turker.out.printlnMy two cents on technology, life and anything else

Jeremy Zawodny points to Financial Times’ link spam.

This is bad because at some point in time there may not be any source that we may call “respected”. What is it with us, people, and the easy money?

• A Serendipitous Intention ? Dating an Apple Developer
  (tags: blog funny)

I learned that Microsoft announced Microsoft Acrylic when I was reading Scoble today. I immediately clicked on the link to the product page and I can say that I could not find any compelling reason to press the “Click Here to download Now!” link. Do you know what I look for first when I go to a product site? Screenshots! Is it that hard to put screenshots on a webpage? I don’t think so. What else do I look for? Features. What does this thing do? Ok, it is a “professional graphics software” but how is it different from other professional graphics software. At the end of my couple of minute long visit to the page, I do not have a clear understanding of the product to urge to me to download and “help Microsoft to test their new professional graphics software”.

Does the fact that the product being a technology preview and beta prevent the team to provide more information? I would think a technology preview product would be eager to give more details and a compelling reason to download and seriously test the new technology. What do you think Scoble?

What is going on at that intersection? What I mean is, there is always some person at the traffic lights at the corner of the street who are asking for money and help. Some hold a sign saying they are hungry or homeless, hungry and homeless, just hungry, and just homeless. Some just hold a cup feeling they don’t need any explanation. That is normal you may say. But what I find interesting/weird is that there are 3 or 4 different people that stand at that corner. It is almost like a shift; different person at different times of the day or days of the week. Also, those people look normal to me, they don’t look like they have been living on streets.

So, I wanted to ask to any possible Nashville readers of this blog if they knew anything about this particular spot. Are these normal people who are in need of help, or is this their day job?

Are you at Vanderbilt (or in Nashville), and working with parallel systems or need supercomputer power for your computations? Drop me a line and let me know. There is something we should talk about;)

IEEE launched today the IEEE Membership Portal. It is a step forward in the right direction in my opinion. In eight years that I have been a member, I hardly visited IEEE pages except IEEE Xplore. The new portal personalizes the IEEE experience bringing together the services and features in one page. It is possible to see the journals and magazines that you are subscribed to and it is possible to easily update member information. The newsletter that I got says:

New Portal Personalizes Member Information As an IEEE member, if you’ve ever tried to learn the names of the journals you subscribe to, wanted to buy life insurance, or needed to submit a change of address, you’ve probably been frustrated by the number of IEEE sites you had to visit before you found what you wanted.
Not anymore. A new site — dubbed the Member Portal — now brings together in one location links to information about all the features and benefits of membership. Find out more at
http://boldfish.ieee.org/u/360/40235722

If you are an IEEE member go ahead and see the portal for yourself at http://www.ieee.org/myieee.