Archive

Archive for December, 2008

Keeping the Gary Kildall Story Straight

December 20th, 2008 No comments

CP/M author and personal computer pioneer Gary Kildall was flying his plane to visit a customer in Oakland when IBM came visiting in 1980, and flew back in time to take part, as planned, in afternoon negotiations that fell apart because IBM was being completely unreasonable:

IBM did not want to pay royalties on each copy of the operating system that it sold. It wanted to rename the product, which would upend Digital’s marketing plan. And IBM wanted Digital to sign a nondisclosure agreement that protected IBM’s intellectual property but left Digital’s extremely vulnerable.

Cassidy: There’s more to the story of software pioneer Kildall – SiliconValley.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser
Categories: 17, computer

Alec Arrival

December 12th, 2008 No comments

Alec made it home after a very long day that started at 6:00 AM in St. Paul, Minnesota and ended with a 4.5 hour slog through the Tokyo train system lugging heavy bags.

Ding-dong went the doorbell, and the family went wild with delight!

Welcome home, Alec.

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Categories: Alec, Family

Stan Veit tells of his encounters with Apple in the early days

December 8th, 2008 No comments

Computer Shopper, that bulky trade magazine that seemed to be on every corner in Silicon Valley has posted an article on their first publisher, Stan Veit’s interactions with Steve Jobs in the formative years of Apple Computer.

It’s a fun read, with anecdotes ranging from sewing jeans to missing out on owning 10% of the company–a decision Mr. Veit eventually comes to not regret.

Categories: computer

Akira Yamaguchi「江戸しぐさ」”Edo Behavior” posters

December 6th, 2008 No comments

On the way back from Yokohama the other night I came across two new polite behavior encouragement campaign posters by illustrator Akira Yamaguchi that stopped me in my tracks. The iPhone photos I hastily took were too blurry but here are a couple of blog postings on the two I saw:

「江戸しぐさ」ポスター – コールスロー

id:Akimbo – Akimbo – はてなハイク

Categories: community, culture, Japan, Tokyo

tckid.com

December 2nd, 2008 No comments

I just found out about the tckid.com web site, an online community for third culture types, started about a year ago. It looks like the best online resource yet for a growing category of people who have always struggled to maintain social networks. I signed up right away.

My LBI friend Paul Johnson’s Facebook post linking to an article by Ruth E. Van Renken on all the third culture folk in Barack Obama’s emerging administration is what led me to the tckids site.

Categories: community, culture, identity

CNET to adopt Facebook Connect signon

December 2nd, 2008 No comments

As Rafe Needleman notes in the article, sites should offer users a variety of alternatives for signing in, so a clueless Facebook user can use their Facebook sign-on, while those who care about maintaining control over their digital identity can use a self-hosted OpenID sign-on.

Sites like ours will do what they do: create content and online services, and offer users community around those services. Users’ identities are becoming untethered from the sites they use. More and more, services will be giving new visitors options for signing in to access the “registered” features of the sites.

Facebook Connect: Scary but good | Webware – CNET

Categories: identity

Morning walk with Bjorn

December 1st, 2008 No comments

The skies over Tokyo this morning were clear and the air cool–perfect for an early walk with Bjorn through Tama Reien to the Sengenyama view of Mt. Fuji.

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Categories: Tokyo, walking