Dan Grossman | Opinion

The Semantic Web and Intelligent Systems

January 21, 2008

I’ve been thinking about Twine a lot recently. I see a lot of potential in the semantic web and I think a lot of people will be thinking that way once Twine is here. Smarter systems that start learning from our siloed information all over the web and on our desktop, then start making [...]

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Forget iTunes, forget cable, I went with Netflix

January 17, 2008

Last time I subscribed to cable TV service, the bill for basic service and cable internet was nearly $100 per month. Even with the short-term bundle pricing, all the taxes and fees the cable companies tack on make it an expensive service. I decided it’s not worth it. I don’t subscribe to cable TV. [...]

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Google can’t buy enough brain power to ignore text ads

October 9, 2007

The SEO community’s buzzing over official word from Google that selling text links can hurt your PR and rankings. It’s truly sad that $600-a-share Google is willing to ruin its own search results because they can’t figure out how to differentiate paid ads from useful links. They’re not always different things, either, one of [...]

4

Betting on IGOR

August 15, 2007

This book was my best buy of the year so far. It packs tons and tons of experience into 400-some dense pages of interviews with the founders of 30 startups. I was particularly interested in the story of PayPal’s early days as recounted by cofounder Max Levchin, the guy that drove technology for [...]

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Transformers

July 4, 2007

If you watched Transformers as a kid, see the movie. The trailers don’t do it justice – it was the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. I can’t wait until home computers are able to render our fantasies so incredibly realistic.

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Snap.com Previews Get Smart

June 15, 2007

I’ve had Snap.com previews enabled on this blog for a while — it’s what makes a site preview pop up when you mouse over a link to an external site. I just ran across a link to this site on another blog with Snap and was surprised to see something very different appear when [...]

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A Whole New Web Starts Now

May 2, 2007

Microsoft’s MIX07 conference has stirred up the web development world with demos of Silverlight, a new platform for rich internet applications. Code-named WPF/e (Windows Presentation Foundation/everywhere), Silverlight brings the full power of WPF to browsers and eventually Xbox and mobile devices. On the surface, it’s much like Flash, distributed as a small browser plugin [...]

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Jack Thompson blames Bill Gates for shootings

April 19, 2007

Attorney and activist Jack Thompson yesterday wrote a letter to Bill Gates blaming him for the Virginia Tech shootings. Thompson claims that Cho Seung Hui was trained to enjoy violent killing by playing Counterstrike, which he claims Microsoft developed.
Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, [...]

2

Fox News says the devil did it

April 19, 2007

This is why I don’t watch Fox News: Their reporting isn’t news. It’s below the level of a tabloid. They just make things up. They’re claiming, quoting several “experts”, that the Virginia Tech shooter may have been possessed by Satan.

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Where’s My FiOS?

March 22, 2007

My cable internet has been up and down (99% down) for more than a day now. I’ve been using my email client refreshing every minute to tell when the connection is up for the few minutes each hour to submit assignments and download final exam study guides. Comcast has nothing to say about the [...]