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February 11, 2004
ETCon 2004: Danny O'Brien on Life Hacks
Danny O'Brien talks on Life Hacks
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Danny O'Brien gave a great talk on how alpha geeks manage their life. I was enjoying the talk and didn't take notes, but Cory Doctorow did. Some highlights:
- Alpha geeks use shells
- Alpha geeks use text-editors like BBEdit, vi, and emacs
- Alpha geeks try every application, but usually end up back with editors and email. They don't trust complicated apps.
- Private, secret blogs and RSS are taking the place of todo.txt files and email alerts.
- Alpha geeks write scripts to take apart dull, repetitive tasks
- All alpha geeks back up. They've all learned the lesson.
- Alpha geeks make their ideas public, but hide their scripts.
This says what they do, but Danny also offered insights into why, which are somewhat surprising. Read the notes.
02:13 PM | Recommend This | Print This
ETCon 2004: Eat Me and I'll Kill You
Marc Smith delivers Wednesday's keynote
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Every product has a story to tell and some of them say "If you eat me, I'll kill you." So says Marc Smith, Microsoft's resident sociologists. Marc is describing a research project called AURA. Combine a PocketPC, a barcode reader, and Wi-Fi or mobile wireless and you've got the ability to find out lots of information about any product with a barcode. The project maps barcodes to names. Once that's done, all kinds of things are possible:
- Google the result for news, images, and other information.
- Annotate the product packaging
- Offer alternatives
- Show how and where it was manufactured
- Give alternative views of the nutritional data
Of course, all this can be personalized, so that I can see how this product fits in my diet, or whether it contains anything I'm allergic to, or even how it matches my environmental or political preferences.
There are all sorts of opportunities for "resolution services" that meet particular needs or demands.
09:33 AM | Recommend This | Print This
RSS Use at Disney
I had to choose between Robert Kaye's file sharing talk and the talk on Disney use of RSS, but Ross Mayfield went to that one and did a nice write-up.