Saturday, October 17, 2015 – Observations Along the Road

At Last, The Stew: Tasty Links in a Simmering Sauce

Posted onSaturday, October 17, 2015Authorcahwyguy

Observation Stew And finally, some tasty news chum stew, which has been simmering in the bookmarks for a couple of weeks:

DoD and Silicon Valley. My wife brought my attention to this article, which explores how the Defense Department is working with Silicon Valley to get cutting edge technology into defense systems. For those who don’t know the DOD and its acquisition processes (which grind exceedingly slow), this is very novel. Silicon Valley brings technology out faster than the DOD can get past an MDD and RFP, so it is really a new way for the DOD.
Boarding Passes. This hit the news last week, but is worth highlighting. We all have typically thrown away those boarding passes we print, because they don’t contain anything useful. So we thought. Brian Krebs did some exploration, and discovered that you might want to save the boarding pass for shredding instead. There’s information on there that is likely sensitive.
Trading Spaces. One of my favorite shows of the early 2000s was Trading Space on TLC. Near the end, it started to go off the rails and quickly disappeared. Here’s a great explanation of the rise and fall of Trading Spaces. I still believe it could be brought back in these tight economic times — they just need to keep it at its original concept, and not allow Doug or Hildy anywhere near it.
Preparing for El Niño. We’ve all been hearing that this winter will be something Southern California needs: a wet one. Here are 28 things that you should be doing to prepare now for the wet winter. I do know I need to out and clean the gutters. All of this is good advice.
CSUN Resurgent. Every time I drive along Reseda, I think how Northridge is reshaping Reseda to be the college town that will complete the transformation of CSUN. In the past 10 years, the transformation of CSUN has been remarkable, and the Daily News has a good exploration of it. CSUN has gone from being just lil’ old Valley State to a full university, with top notch nationally recognized programs and a larger residential contingent. In many ways, I think it — together with the Cal Polys — are the gems of the Cal State system. I think it could almost be another UC, but I believe there is now a law (but I can’t find the reference) that schools in the CSU system cannot convert to UCs. (Both UCLA and UCSB are former CalStates)

Shopping News: Haggen, Fresh & Easy, Handmade, and Jet.Com

Posted onSaturday, October 17, 2015Saturday, October 17, 2015Authorcahwyguy

userpic=outofbusiness Continuing with part 3 of clearing out the links (there’s one more pure news chum stew post): Here are a series of posts related to shopping and stores:

Going Down Down Down. Although this is old news by now, Haggen is going under, and a number of their stores will be becoming Gelsons and Smart&Finals. In some ways, this is sad: Haggen bit off more than they could chew, and were doomed from the start (and likely set up by Albersons). It will be nice to have more Gelsons and Smart and Finals, though. Still no word on what will happen to the store at Sepulveda and Palms: I’ve seen that go through so many iterations by now it is silly. In similar news, it looks like Fresh and Easy is filing for bankruptcy again. I still miss the F&E in Northridge; it was a good store with good selection. But this isn’t a surprise, as I don’t see the stores anymore. Supermarkets, in general, are getting beat by Target and Walmart adding groceries; the landscape will continue to grow as Aldi comes in. As for, we’ll keep shopping at the ethnics, Sprouts, and Trader Joes.
War of the Handmade. Amazon is taking on Etsy with their new subcompany: Handmade by Amazon. Will it be a success? I don’t know. Etsy is well known, but Amazon is a 400 lb gorilla. Handmade by Amazon has much tighter rules than Etsy, but people have been complaining that Etsy’s new rules have reduced the handmade aspect of what is sold. Should be interesting to watch — partially because my wife hope to restart the doll business on line. We still have lots of stock from the days working with Karen (Pratt) Holmes.
A Costco on the Internet. Recently, Planet Money had a fascinating episode on the Anti-Store: a store that makes it intentionally hard for you to buy things, find things, and pay for things. By doing that, they make oodles of money. The store: Costco. They make you pay for membership. They intentionally don’t sign the aisles so you have to explore the store. They take limited forms of payments and provide no bags. But it works, and people buy buy buy. At the end of the episode, they mentioned an internet variation: a company that was going to charge you to become a member, and would give you extra discounts if you ordered multiple different items from the same warehouse (allowing combined shipping) or decided to waive your ability to return items. The site? Jet.Com. Recent news has brought word that Jet.Com has decided not to charge its membership fee, because the profits from other areas — even with their discounts — make it unnecessary. Might be worth exploring, for the bargain hunters.

