Archives for March 2009

Earthquake Measurement Online

30 March, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

This is more fun than any sporting event. The US Geological Survey long ago automated their earthquake reporting instruments and it has become somewhat of a sport to see how fast we can report the shaking intensity and other details following even the smallest seismic event. There was a small quake near AlumRock/San Jose/Morgan Hill about an hour ago and a couple thousand people went to a USGS web site to report the intensity – as they felt it – with many reports coming in within 10 minutes of the actual event (and 14,000 reports in an hour for this particular one).

Read more about what the USGS has available online for earthquake reporting. [Read more…]

It’s the User, Stupid (It’s the Stupid User?)

29 March, 2009 by sky 2 Comments

In The Curious Case of the Invulnerable Browser, Roger Grimes of Infoworld writes about the recent CanSecWest 2009 PWN2OWN contest where hackers pitted their skills against web browsers to see how quickly they could break into a computer. The prize was the computer itself. Roger says that the state of browser security is actually pretty good, but even if browsers were inpenetrable, the major source of computer breakins is users browsing to a web site that then infects their computer. [Read more…]

Google ruled by engineers, Apple ruled by designers

27 March, 2009 by sky 2 Comments

Fundamentally different approaches to problem-solving, nope design, nope creating products, nope life!

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. — Doug Bowman, Goodbye Google

I love this farewell post by Google’s visual design lead because it confirms a theory I’ve long held: that Google is a company where engineers are the ruling class, while at Apple it’s designers. – Buzz Andersen, Sci-fi Hi-fi

This just blew me away because of my experiences with people from both Apple and Google.

[Read more…]

Chatting our way to World Peace

16 March, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

When I made my first trip to Dharamsala, India, in 2005, to see this hub of activity of the Tibetan exile community and the home of the Dalai Lama, I was hosted by Thubten Samdup. “Sam” is founder of the Canada Tibet Committee and an activist in the exile community. He lives in Montréal. When he’s not traveling, that is.

One of Sam’s recent projects (it’s a couple of years old now) involves a group of Chinese-speaking (reading and writing as well) Tibetans who live in Dharamsala and spend their time chatting with people inside China. About what it is to be a part of the Tibetan culture and how it relates to the rest of China. It’s an actual project with financial supporters and employees, and you can contact me if you’re interested in helping support it. Sam also spends a lot of time in the Tibetan exile settlements in the rest of India, but that’s another story.