Archive for category technology
Google Street View — self-portrait
Posted by will in technology, travel on April 24th, 2010
So there I was, minding my own business, looking at samples of Google Maps’ “Street View” to pique my eight-year-old niece’s interest…
And I wound up at the Deadhorse, Alaska airport. It’s not really remarkable — just a remote stretch of land, mostly. Except for two things: one is that it’s about as far north as the roaming Google-street-view cameras have been, at least in the United States.
The other is that Google sent TWO street cameras to film this remote stretch of midnight sun! Can you say overkill? This isn’t downtown Berlin, or Times Square, or Picadilly Circus, or even the outskirts of Punxatawney. Maybe they sent two in case there was an automotive breakdown so one driver could carry the other home? Or are they supposed to be checking up on each other?
Wolfram Alpha is really AMAZING.
Posted by will in ideas, science, technology on January 9th, 2010
If you haven’t seen Wolfram Alpha, you’re missing out. It’s not just a search engine — is answers simple questions with an amazing array of analytics and diagrams and graphs and history and statistics and more. You can see trends, explore patterns, drilling into many layers of detail. Pick a subject, if there’s information to be had, Wolfram Alpha can help you dive in:
Want some eclipse info?
previous eclipse
solar eclipse
lunar eclipseHow about some weather:
evansville weather in 1976
(differentiates rain and snow for short term, bunches them together as ‘precipitation’ for longer term)
precipitation in evanston il in january 1968
climate in bostonHealth info:
male, 5′9″, 155lbs, body mass index
2 eggs with apple juiceSome investment info:
apple microsoft googleWas the name “Wanda” ever more popular than “Edna”?:
wanda, edna, beulah
karen, faith, madisonIf you had 20/50 vision…
20/50 visionGot music?
D major 7th chord <= click ‘play chord’!Crossword fanatic?
pu__l_
anagram roster
Sheesh, this is amazing!
iPhone 3.0 Firmware Update
Posted by will in ideas, technology on June 29th, 2009
Holy cow — the new iPhone 3.0 OS is so advanced I can now delete multiple pictures! But wait, there’s more: I can delete multiple pictures mounted from my desktop, too! Back in the old 2.x days it would RESET THE IPHONE when trying to delete two or more pictures at once.
On top of that, the photos show up in chronological order! How snazzy can you get?
There’s a Pulitzer, or Emmy, or Nobel, in there somewhere.
All kidding aside, it’s a nice new feature set.
- You can also search all your content (drag left from the home-home screen, or hit your home button just one more time, to open the Search interface).
- There’s a voice-memo application now, too.
- And with iPhone OS 3.0 you can now see how long your phone conversations have been. Plus, you know more than just who called, but which phone number they called from (instead of just ‘Diode’ it says ‘Diode / mobile’). Sweet!
- Double-tap just about any text and you get a little select-o-rama interface. Drag the ends where you want them, then tab ‘copy’ and now you can paste it anywhere text is allowed. Nice!
Better Explained . com
Posted by will in ideas, science, technology on June 13th, 2009
I just discovered BetterExplained.com, the brainchild of Kalid Azad. It’s great! Kalid writes clear, thorough explanations of all kinds of ideas from simple stuff to complicated stuff. Math, computers, marketing, communication and more.
Go have a look!
Online Backups/Synchronization Services
Posted by will in technology on February 18th, 2009
Some good reviews about online sync/backup services — imagine making changes to document X on computer Z, and those changes are available on computer Q moments later!
Interesting survey of IT professionals
Posted by will in technology on September 10th, 2008
IT Toolbox Survey of IT Professionals
- What cable TV channel to IT professionals prefer?
- How do IT professionals like to be rewarded?
- Which headaches are most common for IT professionals?
- How do IT professionals like to spend their free time?
- …these questions and many more are answered here
Bill Gates in praise of the Macintosh
Posted by will in technology on September 5th, 2008
Look who said this about the Macintosh in its early days:
To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that’s really new, and really captures people’s imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
How to recover your “sa” password on MS SQL Server
Posted by will in technology on July 3rd, 2007
So you’ve forgotten your “sa” password? Can’t get in to your Microso~1 SQL Server as administrator? If you’ve got other users created already… no problemo!
Raul Garcia’s How to recover from losing your SA password is a nice fix which just saved my bacon! Maybe it can save yours, too. (It talks about SQL Server 2005 but it also appears to work on SQL Server 2000, thank goodness!)
Will.Trillich.Com
Posted by will in ideas, serensoft, technology on February 2nd, 2007
This website is my personal space on the web, which I use for fun… and to back up my business activity. At Serensoft we help colleges and universities, including administration, faculty and students — “higher education”, for short — by providing workflow analysis, ERP selection and support, implementations and upgrades, business-intelligence and reporting assistance, open source tools, learning management systems, and more.
At Serensoft we focus on higher education! We don’t dilute our attenion across other industries… We’re the only Cognos Solution Provider that’s higher-education-only.
I’m also experimenting with memberships at flickr.com, elgg.net, itToolbox.com, LinkedIn.com, kaboodle.com, and a handful of others as well.