I’m about to brew my first Double IPA and want it to be perfect. I have been reading a ton of different info on brewing lately and I think I learned a great deal since my last brew. Over on my basement brewing blog, I just posted an article on yeast starters. For some reason I have become fond of yeast and plan on trying to grow some for personal stock and eventually get away from having to buy any.
Posted on: January 12th, 2008
Yesterday afternoon I received a knock on the door from a Verizon FiOS representative. I have been curious on some of their deals and how it would affect my bill, but I haven’t acted on anything as of then. I have seen the commercials for FiOS and have a couple neighbors who made the switch. My neighbors couldn’t be happier.
The Verizon rep went over my Comcast and Verizon bills and broke it down to show me that I will be saving over $80 a month. Not only will I be saving, I will get a much faster internet connection and more HD programing. And to top it all off, I will be receiving a free 19” LCD High Definition Television.
I’m not a Verizon fan boy, but I love that I now have a choice for cable TV. I definitely don’t like Comcast since they are now stifling bandwidth and blocking some applications protocols on their paying customers high speed internet connections. Verizon may one day do the same, but since they are the under-dogs, they are opened up and going full throttle.
To me it is a no brainer. I made the switch. I am saving lots of money, getting a free HDTV, and will be receiving a faster, less restrictive internet connection. I get it installed at the beginning of December. So bye bye Comcast and hello FiOS.
Posted on: November 25th, 2007
The conference has posted some video of some of the speaches. Just follow the URL below.
http://web2summit.blip.tv/posts?view=archive
Posted on: October 19th, 2007
Dash Navigation is a GPS device that interconnects with Yahoo over a wireless connection. The device can be personalized through a web interface. The device also transmits to and from the device to help gather traffic conditions. It sync’s to Upcoming.org and will allow you to integrate upcoming events and direction into the device. It also syncs to Zillow.com. Someone can pull up to a house and hit the zillow button and find out how much the house is worth and all the Zillow info. This is great when looking for open houses. Man these guys keep going. It syncs with craigslist to look for open houses and even garage sales. I think I want one of these.
Posted on: October 19th, 2007
Jane outlined why virtual worlds are so popular. She stated that people on virtual worlds all start out on a level playing ground. It is easier to make friends and find things to do because the community all shares the same excitement. Some people have miserable lives and this is their chance to start over. In a virtual reality world, we all can be super heros.
Posted on: October 19th, 2007
Mr Venter is one of the leaders of Gnome research and was one of the first people to have their complete gnome’s decoded and posted on the internet. It was a huge discussion that was slightly over my head. I am still figuring out how this goes with theme of Web 2.0. No one from Apple is here, couldn’t they have gotten Steve Jobs. Apple is empowering web 2.0 and allowing people to hit it up everywhere. Nothing against Mr Venter, I just don’t get this decision.
Posted on: October 19th, 2007
Morgan Webb from G4, Tripp Hawkins of Digital Chocolate, and Robert Kotick of Activision talked about gaming. Home consoles rival that of the movie business these days. Gaming in general between web, console, mobile, and now gadgets is a colossal movement.
Tripp made a bold statement, “Mobile Web is Web 3.0”. Tripp also said there are over 3 billion people with cell phones and 1 billion of those people are “looking to hook-up”. if there is an app that can help the people’s social life, it is potentially a 100 billion dollar business.
Morgan asked about in game advertising and whether it is just for added profit or helps offset production. Robert Kotick thinks both. Games are trying to out do each other by brining in big talent, high production, and a bunch of developers.
Tripp explains the difference between Casual Gamers and Hardcore Gamers. Causal gamers care less about graphics and would prefer the games to be more social. Hardcore gamers want to feel like they are in the Matrix.
The shift away from solitary gaming is increasing. 80% of gamers play games by themselves. With online gaming and services like XBOX Live and Consoles like the Wii are promoting social causal and hardcore gaming.
Posted on: October 18th, 2007
John Battelle talks with Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of Imaging and Printing at HP, about printing and he stated that there is 2 things to do on the web, View it or Print it. There are over half a billion HP printers sold from HP so far. Vyomesh talked about how the shift from printing from MS applications to printing the web has been about an 80% shift. There has been a big focus on photo’s these days. Vyomesh thinks sharing photos on cell phones is not too personal and people prefer to have photo’s in hands. Whether it is printed in the home or though a service like HP’s Snapfish.
Posted on: October 18th, 2007
Naill Kennedy organized the Widget Summit this year came to talk to us about widgets. He went over some technologies such as XML, JSON, and RSS. Naill also showed some Advertising Mashups with Nissan and Google Maps. There is no one major widget provider. Google, NetVibes (personal homepages), Yahoo, MSN, Vista, Mac, blog sidebars, etc.. Now there are also Mobile widgets. This is where I can see widgets taking a big leap.
Bill Tancer from Hitwise talked to about Predictive Power of Web 2.0 Data. He went over the “Rogers Adoption Curve”. Today with Web 2.0 the adoption curve has been massively shortened. Hitwise can pinpoint what early adopters are doing on the web and predict which site are going to become hot and which are not. You can learn more on www.ilovedata.com.
Jeff Huber, the SVP of Engineering from Google, talked about the programable web. He focused on Gadgets. Since January, 2006 there are over 20,000 gadgets that are in the Google Ecosystem and spread over 100,000 sites. He stated what RSS has done for Content, Gadgets are doing for applications. It’s the aggregation of application. The top 125 total Google Gadgets are 50% of all gadget Traffic.
Posted on: October 18th, 2007
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