A Garden Hose in Paris

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Mark and Wes in Lafayette, CA at the Swad Indian restaurant.

Sites of Interest:

• Amazon officially announced the Kindle 2.
  
  
• E-ink devices will soon be in color.
  
  
• Modern Flash Memory is like the ancient core memory in that they both retain their bits when power is removed.
  
  
• Wes mentioned an idea from the TED Conference, Homo Evolutus.
  
  
• Bill Gates released mosquitoes to an audience at Ted.
  
  
• Mark thought this Hello Kitty lineman's handset was for sale, but it's just a hand-made gift.
  
  
• History of the early day web browsers.
  
  
• The public first had access to the Internet via a Shell Account, which is character-mode access like a DOS or UNIX command line. Using TIA and other programs, people could do graphic web browsing on their cheap Shell Account.
  
  
• In 1999, the World's Smallest Web Server was the size of a box of matches.
  
  
• Basic Stamp and Arduino are popular systems for making prototype electronic and robotic projects.
  
  
• Today's Front Pages can also be viewed via a U.S. map.
  
  
• Years ago Mark and his cat wrote a daily email newsletter called WebSkulker. The site is still up so people can look through the archive, but don't try to subscribe. Wes mentioned the Dancing Baby phenomenum and Mark remembered that this WebSkulker issue discussed it at the time. Scroll down for the article "Dancing skulkers". The links still work after all these years, but the links within those pages generally don't.
  
  
• New YouTube cult classic: David After Dentist. Another classic: audio of Christian Bale going crazy on a movie set. And finally a mashup of the two.
  
  
• The Truth in Caller Id Act of 2009 is working it's way through congress.
  
  
• How capacitance screens like the iPhone's work. You can buy a stylus that will work for this type of screen, but you can also make one yourself -- the Related Videos show other home-made ideas. Gloves that will work with iPhone and other capacitance screens.
  
  
• Chutzpah award for Wells Fargo.
  
  
• Early history of Compaq Computer.
  
  
• Computers that weigh 1.5 tons.
  
  
• Will there really be an ASUS Eee Phone?
  
  

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• Spell Check -- Look up words to verify spelling and to get definitions. The dictionary resides in memory so no Internet access is needed.
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Fart Army -- Mark thought Wes would like this because Wes used to play with little green soldiers.
  
  
• Remote Fart -- Search the wifi network to find other users, then cause fart noises to come out of their iPhone.
  
  
• Tilt Meter Pro -- Mark's favorite app for using the iPhone as a level tool.