May 29, 2007

Child hit by car followup

I have really enjoyed reading the blog recently started by our city’s police chief. It gives, what I think, is a rare and honest look at the inside of law enforcement. Yesterday he provided his response to the many complaints he hears about there not being enough police around schools in the morning to prevent accidents such as those that happened last week at Prescott Elementary.

May 29, 2007

Of course Intel doesn’t make laptops, but they often put out demonstration technology that they hope hardware manufacturers will draw inspiration from and run with. Here is a new ultra-thin laptop with an e-ink display in the lid to allow checking of calendar, email etc without opening the computer.

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May 18, 2007

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May 17, 2007

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Tubes. Connect Instantly.

May 15, 2007

While we're on coffee houses... My favs

I visit more coffee houses and drink more java than I’m prepared to fully disclose, but here are some of my favorites in Lincoln.

The Mill: This is, along with 'the coffee house', the classic coffee house. I love the wood and brick. I love the dock. I enjoy the atmosphere that all of the international students that hang out there provide. The tables are a little small and the chairs too uncomfortable to do more than an hour of work there.
Scooters: While we're at 8th and P (The Mill), I'd might as well cover Scooters too, which is right across the street. Scooters has bigger chairs, bigger tables and fast internet. They also have very comfortable arm chairs if you are just looking to relax. I enjoy the big windows. Like anyplace in the Haymarket, the thing that often keeps me from going there is metered parking and parking garages.
Meadowlark: This coffee house sits in the old Godfather's Pizza spot at 17th and South. If I'm looking to go work for hours on a project, this is probably where you'll find me. I don't think there is a coffee shop in town with such a diverse audience and it is not uncommon for people to camp here all day talking, smoking and drinking. They usually have some sort of entertainment in the evening and the drinks are very good.
Perfect Cup: We suffer from a severe coffee house shortage on the east side of town where I work. Perfect Cup resides inside of the Good Neighbor pharmacy near the Hy-Vee at 70th and O. The staff is friendly, The drinks are fine, the atmosphere is okay and the internet is slow.
Panera: I only go here because it is near work, but there are free refills on coffee and the internet is stable and an okay speed. I'm here now and getting 1.3 mbps down and .3 mbps up. The staff is not real friendly and the prices are kind of expensive.

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May 15, 2007

Lincoln's Coffee houses in today's Journal Star

Brian Christopherson of Lincoln’s Journal Star took on the burden of visiting some of downtown’s larger coffee joints to compare the vibe and prices.

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May 14, 2007

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Effect Measure

May 13, 2007

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Lighthouse Pro

May 12, 2007

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Top Teacher Shown the Door After Showing “Baghdad ER” | The Progressive

May 9, 2007

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May 9, 2007

Office Suites / Replacements

First, Congratulations to Kirk Langer for his semi-annual posting. They are rare, but good.

Concerning Sun’s committing a couple people to the aqua port of Open Office, I am not impressed. Sun makes me yawn almost as much as Microsoft. First, I know that Star/OpenOffice has been around for quite a few years now, but here’s some problems I have with it…

What does Sun know about client applications? They make servers, an operating system and Java. In many ways, they are like Apple in that they do a bit of everything but where Apple excels at creating user experiences, Sun does not. Sun shines (sorry) when they are providing the technology and tools to let others deliver great experiences. When Sun tries to do it themselves it generally strikes me as nothing more than a technology demonstration to encourage developers to take those ideas further.

Star/OpenOffice has always felt like a “me too” application that tries hard to mimic Microsoft Office without delivering ways that people can act better/smarter. I guess simply providing a knock-off of MS Office without the enormous price-tag is a noble-enough goal, but I would much prefer that they show some innovation and publish a product that is a joy to use.

So what would I do? I’m not sure, and I’m glad that I don’t have to be the one to decide but here are some thoughts.

I would analyze/list the “word processing” needs of our community. This would certainly include note-taking, outlining and report/research paper writing among others. What features do these tasks require?

Tabs?
Indenting?
Margin control?
Headers, Footers?

I would match these feature needs with grade levels and subject areas, then against available products to see 1) how we can deliver applications that best suit the needs of those using them and 2) how we can do this with as few applications as possible.

Developers have long realized that word processors can be evil. Why do I want my text formatted before the text has been finalized? When people send me word documents to put online, the first step is always unformatting all of that text so that I can then format it to match the site. Text-editors are much cheaper and easier to use than word processors and often do the required job just as well.

Office users feel the need, to the detriment of their document, to use strange features that have been packed into the program. Random bits of clip art get dropped in, text gets wrapped, warped and justified in unnatural ways and typefaces that have no business knowing each other are thrown together.

Many people with real layout needs use Office that would be able to better use their time in an application that was actually designed to do layout.

I don't think there is a perfect solution right now. If one is looking for something that is cross-platform and does what is needed there really is no solution outside of OpenOffice and it is good news that the Macintosh platform may finally get a version of it that doesn't require X11 to run. I would prefer to see something like Google Docs used, but at this point there are many things that it does not have, such as tabbing, margin control or headers and footers. There's hardly anything simpler than an MLA formatted document, and I'm not sure if Docs could even do that.

I'm very interested to see where we go as a district regarding this. I think that between a potential OpenOffice port, improvements to Google Docs/Spreadsheets and new web-based apps that will undoubtedly appear, it is clear that Redmond should definitely not be counting any checks before they are cashed.

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May 8, 2007