So
I read several announcements today about the new Yahoo Go service. After searching endlessly for an actual URL that linked to the offering, I finally found one. I'm sure I won't be the first or last to say that the offering should have been called 'Yahoo No Go'. The computer portion of it is not currently available and will be PC only, the 'TV' portion of it is also a PC app (and also not available). Ah, the mobile portion is available for Nokia series 60 phones — I'm in luck, I have a Nokia 6620 that fits the bill.
I download the ~1.7MB app and install in on my 6620 with great interest after having seen the screen shots and read the hyperbole from the CES announcement. The ygo.sis file expands to take nearly 4MB of phone and memory card space, then goes on to download another app for connections. After the initialization, I try out the apps. One by one, I grew less and less impressed. Yahoo Go, it turns out, is just 4MB of bloat that does nothing more than start the WAP browser on the phone (which wants you to login to Yahoo again!) to display the services that are already available to you through the Yahoo mobile site. Accessing the Yahoo mobile site directly using the Opera series 60 browser provides a much better user experience that this. What a total crock. Hell, Cingular's J2ME IM application kicks the crap out of this thing (even as a single tasker). Google's J2ME Maps implementation makes Yahoo's effort look like the brown stuff in the bottom of a college dorm fridge.
I then went about removing this craplet from my phone, but, guess, what? As part of the removal process, it wants to 'phone home' to Yahoo and waste more bandwidth before it will remove itself (shades of Microsoft). It's no wonder that Yahoo recommends that you allow the app to connect whenever it wants to (versus letting you know that it want to make a connection). I finally had to go into the Nokia AppManager and delete the various pieces of it manually.
Based on this experience, Yawnhoo needs to try harder and put out something useful (other than hype).
So Mavromatic has an article about a company that has created road reflectors that are capable of measuring a vehicles speed and using a built in camera, capture the license plate number (and presumably issue you a ticket).
I just wonder how well these things would do in a climate that regularly requires snow removal (and potentially inadvertent camera/detector removal).
So
Not surprisingly, ThinkSecret has some interesting speculation regarding what Apple might announce at Macworld Expo next week. Seems that they believe that there will be a 'media-savvy' Mac mini and a content distribution system.
In an effort to appease media companies wary of the security of digital rights management technology, Apple's new technology will deliver content such that it never actually resides on the user's hard drive. Content purchased will be automatically made available on a user's iDisk, which Front Row 2.0 will tap into. When the user wishes to play the content, robust caching technology — for which Apple previously received a patent — will serve it to the user's computer as fast as their Internet connection can handle. The system will also likely support downloading the video content to supported iPods but at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive.
So
Some 'friends' of this guy thought it would be fun to record on Tivo the previous days winning lottery draw, then buy a ticket with the winning numbers and show him the recorded draw as the current winning one. Needless to say he gets more than a little excited (quite a bit of profanity used).
So
If you spend entirely too much time (how could that be?) keeping up with things in your feedreader of choice, you might find the services of reminderfeed to be valuable. Basically, you set a date, time and description, then use the subscribe buttons to have your feed-based reminder delivered to you.
You could always use this in conjunction with alerts function at Yahoo to have this reminder delivered via SMS to you mobile phone. Perhaps that will be a option directly from reminderfeed in the future.
So
The BBC have an interesting article titled “Do you get less wet if you run in the rain?”. The article delves into the 'serious' mathematics and physics to consider in answering the question. I won't spoil the conclusion — read the article.
However, I did appreciate one of the post comments which reminded me of my Intelligence and Effectiveness rant from the other day:
Alternatively, ignore the maths and get an umbrella.
So Microsoft has agreed to use the feed icon found in Mozilla (aka more MS Innovation). Here are the 'new' feed icons. This post really doesn't serve any other purpose that to allow me to upload the icons so that now I can link to them in blogger.
If you prefer your feed icons all pixel twiddled in a thousand different ways (and available in EPS, SVG, PSD, PDF, PNG, JPG, and GIF formats), then FeedIcons is the place for you.
So
I recently finished reading a book that got me thinking about the relationship between science and religion. The book in question is The Universe In A Single Atom. A reading of this book, coupled with current events should give anyone pause for thought. First, it was refreshing to read that in Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama encourages all monks (and lay people) to have a knowledge of science. It is in no way perceived as a threat to religion. In fact, both are seen as a way of understanding the nature of reality by means of critical investigation. This is not surprising, as one of the fundamental tenants of Buddhism is to 'believe only what you have found to be true yourself' — religious dogma is not forced on the follower. Throughout the book, the position held is that the benefit of science is that it can work to ease suffering at a physical level. Religion can strive to do the same for mental suffering. Contrast this with the veritable war on science that is coming from the right in this country and you have to wonder about the nominal aims of such a course of action. For religious fundamentalist, there is no place for science (or any opposing view point for that matter), only blind faith. One longish quote from the book expands on a more enlightened view of the interplay of science and religion (in this case Buddhism):
In one sense the methods of science and Buddhism are different: scientific investigation proceeds by experiment, using instruments that analyze external phenomena, whereas contemplative investigation proceeds by development of refined attention, which is then used in the introspective examination of inner experience. But both share a strong empirical basis: if science shows something to exist or to be non-existent (which is not the same as not finding it), then we must acknowledge that as a fact. If a hypothesis is tested and found to be true, we must accept it. Likewise, Buddhism must accept the facts — whether found by science or found by contemplative insights. If, when we investigate something, we find that there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality — even if it is in contradiction with a literal scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries or with deeply held opinion or view. So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to discard accepted or long-held positions if our search finds that the truth is different.” (emphasis mine)
The book develops with the Dalai Lama exploring various scientific topics such as quantum physics and neuroscience and how they compare and contrast with Buddhist scripture and cosmology. He even states openly, where, in light of current science, some of the cosmological explanations for the origin of life seem quaint at best and in many cases are regarded as a point in time view of the world rather than an enduring truth. Other areas examined at the intersection of religion and science are human values and ethics.
