eConsultant

Photos of Jazz Greats

Photos of Jazz Greats

Sony BMG tests technology to limit CD burning

Sony - the company that lost the MP3 Player race to iPod because it insisted on using bad music management software (you had to check-in and check-out songs from your own player!) - just misses the whole point.

1. If you let people burn once, they'll rip it back and you are back to square one.

2. Dumbing down the word "piracy" to include casual school yard CD exchange between the best potential music customers for life is a symptom of a company in fundamental denial of the way people listen and exchange music.

Reuters News Article

Sony BMG tests technology to limit CD burning

Sun May 29, 2005 10:11 PM ET
NEW YORK (Billboard) - As part of its mounting U.S. rollout of content-enhanced and copy-protected CDs, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is testing technology solutions that bar consumers from making additional copies of burned CD-R discs."

Since March the company has released at least 10 commercial titles -- more than 1 million discs in total -- featuring technology from U.K. anti-piracy specialist First4Internet that allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies.

The concept is known as "sterile burning." And in the eyes of Sony BMG executives, the initiative is central to the industry"s efforts to curb casual CD burning.

"The casual piracy, the school yard piracy, is a huge issue for us," says Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance."

Sudoku puzzle enchants British problem-solvers

Solving crosswords and puzzles regularly is a proven brain-upkeep method ...

MSNBC - Sudoku puzzle enchants British problem-solvers

Sudoku puzzle enchants British problem-solvers

LONDON - Britain has a new addiction.

Hunched over newspapers on crowded subway trains, sneaking secret peeks in the office, a puzzle-crazy nation is trying to slot numbers into small checkerboard grids.

It"s Sudoku � a sort of crossword without words that has consumed the country.

�There"s something about that grid with its empty squares � it�s just crying out to be filled in,� said Wayne Gould, a retired judge and puzzle aficionado who helped spark Britain�s love affair with the game.

A Japanese brainteaser that has quietly appeared in puzzle magazines in Asia and North America for years, Sudoku hit Britain in the pages of The Times newspaper in November. It now has thousands of avid followers, a host of Web sites and books, and runs daily in eight national newspapers, which compete fiercely to offer their readers the best puzzle.

Newspapers go Sudoku crazy
The Independent offers four a day, of varying levels of difficulty. The Guardian boasts that its puzzle is �hand-crafted by its Japanese inventors,� rather than spawned by a computer like the others. The Times is offering a version for mobile phones. The Daily Telegraph promises a 3-D �ultimate Sudoku� version.

The name, which translates roughly as �the number that is alone,� has become a handy catch-phrase. A Times columnist wrote dismissively about Prime Minister Tony Blair"s recent Cabinet shuffle: �It is not exactly Sudoku, is it?�

Sudoku consists of a grid of nine rows of nine boxes, which must be filled in so the numbers one through nine appear just once in each column, row and three-by-three square.

It looks like arithmetic, but requires the application of logic. It can be fairly straightforward or fiendishly difficult.

�I think the attraction is that you can definitely get it right,� said Anton Viesel, a 23-year-old London bookseller. �It"s very satisfying.�

Getting Cringe Tasks Done

A simple flowchart for handling cringe tasks.

Best Tool For the Job � Getting Cringe Tasks Done

Someday maybe project - Building the Li'l Beauty Skin-on-frame Kayak

Someday maybe project - Building the Li'l Beauty Skin-on-frame Kayak

Li'l Beauty Kayak

Eatery furniture confirms obesity trend

Restaurants offer larger portion sizes ... restaurant increase chair sizes ... Restaurants offer larger portion sizes ... on and on.

Eatery furniture confirms obesity trend - (United Press International)

Eatery furniture confirms obesity trend

Chicago, IL, May. 23 (UPI) -- Furniture makers are selling bigger chairs and tables to U.S. restaurants, an apparent accommodation to growing customers.

The National Restaurant Association's four-day conference in Chicago featured numerous displays of supersized furniture for supersized diners, the Dallas Morning News reported Monday.

"The other (traditionally sized) ones can be uncomfortable," said Bob Murphy, vice president of systems and technology for Chili's Grill & Bar, the flagship chain of Dallas-based Brinker International Inc. "When you sit at them, they're too small."

