Tag: Google (Page 1 of 5)

Daily Reading List — August 7th

August 7, 2017 / Scott / 0 Comments

Open APIs: A nerdy phrase with big meaning for health care –

Japanese Manners Made Easy – When I worked for a Japanese company, they offered an Intro to Japanese class. It wasn’t just an intro to the language, but very much an intro to the culture, and it came in very handy when visiting. There’s a lot to learn, but I wouldn’t really mind if we had a little more here.

Visualizing the Jobs Lost to Automation –

Introducing Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Google Drive – Just had someone asking me about this the other day. BAM!

Better Everything. For Everyone. All $3. – Want to give this a shot.

Interactive Periodic Table of the Elements, in Pictures and Words – This looks like a dang good ‘un for kids to check out.

Daily Reading List — November 17th

November 17, 2016 / Scott / 0 Comments

Touch Surgery Surgical Simulator –

What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class – It's important to me that our kids understand that we're multi-generational working class, and that we don't lose sight of that.

That's one reason I drink "Old Man Coffee". "Old Man Coffee" is made in a regular old coffee pot (or press) from a can that is bought in bulk. It doesn't come from a Starbucks or a single serving made-especially-for-me-by-a-machine cup.

"Old Man Coffee" was good enough for my old man. It was good enough for his old man too.

It's good enough for me.

Google Play Music starts using your location & activity to recommend tunes – Needed. Why should I have to search for my "Sunday Morning Coffee" playlist every Sunday morning while I'm making coffee?

Why should I have to search for my "Old Man Rolling" playlist when they know I'm at the gym during jiu jitsu class.

Can't wait!

The Great Fall of Chyna –

Microsoft Flow Is Out of Beta, Ready to Challenge IFTTT’s Automation – Microsoft does its products well. But they always seem to be late. Now I need a reason to switch from IFTTT, and charging me $5/month for something I'm already getting somewhere else for free isn't a good reason to switch.

BTW, this post was bookmarked in Pinboard by me. IFTTT automatically tweeted it with a link to the article on my behalf (without all this commentary), and it also made an appended a draft version of a blog post that continues to grow until x number of entries have been made, then automatically publishes out to my blog, which is where you're probably reading this.

This didn't take very long to set up, but why would I want to bother doing it again?

How To Clean Burnt Stains off Enameled Cookware – Works so great, I wish I'd taken before and after photos. Next time.

Who Wins in the Gig Economy, and Who Loses – "There’s no way to avoid the truth that fundamental changes in the ways we work are here to stay and are creating a new set of winners and losers. But the proliferation of new opportunities in the gig economy to choose how, how much, where, and when to work is one big win for all."

Was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast the other day, and he noted that the whole corporate structured way to work is a pretty new phenomenon. If you look at it over the course of history, it's just a blip. An anomaly.

Says the guy with a full-time job.

The Elimination Of Reason – Vote today with the 2020 election in mind. #MakeAmericaAgain

Daily Reading List — October 24th

October 24, 2016 / Scott / 0 Comments

Entity Framework and Setting Primary Keys on Views – Trickery!

The Rise and Fall of the Army Surplus Store – There was a day when a man could get a good pair of boots and a durable pea coat at a good price at the surplus store.

Resistance Band Training for Jiu Jitsu – That Paloff Press exercise is a dang good 'un.

Build A System To Play Your Rasslin’ Entrance Music When You Walk Into A Room – Oh.
Hell.
Yeah.

Handy tool to scare the crap out of you when a hurricane is on its way. #matthew –

Microsoft is killing Yammer Enterprise plan in January 2017, will start integrating Office 365 Groups first –

If Google buys Twitter, there’s a perfect spot for it in YouTube – I called this for Q2 I believe. Can it happen before the end of Q4?

PODCAST: What the Generational Cycle Theory Can Tell Us About Our Present Age – Added Neil's book to my WishList

Daily Reading List — July 10th

July 10, 2016 / Scott / 0 Comments

Homeschooled Weirdoes And The Culture Of Conformity –

DC Administrator Expects Good Schools "Sometime in the Next 10 or 20 Years" – Ugh. Homeschool soap box here…

If something isn't working for you kid, you can change it now. Immediately. You don't even have to wait 10 or 20 minutes.

