Bill

Time Warner’s board approves plans to spin off AOL - washingtonpost.com

In a statement, Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said, “We believe AOL will then have a better opportunity to achieve its full potential as a leading independent Internet company.”
Maybe: if they manage to do something about software that’s intrusive, clunky, tempramental, and about [...]

The latest issue of Scott’s Newsletter (and if you don’t read it, why don’t you?) has an interesting segment about cleaning up Firefox profiles and solving some problems that seem recently to have been plaguing the Foxmarks extension.  Foxmarks, if you’re not already using it, stores your bookmarks online so that they can be automatically transferred [...]

The Associated Press: Microsoft to let PC users turn off IE Web browser

Windows 7, the successor to the much-maligned Vista, isn’t expected to reach consumers until next year, but more than a million people are already testing early versions. A pair of bloggers tinkering with settings stumbled upon one they hadn’t seen before: The ability [...]

Zoho, a seriously undermentioned contender in the cloud computing arena, has just completed a serious revamping of their online word processor, Zoho Writer.  I’m liking it — seriously liking it.
Check it out and let me know what you think.  While you’re at it, you can check out some of their other online offerings.  These folks [...]

The Linux kiddies have the same blind spot as Google: they seem unable to make the jump from geek to user. Linux will never be the lead OS (any version) until the everyday user is led by the hand through every single step, as with most Windows applications. The only reason Google gets away with [...]

Having a cow over Gmail just misses the point | Coop’s Corner - CNET News
Truth be told, the walls of Jericho did not crumble, though the outage nonetheless triggered the (now thoroughly predictable) hand-wringing and bloviating from the usual cast of characters. Amusing to watch, but after this incident, there’s also the wider context to [...]

President Barack Obama may be getting a souped-up, super secure version of the BlackBerry called the Sectera Edge, recent speculation suggests. The NSA-certified device could allow Obama to fulfill his wish of staying connected, some suspect, while also addressing the numerous security concerns that come with the territory. [Sectera Edge: A BlackBerry Secure Enough For [...]

Hero: a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength; “RAF pilots were the heroes of the Battle of Britain’; (classical mythology) a being of great strength and courage celebrated for bold exploits; often the offspring of a mortal and a god.
Chesley Sullenberger is neither of those.  He is a highly-trained professional’s professional, who [...]

Tesla will supply about 1,000 powertrains for the Smart ForTwo EV, Elon Musk, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said at a conference held in conjunction with the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The electric Smart cars with Tesla components are due to arrive in late 2009 or early 2010.
If the matchup is [...]

………………..Emily…………………

This week, Michael Phelps signed a deal worth more than $1 million to advertise Mazda in China. Jerry Seinfeld earned a reported $10 million to appear in Microsoft’s recent television campaign. But the person who may be the biggest celebrity pitchman in the world is not earning a penny for his work.  For BlackBerry, Obama’s [...]

“People are too depressed to be sexually active. This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex. With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual [...]

“It requires neither imagination nor acumen to predict that our current conglomerating, lowest-common-denominator, demographically targeted publishing industry will soon achieve its streamlined apotheosis—a single, worldwide, Exxon Mobil–owned literary empire offering up seven books twice per year.  …”  If Books Could Kill

“Despite all the carping, there’s a lot that is good to say about 2008. The presidential election was great. Britney seems to be improving. George W. Bush is leaving. Eventually. That collider in Switzerland didn’t create a universe-gobbling black hole. So far.
Before we move on, one last blast from the past. See how much you’ve [...]

“The bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed freaks who do little else but contribute to the site, says a post racing up the Hacker News charts. The post pulls this number from an essay Aaron Swartz wrote more than two years ago, based on some comments by Jimmy Wales.
“Wikipedia’s growth has exploded [...]

How do you get to be in the “international consortium of timekeepers”? - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine
On New Year’s Eve at 6:59:59 p.m. ET, an “international consortium of timekeepers” [added] one second to the world’s clock. How do you get to be an official timekeeper?

A simple hillside patio at his small Santa Cruz home offers famed digital detective Hany Farid something that the hallowed halls of Dartmouth College cannot: a place to think.
With just a laptop and cup of coffee, Farid writes the computer code that reveals tiny flaws hidden in phony photos. His suite of software tools — [...]

State of the Art - No Keyboard? And You Call This a BlackBerry? - NYTimes.com
Here’s a great example of the intelligence that drives R.I.M.: The phones all have simple, memorable, logical names instead of incomprehensible model numbers. There’s the BlackBerry Pearl (with a translucent trackball). The BlackBerry Flip (with a folding design). The BlackBerry Bold [...]

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? If Obama Has to, Yes He Can - NYTimes.com
For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to [...]

Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide. E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.
Host of Internet Spam Groups Is Cut Off - washingtonpost.com