Josh Bancroft's Linkblog

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Wow, this ia cool, unsolicited look at ISN (even though Dave works for Intel) and it's history. It's (in my biased opinion - this is my group) one of the most unique, innovative, and high-performing groups I've ever seen at Intel. I'm proud to be part of Intel Software Network, and even though I say it frequently, it's true - I love my job! :-)

So you understand the context here, I am not being paid by the Intel Software Network to write this.

I am occasionally inspired by stories of how corporations or business units reinvent themselves. It's something I can learn from as I try to be a better leader and manager.

The challenge - how do you reach out to software developers and help them be more effective using our hardware?

Other companies do their developer outreach by putting together a membership program and deliver all kinds of value to the members. The best example of this is the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN). If you are not familiar with it, MSDN offers developers a stream of documents, how-to guides, SDKs and support articles. At the highest level of participation, subscribers get access to trial versions of practically all Microsoft software products.

Amongst the Microsoft-oriented development crowd, MSDN membership becomes the badge of achievement as a kung fu developer. Every month, subscribers would get a shipment of CDs or DVDs with the latest updates. It would be a special ritual to pull outdated disks from your MSDN binder and insert the new ones. And it's quite expensive to join at the highest level, thus the badge of alpha geek which comes with membership.

Any company would be envious of this kind of devotion from its eco-system of developers. But how could you possibly emulate it in bounded budget? Microsoft must spend a pretty huge sum keeping MSDN rolling, and it's worth it to them in keeping developers engaged.

Faced with the question of how to invest to keep pace with the expectations of a developer program, the Intel Software Network took a "right turn" and headed into new territory. Why not leverage the tools and assumptions of Web 2.0 and throw ppen our program's content development to the very users who would benefit most from it.

It's a really gutsy move from a company like Intel! Prior to this, absolutely any and all content generated by Intel employees needed to be vetted and approved by Intel Legal and likely others in the various business units. Certainly we wouldn't expect the external contributor community to abide by these rules.

My hat is off to Elliot Garbus who was the General Manager at the time and who took on this decision to break with tradition and throw open the gates.

One of the results of this decision was that Intel is now honoring external contributors to the network, we call them Black Belt Software Developers. These are people so committed to the whole idea of mutual contribution for mutual benefit that they have invested their time and talent to contributing to everyone.

We have content contributions from many more contributors now, and the technical content keeps improving.

My congratulations goes to the leadership of the Intel Software Network! It was a bold move, and I love the results. Keep it going!

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to allow Congressional hearings, but not to delay, the implementation of new FBI regulations that would allow them to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of any crime. As an editorial in the New York Times points out, this is a power that has a history of abuse. In times past, it was used to wiretap Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to spy on other civil rights and anti-war protesters." As Dekortage points out, "Several senators have formally complained that citizens could be investigated 'without any basis for suspicion,' which the Justice Department denies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Nice. These just got more attractive, though I've not heard good things about their performance.

Acer has announced some serious price cuts for its Aspire One laptop series. Like $50 price cuts. Here’s a rundown of the new pricing structure:

• Aspire One AOA110-1722 with Linpus Linux Lite, 8GB SSD, and 3 cell battery - $329 (was $379)
• Aspire One AOA150-1570 with Windows XP, 120GB HDD, and 3 cell battery - $349 (was $399)
• Aspire One AOA150-1447 with Windows XP, 160GB HDD and 6 cell battery - $399 (new)

Why slash prices on a PC that’s only been out a few months? I don’t know, but I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with a $299 coming soon from Dell…

I checked a few online shops and the new prices don’t seem to be widely in effect yet. But hopefully we’ll see updated listings shortly.

[via Laptop Magazine and Engadget]

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Those are big servers.

Microsoft's new data-centres are comprised of entire sealed shipping containers that are slotted into racks and left to run until a critical mass of their processor units have failed, then are swapped out.

Starting with a Chicago-area facility due to open later this year, Microsoft will use an approach in which servers arrive at the data center in a sealed container, already networked together and ready to go. The container itself is then hooked up to power, networking, and air conditioning.

"The trucks back 'em in, rack 'em, and stack 'em," Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told CNET News. And the containers remain sealed, Ozzie said. Once a certain number of servers in the container have failed, it will be pulled out and sent back to the manufacturer and a new container loaded in.

Microsoft's data centers growing by the truckload (via Beyond the Beyond)

Empfohlen von Josh Bancroft
Sign me up! ;-)

Intel CTO Justin Rattner, at his keynote speech in San Francisco's Intel Developer Forum, told the seated that by 2050, the gap between humans and machines will close. And Intel, of course, will be selling you the implants.

He said Intel's research labs are already looking at human-machine interfaces and examining future implications to computing with some promising changes coming much sooner than expected.

"The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago," Rattner said. "There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future."

Other cool stuff addressed by Rattner include an implementation of resonant wireless power and "catoms," microscopic robots that collectively change their arrangement to create "shape-shifting materials."

Borg, Tesla and The Culture all in one press release, oh my!

