A press release we issued today. Note that the eXtreme Early Bird registration discount for FutureTest 2009 ends this Friday, Nov. 21. Star-Studded Speaker Lineup Announced for FutureTest 2009 Conference attendees will lessons on Web software quality from Amazon.com, Adobe, Time Inc., HBO, Bank of America BZ Media LLC today announced the industry-leading speakers for […]
Wal-Mart sent me this email today, for my order of the new AC/DC Black Ice disc last month. Thanks for the refund, wish I knew why they’re issuing it. Subj: A Refund for Your Walmart.com Order Dear Alan Zeichick, Thank you for your recent Walmart.com purchase. We recently made an adjustment to this order. A […]
Not the subatomic particle. Not the big-lobed bartender in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Quark can only mean one thing: Captain Adam Quark, commander of a United Galaxies Sanitation Patrol Cruiser in the year 2222. Quark was a short-lived (eight episodes) comedy television show, starring Richard Benjamin, that ran briefly in 1977-1978. Since then, the […]
The night of November 9-10, 1938, must have been terrifying beyond comprehension. That’s when the Germans citizens launched Kristallnacht, the night of breaking glass, destroying buildings, property and religious treasures belonging to the frightened Jews of the country. My mother-in-law, Rosa Sacharin, was a young girl in Berlin at that time. She escaped the country […]
I am of the Structured Programming Era. The first languages I coded in were COBOL, FORTRAN (not Fortran, it was still an all-capital-letters language back then), PL/1, RPG, APL, Smalltalk and VM/SP Assembler. That was long, long before Bjarne Stroustrup created C++. Ahh. Those were the days. Kids today, they don’t do much programming in […]
According to last week’s story in the New York Times, people want their canned meat. “Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table. Now, in a sign of the times, it is happening […]
Design Buy Build is a British magazine whose editorial content is for sale to prospective advertisers. In January, in a post called “A different editorial standard,” I wrote that the magazine’s editors charge companies a £85 fee to print color photographs in new product announcements. Today’s pitch from Design Buy Build’s editors is even more […]
Like you, I get so many advance-fee scam messages that they barely register on my consciousness. However, sometimes I read them (generally, to get a laugh). This one is so brazen that it stood out: “Honestly, it really baffles me that you took such decision without my consent.” Most of these scams start out with […]
Remember that airlines used to carry luggage for free? Now, they don’t even want to carry it at all. United sent me an email today that said, “United is the first airline to offer baggage shipping via FedEx Express, helping you send bags overnight from your home or office directly to your final destination.” In […]
Andrew Binstock’s SD Times column last week, “The Return of NetRexx,” brought back some fond memories from my past associations with NetRexx and its big-predecessors. NetRexx’s great-grandfather was an IBM scripting language called EXEC, which was an interpreted command language that ran on the IBM System/370 mainframes under the Virtual Machine/Conversational Monitoring System operating system. […]
This seems like a fascinating event down at Stanford, and I plan to attend. Tuesday, December 9, 2008 1:00 to 5:30 pm at Stanford University Memorial Auditorium They call it the “mother of all demos.” On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart and the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute staged a 90-minute […]
My family is into casual astronomy. My weapon of choice is a Celestron 8″ Schmidt-Cassegrain scope with a reducer (I like a big field of view), while my wife prefers binoculars. Binocs are my recommendation for all amateur astronomers, because they let you look at the sky. Big telescopes are good for looking at objects, […]
I missed the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference this year, and as part of that, missed the announcement of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. You can read SD Times reporter David Worthington’s report on Azure, to catch up on the story. Azure is a big initiative from Microsoft. Steve Ballmer issued one of the company’s rare […]
The danger of working with languages that you don’t understand is that you might do something silly. Like, for example, building a road sign that says, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” That’s what the Welsh in this sign says. According to a story on the […]
I discovered the “Despair, Inc.” store in 2003, and have since purchased several of their demotivation products for myself and for friends. One of their newest products is pictured. Isn’t it perfect? “Blogging” is only available at this time as a desktop sign and in calendars. Many of the company’s products are also available as […]
