Category Archives: dot-communism

buzzword compliance, dot-communism, work

googlement

I’m listening to a speaker from Hampton Roads Transit sing the praises of Google Transit. Last night, the folks from Alabama’s Homeland Security showed off Virtual Alabama, a statewide geospatial application built on Google Earth, which incorporated county data and aerial imagery with utility, law enforcement, school district and other data to create an all-seeing first responder’s application–allowing users, for example, to overlay sex offender data on school bus routes.

Government, especially local and state, loves the word free. And Google’s geospatial and other data standards have made them even more dear to them, since local government data has been locked up in GIS and other databases that would cost millions to integrate independently.

Also, it’ll make the transition to googlement that much easier when the googleplex takes over the world.

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dot-communism

Steve Jobs wants to bankrupt me

How do you know when you have a problem?

When you just got a nice, shiny, black Video iPod for Christmas, and have a house with no less than five functional computers in it (plus an ailing Titanium PowerBook), and find yourself trying to figure out how to squeeze a preorder for a MacBook Pro into your budget.

Sure, three of the computers in my house were bought by my employer. Sure, P.’s iBook isn’t nearly as fast as the new Intel Duo-based systems will be. (And, btw, I remember the last time Apple did something with the name, “Duo” — it wasn’t pretty. I had to pry mine out of its dock once when the engaging motor failed in the locked position.) Still, as someone with more computing resources on each floor of his house than it took to support all of the Apollo missions combined, I find it disconcerting that I am drooling over computerporn again.

Maybe that’s why Apple’s stock price is doing so well.

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