Moon crash: Public yawns, scientists celebrate
“We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood to expect the money shot, like ‘Deep Impact’ or when Bruce Willis saves us from a comet,” said physicist and television host Michio Kaku, who was not part of the mission. “Science is not done that way.”
Sometimes there seems to be more hype for things than actual thought to process and what the future holds for certain achievements.
Of course the animation by NASA seemed to be more fiction than reality.
Using Mozilla Prism
From the Prism home page – Prism is an application that lets users split web applications
out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
Making a web application look more like a standalone application. I use this with Meebo to display popup alerts.
Also the separation of the applications and browser is also a nice advantage. Firefox will and Chrome has separate processes also ready.
I like to keep Hulu and other streaming media separate and avoid browser load and performance.
I’m looking forward to some more of the feature plans to add in the future.
Gene May Determine How Much Sleep You Need
According to this article we may be hardwired for the amount of sleep we need.
“Normal people need eight to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep,” says Ying-Hui Fu, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco who led the study. By contrast, the two people with the mutation seemed to need just five or six hour’s rest each night. The work appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science.
Looks like there needs to be follow up to see whether this is a benefit. Does this mean less sleep is required or just cannot sleep more?
Google Wave
Google Wave preview looks nice. The ultimate in communication. There are plenty of articles talking about if one wants Google to know everything about them though.
Also why not sign up for Google Voice. One number for the rest of your (or Google’s) life. One can even provide a call widget and put it on a web page so anyone can call his/her Google voice number. (I actually tried to publish this article with the call widget but it didn’t work.)
In the meantime Lifehacker is taking votes on which is the best instant messenger I use Digsby and Meebo depending on which computer I happen to be on.
Losing Sight Of People In A Crowd Can Spell Disaster
Losing Sight Of People In A Crowd Can Spell Disaster
Focusing on technology instead of people is a key factor in events going wrong, according to a major series of reports into crowd behaviour and management.
The article focus is on event and crowd control but it brings to mind that the people are the primary focus for the event. Sort of like clients of the software that engineers build.
In other words – customer focus? Understand your customer.
Indeed.com Trends
Indeed.com provides trend information for their jobs information. Great way to stay on top of what the job market is looking for in candidates.
Here’s one for programming languages (see also TIOBE – software index) but the search can look for anything in the job description and even look for multiple words.
Silicon Valley “brain drain” due to costs
From Computerworld – Why is Silicon Valley being compared with Detroit?
There has always been issues with finding cheaper labor and cost of living. Not sure how the employment numbers are derived:
- Silicon Valley 244K
- Minneapolis 133K
- Houston 151K
- Wichita 55K
I wonder what the current numbers of Seattle and New York are for employment and cost of living. High costs there also. Interesting how they split San Jose from San Francisco. I think by combining SJ and SF as a single region the number of people employed in tech would be almost double.
TIOBE Software: Tiobe Index
Ever wonder which programming languages are in demand and most popular? The TIOBE Programming Community Index is updated every month to show trends. The long term trend chart so what is happening over a few years.
The Technium: Reasons to Diminish Technology
Article (and comments) on the implications of technology and regards to morality. There are consequences to all our actions – whether they are good or bad is sometimes a matter of perspective and what each of us find important.
We have lots of science fiction stories on the extremes of what technology can do for and to humans and the rest of the world.
Firefox Extensions
Lifehacker article on Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition inspired me to list the add-ons/extension I use for Firefox.
Also on the Lifehacker Must Have List. Copy without having to use Alt+C. Just select and paste using Alt+V or the middle mouse click.
Manage downloads without having the download window popping up. The download is shown on a bar at the bottom of the browser.
Run the IE engine within Firefox. Great for sites that require Internet Explorer like SharePoint.
Save web pages locally and manage them easily.
Reduce space by making the menu bar tiny. Then move items from the navigation bar to menu toolbar.
Tree style tab. I put this on the rightside. Space is taken up for this but I can scan and select tabs more easily using a vertical display rather than the default hortizontal tabs.
Technology and things 