Tech

Today is the first annual Ada Lovelace Day, a day where we honor women in technology. I pledged in January that if 1,000 other people agreed to blog about a woman that they admire in technology that I would do the same. Ada Lovelace was a 19th century Englishwoman who is often considered to be the first programmer. The daughter of Lord Byron, she worked on Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, a very early computer. In honor of Ada, I have…

[via Alan Wiig]

by John Ashbery (1966) Barely tolerated, living on the margin In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso Before it was time to start all over again. There would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils, And Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering The colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting The whole thing might not, in the end,…

Note: I have mixed feelings about Walt Mossberg, ever since I was told by another veteran technology journalist whom I respect that Mossberg does consulting for companies that he covers, before the products actually come out. Also, I get the impression that there’s a bit of jealousy amongst almost every journalist that I know — the guy commands probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars annually. As I’ve written more, my non-techie family sometimes asks me my opinion…

This may be old news to some, but I just discovererd that Belkin, maker of all sorts of gadgets, was founded and still thrives in Compton, California. Inc. wrote about the rise of the business in this ill-fated city back in 2003. It’s not too much of a stretch to compare Belkin to its inner-city surroundings in Compton, Calif.: neither possesses the kind of buzz-generating, love-at-first-sight glitz that inspires devotion. Pipkin balked, in fact, when his real estate agent first…

Dear Editor, I am writing to you to take issue with your editorial dated February 10, 2006. I find your argument against installing a municipal wireless network in Pleasanton to be overly paranoid and in some cases factually wrong. You wrote that San Francisco has a great deal of “hot spots” and presented a scenario where Pleasanton would become “jammed with laptops.” I work in San Francisco and despite what you may think of our local digerati, Market Street has…

Hi Cyrus, Just wanted to let you know that I enjoy your blog and am going to link it to mine. In particular I thought your Persian Web 2.0 post was very cool. As it happens, I am also a persian involved with Web 2.0! I guess we are really all over that. Anyway, keep up the good work. Have a good one! Cheers, Hooman Radfar Pittsburgh, PA

Today I got a response from Councilwoman Maio: Dear Cyrus, I felt as you did until I heard the program. Since you haven’t, as you said, maybe it would be helpful to you to track down the Tuesday “Our Healh and Fitness” program and get a sense of what was presented. You might even be able to get a transcript. Linda After spending some time online, I responded with the following: Dear Linda, I’ve found and listened to the program…

Anyone want to go with me? Homebrew Computer Club 30th Anniversary Retrospective: On March 5, 1975, a very special meeting took place at Gordon French’s garage in the then freshly named “Silicon Valley”. This was the first gathering of the “Homebrew Computer Club” (also called the Amateur Computer User’s Group). Now, this was no ordinary amateur group of folks but the very acorn of the great tree of the personal computing revolution to come. The hand-soldered microcomputer grew up to…