On April 26, 2004, President Bush announced a series of specific measures to inspire a new generation of American innovation - policies to encourage clean and reliable energy, assure better delivery of health care, and expand access to high-speed Internet in every part of America. By giving our workers the best technology and the best training, we will make sure that the American economy remains the most flexible, advanced, and productive in the world.

President Bush's Technology Agenda

A single column from Bob Colwell can make a subscription to Computer worthwhile.

Two heads are better than one as long as both are actively trying to accomplish the same goal. But those two heads also can achieve less together than either could alone. It depends on many things.

Cognitive humility is one of the general traits I like best about engineers: We know we don't have all the answers, and yet we recognize that our designs must move forward even when our imperfect knowledge can have serious or even life-threatening consequences.

Brainstorming, Influence, and Icebergs

Thrynn wrote:
] Interesting. But how extensive could the database be?
] And this really worth $.99?

The linked article reports a database of "1 million popular songs." That's a significant database; as a point of reference, the Rhapsody database presently contains ~ 634,000 tracks. It's quite likely that the database of this particular service, as it now stands, includes tracks that are not licensed for electronic purchase. As an example, it can probably identify "Help!"

I agree that $0.99 is too much just for an identification service.

Here's my proposal for the business model of the service.

* You capture the audio clip and submit it to the service.

* The service performs the lookup and responds with an identification of the track.

* The service offers to sell you the track for $0.99. If you choose to purchase the track, you can listen to it on your phone immediately and at any time. You can also download it at a later time from an affiliated web site and transfer it to your desktop, laptop, iPod, or other portable player.

* If you decline to purchase the track after it has been identified, you are charged $0.10 for the lookup; such results are logged by the service and made available for later reference on the web site. Previously identified tracks can be purchased from the web site at any time for an additional $0.89.

As a partnership between AT&T and Apple, this could be successful.

AT&T Wireless Launches Music Service

"The hope is to inspire people, through role models, to pick up a screwdriver and a soldering iron and to start hacking," writes Andrew Huang in the introduction to his "Hacking the Xbox." "Instilling this sort of exploratory spirit in the younger generations will be important in the long run for preserving the pool of talented engineers that drove the technology revolution."

This is a Knight Ridder wire story from earlier this month.

When was the last time you were inspired to pick up a soldering iron?

Hobbyists return to tinkering with hardware

* To help the incorporation of trust management elements in existing standards.

Second International Conference on Trust Management

Like books piled high on a nightstand, the abundance of selected programs stored on a recorder's hard drive can start to seem more like a challenge than a pleasure to be savored.

Forget Atkins. Forget South Beach. When the Big Mac attacks, fight back with heaping helpings of ... television!

"Your special sauce is no match for my TiVo."

An abundance of cheap corn made America fat. Now, an abundance of cheap disk space will make America thin again.

Okay -- maybe just fat and happy.

How Do I Love Thee, TiVo?

Google's new headquarters is what graduate school would be like if all the students were rich.

In Searching We Trust

Dave will discuss Weblogs, RSS, aggregators, OPML, content management, how we can work together, and the care and feeding of online communities.

Dave Winer gave a talk in February as part of the Microsoft Research Lecture Series. There is also an extended Q&A discussion between Winer and Microsoft employees. Watch it in streaming video.

Dave Winer: 'Weblogs and how we can work together'

It concludes with a series of observations and recommendations for policy action and further research.

Evolution Scenarios for Future Networking Technologies and Networks

Orkut hot-spots include the Boston-Washington and LA-SD corridors, SF and the Silicon Valley, and Chicago.

It would be interesting to contrast the "location" data with the "hometown" data and to look at various migration trends.

Orkut: Map of US Membership