I Am Adam Smith

Fun, Inspriational Speach by Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch is an amazing guy. Virtual reality prof at CMU who recently was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This is his last public speech. This talk changed my whole day. He's more fired up about life then most healthy people I know.

Clinton Video on Non-Zero Games and Robert Wright

Great speech by Bill Clinton at the Daytona Peace Accord. Thesis of speech was based on Robert Wrights excellent book, Nonzero . Bill wasn't perfect, but damn does he put arguements on how to make our world a better place eloquently.

Couldn't agree with you more buddy.

Building your own Projector

I've thought it'd be fun for a while now to build my own projector to watch movies on.

Nice tutorial up at Tom's Hardware on how to build a high-res projector by taking parts from an LCD flat-monitor and putting them into an old fashioned overhead projector.

As you can see here, the model they built looks really good:

Here's a cheap Apollo overhead projector. These overheads are nice because replacement bulbs cost $20 instead of $200 for the ones you buy for the nice new ones.

Wireless App Sends Video from your PC to your TV

Wirelessly transferring video from your PC to your TV should be a big boost to streaming video and video downloads over the net. This product was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas today by Adimos.

Mix this up with some new RSS applications and some powerful video streaming - and you can have some great TV options that don't exist today. Needs to be kept extremely simple for people to find and stream your content though. Podcasting for video.

DRM and finding a way to make some money from it will be an issue - but I think a very solvable one.

REST Format for web services

Bill Burnham has a post on REST-based SOAs vs SOAP for web services. Good to keep this in mind when we start thinking about affiliate/partnership opportunities.

One of the most basic examples of a REST-based SOA is Amazon’s affiliate network (or for that matter any e-commerce affiliate network).  Amazon’s affiliate partners simply paste a small snippet of code into their website and then become part of a distributed web service in which they display Amazon’s goods and Amazon then pays commissions on any sales that occur as the result of their referrals.  This service, now with tens of thousands of participants, is all done by leveraging the existing web infrastructure.  Amazon does offer more complex SOAP-based web services, but these services are have been adopted by only a small set of their affiliates due to their complexity.

Implement Bayesian inference using PHP

IBM has a three part series on implementing Baseian algoriths in PHP to create intelligent web applications.

I can see us using this to make a Suggestions Engine for people who've booked trips with TripInvite. Or possibly to suggest which tours people might like on a given trip. Need to think this one through, Bayesian analysis is a powerful statistical tool.

What else for wifi?

WiFi is growing pretty quickly, primarily as ways to attract upper income people to coffee shops and hotels.

While email and web browsing is great, what other uses are there for WiFi? What other devices or services could be enabled by it?

Map UIC Project vs. Protected Land

Idea for thesis:

Map out where Underground Injection Control projects are happening today. Particuarly Class I, II versus where protected areas are.

This should help give me a better idea of what sized buffer zone (where no CO2 injection could happen) there should be surrounding protected areas. Also would double check that there aren't injection projects happening in protected areas today.