Rubber Chicken

Room in my pocket for just one thing

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:00:32 -0500

Another article on the future of portable music: it ain't the iPod, it's the mobile phone.

the cooper mini of the housing market

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:29:43 -0500

I like the design of these Katrina houses. They sort of remind me of the ramshackle houses in many southern Coastal cites, but without the slum look. Who needs 6000 square feet?

Listen to the musical footsteps

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:09:46 -0500

I've never been an iPod fanboy. I appreciate the nice industrial design and think that it is a nifty device, but I've never bought one or seriously considered it. A few years back, before iPod had video, I bought an Archos player that I've had since then and still enjoy. When it comes time to replace it in the next year or two, I will probably buy something from Nokia.

They are getting so close to all of the features I want. First, it has to work really well as a phone (and would be a big plus if it worked with WiFi networks as well). Second, it needs to work fairly well (meaning a small keyboard) as an email device. Third, it has to be a compentent music player. Forth, it should be able to play video. Lastly, a nice camera (still or video) is a plus. Oh, and it all needs to cost me around $300.

You combine the Nokia N91, the 6136 and the E61 and we are in business.

Tres cool

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:42:42 -0500

T-mobile is introducing a mobile phone plan that is integrated with VOIP using a WiFi phone. The only complaint I have about T-mobile is their coverage which is merely adequate.I already use VOIP but would cancel in a heartbeat if this were available in 24014.

Ubiquitous

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:35:43 -0500

I think they are going to have to add another clause to the definition of ubiquitous - see Starbucks. In our little city, we went from 0 to 2 in the past year and I bet we could support another 2 easily. I'd have to agree with They still have room to grow. So what if their coffee isn't the best - it is decent and you can always count on it.

Nicholas Carr weighs in on Apex

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:22:38 -0500

Carr wrote a piece on Apex the other day. He also noted the similarity with SAP, but more from the perspective of vendor lock-in. Do people want to write apps in a proprietary language?

My conjecture is that all complex applications are married closely to whatever system they are developed on, whether commerical or open source, and that portablility is mostly an illusion for these types of systems. Once they are built, they aren't going anywhere without a lot of blood, sweat and tears. So, the choice is really one of which platform is going to be the best one for this application for the forseeable future? There are quite a number of applications where the answer could be Apex (or something like it).

voice for the people

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:39:24 -0500

In working with a friend on some business ideas he had, I looked into some IVR solutions earlier this year. There are some nice solutions out there, but everything seemed like an administrative pain in the rear. I'm starting a new contract with a local company and the first project on my plate is to do an IVR integration. Instead of hosting the IVR system themselves, they are going with a hosted solution.

They've picked angel.com as the IVR provider. Angel.com has a nice little API and some pre-cooked integration with Skype and salesforce.com. They have a simple-looking web services integration as well (which is what I'll be using). Pricing is per minute at $0.12/minute for local (703 area code) calls and $0.17 for toll free calls. I should have more to say on this after I've worked on the project for a bit, but it looks interesting.

moving to the fast lane

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:27:29 -0500

I'm a T-Mobile customer and pretty happy by most measures (although I have no idea what the new "Stick Together" slogan is all about - sounds kind of icky). Anyway, they are upgrading their data network from GPRS to UMTS. It'll be super-nice to see data rates go from 4-5k/sec to 384k. I guess I will stick around for that.

Interesting new API

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:57:44 -0500

Salesforce.com has introduced an interesting new API for their applications called Apex. They have created a new language that is sort of a cross between SQL and Java and hooked it into their existing application. So, you can override the existing behavior in the salesforce.com application. In many ways, this seems similar to user and customer exits familiar to SAP developers - they are even run in a virtual machine in a way that sounds a lot like the way ABAP is run in SAP. Neat stuff.

Everyone has one

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 10:15:27 -0500

It is true - everyone has a cell phone. The interesting part in the article wasn't that fact (which is painfully obvious) but the discussion of why 37 percent of people keep their landlines. Simply put, it is reliability. Western consumers expect 5 nines reliability out of their products and get upset with anything less. This might be a lesson for technology companies: reliability can be a differentiator.

Keeping track

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:50:49 -0500

I've been setting up all of the infrastructure for my new business and needed a decent time and expense tracking system. I've got a small shop (me) and minimal expenses, so I wanted something very simple where I can record my time and expenses. My first instinct was to go for something like QuickBooks or Microsoft Small Business Accounting, but that is really overkill for what I need. Next, I looked around on-line for something that looked decent and there were some good solutions out there (QuickBooks Online looked pretty decent), but, again, they were overkill for where I am right now.

So, I kept searching around on the web for something cheap and simple to track my expenses and came up with Timesheet Xpress. They have a free edition (with some limited features) that I'm using now to kick the tires, but so far, I really like what I see. It has a simple approach to entering the time you spend on projects and the expenses you incurr. It took me probably an hour to get used to the way it works and then I entered in all of my recent time and expenses. I'm going to use it for at least the next month and if it continues to go well, I'll pony up for the full version (USD $71).

Argh

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:12:51 -0500

I booted my three year old Dell 8500 laptop last night and got the dreaded "NTLDR cannot be found". Argh. Now I need to get a new disk and recover my data.

And I was just thinking "Boy, this laptop has been very reliable compared to most."

XML and RDBMS

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:36:08 -0500

This is an interesting piece on the co-evolution of XML and relational databases. I agree with a lot of the points and espeically with the idea they can be used together very effectively. I wasn't initially a fan of the XML type in SQL Server 2005 and it does have its warts (so, how do I update a schema on a column?) but I think it is a decent level of integration because it makes XML a first-class citizen in the database, not just a CLOB.

My favorite quote: "Memory is the new hard drive and hard drive is the new tape drive". Interesting thought.

"free" music

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:57:08 -0500

SpiralFrog looks like an interesting idea if they can get it to work. They have plenty of money so the question is how obnoxious is the advertising going to be and how good will the catalog be? They also don't mention if the music is going to have DRM, but I would assume so.