Cisco was the darling of the Internet boom, it provided the term that VC’s loved: infrastructure. No matter how bleak the technology business landscape, wireless is huge, and Linksys are providing the wireless infrastructure. A private company to watch. “Linksys has been ranked as an Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Company in the United States for 5 consecutive years. Only 61 companies have ever made the list 5 years in a row” Linksys: Company Background
In Virgina you have to be: 21 to drink; 21 to purchase a handgun; 21 to join the police force; 18 to vote; 18 to purchase a rifle or shotgun; 18 to become a public notary; 18 to marry without parental consent; 18 to practice law; 18 to apply for a driving license without parental consent; 18 to gamble or buy a lottery ticket … and 17 to receive the death sentence. Virginia is for haters. Murder indictment of Malvo expected — The Washington Times
No, this is not from the Onion: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Russian source: US ‘will attack Iraq next month’ “Interfax did not explain how the Russians had obtained the alleged details. However Russian website gazeta.ru, wryly noting that US news outlets had been predicting an attack in late February or early March for some time, ran a story titled ‘Russian general reads American paper’. “
Guardian Unlimited Uncommon wealth The Guardian looks at Bush’s tax cuts which affect the top 1% of tax payers and asks why “the Bush camp appears to have no fear of being seen as pandering to a relatively small coterie of country-club types. Any European politician proposing such a elitist fiscal policy would be destroyed in the press and the polls. “ The answer: “A poll at the time of the 2000 elections found that 19% of those asked believed they were in the top 1% income bracket. Another 20% expected to be there soon.” Unlike in Europe, optimism has given the right their ‘mandate’.
via Doc Searls: Andre Durand : Three Phases of Identity Infrastructure Adoption “I owe my involvement in the identity industry to a similar personal passion, to see that end-users are ultimately in control over their digital identity.” Webloggers with online bio’s will have the power to create a federated identity system where individuals have control over their own identity online.
via Simon Perry: Mecca-Cola Bizarre: An Islamic Cola, from France, which has proved hugely popular there as a boycott of the Atlanta version.
Anil rails against De Beer’s monopoly product, concludes that diamonds are for never and warns about unknowingly purchasing conflict diamonds. What about conflict oil?
Where Next for RSS? Tim Bray, co-creator of XML sees the future of RSS consumption as moving from standalone clients to being built directly into browsers. “this stuff just belongs in the browser” I see the issue as being client v. server side. Although RSS readers are currently very useful, they are akin to client side Usenet readers that were built into browsers and email clients. As the volume of RSS grows, I would rather use a web based interface to RSS in the same way that I now use Google to read newsgroups.
Dave Winer: “I’m old school. I think the cool thing about weblogs is that they are not discussion groups or mail lists.” What if comments links took you through a wizard that created a weblog for the comment if you didn’t have a weblog. If you did have a weblog then a system that posted remote comments to your weblog with a trackback ping. The latter is easier said than done.
Ben Hammersley.com: Trackback in the saddle again
Via Kottke.org: vote for the New 7 Wonders My Picks: 1. Manhattan Ancient pyramids, Colossus of Rhodes, pah! The collective architecture of Manhattan is mankind’s greatest achievement so far. Van Allen’s Chrysler building, its crowning glory. 2. Downtown Chicago OK, for the purists there are some better individual buildings here, but collectively Manhattan still wins. 3. Tivo God’s machine and all. I love Tivo, it changes everything (I haven’t actually bought one yet, but I don’t care, Tivo rules). 4. Ebay Whenever you are getting bored of the web, there is always something weird on Ebay to cheer you up. See Whowouldbuythat. 5. Long Haul Jet travel When Norman Foster was asked to pick his favorite piece of modern architecture, he chose the Boeing 747. Nothing changed the world more than the availability of cheap long-haul travel that the 747 created. 6. Cellphones The Internet may be cool but if…
Macromedia Adds Flash to PowerPoint. This allows you to convert Powerpoint presentations into Flash. If you run a browser in kiosk mode, as in the previous post, create your entire presentation in Flash, with a browser as the container. Powerpoint has always struck me as the worst of Microsoft’s products, sold for money when it looks like bad shareware. Powerpoint is responsible for a generation of bad graphic design, it almost conspires to produce hideous, cheap looking, presentations with drop-shadowed times roman on blue-blend backgrounds. I loved the apocryphal tale of it being banned at Lotus.