Paul's Picks

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 16:50:07 GMT

Wireless: We are moving forward in this are too!

Dianah Neff - Wireless Philadelphia. The City of Philadelphia is in the vanguard of American municipalities offering ubiquitous wireless access to their citizens. Despite legislative opposition from the cable and telecommunications industries, the city has forged ahead with a public/private partnership to build the infrastructure and skills needed to bring affordable wifi to the city's diverse neighborhoods. Dianah Neff describes the vision and the logistics of Philly's plan to shrink the digital divide and connect residents to the information highway. [IT Conversations]

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 23:44:16 GMT

Cool Photo App

Check out the new program by Albert Lai of Bubbleshare Looks like a winner to me.

[Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:10:12 GMT

Great ideas on how to improve email.

Geek to Live: Train others how to use email - Lifehacker

[Career Opportunities: The High-Tech Career Handbook]

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:03:51 GMT

It will be interesting to keep an eye on this. I don't see much of a chance for this in our shop.

Forresterâ€™s corporate blogging solutions evaluation, Part 1. I'm conducting a review of corporate blogging solutions this quarter and could use your help in the process. Forrester has been doing evaluations -- we call them waves of technology solutions for the past few years and we thought this... [Charlene Li's Blog]

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:22:57 GMT

Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Interesting concept here.

I ran into Jeff Barr today and he asked what I thought about Mechanical Turk. 'Huh?" I said. Don't know where I've been for the last week. Amazon launched a service that brings together people with small jobs and people willing to perform them. The jobs pay pennies and take a few seconds. Micropayments for microwork. Very cool idea.

Most of the examples on the site now are picture identification tasks. The payments are around $0.03. Not a lot of money, but the jobs don't take long. Right now the requesters all seem to be Amazon. I signed up and spent a few minutes earning $0.24. Not the best pay I've ever received, but I was using a trackpad. :-) The money goes to my Amazon account and can be turned into cash.

I couldn't help thinking, however, as I did it about Paul Allen's talk that I just attended and about his pleas that we use technology to help lift people. There are a lot of people who could earn money doing this. If you have access to a computer (in the library, for example) and can read, you're qualified. To earn enough to put you above the poverty level ($9/hr), you have to do 300 tasks an hour--not inconceivable. The only sticky point is that the people most in need might not have access to a bank account to turn the earning's into cash. That's something that could be fixed without much effort.
[Phil Windley's Technometria]

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:43:04 GMT

Wiki for Business? You bet!. I have now had the experience of using a Wiki information system for a variety of purposes and I am entirely sold. If you need to build up and information source with other people, it can be the easiest and fastest method.

Anyone can edit a wiki page to add or change information, but you can put the wiki behind a password to limit access. One friend is using an internal wiki to collect and share information on the myriad of procedures that staffers must use to process loans with a variety of banks.

This posting from LifeHacker, links to a particularly good article from Information Week magazine on wikis and their use in a business environment.

How To Use Wikis For Business
Over at Information Week, there is a very nice overview/tutorial on the use of Wikis in business. Wikis can make for a good, inexpensive collaboration tool or content management replacement, and this article may help decide if a wiki is right for you.

How To Use Wikis For Business [Information Week]

(Via Lifehacker.)

By noemail@noemail.org (Douglas). [Career Opportunities: The High-Tech Career Handbook]

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:49:11 GMT

Slingbox.

From the Slingbox website......

"What is the SlingboxTM?

The SlingboxTM Personal Broadcaster is a consumer electronics product that a user connects to their personal TV source (including a TiVo, cable box, analog cable, satellite receiver, or virtually any other AV device) and to their high-speed network/internet connection (including DSL, cable modem, or other solution) for the purpose of "placeshifting the content" - enabling them to view their TV programming on any device. Once connected, the user can watch and control their personal TV experience from virtually any computer, PDA or mobile phone. Your TV. Any Device. Any Location."

Now tell me that isn't freaking cool!? Anything that timeshifts or placeshifts (it seems like those aren't even words for some reason...?) is cool in my book now. TiVo starting the timeshift revolution and now I believe slingbox will start the placeshift revolution. I'm a gadget geek and this thing has me going. Slingbox will be available at BestBuy and CompUSA starting tomorrow (Thursday, June 30th) and will run $249 with no montly fees.

[Alex Lowe]

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:35:59 GMT

Equation Editor

Here is something useful for folks in math and enginnering!

Word

Geek symbols

A little used feature of Office is an applet that will help create complicated equations.

Equation Editor is available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
It is a sub-set of a full-blown program called MathType. The instructions are similar for each version.

To add an equation to your document, go to Insert>Object.
In the Create New option area, scroll down to Microsoft Equation 3.0.

(BTW: If you create the equation in Word. You can save that Word document as HTML. That will save the equation as a GIF file that you could use on the web. )

If you need more instructions, use the Help file in Equation Editor itself.

Also:
Steve Simonds at Portland Community College:

Creating Mathematics inside Microsoft Word

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada:

Creating Equations With Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
(there are videos available as well)

Also:

Microsoft.com/education:

Using Equation Editor

Indezine.com

Equation Editor
by Geetesh Bajaj

See all Topics
[Unofficial Microsoft Office Stuff]

Sat, 21 May 2005 00:16:20 GMT

Oracle now podcasting.

Oracle now joins the podcasting world, for all you database freaks.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Sat, 21 May 2005 00:12:43 GMT

Google announces â€œMy Googleâ€. Ok, itâ€™s not really called My Google, but a confused name called â€œFusionâ€, but I think you get the idea. Available in the test area of Google Labs, the personalized home pageallows users to choose content (like Gmail, the New... [Charlene Li's Blog]

Thu, 05 May 2005 23:08:05 GMT

Simple single sign-on. Today's 2.75-minute screencast features Nic Wolff's ingenious solution to the vexing problem of single sign-on to websites. I've mentioned it before, but I suspect few outside the geek community read those postings or "got it" if they did. We'll see if this narrated visual demonstration can manage to cross over. ... [Jon's Radio]