Internal Mono(b)log

Jonathan Schwartz (Sun’s CEO) has a great blog entry on the power of the brand:

I spent a good portion of a weekend a few weeks ago with a customer that was having a quality problem. There’s no point in going in to the nature of the customer or the problem, but suffice it to say it was a bad problem, and by far and away the most expensive kind: one that put the customer’s brand at risk. For those that deliver service via the network (or free software), brand is all you’ve got. It’s not an asset, it becomes the asset.

The whole blog entry is great and [available here](http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/what_service_means_to_me)

Those of you who know me know that I’m somewhat of a geek, a ham radio operator, and definitely a lover of toys.

For my birthday, [Kim](www.eyecanseethat.com) got me a [RC Helicopter](http://www.e-fliterc.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFLH1300) and it’s great fun and a big challenge. I’ve only put about 3 hours on it trying to get a hover going in my dining room – suffice it to say, I’ve spent more time repairing the Heli than flying it due to my space restrictions. I’m either going to have to grow some patience or find a large indoor place to play.

Anyhow…

Found this on the net today: a great convergence of remote controlled aircraft, radio technology and virtual reality goggles.

Check out [this link](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9091545735215129742).

I haven’t rented apartments for over a decade, but [Kim](http://www.eyecanseethat.com/) and I are thinking that at some point our current home (built as a duplex, but currently a single family dwelling), may someday become an income property.

[O'Reilly Radar](http://radar.oreilly.com/) [posted](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/rentometer.html) a link to the [rentometer](http://www.rentometer.com/) which is a pretty nice mashup for seeing if the rent you’re paying is higher or lower than the comparable rents in the area.

Pretty sweet.

I’ve always wanted an RC airplane or RC helicopter. I had a COX airplane when I was a kid, but never got the chance to fly it – my Dad took me out to show me how it was done – the plane left the ground and came down hard, never to fly again.

Anyhow, as a teen, I pursued my pilot’s license and glider license, but that’s long past and still I have the desire to fly by wire.

[This](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7239242995971908820) guy has it all sorted out – fly by wire but see from the perspective of the RC airplane. NICE!

The new reality of server co-location is that electricity is the tightest commodity going. More precious than bandwidth or floorspace.

Sun has been meeting this challenge head-on, and more power to them for the effort.

Now [California offers rebates for deploying coolthreads servers](http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=putting_a_chill_on_the).

[Kim](http ://www.thinker.ca/~kim/blog/) and I finally got around to trying a new veggie restaurant in the area called [Fresh](www.juiceforlife.com) and I have to say that I’m disappointed in not checking it out sooner. The menu is HUGE, all veggie, and delicious. Best of all there is one (two in Toronto currently) about a 15 minute walk away. We definitely aren’t the 1st to find this place, it’s hopping busy.

We’ve been there twice in the last week and I expect to be there again soon. At between $30 and $40 for 2 for dinner, it’s not too hard on the pocketbook and worth every penny for the fresh and delish’ food. BTW, for those who fancy a glass of wine with dinner/lunch (breakfast? ) they allow you to bring your own bottle to enjoy for a $10 corkage fee. (No you can’t take anything you don’t drink home. This is Ontario afterall.)

I got a Nokia 6682 a week or so ago and have since been playing with it, trying to get a feel for it’s features. I have to say, this is one pretty nifty phone.

In the small package there is a cell phone (of course), video camera, still camera with flash, mp3 player, but best of all, the phone is built on the symbian platform and comes with a pile of very cool software. Of my favorites are voicesignal, quickoffice and an adobe pdf reader.

Adobe, you’re likely familiar with. Quickoffice allows you to create, read and/or edit MS office documents on your phone(!!!) – very cool. The coolest piece of software that came with the phone is, in my opinion, voicesignal. Voicesignal builds an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system into your phone. No more training your phone with your voice, Voicesignal just understands your voice “out of the box”. Pretty cool.

I took some pics with the phone over the weekend, but I have yet to transfer them off. I’ll post some here once I do.

Oh, and the absolutely best thing about this phone? It sync’s seamlessly with my Macbookpro. Sweet!

Anyone wanna give me a Nokia 770 to play with?!

The momentus day has finally arrived! Fraleigh.ca is live!!!

Yesterday in the car on the way into The City, we were talking about the concept of “The Chip” – a human-computer interface consisting of a chip installed in the brain that is always connected to the ‘net and has at its disposal all the computational and search power that exists there.

At first, it sounds like an interesting idea. Hook into all that information, the ultimate “always on” experience. Then we started looking at the downsides. Can you imagine how bad it’d be if some hacker breeched the firewall on the chip. People’s brains would start getting spammed, or used by hackers that need space to store files, or worst be the subject of denial of service attacks…

Maybe “the chip” isn’t such a good idea afterall