Category: Tech

Just another web site

It’s not the Internet, which was developed under the direction of Bob Taylor. It’s not Xerox PARC, where the GUI, Ethernet, and laser printing were developed under the guidance of the same Bob Taylor, and it’s not the Wordwide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. It’s just another Web site. A Web site that only now is going to have its own data centers. It’s Facebook.

Does the human interest story behind the start of Facebook, and the fact that it’s current and has 20-something appeal, make it more worthy of a major motion picture than the creation of the Internet and the WWW? Doesn’t matter, because the movie The Social Network is coming…

I like Facebook. Has it changed my life? No, WordPress has had a much bigger effect on me personally. I’ve been on the Internet from home since early 1994, and Facebook came along much too late in my online experience for me to be awed by it.

By the way, the version of radiohead’s “creep” that’s heard in that movie trailer is by the Belgian singing group the Scala & Kolacny Brothers Choir, who I featured here a couple of years ago.

The Revolution will not be colorized

If you’re like me, you’ll think this is the most interesting thing you’ve seen today. Full color photographs, not colorized, taken in Russia between 1910-15, by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.

Hey, wait a sec’… the Library of Congress bought those photographic plates back in ’48?? That was only a year before the Soviets had their first atomic bomb test! Some Commie sympathizer in the LoC wasted American post-war taxpayer money on Russian photos?? I’m outraged!

Best Buy at Wal*Mart

I really obsess before purchasing electronics. Eric needs a laptop computer for college, and we agreed that it should have a Blu-ray player with HDMI. The problem was, I had budgeted $600 for the purchase, and Blu-ray laptops are $750 and up. But then I found this Acer Aspire model on Wal*Mart’s web site for $598:

Acer 15.6″ Aspire AS5551-4200 Laptop PC with AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core P520 Processor, Blu-Ray Disc Drive & Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition

Over the past month I’ve looked at a lot of laptop computers in Best Buy, Staples, Wal*Mart, and BJ’s Warehouse, and this Acer is a great unit, regardless of price. I’ve been very happy with my Acer Aspire One netbook, and the construction quality of this full-featured laptop is excellent. Blu-ray video discs start up much more quickly than on standalone players, and the playback is perfectly smooth.

FedEx shipping was only $0.97, and after placing the order on Sunday (a sales tax holiday in Massachusetts) it shipped on Monday and arrived on Wednesday. I know that Wal*Mart is thought of as being the Evil Empire, but I couldn’t pass up this deal.

Follow-up: The price has dropped to $578! This is the #1 bargain right now for a Windows laptop.