Published on Monday August 11, 2008 .
The Olympics are finally here. Always one of my favorite events, this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing, China was one of the most hyped ever. As someone who has always been wary of the Chinese, still found myself thoroughly impressed with the opening ceremony. The artistic performance was highly creative and melded clockwork precision with 15,000 performers; the Chinese have seriously set the bar high for future hosts as well as shown the world how far China has come in the last decade. Aside from one tragic story, the games are well run so far.
As of today, China leads not only the overall medal count, but the gold medal count as well (China 9, U.S. 3). While i don’t expect the discrepancy to last for long (espescially once track and field gets under way), I strongly believe that China will give the United States a strong run for it’s money in terms of overall medals.
So far we’ve seen some epic performances, most notably in swimming, fencing and basketball but there are stil nearly two weeks of competition. I typically find myself watching two TV channels at once and stream another event on my computer. You might call me some sort of Olympics addict. Derek posted some stunning photos over on Markfive, and Gizmodo has an interesting read about the opening ceremony here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 3 screens worth of Olympics to watch!
It seems nowadays, there is a web application for everything. In a few short years, we’ve seen explosive growth in a movement called Web 2.0. This has resulted in a shift towards spending more and more time in our browsers, and less time in standard desktop applications. With so many new web applications popping up left and right, you will invariably see clones and companies trying to best each other. It can definitely be overwhelming trying to keep track of them all. The following are the web apps that make the cut for me. Those who know me well, know that I am extremely particular about the technology I use so I hope you will find these sites as useful as I have.
Continue reading ‘Web Apps Galore’
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose final lecture inspired millions, has died of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pausch, 47, who turned the lecture into a book, said that no one would have been interested in his words of wisdom were he not a man in his 40s with a terminal illness.
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Published on Thursday July 24, 2008 .
Via Digg (via TechCrunch)
Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors, who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page.
I’m not entirely convinced that Knol will become that popular. This day in age, being first has a lot to do with a product’s success. While Knol address the one main criticism of Wikipedia, article integrity, that alone doesn’t look like enough to chip away at Wikipedia’s popularity and sheer volume of information. That being said, I do believe that the open editing of Wikipedia has held up better than most would expect. I’ll be interested to see how the perception of Wikipedia changes (particularly in academia) over the next several years.
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