Chili's has begun testing more spacious eating spaces and was looking at installing tables up to 12 inches larger at future Chili's outlets, he said.

One chair manufacturer said his company is rethinking size -- as in making products bigger -- because customers are bigger.

"Let's face it, America has an obesity problem," said Jerry Falk of Foldcraft Co. of Minnesota.

Thinking and Paper

With Blogs, wikis, Palm/Pocket PCs, web-based To-Do lists etc, paper has a place in your GTD method - it can be as simple as the hipster PDA.


Ask E.T.: Thinking and Paper

Thinking and Paper

I like to think that I have - over the years - devised a personal operational work system that combines the benefits of both chaos and organisation. It is completely paper-based, although I have had a computer on my desk since 1982.

15 things you can do with RSS

15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away) - Tim Yang's Geek Blog

15 things you can do with RSS

Get the news as it happens from multiple news sources
Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
Track Fedex packages
Get notified of bargains at Ebay
Get the weather reports
Find out what people are saying about you, your company or your product online
Get music, radio programs and TV clips
Stay updated on someone's schedule
Get cinema schedule updates
Read your favourite comics
Find out what other people surfing
Automatically backup your weblog posts
Get software updates
Get the latest bittorrent files and ahem, p*rn

You can do anything - but not everything.

David Allen's article in Fast Company in May 2000 before GTD became a cult!

You can do anything - but not everything.

At the heart of David Allen's productivity coaching is the discipline of a weekly review. "That is critical to making personal organization a vital, dynamic reality," he says. Here, adapted from Allen's Web site, is a list of steps that you should work your way through every Friday afternoon.

1. Sort your loose papers. Gather all scraps of paper -- business cards, receipts, miscellaneous notes -- and put them into your in-basket to process.

2. Process your notes. Review journal entries, meeting notes, and miscellaneous scribblings. Turn them into appropriate action items, projects, and so on.

3. Review previous calendar data. Look through expired daily calendar pages for remaining action items, and move those items forward.

4. Download your data. Write down any new projects, action items, "waiting-for" items, and so on.

5. Review outcome lists. One by one, evaluate the status of each project, goal, and outcome.

6. Review "next action" lists. Check off all completed actions. Look for reminders of further action steps.

7. Review "pending" and "support" files. Browse through work-in-progress materials and update lists of new actions, completions, and "waiting-for" items.

8. Review "reminders" lists. Make sure that there isn't anything that you haven't done that you need to do. Also, make sure that there aren't any checklists that you need to review.

9. Review "someday" and "maybe" lists. Look for any projects that may have become active, and transfer them to your "projects" list. Delete any dead items.

10. Review "waiting-for" lists. Record appropriate follow-up actions. Check them off as you complete them.

11. Be creative and courageous. Add to your system any new, wonderful, harebrained, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas that have occurred to you.

Mathematical Fiction Homepage

Mathematical Fiction Homepage

"Do you like fiction and mathematics? Are you looking for a book or story that might be useful for the students in your math class? Are you interested in what our society thinks about mathematicians? Then you've come to the right place..."

An excellent place to satisfy your science and writing hobbies!

Be A More Productive Blogger

An excellent set of rule of blogging to live by ...

* Set aside time for writing and stick to it.
* Create (and stick to) a publishing schedule.
* Keep an Idea Journal.
* Take advantage of creative highs.
* Take some time off.
* Read.
* Start with a title.
* Adopt a conversational tone and style.
* Connect and motivate
* Don�t fear failure.
* Don�t get too hung up on grammar
* Stay positive.
* Try something new.

Be A More Productive Blogger

Natural-Born Liars

An excellent piece on how and why we lie and the brain functionality involved.

Why do we lie, and why are we so good at it? Because it works

By David Livingstone Smith

Deception runs like a red thread throughout all of human history. It sustains literature, from Homer"s wily Odysseus to the biggest pop novels of today. Go to a movie, and odds are that the plot will revolve around deceit in some shape or form. Perhaps we find such stories so enthralling because lying pervades human life. Lying is a skill that wells up from deep within us, and we use it with abandon. As the great American observer Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago: "Everybody lies ... every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception." Deceit is fundamental to the human condition.

Blogebrity's List

Blogebrity - which does not even exist as a magazine - has named an A-list ...

