Archive for December, 2007

Dec 28 2007

Talk about not learning from mistakes

Published byKarlin under net communities,privacy

Apparently being kicked around by 50,000 angry petition-signing users, privacy advocates, and bloggers didn’t bother the company too much because Facebook is back at it again: Six weeks after Facebook launched a controversial advertising program that tracked its members around the Internet, the Palo Alto company is quietly testing a new system that slips links to [...]

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Dec 27 2007

Blogging and small business

Published byKarlin under blogging

Interesting piece in the NYT which gives a cautious thumbs up to blogging for little firms. Some of them — a small ‘some’ — anyway. But some companies are suited to blogging. The most obvious candidates, said Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of “The Everything Blogging Book” (Adams Media 2006), are consultants. “They are experts in [...]

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Dec 24 2007

Christmas season has officially begun

Published byKarlin under ramblings

I know it began quite some time ago for most, but it is never really Christmas season for me til I make the Vinartarte (sometimes spelled vinerterte). This is an Icelandic cake with some of my favourite flavours– cardamom, vanilla, almond, cinnamon… and the secret ingredient (which no one can ever figure out) is prunes.The [...]

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Dec 23 2007

Highway to hell

Published byKarlin under general weirdness

Celine Dion and Anastacia do AC/DC. I kid you not. As one person comments: “This actually hurts my soul.”

One response so far

Dec 22 2007

The perfect geek gift

Published byKarlin under general weirdness

Gotta have it. A chicken foot USB drive. 

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Dec 22 2007

Watching the real dawn of history

Published byKarlin under events

Heritage Ireland did a streaming webcast this morning from Newgrange, catching the moment when a beam of sunlight on the shortest day of the year penetrates the lightbox and slowly ascends the passageway into the heart of the great stone structure and illuminates the innermost chamber. To be one of the very few that are [...]

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Dec 20 2007

Job one break starts, job two work begins

Published byKarlin under dogs

I finally finished the last of my writing assignments for a couple of publications this morning, meaning I have a break now for about two weeks. So, much relief here at the chance to kick up my heels — except that as soon as I hung up hat one, I took down and put on [...]

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Dec 19 2007

Getting kids into engineering

Published byKarlin under events

Engineers Ireland launched a website today for their February “week of wonder” events designed to get schoolkids interested in engineering. It’s nice and bright and features a robot — always an attention-grabber for kids… erm, and more than a few adults. I like the idea of the robot workshops — will be interested to read more when [...]

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Dec 17 2007

Insert frog-related headline here

Published byKarlin under Uncategorized

The Merc blogs – GMSV and Takahashi – have quite a bit today on Ribbit, a very interesting sounding Valley company that has created a software switch that integrates all kinds of communications apps, allowing one type to connect to another (eg landline to instant messaging to VoIP to WiFi) and enables voice applications of all sorts to be embedded [...]

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Dec 17 2007

Ladies’ man?

Published byKarlin under Uncategorized

Sky News website’s home page currently features this link: “December’s Top Theatre: Thesbian highlights, including Ewan McGregor in Othello”. I guess Mr McGregor has a special appeal to Sapphic theatre lovers?

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Dec 16 2007

Colossus decodes once again

Published byKarlin under Uncategorized

I missed this article last month but Bruce Schneier links to it in the current Crypto-gram. Colossus lived at the legendary Bletchley Park and decoded German high command messages during WWII. It took 14 years to rebuild the lorry-sized, 2,000 valve computer (particularly hard to do because the 10 known Colossi were all broken apart post WWII). For [...]

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Dec 09 2007

Digital Christmas

Published byKarlin under technoculture

I really adore these ornaments made from old circuit boards and CDs. From Nigel’s Ecostore. Great for decorating a package! The green of the circuit boards might kind of disappear on a green tree, but then — huzzah! — the gold and silver circuits and sauters will make them shine and stand out.

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