Author: Tim Jarrett

Google galore

Dave points to new services from Google: Glossary, Sets, Voice Search, Keyboard Shortcuts. Cool tech. This is what differentiates Google from other past search engine failures. By now, if it were another Yahoo or AltaVista, Google would have launched six auction portals and a weather page instead of thinking of ways to make the user’s search experience more productive.

That said, I’m trying to understand where the hell they’re going and failing. I can certainly see how Glossary will be useful, but it’s slower than the main Google search. Sets? I can’t think of a practical application offhand, but if someone’s interested in the part of traditional Google searching that provides related links, Sets could be a good way to focus the results of such a query. Voice Search? Busy signal. Might be cool if it gave the results over the phone rather than making you have a browser. Keyboard shortcuts? Very cool, but I have the funny feeling that I’ve just used ten years of browser and markup development to recreate the Lynx experience on a Google search results page.
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OmniOutliner as an AppleScript tool

Jesse Shanks: More AppleScript and OmniOutliner: OmniOutliner as a Script Analysis and Management Tool. Jesse emailed me Friday to ask if he could use my OmniOutliner2OPML script as the basis of the script in this article. It’s a good thing I was checking email in Bar Harbor! Of course, the server apears to have fallen over and died now, so I’m guessing I’m not getting a lot of traffic from Jesse’s piece, but welcome any new visitors anyway…
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Recording rocks

The E-52s did their most amazing performance today for the mikes. We recorded our repertoire in a tight two hour session—a far cry from sessions I used to do with the Suspicious Cheese Lords that would take two hours to cut one song. Of course the standards were much higher at those sessions. Here we wanted songs for archival, memory, gifts to families, and possibly on line promotional purposes, which made the pressure much less and we had a lot of fun.

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At home, breathing easier

After a weekend spent in the cold rain of Bar Harbor, I’m back in Boston this morning relaxing and trying to get myself used to my new free time. It’s not really free; I have to do a fair amount of work to get ready for our house-hunting trip in Seattle this coming weekend. But I have no cases to read, no classes to attend, and no papers to write. I feel better already.

Finished….

I finished my last class yesterday, turned in my last assignment. I’m finished with my work for my MBA. No more MIT classes, alas. But on the other hand, no more cases to read. It seems unbelievable that it’s all over except for graduation.

It’s time to refocus on other things. Like, finding a house in the Seattle area.
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$50K buys a lot … of free publicity

The MIT $50K competition held its award ceremony last night. Congratulations are in order to my classmate Jeremy Bender and his team, Ancora Pharmaceuticals, who won the grand prize. $50K may not be a lot as far as seed money goes, but it’s a spectacular win for Jeremy and his team. For the record, their team “specializes in the development of complex carbohydrate drugs,” according to the summary posted here.
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New iTunes2Manila v 1.0.2

New version of my iTunes2Manila script out today. This little script, which posts the currently playing track in iTunes to your Manila weblog as a news item, now uses proper typography (curly quotes!) and includes an automatic wrapper for a Google search on the artist name.

Future to do: have a way to update a playlist message automatically, so that “currently playing track” can easily be included in your site template.
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2600 Fever! Can Breakin’ 3 be far behind?

Slashdot: Atari Announces Official Portable 2600. “Portable” is an exaggeration; the unit has no screen or batteries. It’s just a joystick that plugs into your TV and plays 10 classic Atari games. It’s also an exaggeration to say that Atari is making the thing; they’ve licensed the rights to JAKKS Pacific, a company that have already made a similar product. Press release here; get it before it succumbs to Yahoo bit-rot.

Personally, I would only consider such a monster if it had the entire Atari library in it (considering that each game was only a maximum of 4K in size, that should be feasible) and if the “joystick” were identical to the old Atari 2600 joystick. Super retro kid stuff…
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It all comes together in the end

This is the second to last day of classes here at Sloan and I’m feeling a bit pressured. I had a semester paper due for Technology Strategy, a final paper for Power and Negotiation, and a final “quiz” (they couldn’t call it an exam by Institute policy because it was given before Finals Week), and I have one last final paper due tomorrow.

And after tomorrow I’m done. Then comes graduation, the move to Seattle, and the new job (along with the resumption of an income). I’ll probably have more thoughts about all of the above shortly; right now I’m still kind of in shock that it’s almost over. I feel like I just blinked while two years went by.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “Relative Ways” by And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead on Source Tags and Codes. Sadly, while this song sounds a whole lot like really good Sonic Youth a la A Million Leaves or Washing Machine, the rest of the album sounds a whole lot like… a lot of other bands. I might think better of it after another listen.