Why America Is So Obsessed with Florida (man)? – Keep Flarda weird.

Soon you’ll be able to Cast tabs from Chrome without an extension – Yaaaaas

All the OK Google commands. Or at least a lot of them. –

Strength Contests from the WWII Era – AoM – Do this kind of stuff daily with a friendly neighbor if you can, and toughen up.

You can’t kill email – This is way more depressing than the articles I read claiming we are headed for a political and financial meltdown.

The End Game Of Bubble Finance – I think they may have at least one more bubble in them.

Daily Reading List — October 15th

October 15, 2015 / Scott / 0 Comments

Infrastructure – Not just countries and business organizations either. This stuff can be applied at the family level. And should be.

Las Vegas has one of the biggest populations of ‘sugar daddies’ – Third? THIRD?!?!?!

Step it up Vegas! This is one you should be able to win.

Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices – Um…how about just adding chromecast support to an Amazon Prive Video app.

Before I cancel my Prime account. Ok…seriously, I’m not even close to that, and hardly ever use Prime Video.

But still.

Last – The first person who ran 26.2 miles died. He died. – I’ve always had a lot of admiration for anyone who takes longer than me to run a marathon. They have to deal with at least one second more of suffering than I have to endure.

Still, not itching to be last either.

Are Your Barbecued Chicken Kebabs Missing a Key Ingredient? – Well…duh.

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won’t Die – Did you know it takes more calories to digest a serving of Cap’n Crunch than there are calories in a serving of Cap’n Crunch?

Or wait…maybe that’s Fruity Pebbles.

School District Bans Tag for Reasons of ‘Emotional Safety’ – It’s getting to the point that my biggest concern as a parent is how to teach my kids to learn empathy and have mercy on their peers once they are all adults.

Their world is going to be filled with peaches.

Body found in suitcase near Boulder Highway – Wait…what? “Body found in suitcase”?

WHAT?!?!?!

Daily Reading List — June 19th

June 19, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

3 Trends That Are Changing The Way We Work Today – Yes. Yes. And yes.

"People don’t share because they like a project or brand … they share to help people who they want to see succeed."

To it's logical end…if you're only sharing with yourself, you only want to see your self succeed. Q.E.D.

Five Libertarian Lessons in HBO’s Game of Thrones – I would say there's a sixth lesson as well…the rule of law binds everyone. At least everyone with honor.

After Ned lost his head, there probably wasn't a more honorable guy in all of Westeros than Stannis Baratheon. Not the most charismatic to be sure, but he at least respects the rule of law. I mean, the guy didn't even really want to be king…he was just doing it because it was his duty.

Stannis acts on principle. And it doesn't really matter to him how many people have to die for the principle to be followed.

I'd better stop. That last sentence is a pretty good argument for political pragmatism.

The DOs and DO NOTs of running your first marathon – DO chase down people in your office who are trying desperately to get away from you talking about your training. Sprinting after these people counts as intervals.

Google Fit: Another Try At Health Data? – Until I can get an on-the-wrist HRM that doesn't spend more time completely dead in the water *cough Garmin cough* than it spends monitoring my HR, I'm going to sit it out.

Then again, I guess my only real option is to continue struggling with a HRM that is usually completely dead.

Cartagena, Colombia added to 2014 World Cup schedule – This would be a really cool place to race! #jealous

Everything Is Broken–All Software Is Bad – Hello World! At least the Pinboard->Twitter->WordPress plugin that will autopost this onto my blog works.

Well…most of the time.

School cancels reading program rather than promote “hacker culture” – Related…I'm currently reading "Natural Born Learners", which is about homeschooling/unschooling and very hacky itself in a lot of ways. Every kid is different, and every family is different. But I'm more and more convinced that your best bet at getting an education (whatever that means) is to hack it together yourself.

Focus – "Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you've got, you're more likely to do it.

And this is precisely why it's difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part."

Word.

Daily Reading List — June 5th

June 5, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

Android vs. The iPhone: It’s All About The Cloud – Um…yeah. I'm a little shocked to read this epiphany from a tech writer who didn't realize this difference years ago. Am I taking it for granted that people understand the difference between Apple and Google's focus?

