Thoughts on AI, architecture, and building systems that work in the real world.

Great tools for developers: Google Charts and Visualization APIs

Google continues to release very cool, functional, and more importantly, useful APIs. They have introduced a new Visualization API, and updated their Charts API. The updates to Google Chart include three new charts (Sparklines, Radar, and Map) and a more flexible usage policy:…

On Friedrich Nietzsche

A good friend of mine and I like to talk about late 1800s philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche. He is much more educated than I am on the subject, and recommended that I expand my knowledge and read some related books (i.e. it is…

On Startups: Blyk and Management-to-Developers Ratio

Blyk is a startup company. What they are doing seems pretty cool. They have an interesting management team, ex-Nokias and other. That said, I’ve seen and experienced startups that are management heavy. But Blyk is an extremely management-heavy startup… 30 folks? That seems…

M:Metrics 3 years anniversary, and some good metrics with it

Earlier this month, M:Metrics celebrated their 3rd anniversary; happy birthday M:Metrics. With it they released an interesting set of metrics that compares the last three years of device capabilities and growth: At launch, the mobile content sector was young and promising, with expectations…

The iPods rock the Space Shuttle, and single-bit soft errors

I found this article about an iPod that was spotted on the Space Shuttle… I wonder if the iPod is experiencing single-bit soft errors. In space, unless the electronic equipment such as computers (or iPods!) is “radiation hardened”, using techniques such as single…

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke 1917-2008

Arthur Charles Clarke, was born on 16 December 1917. Visionary, author and inventor. Passed away today March 19, 2008 at the age of 90. What a visionary person he was. He got right so many things; this is back in the 50s and…

Steve Jurvetson: The Joy of Rockets

I love Rocketry too… You can do small rockets just for fun, or fly it to the edge of space if that’s your goal; the latter being very challenging and very exciting. Check out this cool video of Steve Jurvetson speaking at TED:…

On 2D navigation on a mobile screen

Morten Hjerde (Sender 11) wrote a very good piece on 2D navigation on a mobile screen: Navigating large information spaces can be disorienting even on a large screen. On a small screen it should ideally be avoided, but that is not where we…

Skyfire Mobile Browser

At the last MobileMonday Austin, I met Raj Singh of Skyfire. There he showed me Skyfire, a mobile browser (I think it is Mozilla-based) with full Flash, video, QuickTime, JavaScript and AJAX support. I was very impressed with the browser, its speed and…

On Mobile Consumer Segments

According to InsightExpress, there are three mobile user segments: The Mobile Pioneer (15 percent of the market) is ahead of his peers in terms of mobile behavior, and uses advanced features weekly such as Internet, unique applications, and/or video. The majority of Mobile…