Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: August 14, 2005

  • Rob Curley Blew My Mind

    A few days back I listened to this IMA Keynote by Rob Curley on IT Conversations. It blew my mind. I started out looking for some insight in to the team behind Django, The Lawrence Journal-World, lawrence.com, and so on. I got a whole lot more than I had bargained for.

    If you’re involved in old media, new media, any media, or just want a glimpse of the future (I hope), please have a listen. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the next few months as Django takes flight, Rob heads to Naples (with technical backup from Eric) and Adrian telecommutes to The Washington Post

  • Nokia Smartphone Hacks

    Smartphone HacksI stumbled upon Nokia Smartphne Hacks by Michael Yuan (with foreword by Christian Lindholm) while windowshopping for books yesterday. It looks like a great book for people with a Smartphone wondering what cool stuff they can do with it. The tin cans on the cover rule. The hacks themselves are quite useful since there are so many gems buried away in these little devices. I have to admit that I knew about most of these hacks before, but there are always gems buried in these devices that you didn’t know about. I’m also far from your average smartphone user, so many people that pick up this book will find it interesting, useful, and inspiring. If you’ve got one of them there Nokia smartphones and are wondering what else you can do with it, check out this book.

  • Scuttle the Shuttle?

    It may be painful to be left without a means for Americans to get in to space (aside from bumming a ride on a Soyuz), but something needs to be done and quick. I would hate to see the shuttle fleet mothballed immediately, but that might just be the best thing for space travel in general. This AFP story on Yahoo! News puts in to words a lot of thoughts I’ve been having about the shuttle program lately.

    At this point in the game plan we’re going to be without our own means in to space between 2010 when the shuttle program finally expires and 2014, the earliest that I could imagine the CEV and cargo carriers might be ready. Here’s what NASA engineer Homer Hicham has to say:

    “The space shuttle is … never going to be reliable no matter how much money, time and engineering careers your throw at it. Let’s put the shuttle on the shelf right away and give engineers the gift of designing new ships to carry humans into space,” he said

    The current next-gen plan seems like a duct tape solution, but given the time and budget restraints I don’t see an alternative. All of this stuff is a total downer for a sci-fi geek like me, and I’m just hoping that China announces serious plans to put a man on Mars by 2020. Short of something like that I don’t see us taking space exploration very seriously at all.

    *Sigh*