Listening to: NerdTV - Show 9 - Anina | PBS - NerdTV | PBS

I am currently listening to the NerdTV interview with Anina…
talk about a clash of cultures… old school PC vs new school cellphone, hard core
nerd vs hard core user, technologist vs fashionista. The interview just doesn’t flow
in the same ways that they do when Bob interviews the technology giants of the 70’s,
80’s and 90’s. I don’t think Bob fully groks Aninas tech/world view and THAT is very
interesting.

Listening to: Fasten Your Seatbelt (Ft. The Freestylers) - Pendulum

Now this is my sort of coffee table! From BoingBoing,
the Nar coffee table:

This Turkish coffee table has integrated bookshelves beneath sliding
surfaces; the books slot into vertical slots, like hanging files.

Listening to: Carrier - Fly My Pretties

Liksang.com has a review
of the PSP Talkman app:

How does all this translate in a real life situation? Starting off,
we went into “Basic Conversation”, where subjects like “Greetings” contain phrases
like “Good Morning”, “What’s Up”, “Goodbye” or “See you later”. We hit square and
went “Hi! How are you?”, without caring much about overly correct pronounciation or
refraining from a broad US mid-western accent. Very happy we were to find that MAX
had no problems at all with this and quickly offered “How are you?”, just ommitting
the “Hi!” we had so casually thrown at him. Changing the main language to Japanese,
we are glad to report that MAX did a great job when performing the same routine, recognizing
some simple phrases easily, even when voiced from non-native speakers at the first
go. After trying out several of the 28 situations throughout, we found speech recognition
to be quite good, if MAX indeed knows the phrase or part of what you want to be translated.

What a seriously smart idea!

Listening to: Only When I Lose Myself - Depeche Mode

From BetaNews:

With the release of a new user interface in Windows Vista and Office
12, Microsoft will also update the font that both products use for the first time
in eight years. The company says the new font is designed to take advantage of ClearType,
and is more modern than its predecessors.

Dubbed “Segoe
UI,” the font is more humanistic and less computer-like than it’s predecessor, Tahoma.
Microsoft also relied on a decade of research from its Typography unit on making fonts
easier to read and scan on screen.

Listening to: Still Grey - Pendulum

From TUAW:

Did you ever want to take a course at Harvard? Now you can–via
your iPod. You don’t have to be a registered student to download free podcasts of
Harvard University Extension School’s Computer Science E-1 course, Understanding Computers
and the Internet. Some of the lectures are videocasts; others are audiocasts. You
can subscribe to the podcasts through iTunes or your favorite podcast client via this
feed.This is only an introductory level course, covering the basics of hardware, software,
the net, and multimedia, but it’s a promising model.

I hope they start pocasting more advanced topics…

Listening to: Out Here - Pendulum

On Friday I developed a irrepressible urge to purchase the CD Hold Your Colour by
Pendulum. I’m talking a ‘drop everything, must purchase’ urge. Given that my preferred
supplier is way down the other end of town I thought I would try the high street
shops. I would miss out on my purchase points but I would sate my desire and it would
probably be cheaper to boot.

And then it happened…

I came crashing down into the sad, sad reality of the high street. Three CD stores…
none of them had what I wanted and all the people who served me showed varying degrees
of cluelessness (to be fair, I don’t think I’d be terribly engaged in that sort of
role). Now this is probably not all that strange. For me, at that point in the day,
it was jarring. I suffered a little bit of shock. I had genuinely entered the high
street with the expectation that i have when I shop on the net… “Yes sir, we have
what you want and we know exactly what your talking about.”

What happened to that lovely long tail I have gotten so used to? That long tail that
now shapes my purchasing habits so absolutely these days? Well, for the vast majority
of the planet it still doesn’t exist. Coming to that realisation was a kind of weird
feeling.

Even a crumby experience of shopping online is better than most of the experiences
I have had this week of shopping in a store.

Listening to: Nato’s Theme - Fly My Pretties

This morning I caught the last 30 mins of Building
Africa on BBC World. David
Adjaye tours a number of countries showing off the various architectural highlights
of each of them. While fascinating in itself the thing that really struck me was how
what I was seeing about Africa was different from the normal African stories and how,
as a consequence, my reactions to the continent were immediately different. Adjaye
wasn’t telling a story of poverty, death and dictators (though he did address on each
of these to provide the requisite context) he was telling a story of people moving
forward and shaping their worlds… for the first time EVER I thought to myself “that’s
exciting, I want to check that out.”

If you get chance sit down and watch Building
Africa. Not only is Adjaye a wonderful presenter but the subject matter turned
out to be perception changing.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

From Stuff:

Fujitsu,
one of the largest Japanese technology companies, opened a new digital media development
centre on Southbank earlier this month and predicted that commercial versions of the
prototypes it had on display would go to market within 18 months.

Fujitsu
says it has the world’s first film-based, bendable colour- capable electronic paper
with an image memory function that requires no power source to function.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

For my own notes: http://www.nanosolar.com/

UPDATE: : Another approach http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050701/disruptor-slawson.html (cheers Steven
Kempton)

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

Happy Thanksgiving day.