be done. I’m much more confident than most that it’s a problem that will be solved by technology (including so-called soft technology) we haven’t yet invented. The doomsday crowd makes me laugh – never underestimate human ingenuity.
CBS has started podcasting full length episodes of the news with Katie Couric. Excellent!
A few very vocal users are upset about some changes being made at Flickr. I don’t see what the big deal is – I mean, doesn’t everyone have an account from GYM? I started signing into Flickr using my Yahoo account the day it became possible to do so.
Is Apple really going to be bigger than Microsoft in 2010? I highly doubt it.
Good job snoozing during the State of the Union address, John McCain. What a moron.

Hubble Space Telescope in trouble?

Many photographs of outer space have been taken over the years, but the really impressive ones have for the most part been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. I have learned quite a bit about the telescope thanks to the two astronomy courses I have taken this year – it is a pretty amazing piece of engineering. Needless to say, I was a little worried when I read the headline “Hubble humbled by power failure” today. Fortunately, the news isn’t that bad (and it’s a few days old too):

The main camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope has stopped functioning due to a short circuit, NASA announced Monday.

A previously planned service mission on the Hubble to install a completely new camera was already scheduled for September 2008. The new camera, currently called the Wide Field Camera 3, will replace the downed WFPC2 and prove more powerful than the ACS was in most ways…

So it’s not really in trouble. Though I suppose the scientists won’t be happy about having to wait until next year to use the main camera. As a mere bystander I’m just happy that it is mostly operational and that it will continue to be able to bring us amazing photos and information.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24th, 1990 and will be replaced in 2013 by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Read: CNET News.com

Pocket HD Video Recording

In the marketing presentation I gave on Monday I mentioned that podcasting will increasingly take advantage of advances in mobile devices, as well as high definition recording. When I put that idea into my presentation, I was thinking about the mobile and high def parts separately, but if this little video camera is any indication, they might come as a package deal:

The research kids in Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute just announced a tiny new video camera capable of shooting at a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and a variable frame rate up to 60 frames per second.

Pretty damn intense. The camera will be on display at CeBIT in March. I can just imagine the possibilities a small, high quality camera such as this would make possible. Bring it on!

Read: Engadget

Amazon Web Services Growth

Amazon.com released their fourth quarter and year end (2006) financials today, and tucked away inside the press release was a little information on how their relatively new Web Services division is doing:

Over 220,000 developers have registered to use Amazon Web Services, up greater than 55% year-over-year.

Unfortunately – and this is often the case with these kinds of numbers – the release says nothing about how many of those 220,000 developer accounts are active.

The poster boy for Amazon S3, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, recently wrote yet another blog post on the service. The entire post is worth a read, but in particular he says:

Finally, S3 is a new service and yet remarkably reliable. Since April 2006, they’ve been more reliable than our own internal systems, which I consider to be quite reliable. Nothing’s perfect, but they’re doing quite well so far for a brand-new service.

I suspect their growth isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, so let’s hope their reliability and performance both scale with the continued influx of new developers.

Read: Amazon.com

What Comes Next for Jim Allchin

I just read Jim Allchin’s final post over at the Windows Vista blog, and I have to admit, it’s kind of sad. He has been in charge of Windows development at Microsoft for so long, I’m sure he won’t know what to do with himself now. I mean, it must be pretty hard to go from running the Windows team to just relaxing, right? Running the Windows team has to be one of the hardest jobs around. They are always behind, always getting dumped on by the press, always fighting the bad guys, etc.

Jim’s post conveys this very well, with a funny overview of what a “typical day” might look like now that he’s retired. I guess he knows it’ll be hard to transition. This one is my favorite entry:

9:30 AM: Spent 45 minutes looking around the house for the big refrigerator with the free soda just like Microsoft – was unable to find it.

When I visited the Microsoft campus a couple years ago that was easily one of the coolest things. Big refrigerators all over the place with all the Coke you could ever want. It was wonderful!

Anyway, here’s my “thanks Mr. Allchin”. My fellow Windows fans and I appreciate all that you’ve done. And hey, no need to stop blogging! Start a personal blog!

Read: Vista Team Blog

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