Quotes of the Day

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
  - Frank Zappa

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
  - Rodney Dangerfield

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
  - George Bernard Shaw

One Year Old

It totally escaped my notice until now that this blog is one year old, two days ago in fact. I was was going to use the moment to talk about blogging, but Scott Hanselman stole my thunder. Its worth a read.

Surface Computing, here I come

Ok, maybe I’m being over optimistic about how soon Surface will be available to the average Joe.

It is a great idea, revolutionary in scope (Apple has not yet tried coffee table sized iPhone screens) and is full of possibility. It’ll go the way of the Xbox and prove to be a sell out success. Its the natural complement to Microsoft’s suite of home focused products. Media Centre is the PVR; Home Server makes sure everything is backed up and in a central, universally accessible location; your friendly 360 also has the capacity to stream music and photos as well as play games and DVDs in Hi-Def; the Zune fits in here somewhere as well, but don’t ask me where. Now Microsoft comes in an turns the coffee table into an interactive experience that ties in with all the above and acts as a thin client for them plus bringing its own functionality to the table.

Mary Jo, while usually right on the ball with Microsoft, takes a differing view:

But do I really need a table at a restaurant (or in my home) to tell me the best food pairings for my wine choice? Or to generate for me a customized version of a map of local attractions?

Unless there are some surface-computing form factors that don’t look like a chunky coffee table or a retail-store kiosk, I have zero interest in a Surface. For now, the first iterations of Microsoft’s Surface Computer seem a lot to me like the first “Origami” ultra-mobile PCs: Products in search of a market. (And not very well-designed products, at that.)

True. But if there is no market, there no reason why one can’t be created. Microsoft is doing exactly that by starting off with enterprise-level deployment in hotels and suchlike. Once people see “the Surface” in action, they’ll be wanting one as well.

I’m not a wine buff, but I do enjoy a good meal. And have no problem taking instructions from an ultra cool coffee table (for the acronym lovers among us that’s: UCCT).

Partial Feeds

Partial Feeds are the worst kind of feed there is to subscribe to. They drive me insane.

Fortunately, a few bloggers (in my blogroll, that is) are seeing the light and changing to full text feeds. Recently Michael J. Totten changed to full text feeds and I read more of his stuff now as a result.

Steve’s post at the Ransom Thoughts blog ( found via Scoble’s link blog) has the exact same thoughts about this. He goes a bit further than me and says he’s unsubscribing from partial feeds.

Feeds are there for the express purpose of giving people easier access to your information, not baiting links to drive up the PageRank and roll in the AdWords revenue.

Remember the blogosphere is a community with a vast amount of information contained in its many pages (and feeds). Since it is a community, a single blog survives only by the grace of others that link to it.

So be nice to people when it comes to full text feeds - let them read your stuff with as little effort as possible - it’ll help your blog in the long run.

The first comment to Steve’s post puts it best:

Life’s too short for [a] clickthrough.