Technological Miscellany: Facebook, Mergers, AOL, Word, and Google

Posted onSaturday, October 17, 2015Saturday, October 17, 2015Authorcahwyguy

userpic=cyborg I’m taking some time this morning to clear out the accumulated links. This post brings together a number of items of technological nature, some older, some newer, but all with hopefully some interest:

I Like That. Reports are surfacing that Facebook will be addressing the “dislike” button issue by allowing people to vote with selected emoticons. The problem that Facebook faces is a language one: “liking” a post doesn’t seem right when someone is sharing bad news — you want somethat that says “I’m here for you”. The problem is that Facebook’s new range still isn’t broad enough: 😢 might not be the right thing. Ideally, you could put any emoji: just imagine: 💩 23
Merger Mania. Some tech mergers have been in the news recently. Dell bought EMC, which might not mean anything to you, but does mean a lot to me. EMC, you see, bought Data General many years ago back when I was the team leader for the DGUX B2 evaluation. Also announced was the purchase of Lastpass by LogMeIn. A lot of people are worried about this. As a Lastpass user, I’m not worried yet — I’m more “wait and see”. I would still recommend Lastpass — it has drastically simplified password management for me and seems to do a good job of securing the passwords (from what I’ve read) 🔐 5
Building a Collection. Everyone collects something, from maps to stamps to figurines. But here’s a new one: AOL Disks. Here’s a detailed look inside the world of AOL disk collecting. 💿 2
Fonts and Word. One problem with MS Word is that sometimes you get a document and don’t have the fonts to read it. Here’s how to solve that problem — here’s how to embed your fonts in a Word document. 📝 4
Slightly Off. Do you like the new Google logo? Some folks didn’t … it disturbed them, and they undertook an investigation to figure out why. They discovered it was because the kerning was slightly off. 📐 7

It’s All About The Exposure

Posted onSaturday, October 17, 2015Authorcahwyguy

userpic=tortuga-heuvos It’s Saturday — and time to start clearing the accumulated links. First up, a trio of links all connected to sex and exposure:

The Sexy Tampon. It has become a parody of itself, the “Sexy …” costume. So here are some more entries for your Halloween Costuming needs: the Sexy Cockroach, the Sexy Fetus, the Sexy Tampon… well, you get the idea.
It’s a Business. Here’s a fascinating article about the porn business: it explores why the business you think you know is nothing like the business you think you know. For example, is that oft-repeated claim that porn drives tech adoption true? Right now, the porn industry is going through hard times, with new media, “free” streaming attempting to compete with paid, condom laws, and often being barred from app stores.
Alone in a Hotel? You’re alone on a business trip, and in your hotel. What do you do? Increasingly, the answer is not to watch porn. Both Hyatt Hotels and Marriott Hotels have announced they are dropping pay-per-view adult movies. Why? A number of reasons. With the increasing number of intrusions into hotels, patrons don’t want their porn preferences exposed to the world when their bills are exposed. Probably more importantly, people can watch for free over the Internet. As a result, revenue has plummeted, and hotels are looking for profit in different areas.
Nudes and Economics. Here’s an interesting detailed analysis of Playboy’s announcement to drop nudes from its magazine. Playboy has been faced with a significant circulation drop, and they discovered when they made their website SFW, views increased. To become a mainstream media brand — and one that attracts the lifestyle advertisers they want and need — they need to be more mainstream. How do they do that? Drop the nudity. It’s not like people can’t find it elsewhere these days — something that wasn’t true in the 1950s-1970s — they top days of Playboy.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31