Ali, Rafat
Alterman, Eric
Althouse, Ann
Anderson, Chris
Armstrong, Heather
Baio, Andy
Battelle, John
Black, Duncan (Atrios)
Blood, Rebecca
Bonner, Sean
Boyd, Stowe
Braff, Zach
Bruner, Rick
Butterfield, Stewart
Calacanis, Jason
Chung, Jen
Coates, Tom
Coen, Jessica
Cone, Ed
Coolfer, Glenn
Copeland, Henry
Cox, Ana Marie
Cuban, Mark
Curry, Adam
Curtis, Drew
Dash, Anil
DeFillippo, Jason
Denton, Nick
DePlume, Nick
Derakhshan, Hossein
Dobkin, Jake
Doctorow, Cory
Drudge, Matt
d"Addario, John
Fake, Caterina
Fitzgerald, Brad
Frauenfelder, Mark
Gaiman, Neil
Gillmor, Dan
Godin, Seth
Grambo, Uncle
Haber, Matt
Hall, Steve
Hammersley, Ben
Haughey, Matt
Hewitt, Hugh
Hinderaker, John
Hourihan, Meg
Huffington, Arianna
Israel, Shel
Ito, Joi
Jardin, Xeni
Jarvis, Jeff
Johnson, Joel
Johnson, Scott
Kaus, Mickey
Klein, Zach
Kottke, Jason
Lapatine, Scott
Lasica, J.D.
Layne, Ken
Le Meur, Loic
Lessig, Lawrence
Lisanti, Mark
Lutz, Bob
MacLeod, Hugh
Malda, Rob
Malik, Om
>Malkin, Michelle
Marshall, Josh
McCullagh, Declan
Meskill, Judith
Mirengoff, Paul
Moulitsas, Markos
Newmark, Craig
Ochman, B.L.
Pell, Dave
Peretti, Jonah
Pescovitz, David
Pierce, Tony
Pirillo, Chris
Reynolds, Glenn
Rojas, Peter
Romenesko, Jim
Rosen, Jay
Rubel, Steve
Rubin, Josh
Schachter, Joshua
Scoble, Robert
Searls, Doc
Shirky, Clay
Sicha, Choire
Sifry, David
Simmons, Bill
Simon, Roger L.
Sites, Kevin
Sorgatz, Rex
Spiers, Elizabeth
Steele, Lockhart
Stone, Biz
Sullivan, Andrew
Tillinghast, Tig
Torrone, Phillip
Totten, Michael
Trott, Mena
Wheaton, Wil
Williams, Evan
Winer, Dave
Wolcott, James
Yglesias, Matthew
Zawodny, Jeremy
Zeldman, Jeffrey

Setup Multiple HomePages in Firefox

Want to startup Firefox and see multiple tabs that you must look every day?

You have two options:

1. From Firefox�s Tools menu, Options, General, enter the addresses of sites separated by a pipe |, as shown above. Or, you can open up all the sites in tabs and hit the �Use Current Pages� button.

2. Use SessionSaver extension - it opens the browser with the tabs that were present when the browser was last closed.

11 steps to a better brain

New Scientist has an excellent article on brain building and memory maintainence via quite obvious healthy lifestyle.

1. Smart drugs : Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy thinking?
2. Food for thought : You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate mastermind diet?
3. The Mozart effect : Music may tune up your thinking, but you can't just crank up the volume and expect to become a genius.
4. Bionic brains : If training and tricks seem too much like hard work, some technological short cuts can boost brain function.
5. Gainful employment : Put your mind to work in the right way and it could repay you with an impressive bonus.
6. Memory marvels : Mind like a sieve? Don't worry. The difference between mere mortals and memory champs is more method than mental capacity.
7. Sleep on it : Never underestimate the power of a good night's rest.
8. Body and mind : Physical exercise can boost brain as well as brawn.
9. Nuns on a run : If you don't want senility to interfere with your old age, perhaps you should seek some sisterly guidance.
10. Attention seeking : You can be smart, well-read, creative and knowledgeable, but none of it is any use if your mind isn't on the job.
11. Positive feedback : Thought control is easier than you might imagine.

11 steps to a better brain - Features | Print | New Scientist

Test - 05/25/05

Test - 05/25/05