Ron Guest

Very cool news from my friends at Citrix and Cisco:

Cisco Systems Wednesday announced new technology to deliver high-definition video and voice through a virtual desktop infrastructure which sends the signals from one endpoint to the other, bypassing the data center and reducing the high CPU processing and bandwidth that makes for subpar video. Cisco is also entering into a “strategic alliance” with virtual desktop provider Citrix to tightly integrate the Cisco technology, called Virtual Experience Infrastructure VXI with the Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop platform.

via Cisco, Citrix Do Video Via Virtual Desktop - - Storage Virtualization - Informationweek.

I immediately expressed privacy concerns about the Kindle Fire’s Silk browser technology. You can read some more on Gigaom (link below). Since the general population seems to ignore privacy concerns (until something bad happens) I rather doubt this will slow the sales of Fire.

Why Silk won’t be silky smooth for Amazon

A smile without the eyes?

A man and his ride

Tesla on sale at the Santana Row mall

Chillaxin with Snapseed preprocessing

Chillaxin

Mommy’s Sippy Cup :) Halloween Style

Very interesting discussion of how Facebook develops apps for the proliferating mobile platforms. A smart approach.

How Facebook Mobile Was Designed to Write Once, Run Everywhere.

They’re coming to take me away

As I mentioned earlier today, Marc Andreessen made some negative remarks about Oracle’s risk from the growth of Cloud and open stack adoption. Now Barb Darrow over on Giga Om is piling on with a reminder of Ellison’s (2 year old) deprecating remarks about the Cloud.

Oracle needs some cloud computing mojo — Tech News and Analysis.

First it was Disney with it’s Cars-themed iPad game called Appmates and now TUAW has reported Lego has come out with “Life of George”. The iPad gives you a design to build. Once down you take a photo with the iPad and the game grades your build based on the photo. In total there are a 120 different models for you to build based on the 144 included Legos. I  think my daughter will love this one. Hit the link below for more details and a press release.

LEGO Life of George game combines iPhone and real LEGOs

Nice write-up discussing the different success factors needed when working at a startup versus working in a large corporation. I think the points are spot-on. One key difference Eran omitted, in my opinion, is the pace of movement.

Tips for moving from the corporate world to a startup | VentureBeat.

Speaking at a Cloud conference Marc Andreessen takes a shot at Oracle essentially saying ramping adoption of Cloud tech will erode Oracle’s software business. Keep in mind Marc is on Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors. I certainly agree advances in open stacks and Cloud are eroding Oracle’s main software product lines’ edge in technology. I don’t see Oracle’s business blowing up because of this trend but I would agree there will be a steady erosion. Look for more Oracle price increases…

Marc Andreessen: The “Clock Is Ticking” On Oracle.

The price and specs mentioned on Amazon Kindle Fire - Full Color Kindle with 7” Multi-Touch Display, Wi-Fi are indeed impressive. The price came in a bit lower than I expected. A real verdict will have to wait for detailed hands-on reviews but as I mentioned in this prior post I believe the Fire will be the second highly successful tablet. In fact it should outsell iPads unless Apple comes up with a lower priced model soon. I definitely see this as a candidate tablet for my kids. It’s bound to be on a ton of Christmas lists…

TUAW is reporting that Disney will soon launch a set of physical toys that interact directly with iPads. Apparently this will be something of a scroller game where the landscape will scroll by and the child (in all of us?) interacts by moving a car over the surface of the iPad.

While the description provided doesn’t seem very compelling I’m very interested in learning more about the technology used in the cars. I’m a big believer in the growth of physical interaction with computing devices. In spite of this incarnation seeming a bit lame I think we will soon see some exciting innovations. And that 32-bit Arduino will likely be in the middle of things…

Disney to pair iPad, physical toys with new games

At the New York Make Faire this month the Arduino team, led by Massimo Banzi, made some exciting announcements. The first was the release candidate for the IDE/sketch system. Yes it has finally reached Arduino 1.0rc stage and you can get it here if you want an early look. As you’ll see from the announcement video linked below this should go final in the next month or two.

The biggest excitement comes from the new hardware they’ve introduced. Here are a few highlights along with a photo of the spec sheet.

• Arduino Leonardo - a lower cost Uno with a simpler design but, get this, it has USB capabilities built in. It can handily emulate USB devices such as a mouse or keyboard. It's expected cost about $20US.
• Arduino Wifi Shield - finally an official, and far superior, Wifi shield is coming. I've experimented with several of the existing Wifi shields and their implementation all leave something (in fact a lot) to be desired. This official shield, coming soon for about $80US, will leverage support in the new Arduino 1.0 software as well as benefitting from a design that avoids the UART. This means it's functioning will be completely hackable. It has it's own processor so performance will also be superior as well. The Wifi shield should be available soon - but I won't be surprised if they sell out immediately.
• Arduino Due - a Arduino with a 32-bit processor but that barely tells the tale on this one as it's I/O performance will kick some serious butt. This baby is due at the end of 2011 and will clearly push the frontiers of what's possible with an Arduino.
• Arduino Robot System - this is a dual-Arduino robot system which is TinkerKit compatible. I have not yet seen a release date for this one.

Arduino Blog » Blog Archive » Arduino Is You.

Got milk?

Double espresso con panna

Man Down! Junior fell asleep this afternoon on the study floor

Live live

Beauty

Lap being warmed

Soooo cool!

NASA’s Cassini orbiter snaps unbelievable picture of Saturn

I highly recommend reading this blog post by Roger Nusbaum if you have given or are giving thoughts to your retirement plan. Before the baby boomers neared retirement the US was in a fairly high growth state. Rising home and equity values, combined with nice returns on cash/bond investments, made it easy to accumulate retirement funds while still spending fairly heavily. Things have changed for the worse and won’t get better for many years (think a decade or more). Growth is slow in all developed countries with interest rates far below the level needed to deliver a real return above inflation. House values are likely to recover in the next few years but the steady long term growth will not return. Some Asian economies are in a position to grow faster than developed ones but are far too small to sustain the global economy in the face of European and North American long term weakness. It all sounds quite negative but if you plan accordingly you can still earn nice returns and retire at a reasonable age. Act and succeed.

Random Roger: It Won’t Get Easier.