dan on SWiK

Welcome to the Frontpage

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:57:12 -0700

Widgets 1.0: Requirements

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:58:40 -0700

Introducing djatoka: A Reuse Friendly, Open Source JPEG 2000 Image Server

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:04:03 -0700

Welcome to the PS3 Data Center

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:04:10 -0700

Computerworld has done a nice job of encapsulating a corporate IT trend we’ve been writing about for the last couple of months with our focus on accelerator chips — among them graphics processors from Nvidia or AMD and Cell (which was designed originally for the PlayStation 3) from IBM — moving into the enterprise. To sum it up, the x86 processor, the workhorse of corporate computing, can do a lot, but accelerators such as Cell or GPUs can do some things better and faster, such as Monte Carlo simulations on Wall Street or video encoding and decoding.

That’s leading some IT managers to look into hybrid machines like the newly launched Roadrunner supercomputer, which uses AMD’s x86 chips and Cell. Hybrid machines won’t take over the data center, but plenty of firms that build high-performance computing systems for enterprises are eying the trend with interest.

The Computerworld article quotes Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, as saying that 40 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies will be using hybrid computers within five years. One challenge will be getting enterprise software ported onto the different chip architecture through efforts like Nvidia’s CUDA or IBM’s software development kits for Cell, but there are plenty of companies working on that problem.

photos courtesy of IBM

KidCast Podcasts

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:46:05 -0700

BSDCan 2008: Opening Session

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:05:38 -0700

BSDCan 2008 officially started this morning at 9AM with an opening talk by the event's organizer, Dan Langille. However, in reality the event has already been running for two days, with the FreeBSD tutorials having started on the 14'th. After arriving in Ottawa yesterday afternoon and finding my room in a 20 story University of Ottawa residence, I wandered down to the Royal Oak Pub for early registration, meeting several dozen BSD hackers from all over the world.

This morning's opening talk was well attended, filling up first with clusters of laptop users around the power outlets along both walls. By 15 minutes after the hour, the room was completely full, and Dan started with a humorous slideshow of example letters he's been receiving ever since posting the words "letter of invitation" somewhere on the BSDCan website two year back. Coming primarily from Nigeria, the letter's authors often claim to represent large groups of developers, yet always coming from "disposable" email addresses. After some laughs, he launched into his opening keynote.

U.S. WiMAX Saved by $3.2 Billion Infusion

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:16:37 -0700

You can all Xohm now — and call it Clearwire. The much talked about WiMAX joint venture between Clearwire and Sprint Nextel is going to happen and the news is going to come as soon as tomorrow. The combined company is going to be worth $12 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. Here are some facts:

Comcast is pumping in $1.05 billion.
Intel Corp. is putting in $1 billion.
$550 million will come from Time Warner Cable.
$500 million will come from Google.
$100 million will come from Bright House Networks.
The new company is also going to be called Clearwire.
Current Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff will also be the CEO of the new company, Craig McCaw will be chairman.
The service will offer voice service and broadband.
Cable providers will sell it under their own brand, with a re-seller agreement with the new Clearwire.
There is a good chance this service comes out before the wireless guys roll out their LTE networks.

Other details are sketchy, but here are my thoughts:

Sprint Xohm is dead.
Craig McCaw can chalk this up another win — he saved his near-disaster investment(s) in Clearwire with this deal.
Intel will throw mad money to save some of its investments, however foolish they might be.
McCaw & Wolff bluffed their way to a sweetheart deal. The cable companies, Google and Sprint are all playing from a position of fear. McCaw made AT&T buy his wireless operation, spend billions on it and then walked away, smelling very green. Same is true this time.
Many might see this as a win for Dan Hesse; I think of it as the start of one giant hack job in Overland Park, Kan. He will sell Nextel and be left with a puny Sprint that will eventually be sold to T-Mobile or someone willing to pay up just to shut up Wall Street.
You might want to recall the AT&T implosion and the end of Michael Armstrong, who had the right ideas at the wrong time. Of course, he listened to Wall Street too much.
The big winners will be the equipment providers: Motorola, Nortel, etc.

The elephant in the room:

This is a spaghetti-like mess of conflicts and self-interests. I wonder how open this network is going to be? Clearwire has a history of blocking other services such as VoIP carriers. Comcast is a known P2P offender. Will Google be our only search option?