I’ve received many of these clever phishing messages, as usual coming to addresses like webmaster@, info@, privacy@, and so-on. They pretend to be from Microsoft, giving you a chance to opt out of MSN commercial messages. However, the links go to a Web server based in China. Not only does the domain attempt to phish […]
Recessions and other tough economic climates often hit marketing budgets pretty hard. That was certainly the case when the bubble popped in 2000/2001. However, according to the Association of National Advertisers, more than a quarter of marketers plan to increase spending despite downturn. According to a recent ANA survey, marketers responded: How will you adjust […]
This one’s hard to figure out. The message originated from an ISP in India and came through to one of our info@ addresses. There was no response to my query when I wrote back to “Sarah.” What do you think the deal is? My guess is that they’re going to solicit up-front funds to pay […]
While I’ve been on a short vacation from blogging, it’s only because I’ve spent two weeks on the road, most recently at the EclipseWorld 2008 conference in Reston, Va. EclipseWorld 2008 truly is a great conference. The energy of the speakers and the attendees is tremendous. The highlights were the keynote talks, first by Mike […]
My wife is very, very proud of her old secondary school, Shawlands Academy, which was named the United Kingdom’s greenest school. According to a story in the Evening Times, Shawlands Academy in the South Side of Glasgow is celebrating being named the UK’s greenest school. Staff and pupils, who describe themselves as “the next generation […]
Here’s the “PR pitch of the day,” which came to our newspaper’s info@ e-mail address. Guess how much time, rounded up to the nearest nanosecond, we’re going to spend compiling a list of “technology stories” that our reporters are working on, just so that Jackie can match them up with her clients? If you guessed […]
Nobody does aluminum like Apple. Apple’s new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, introduced a week ago, are drop-dead gorgeous. That’s about all you can say about them, compared to the older models. The prices are the same as the previous generation. The size is about the same. Weight is actually higher. Sure, the new entry […]
The U.S. Presidential elections are being fought in Main Street, on Wall Street — and on Broadband Avenue. YouTube, blogs, RSS feeds… those are all just as important as televised debates, robo-calls and TV advertisements.Every four years, we see new technologies and new attention being given to the Internet. It’s easy to forget that despite […]
I remember a funny Dilbert cartoon series where the Pointy-Haired Boss’s company won the contract to redesign the U.S. air traffic control system. Dilbert and his colleagues immediately invested their life savings in a bus company. That brings up the question: Do you trust your architects, your designers, your programmers and your testers — and […]
Microsoft shipped Silverlight 2 today, sort of. While the company said that the software was “released” today, Monday, Oct. 13, it won’t be available for download until tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 14. According to Microsoft, these are the highlights of Silverlight 2: • .NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible […]
This morning’s mail brought an official-looking message with an European Union Taxation and Customs Union banner… addressed to our info@ email account. It claims to be from the europa.eu domain, but the message actually originated from the pelayanweb.com domain, which is a hosting service in Malaysia. The message is a straightforward phishing attempt, offering a […]
Today’s new phishing scam is an attempt to steal your Google AdWords account information and/or a credit-card number. I received two identical messages today, sent to email accounts that most definitely aren’t set up with Google AdWords. One came from the spoofed address email hidden; JavaScript is required, and had the subject line “Please re-submit […]
Here’s a big shout-out for the Eclipse Foundation, which is throwing a an attendee party at EclipseWorld 2008! They’ve hosted parties like this at previous EclipseWorld conferences, and they’re always great. This year’s Eclipse Foundation Party is on Wednesday, Oct. 29, from 7:00-9:00 PM. It take place immediately after our Afternoon Keynote (Ivar Jacobson) and […]
Here’s a notice that I received from Netflix today: Dear Alan, As you may know, Blu-ray movies are more expensive than standard definition movies. As a result, we’re going to start charging $1 a month (plus applicable taxes), in addition to your monthly membership charge, for unlimited access to Blu-ray movies. The additional charge for […]
I must thank my friend PJ for this wonderful framed poster, dating back from the mid-1980s. It now lives in a place of honor at BZ West. What a great gift! Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick