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BugMeNot bookmarklet

This rocks!

Lotsa people know about BugMeNot, the centralized database of usernames and passwords for Web sites that require free registration (such as, alas, many news sites). But have you seen the bookmarklet?

On the BugMeNot home page, click on the link that says “bookmarklet” and drag it to your bookmarks/favorites. From then on, whenever you’re at a registration log-in page, just click that bookmark and it will pop-up a window with a username and password for the site that you’re currently looking at. [Holovaty.com]

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Blog Plug

I don’t get too many requests to promote, but what the heck…

I received an email today notifying me about a blog Sensory Impact, which is a nice looking design focused blog, in which Douglas Rushkoff is a guest contributor.

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Nerd Values at Craigslist

Great piece on Craigslist at Online Journalism review by Mark Glaser… Thanks to Sandro for the tip.

Craig Newmark started the community site as a hobby, but it soon became a San Francisco area institution for selling cars, getting jobs and finding sex. But just how much has it eaten into newspapers’ traditional classifieds business, and can they win that back? [OJR]

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Bill Gates: Microsoft CEO Summit 2004

Rather than even try to pull highlights from this talk, I’ll just point to it.

Amazing stuff… Be sure to keep the audience in mind — CEOs of major companies. They are not as focused on tech gadgetry and services as some of us, and Bill is able to distill things into simple bits for people to get very excited about. Windows fan or not, this is a must read!

Bill Gates’ Web Site – Speech Transcript: Microsoft CEO Summit 2004

Let me state clearly: these are not things that will happen in one or two years. These are things that over the rest of this decade, through the technical advances that have taken place this last year and will take place in the next couple of years, these things will move into the mainstream, and you’ll really see the impact there that we’re talking about. Very ambitious things, but if you think about it, over the course of the next six years we’ll spend over $40 billion in R&D, so that’s $10 billion per pillar. It seems like for $10 billion we ought to be able to achieve those things. At least that’s what I tell our programmers.

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Pocket Full of Dough

This is a great read in which the author, James Beard, uses the bribe technique to get through and dine at an impossible list of restaurants in NYC.

A few nights later, the effect of this newfound glow became clear. I walked into Le Cirque 2000, the gilt-edged establishment on the East Side. “Sorry,” I was told. “We don’t have a table tonight.” No problem, I thought. I took a step back and tried to identify the person in power. Seconds later, a gentleman in a tuxedo approached. “We were wondering if you had a table for two?” I said, clutching a bill in my pocket … but not handing it over. He bowed. “Your table is ready,” he said, and led us into the dining room. [EPICURIOUS]

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Best Way To Use Caffeine

You are probably doing it wrong… I guess my switch to doppios at Starbucks was the right move…

Researchers at the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago along with colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have shown that caffeine is best admnistered in a larger number of smaller doses with the doses coming later in the day. [FuturePundit]

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The Doctor Will Freeze You Now

I was reading this one on the train the other day… some seriously amazing science mixed in with some good old fashioned wackos.

Human antifreeze could kick-start the cryonics game by making it easier to perform low-temperature surgery. [Wired News]

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Switcher

Folklore is a great site and this story is amazing… Andy Hertzfeld meets one on one with both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs while developing and selling the first application switcher — Switcher — for the Mac.

I mentioned Andy Hertzfeld’s wonderful Folklore web site right after it debuted, and if you have any sense at all, you’re obsessively reading each new article as it’s published. But in case you aren’t, Hertzfeld’s story about Switcher — the first multitasking software for the Mac (circa 1985) — is just amazing. Switcher was so cool, and the Mac so important to Microsoft, that Hertzfeld negotiated with Bill Gates one-on-one for the rights. And, of course, Gates tried to screw him. It’s a great story. [Daring Fireball]

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The Power of Walt Mossberg

Thursday is the best news day because I get Circuits from the NYT and Personal Technology from Walt Mossberg in the WSJ. The current issue of Wired has a great article on Mossberg and his power and influence in the tech space. It will be online eventually and I’ll try to remember to go back and link it here (just added to Tasks), but if you subscribe or get it at the newsstand, you should check it out.

UPDATE – May 4 — Here’s a link to the article

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The New Yorker: Neck Face

In my neighborhood, these graffiti tags are everywhere… I see them on the street, on walls and in random surprise locations as well. I’ve been wondering what the deal was for a long time and now I finally know… except of course who the guy really is…

For the past year and a half, a mischievous presence has been asserting itself on the city’s street lamps, doorways, traffic-light-control boxes, and any other visible surface that it is in no one’s interest to monitor or clean too diligently: drawings of snaggletoothed monsters and hairy limbs with sharpened nails, and oblique yet strangely pointed phrases such as “beat with the ugly stick.” These images are often signed “Neck Face,” in angular capital letters that look like the work of an angry toddler or of Danny Torrance in “The Shining.” [The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town]

Thanks to Anil for the tip!

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How to Walk in New York

Walk or don’t walk? In New York, there is rarely a choice. Andrew Womack lays the ground rules for how you should maneuver the pavement, always showing your best side under special circumstances, and what to do when sidewalk rage hits. [The Morning News]

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Putting Blogs in Their Place

This chief of New York Times Digital once famously planned to spin off the online division and take it public. Didn’t happen. Now that his operation is turning a tidy profit, Martin Nisenholtz is back to making declarations. Wired magazine’s Josh McHugh investigates. [Wired News]

I wouldn’t need to work for Wired if I decided to live off AdSense clickthroughs on my own blog.
I haven’t seen anything that could create the scale necessary to engender a professional blogging class in any meaningful way.

NYT Digital just announced a $20 million profit. AdSense seems to work for you.

We’re still mainly in the business of aggregating and sorting content that was created for other purposes. Plus, most of our advertisers don’t live and die by the clickthrough. Our brand advertising business has been growing 30 to 40 percent for the past two years. There’s a lot of room for innovation in brand awareness advertising.

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Phone-cams, Moblogs, and Public Nudity

In case you missed it, John C. Dvorak published his latest anti-tech essay. Sounds to me like he is just writing for the wrong industry.

Sure there are uses for technology that might be viewed as lewd or just boring, but these things tend not to openly present themselves to people not either invited in or actually looking…

If you have no interest, fine. don’t bother. The tech itself is just getting started and will probably have some very interesting and usefuly purposes soon. The phone Dvorak carries, the Nokia 6600 is among the more capable… too bad it goes unappreciated in his hands.

It’s actually almost humorous to think that someone writing for a technology publication could be so closed minded about these things. You’d almost have expected this piece to have appeared in a more general news source…

If you’re not aware of the moblog (mobile blog) movement, you should familiarize yourself with it by visiting the various moblog sites. These are places where people post snapshots they take with their phone-cams. Certain sites, such as textamerica, pioneered the concept. And then there is Yafro, a site laced with lewd and lascivious snapshots. If you’re an exhibitionist, this is the place for you. I never knew it before, but there seem to be a lot of women who like walking around stark naked, having their pictures taken (not porn, mind you), then posting these pictures on the Web just because, well, they think it’s cool. I do not need this distraction. [PC Magazine]

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The Eudaemonic Pie

I recall it being quite good as well. I was fortunate enough to have a class in college taught by the author as well as an extra bonus.

After reading my review of Bringing Down the House, Madpro pal Stefan Jones reminded me about a similar book called The Eudaemonic Pie, by Thomas A. Bass, describing it as “Chaos theory wonks build shoes with computers hidden in them to predict roulette wheel results. Highly recommended.” I agree. It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember it being deeper and more thought-provoking than Bringing Down the House. Buy from Amazon [Mad Professor]