4 Habits Of The Most Resilient People – There's actually a 5th habit: Habitually post motivational posters/quotes to social media.

Sharks & Minnows – Punching and kicking on purpose isn't acceptable on the swim–too dangerous for everyone involved. On the other hand, as the guy who once grabbed my ankle and used me to pull himself forward found out the hard way, I ain't no punk either.

The 9 Biggest Reasons to Embrace Solo Running – I'm mostly a solo runner. The only downside to running solo for me is that I'm the only person I get to spend the time with. I don't like myself as much as I do my running partners 100% of the time.

As IT’s industrial age ends, the humanist era begins – Power to the people!

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg gave New Jersey schools $100 million? OOPS!!! – Fortunately for Zuckerberg, all most people are going to remember is that he wrote the check. #ForTheChildren

Roku Remote Stopped Working – Easy Solution – I love the internet on most days. Today is one of those days.

A Bachelor’s Level Computer Science Program Curriculum – If you want to learn it, here you go. Good for review too. And there are countless other resources available as well!!!

Chicago halts Uber try at airport pickups – Translation: taxi companies and airport upset that people don't like price fixing.

Triathlon, Do You Live And Die By It? – Anyone who ever accused me of this isn't aware of my results. Still, I could benefit from a healthy dose of it right about now.

What Ancient Cave Paintings And Teen Spirit Teach Us About Where Social Media Is Going – Of course, everything is alternative. Until it isn't.

Daily Reading List — April 25th

April 25, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

Triathlon Fatalities Aren’t Going Away – Really hope someone can figure this out. Everything I've heard is that most of the people who die are fit and experienced, but have an undiagnosed heart condition.

And, uh, we also really need to do something about the number of people getting mowed down by cars when they are out training on their bikes. I stay inside the house because of that. Also there is Netflix.

Inspiration and Outrage in Boston – Outrage! If you're worried about the integrity of bandit runners, stop using your company's computer and bandwidth to try and track down bandit runners using Twitter and Facebook.

Ronald McDonald gets a makeover – Ronald McDonald now *serious* about being creepy. No more messing around.

American Teamwork–How Ryan Hall Helped Meb Win Boston – Great story about sacrifice for your teammates. Ryan Hall has smarts real good.

Why There Will Be A Robot Uprising – Some touch screen devices seem to have already achieved the desired outcome of preventing people from turning them off. #NoDisassemble

Drone Footage of a Rocket Taking off and Landing is Spectacular – The takeoff and landing is amazing on its own. Drones for the +1!

Post-Run Yoga – I blindly clicked, guessing low lunge would be the first thing on the list.

Google’s Secret Weapon To Keep Amazon And Microsoft On Their Toes – Race to the bottom of prices with a concurrent race to the top on speed? Sounds good to me!

4 Manly Lessons from the Minor Leagues – Some great stuff in here for triathletes too, even if you aren't trying to be a pro or get some sort of sponsorship. "Dominate the things you can control." and "Action without vision just passes time." are two of my favorites.

Unfollow Chocolate Milk! – It's about time someone with a louder voice than me said it. I bet Kool Ade, Tang, and every other sugary drink company wishes they'd thought of this scam before the Chocolate Milk cartel did.

Weekend warrior: mastering the art of the triathlon humblebrag – Really, there's no reason to be humble about it. If you're going out and doing ultra distance events regularly, or kicking ass in your age group in short and mid distance events, you are a bad ass. You are MUCH more of a badass than 90% of the population.

Flaunt it while you have it. You're not getting any younger.

Penn State Rugby Team Suspended – Here's the thing–college kids like to drink cold beer and, apparently, set things on fire.

When you have a problem with scholarship Division 1 athletes behavior, you can expect to have similar issues with non-scholarship club sport participants.

Ok..it's probably fair not to expect them to set things on fire because they aren't happy with their coach, but still.

Daily Reading List — March 30th

March 30, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

How much pee in a pool would kill you? – Still, going to keep the chlorine numbers lower this year to be safe. #dontstoppeeing

Pets Vs. Cattle: The Rising Value of Cloud Computing Skills – Digits – WSJ – “'Now you shoot servers in the head and leave them in the field,'” said Joshua McKenty, a former technical architect of NASA who co-founded a cloud software company based on his work there called Piston Cloud Computing. 'Eventually enough die and then you swap out the whole rack.'"