The final word:

I told you so comes to mind :-)

X300 ThinkPad: One Week Later

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:06:39 -0700

Dan Farber has a new home for his blog, Outside The Lines. I was reading it using the best Windows RSS reader, FeedDemon, this morning when I stumbled upon this little video by Lenovo that pokes fun of the MacBook Air. Funny stuff! It also reminded me that I needed to share my early impressions of this new device. First, it has been great to have it around since I am watching the Twenty20 cricket tournament that is going on in India right now.

Willow.tv only works on a PC and Internet Explorer, which is seriously lame. Still, it has forced me to use ThinkPad X300 for about four hours a day, and I can understand why people rave about solid-state hard drives. This machine (running Windows XP) is fast — and I mean fast — for basic computing (or the cloud computing tasks we typically do these days.) I wish I had a Macbook Air with SSD to do a one-on-one comparison.

My very quick take after spending a week with X300: If you are looking for an ultra-portable with a great keyboard, decent screen, you like using Windows XP and money is no object, then there is no way you can go wrong with x300. Automattic CEO Toni Schneider just got one.

Clock Ticking On Pageflakes?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:56:42 -0700

Updated, Monday, 7.30 PST: Personalized web page startup Pageflakes has run into trouble and is desperately seeking a buyer, according to our sources. The company is rumored to be running low on cash and will join the dot.gone club unless it can find last-minute buyers. I am told that there are a couple of interested buyers, though they are not big spenders.

Pageflakes CEO Dan Cohen, formerly of Yahoo, denied that the company was running out of cash. He invited me to a fancy lunch and offered to pay with the company company card. “All startups are up for sale! We frequently receive inbound M&A inquiries,” he said.

However, my sources are fairly confident about the tough times facing the company, which was founded in Germany and is headquartered in San Francisco.

The company was co-founded in October 2005 by Christoph Janz, Omar AL Zabir, Ole Braundenburg and Shahedul Huq Khandkar. Benchmark Capital Europe invested $1.3 million in Pageflakes in May 2006, and followed up with a $2.8 million bridge.

Even though Cohen denies running out of cash, our sources tell us that their burn rate is over $300,000. Given that the company had little to show in terms of revenues for 2007, simple math shows that they are skating on very thin ice. Simply put, they’re in urgent need of fresh cash, but given the state of their traffic, that looks like a long shot. Pageflakes had around 1.5 million visitors a month and over 200,000 registered users. Those are remarkably low numbers, making it tougher for them to compete with their rivals, which explains why Pageflakes’ recent attempts to raise capital have come to naught.

Pageflakes’ closest rival is Netvibes, a Paris-based company that has had its own set of challenges. Of course, the real competitors for these personalized web page startups are the Internet gorillas – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL – which are offering their own version of personalized web pages. (Read: WebWorkerDaily’s review of Top Ajax Start Pages.)

Pageflakes is just the tip of the iceberg: Many 2005-2006 consumer web startups that have failed to grow real-big-real-fast will find life increasingly tough, with many facing the fate of Pageflakes. Stay tuned!

Updated: Last evening we got an email from Cohen in response to our questions. Here is essentially what he said.

We don’t give out financials, but the liabilities we have are typical for a startup, we always make payroll, and we’re mostly current with our vendors. I won’t comment on the amount you state other than to say that’s it’s not too bad for a VC-funded startup! We’re out raising capital, and as you know the market is tough, and we haven’t closed a new round. Our current VC continues to be supportive.

This morning, there are reports that Live Universe is buying them. Given that Brad Greenspan’s roll-up vehicle buys web companies on the cheap, it is clear Pageflakes didn’t get a premium. Newsgator was another bidder and offered close to half a million dollars. Since Live Universe hasn’t issued a statement, plain math showed Pageflakes was going to be part of the dot-gone club.

