Remember the Rainbow?

After seeing some new developments in the gaming world, I am not having much fun. We are about to repeat some of the same things we went through during the dawn of the PC era in the mid 1980s. Do you remember way back when with copy protected software, and incompatible disk media formats? Do the names Ashton Tate and DEC’s Rainbow mean anything to you?

Here is how gamers are about to repeat this history.

How Cars Are Leading Platform Independence

Your car is the leading edge for computing platform independence. Hard to believe, but true.

It is ironic. I spend a lot of time telling you which computing platforms are the right choices for your applications, and how to extract that last bit of performance out of your systems.

But my thoughts today are that eventually, these choices aren’t so important. And in some areas, the platform choices are so indistinguishable that it is hard to tell.

Take your car as an example.

Personalized RSS feeds for everyone

The more I use it, the more I am becoming a bigger fan of RSS. It is almost becoming a borderline obsession in the past few weeks. I like the way it acts as both a content syndication service and a notification system. And it is nice that RSS doesn’t require any specialized software, so I don’t have to download any new applications.

RSS has become popular in the age of blogs, but it has more universal and interesting applications. It is certainly here to stay.

You can read more of this post here.
And here is a great list of various RSS applications, more up to date than my post.

The Ultimate Smart Home

I wanted to describe the ultimate smart home that I’ve seen and draw some lessons for you, the enthusiast and early adopter.

The scene is a suburban house that was built from scratch by John Patrick, who retired from running IBM’s Internet business several years ago. And the first lesson is that you have to design your home systems - not just computing but distribution of water, power, and other services - like IBM designed its mainframe computers, with centralized management but distributed control. We truly have come full circle with desktop computing.

You can read more about his home here.

WiFi As Urbane Renewal

Since I moved here, I have found that there are two things that get Californians excited: free parking and free WiFi. Even better, how about places that offer free parking within a few feet of having free wireless access. The only thing better would be laptops with built-in cup holders for your lattes. Wait a minute, isn’t that what the CD drive is for?

Two years ago the City of Long Beach was one of the first to jump on this trend, and enabled free WiFi in a four-block area along Pine Street, one of the more pedestrian-friendly and restaurant-laden spots in the area. Then they turned on free WiFi at their airport, which has become a busy cross-country hub since Jet Blue started flying there and American had to match its service levels.

Read the complete essay here.