Wait…is he talking about servers, or sysadmins?

The Hardest Problem In Baseball – I thought this was going to be about pajama pants being allowed as part of the uniform, or players not wearing stirrups.

Still cool though.

Google And Apple—Take My Fitness Data, Please! – The first one to solve the problem of fragmented fitness data is a huge winner.

"The smartest move for Apple and Google would be to avoid creating their own fitness apps, aside from very simple data-display tools. Instead, they should use their clout with developers—the stick of app-store approval and the carrot of promotion in those stores—to encourage app makers to strive for compatibility with one another."

The Logic of Long Distance: The Running Bum as Sad and Admirable – "The running bum intuits what the rest of us also know: life is short and it will fade for us all. In the end all instrumentalities of life, all the best-made plans, lead us all into the ground. His choice is noble, as it honors the present. He throws himself deeply into it without regard for futures beyond his experience."

Why the Wallabies struggle with the ‘choke tackle’ – Step 1: Change the law to award scrum to defensive side in failed mauls to discourage offenses from mauling and speed up the game.

Step 2: Change the law to give a defender on his feet less right to the ball in the tackle in order to give advantage to the attacking side and speed up the game

Result: Defenses now have TWO incentives to force maul situations, where they now have more rights to the ball than in the tackle, and a better chance at changing possession by forcing a scrum, thus slowing down the game.

Nice move IRB.

Lance Armstrong’s Fuel Guru Reboots. His Quest? Kill Gatorade – For those who want to go faster AND care about their health.

Disney bets big on visitor-tracking technology – The technology is cool, but the scheduling of Fast Passes isn't as nice as it sounds, and may cost them some revenue. For example, it's already less likely that we will wake up and decide to head to a park after lunch on the same day because we know we don't have much of a chance of getting Fast Passes for our favorite rides. As a result, guess where we DON'T end up having dinner and ice cream treats.

Daily Reading List — February 18th

February 18, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

Helmets not even in top 10 of things that keep cycling safe – Have to agree with this. My biggest fear on the bike is that it will somehow come dislodged from the trainer in the middle of an interval and I'll go slamming into my desk.

Dispelling Lactic Acid Myths – Gyah! I learned a ton reading this article!

"The takeaway? Concentrate on exhaling."

5 Myths About Running That Are Ready to Be Retired – "Chocolate milk as a recovery drink" needs to be added to every list like this.

Calf Heart Attacks – Ouch! Glad I've never had this. You'll never believe what the number one thing you can do to help this running injury get better. Yep…stop running.

Tour of Sufferlandria recap – Best. Haiku. Every

Angels Haiku
Pain pain pain pain pain
Pain pain pain pain pain pain pain
There were no Angels

The Pleasant Places to Live – Cool map! Take into account the sea breeze, and I'd argue that our June and July on the East Coast of Florida is pretty dang nice. Boost our numbers!

Cycling ‘much safer than playing rugby’ – Well, now that's finally answered.

Google Releases Chromecast SDK To Developers – Avalanche of game updates coming in 3,2,1…

Daily Reading List — February 3rd

February 3, 2014 / Scott / 0 Comments

Pre-Season Weaknesses: Become A Faster Runner – "The Fit, But Slow Runner" caught my attention right out of the gates. 10k training may be in full effect. After rest.

Amazon looks at boosting Prime fee – Not happy about this, but I feel like our family makes money on Prime as it is, so can't complain too loudly.

Trainer Road Will Make You Stronger – Trainerraod: Best. Value. In. Cycling

Effective as hell too.

Finally, A Digital DJ That Knows Its Stuff – This is my biggest complaint with Google Music. I don't understand how a company so good at meta-data processing can offer up a product so bad at DJing radio stations. Pandora was way better at this in 2008 than Google is right now.

Reading between the lines of the latest Facebook usage data – “We’ve asked about Google+ in the past and were worried when we heard respondents being interviewed that they weren’t sure if we were asking about the social networking platform or more broadly about use of any Google product. That was a while ago and we will likely be including Google+ the next time we ask people about social networking platforms.”

