1–6 of 326 entries categorized:

Internet matters

Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

July 3, 2009

in Books and literature, Economics, Geek stuff, Internet matters, Science, The environment

David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air is a remarkably engaging book; it has certainly kicked off and contributed to some very energetic discussions here. The book, which was written by a physics professor at Cambridge and is available for free online, is essentially a detailed numerical consideration of renewable forms of power [...]

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Improving voicemail

July 2, 2009

in Geek stuff, Internet matters

While useful, voicemail is a flawed technology that can be improved in many ways. Three recent examples come to mind:
First, there is Apple’s visual voicemail. The improvement here is like the improvement between cassette tapes and compact discs: each message is an independent ‘track’ that can be treated as a unit. That is nicer than [...]

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Pondering smartphones

June 20, 2009

in Canada, Geek stuff, Internet matters

Soon, I will probably be switching cell phone plans, and possibly phones and providers as well. I am considering getting an internet-enabled phone, and pondering the various associated options. The most appealing phones are the iPhone and the HTC Android phone, followed by the Nokia smartphones. Using the first two would mean switching to Rogers.
In [...]

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Contributing to Project Honeypot

June 14, 2009

in Geek stuff, Internet matters, Security

Spammers are one of the most annoying natural enemies of the blogging community. They waste the time of site administrators who must install anti-spam systems and dig through suspicious comments to pick out real ones. They waste the time of users who are forced to jump through hoops like site registration and CAPCHAs.
One way to [...]

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Threaded comments

June 6, 2009

in Daily updates, Internet matters

WordPress now supports the option of threaded comments, where people can respond to a specific comment in a sub-thread, rather than just adding to the bottom of a single list.
Do people think incorporating this feature would improve this site, or make it less functional?
I would have no objections to giving it a whirl if doing [...]

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Microsoft’s imitation Google

June 1, 2009

in Geek stuff, Internet matters

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is a bit bewildering. To call it an homage to Google is an understatement: complete with ‘Web,’ ‘Images,’ ‘News,’ ‘Maps,’ etc across the top bar. While the bird’s eye feature in Bing Maps is a bit neat (it seems like it might be based on HDR images), one cannot easily [...]

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