This picture from a New York Times article on the Vista launch has been making the blogging rounds today: Now, it’s hard to argue that the executives pictured (from Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba, AMD and HP) all look pretty serious, possibly even dour. But, who knows the context of that exact moment when the picture was taken? Rather than being a real indicator of the enthusiasm (or lack thereof) of the participating companies, I think it’s just the same old media trick of choosing an image to suit the story, even (especially) if it doesn’t portray the subject in a…
The front page of today’s San Jose Mercury covered the unveiling of a new high-tech watercraft called Proteus: Dr. No, your escape vehicle is ready. The 100-foot, spider-shaped contraption skimming around San Francisco Bay looked more like a James Bondian vessel than it did a new class of watercraft. But that’s exactly what its inventor, Ugo Conti of El Cerrito, says he’s achieved. This thing looks really wild. It’s hard to judge the size from the pictures, but the specs say the beam is 50 feet (15.2 m), so it’s probably 100 feet (30.5 m) in length. The WAM-V, short…
Today I chaperoned a school field trip to NASA Ames Research Center here in Silicon Valley. The educational program focused on wind tunnels and some aspects of creating vehicles for space travel. Overall it was interesting and seemed to hold the kids’ interest pretty well. Of course I volunteered because I’m interested in this great facility right here in our backyard. Anyone commuting near highways 85, 101, or 237 in Mountain View has seen this facility’s impressive buildings. Tonight I did a little digging to see what kind of online information I could find. The official Ames Research Center site…
Shuttle mission STS-116 landed in Florida almost an hour ago at 5:32pm EST. The NASA landing blog said the flight covered 5.3 million miles, orbited the Earth 204 times, and lasted just under 12 days, 21 hours. (I wonder how this duration compares to the other shuttle flights…) Check out Yahoo!’s Shuttle Full Coverage news page or NASA’s STS-116 Mission page for news and multimedia. I like this picture of the first spacewalk — the astronauts are doing construction on the International Space Station while in orbit over New Zealand and Cook Straight in the Pacific Ocean:
Last night I attended the first “confab.yahoo” at Yahoo HQ. The topic was Prediction Markets moderated by James Surowiecki, author of the popular book “The Wisdom of Crowds”. Overall this was a great learning event and I’m glad Yahoo! is starting this series of micro-conferences and making them open to the public like this. For a great summary of the event, check out ReadWriteWeb’s post: Prediction Markets at confab.yahoo.