Intel CTO Says Gap between Humans, Machines will Close by 2050 [Intel]

Julian Prokaza:

Unfortunately, as excellent as it is in delivering a desktop-like web browsing experience on a small screen, the BlackBerry Bold’s web browser is just far too slow to be a serious alternative to the iPhone. The Bold is the first BlackBerry with 3G support, but even over a more reliable Wi-Fi connection, our iPhone 2G repeatedly finished downloading a web page several seconds before the Bold had even got past a blank screen and a “Requesting…” message. Even with just its 3G connection active, the Bold still lagged behind the iPhone 2G with its EDGE connection. Either Apple is doing something right or RIM is doing something wrong with their respective web browsers, but whatever the case, it’s a pretty poor show for the Bold.

Scroll down and watch the side-by-side video shootout. It’s painful.

I use Flickr to store my photos online. You can “geotag” your photos on Flickr, to show where, exactly, they were taken (on a map). I’ve geotagged most of the 4000+ photos I have on Flickr. By hand, dragging them to the correct location on the map. What a pain.

The iPhone, with the new 2.0 software, can take pictures and tag them with your current location (if you have an iPhone 3G with real GPS, this location information is usually MUCH more precise). Suddenly, the dream of being able to get photos from the iPhone to Flickr, WITHOUT having to manually geotag or othewise manipulate them, seemed to be within reach.

So close, yet so far away.

Right now, there are a few ways to get photos from an iPhone to Flickr. The easiest, I think, is to setup the “upload by email” feature on Flickr. This gives you a secret email address that, when sent a photo as an attachment, uploads the photo to Flickr for you. This is how I get iPhone photos onto Flickr 99% of the time. The downside is, the photos get sent at a much smaller size (640×480) than they were taken at (1600×1200). On top of that, all of the “EXIF” metadata (what make and model camera took the picture, what exposure settings were used, etc.) gets stripped off of the photo when it’s emailed. This includes the geotag/location information. So it arrives at Flickr shrunken and lobotomized and unaware of where it was taken. So sad.

Once the App Store launched, Flickr uploader apps started appearing in droves. AirMe seems to be a popular one, but I tested it, and it didn’t preserve the geodata, (and I think it shrunk the photos, too). So I deleted it.

I’ve been watching the development of an app called Flickup with interest. The author, Martin Gordon (@kodachrome22 on Twitter), is someone I kind of know from Ars Technica. But most importantly, the feature list of Flickup looked promising - it can upload photos and preserve the geotag/location information. It’s not free ($1.99), so I waited a little longer to try it than I would have otherwise, but try it I have, and I’m pleased (if not 100% ecstatic) with the results.

First of all, Flickup DOES preserve the geotag information of the photos it uploads (with a caveat):

This is a photo I took from within the Flickup app, and uploaded straight to Flickr. The app asked me for permission to use my location (like all location-aware iPhone apps do), which I granted, et viola! The photo appears on the map where it was taken (to the best of my iPhone’s knowledge). Click on the photo then click “map” to see it - I can’t figure out a way to direct link to a single photo on the map on Flickr.

Even better, for photos taken from within the Flickup app (as opposed to uploading saved pictures from the Photo Album), the photos go up to Flickr in their full 2 megapixel 1600×1200 glory.

If you’re looking for an app ONLY to take pictures, and send them directly to Flickr, you can stop reading here. Flickup is perfect, and does everything you’d expect it to (you can edit the title, description, and tags of the photos, etc., too).

So what are the caveats? They have to do with uploading saved pictures from the iPhone’s Photo Album.

First, when you upload a saved photo from the album, it goes as a shrunken 640×480 version. Martin says this has to do with some limitations in the iPhone’s APIs (which I believe). He also says that the API is the cause of all the other EXIF metadata being stripped from the photos (which is probably what makes this such a problem in the first place - fix your stupid APIs, Apple!) Don’t count this against Martin or Flickup.

Second, when you upload a saved picture from the album, Flickup WILL geotag it, but it appears to grab your CURRENT location (it asks), rather than use the location data stored in the photo. In other words, it will geotag the photo with the location of where it was UPLOADED, instead of where it was TAKEN. Martin acknowledges this is sub-optimal.

(A photo uploaded from my Photo Album, but geotagged at the time of upload.)

If what Martin says about the Apple APIs stripping out EXIF metadata (and again, I have no reason not to believe this is true), then there’s probably no way for Flickup (or any other photo uploader app) to preserve a photo’s ORIGINAL location information. The best we can hope for is how Flickup works - tag it with the location at the time of upload. If you take photos and upload them immediately, then there’s really no difference. But it’s super annoying that Apple comes SO CLOSE to making this work the way it should, yet falls short in the home stretch.

So, is Flickup worth the $1.99 in the App Store? If you’re a Flickr user that cares about a) uploading pictures at full size instead of 640×480, and/or actually preserving all that fancy location data that your iPhone can tack onto your photos, then yes, absolutely. Flickup is the way to go for full size geotagged Flickr uploading goodness.

There’s still room in this field for perfection. But it seems that it will depend on Apple making changes to the photo and location APIs on the iPhone, or some really clever developers figuring out ways to get around those restrictions. Guess which one I’m betting on happening first?