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We Must Adapt

Just a note for any one toting around an Apple laptop, be it an old iBook or a new MacBook: Get a video adapter!

More than a few times in the last year I’ve seen someone show up with an Apple laptop, and then look at the VGA connector on a projector, and have an “oh shit” moment where they realize things won’t plug into other things.

Even before my (pre-owned) iBook arrived, I had tracked down the needed VGA and s-video/composite video adapters on ebay. (I got both for under $20.)

I tend to carry my adapters around with me, and even offered one up at BarCampMadison to someone. Of course Apple in it’s infinite wisdom likes to change things each year, so my adapter didn’t work. (I ended up just letting the presenter use my iBook, though I warned him if it wasn’t interesting, I’d take my iBook and leave.)

For the modern folks, it looks like the Mini-DVI to VGA Adapter is pretty cheap, around $20. That should work for the MacBook and 12-inch PowerBook G4. If you have some other model, track down what adapter is used and order it today so you’re ready for the next user group meeting or BarCamp presentation.

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Does TechCrunch Matter?

Does TechCrunch matter to your customers?

That was one of the questions raised by Sean Johnson at BarCampMadison, where he gave a presentation titled "How To Burn Your Business Into The Ground – Lessons in Entrepreneurship"

I was reminded of this when I saw that TechCrunch just got a CEO. (Many people are asking “Why does a blog needs a CEO?”)

Sean’s point was that, as cool as TechCrunch is, at the end of the day, do your customers in the real world really care, or even know about TechCrunch? For most of us, we build things that are used by average people, not the select few digerati that are hip to the Web 2.0 lingo. There are tons of successful companies that have never been, and will probably never be profiled on TechCrunch, yet they do great work and make their customers happy. And that’s where the focus should be. Happy customers. Slashdot, Digg, TechCrunch, they all serve as these spotlights to shine on the latest online-thing that will give you brighter whites and cure what ails you, but it’s just a small percentage of a small percentage of people who pay attention to these things.

At the end of the day, do your customers, the ones paying the bills, really care if your company was profiled by some nerd news site?

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Fireseed Streaming Supercomputer(FS3)

Those crazy guys a Fireseed are trying to build a supercomputer. It’ll be called the Fireseed Streaming Supercomputer aka “FS3”

The FS3 project is a recently launched ad hoc tech project to design, build and program a GPU-cluster supercomputer, rather than the traditional CPU-cluster.

Join them at Bucketworks on Sunday March 18th, 2007 at 2:30PM if you wanna get involved…

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Lightning DST Problem?

Does Lightning have a Daylight Saving Time problem?

Lightning DST bug?

I don’t know when to go to the Apple Store! (18:00 is not equal to 5PM…)

Ah, I just checked for updates and a new version of Lightning was installed. Looks like they had a DST fix about a month ago. There’s also a Calendar blog which I might actually try to follow in the future.



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tw

It’s obvious that Twitter is cool, but honestly, it takes too much work. I mean, sure, I can try to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters, but why bother? That’s a lot of effort!

My new service will be named tw which is shorter than “Twitter” and has no uppercase letters, so you don’t even have to hit the shift key. And that “140 characters”? Forget it! We will be using two. Yes, two. Here are some examples.

  • :)
  • :(
  • ;)
  • :/
  • :p

I think tw will be able to convey all human emotions with just two characters.

(If you’re interested in funding this thing, I’ll need about 2 million. Leave a comment.)