Plan Of ‘Attack’

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:53:46 -0700

Source: FlickrThe Black Keys have been a model of consistency throughout their first four albums, relying on little more than Dan Auerbach's deep, bluesy vocals and searing guitar licks atop Patrick Carney's thunderous drumming to build an enthusiastic fan base. Related articles

Black Keys : Win Free Vinyl & New Video [via Zemanta]
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple (plus The Black Keys - Attack and Release): Pop CD of the week [via Zemanta]

404 Blog Not Found:たらいを回すならHaskell

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:44:01 -0800

Zude! Startup Scores $5.3M

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:59:34 -0800

Fifth Generation Systems, owner of drag-and-drop web page customization technology provider Zude, has raised an additional $5.3 million in a second round of venture capital. It also added Dan Bricklin, a computer science superstar and co-creator of spreadsheet software VisiCalc, to its board. Perhaps that money and Bricklin’s talents will go toward perfecting Zude’s difficult user interface.

XML Editor

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:16:36 -0800

Featured Firefox Extension: Get Directions with Two Clicks with GDirections

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:16:21 -0800

Dan Carlin -- News, Politics and History

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:26:38 -0800

xmlforasp.com

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:42:12 -0800

KnoppMyth

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 13:03:03 -0700

KnoppMyth is an attempt at making the Linux and MythTV installation as trivial as possible.

MythTV

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:35:19 -0700

Official website of the MythTV project.

Mythbuntu

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:35:18 -0700

Providing an Ubuntu based MythTV distribution that is easy to configure, maintain, and use.

KnoppMyth

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:35:18 -0700

KnoppMyth is an attempt at making the Linux and MythTV installation as trivial as possible.

TED Talks: The rise of the amateur professional

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:39:15 -0700

Crowdsourcing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:36:34 -0700

Interest, but somewhat dated, read

What would the Director of Strategy at Lotus say?

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:57:07 -0700

Really, what would Dan Heintzman, the director of strategy at Lotus, say about IBM joining the OpenOffice.org community? Andy Undergrove wondered too and interviewed Dan Heintzman from Lotus. Dan makes some interesting points, including:

IBM hopes to signal its commitment to ODF and the OpenOffice.org to IT managers that are not sure how long this technology will last. he mentions the $1 Billion invetment tha tIBM announced for Linux way back. However, I must have missed an announcement that impressive or any direct number at all.
He acknowledges that there have been tensions between Sun Microsystems and IBM over community governance and that IBM’s announcement means IBM will help to make change in the governance structure of the OpenOffice community happen.
Dan’s vision of a document is a container that brings elements toghether, but retains their source. It is more a collage of text, graphics, data then the coherent print form we often think of. He thinks ODF is a viable platform to start this transformation.
Dan dodges the speculation if IBM would add an e-mail/calendar program to the Open Office suite.

Open source in libraries: community = strength - Coffee|Code

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 21:30:16 -0700

Open source in libraries: community = strength

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:24:05 -0700

Caveat Emptor - Tennant: Digital Libraries - Blog on Library Journal

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:08:15 -0700

Nineteenth-Century Open Source

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:26:30 -0700

積丹尼＝ Dan Jacobson

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:38:24 -0700

很酷的blog

Dan Connolly, W3C

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:53:40 -0700

XForms/eXist - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:49:21 -0700

dan on SWiK

Welcome to the Frontpage

Widgets 1.0: Requirements

Introducing djatoka: A Reuse Friendly, Open Source JPEG 2000 Image Server

Welcome to the PS3 Data Center

KidCast Podcasts

BSDCan 2008: Opening Session

U.S. WiMAX Saved by $3.2 Billion Infusion

X300 ThinkPad: One Week Later

Clock Ticking On Pageflakes?

Plan Of ‘Attack’

404 Blog Not Found:たらいを回すならHaskell

Zude! Startup Scores $5.3M

XML Editor

Featured Firefox Extension: Get Directions with Two Clicks with GDirections

Dan Carlin -- News, Politics and History

xmlforasp.com

KnoppMyth

MythTV

Mythbuntu

KnoppMyth

TED Talks: The rise of the amateur professional

Crowdsourcing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What would the Director of Strategy at Lotus say?

Open source in libraries: community = strength - Coffee|Code

Open source in libraries: community = strength

Caveat Emptor - Tennant: Digital Libraries - Blog on Library Journal

Nineteenth-Century Open Source

積丹尼 ＝ Dan Jacobson

Dan Connolly, W3C

XForms/eXist - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

積丹尼＝ Dan Jacobson