Technology

Spam sucks. Of course, we know this. The point is that spam could be stopped, but the result would no longer be email as we know it today. Corey Doctorow gave a brief … Read more

Neil Gershenfeld, from The Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, opened today’s eTech session. His wide-ranging talk mainly focused on “making things” and the challenges and rewards that come from actually building … Read more

Sam Ruby talks about why we can’t “just use http”. Ouch. My head hurts. This is important stuff, and I do mostly understand it, but I’m not gonna do it justice by trying … Read more

Random short notes … here’s a link to the reinventing radio presentation. 10 hours of listener’s choice radio broadcast by the BBC: Suggestions came in via SMS: 150K txt msgs, from over 100K … Read more

Wendy Seltzer and Jason Schultz from the EFF gave a great presentation at eTech this afternoon. Many electronic and software gizmos are being squashed by old dinosaur companies who haven’t figured out how … Read more

George Dyson presented a fascinating history regarding the early days of modern computing, starting in the 1930s when folks such as von Neumann and Godel moved to the United States. Lots of old … Read more

The second part of the first morning’s session at eTech includes lightning talks, 15 minutes each, by representatives of Microsoft, Yahoo and Google’s research labs. Microsoft Labs Unconventional, cross-disciplinary research. Example: tracking one’s … Read more

Bezos began his eTech talk by mentioning one of Danny Hillis’ phrases: global consciousness. Example: decaf coffee pots are all orange. I guess that bad anecdote had its own reward: as Jeff went … Read more

Danny Hillis, founder of Thinking Machines, spoke at eTech today, where he described his current company, Applied Minds, and the kinds of consulting and design work they perform. He showed some fascinating videos … Read more

Flickr: if you haven’t looked at flickr, and you have any interest in viewing and sharing photos on the internet you must check it out! Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr, gave a fascinating … Read more