Well…yeah. I'm pretty sure that's exactly where Google is going with Plus. It's not as much of a destination as it is a layer that connects all Google products and services. Sure, there's a site there you can use as a "red Facebook", but the scope is way past status updates, likes, and shares.

I think Google is perfectly content to sit back and play possum with this for now.

What Should a 4 Year Old Know? – Yes. Yes. Yes.

7 Tools That Let You Control Your Own Data – OpenPDS is very interesting especially. I don't mind the idea of sharing data so much if I have more control over the precision of that data.

Google Launches AdSense Direct, A New Tool For Direct Ad Sales – I'm open for bizniss.

The Real Power of Chromecast

July 24, 2013 / Scott / 0 Comments

More Google genius.

If you haven’t heard about Chromecast (Amazon affiliate link–thanks for clicking through and buying), it’s a pretty cool idea. A little $35 part that plugs into you HDMI input on your TV and lets you broadcast from your phone (any platform–Android, iOS, etc.) directly from applications like YouTube, Netflix, Google Music, Pandora (coming soon), etc. But it doesn’t stop there–your phone is just where the broadcast initiates. Since the device is running ChromeOS, it can take over the stream from there so your device is freed up to do other stuff. And…you can broadcast from the Chrome browser too (for stuff like Amazon streaming)…provided your device will allow you to run Chrome.

Pretty smart. Pretty cool. And, they’ve made the SDK available for any app developer to sync up and stream from their apps. Again–it doesn’t matter what platform your device is running on.

That could make this a no-brainer device for every TV in your house. Especially for $35 each.

Why wouldn’t app developers want to include this functionality, right?

That’s a question Apple’s going to have a tough time answering. Because I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you will not see a ChromeCast icon in iTunes any time soon.

I think donuts may cost more than a dollar now, but I still like that saying.

We only have one TV, so I’ve only bought one so far. But Christmas is right around the corner.

Daily Reading List — June 17th

June 17, 2013 / Scott / 0 Comments

Top 5 Triathlon Swimming Problems And What You Can Do About It – Haven't been nervous in any water for a long time, but these are good things to review and always have in the back of your mind.

Winning Manhattan Race Report – Was feeling really good about my 3.5 mile swim coming up. Of course, this put me right back into my place.

Google Hangouts upgrade removes ability to host Google Voice calls on your computer | The Verge – Hard to complain about a free service that's so useful. So I won't.

It's just that, well…

New Study Finds It Is Impossible To Lose Weight – I think I know the guy in the before/after photos.

Daily Reading List — June 10th

June 10, 2013 / Scott / 0 Comments

Open Source Tool Moves Spotify Playlists To Google Music Using Unofficial APIs – Dangit the money! You have to have a premium Spotify account to do this. Oh well…maybe an official mover is just around the corner?

5 Tools For Creating Your Own Infographics – I think they are trendy and all…but I still look at them a lot. Great way to get several ideas across in a very convenient format.

Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrollment – Yeah, but doesn't it worry you that your kid may end up enjoying learning at home instead of hating school at school? LOL

Google Will Soon Launch Google Web Designer – Awsum. There's an app I'd like to build for work. I'm Android, and most of my target audience is iOS. This will make it easy to just do it as a webapp.

Daily Reading List — March 20th

March 20, 2013 / Scott / 0 Comments

Triathlon Is What You Make Of It – While I was on the bike last night I was watching a documentary on Jon Fitch (UFC Fighter). He mentioned that one of the things he really likes about MMA is that there's some honesty in it–no shortcuts, no way to cheat the system. These are things we seen a lot in other parts of life. I think that applies to triathlon as well. From the first to cross the finish line to the last, just about everyone on race day personally gets out of it what they put into it.

22 Things Happy People Do Differently – Best. Hot dog. Ever.

Replace hot dog with whatever.

Why Local SEO Is Vital For Small Businesses [Infographic] – I'm finding more and more that just taking care of things locally make a huge difference. But my experience was just anecdotal until now.

json2csharp – generate c# classes from json – Saving me about a million years' worth of work.

Gettin’ After It!