Pito’s Blog

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The other day I came across this article in the Boston Globe about one of the greats of Computer Science, Seymour Papert, inventor of the seminal Logo programming language and many other important accomplishments.

“He was long a jewel of the MIT faculty. Now, after a devastating brain injury, mathematician Seymour Papert is struggling bravely to learn again how to think like, speak like, be like the man of genius he was.” (from In Search of a Beautiful Mind, The Boston Globe)

Hard to believe that I hadn’t heard of it before. So Sad. Read the whole article, it’s worthwhile.

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I saw this somewhere and I thought I would share as it seems very useful, yet obscure:

Helpful Tip: To quickly reset your iPhone without wiping anything off it or retethering it to iTunes, hold the volume up button, the home button, and the lock button at the same time. Keep holding it even after the “Slide to Power Off” appears, eventually it will flash totally off and then you’ll get the Apple logo. Let go then.

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Check out these 10 Commandments for Facebook Applications. They are pretty good commandments for software in general. I especially like:

“Make it simple. Users DO NOT read.”, from FaceReviews

Yup, I have seen that time and time again with BlogBridge. Hard to believe. But true. Of course there’s the 1 in a thousand who ask for more documentation, but they are very rare.

[if you are interested in Facebook, take a look at BlogBridge’s Guide of Facebook blogs and feeds]

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“The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth — BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next.”

Check it out and watch the BostonDynamics video. Pretty cool and surprising. Your tax dollars at work!

p.s. But a gasoline engine?

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Check out “Forget Photoshop: 15 Online Graphics Generators“:

“Shiny edges, reflections, neat 3D effects - you love them and can’t get enough of them. Well, there’s no reason to spend any time in Photoshop creating them since there are so many tools out there that will do the dirty work for you. Without further ado, here’s a roundup of 15 online Web 2.0 graphics generators.” (from “Forget Photoshop: 15 Online Graphics Generators“)

Read the whole thing!

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Recently three friends of mine got nice press coverage, so I thought I’d share them:

• Reed Sturtevant is doing some great things at Microsoft in Boston
• Paul Engiish and Kayak are showing the true prices of air travel
• Ted Morgan of Skyhook are performing magic with photos and no-GPS

So in fact, there IS cool tech stuff going on in Boston

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I just came across Dave Dupre’s blog. Some good reading there, for example:

“[…snip] If the single test does not show a huge improvement, the project is considered a failure and scrapped. This happens all the time, and it always stifles innovation. Why propose something new if you have to be right all the time?

Innovation does not proceed on a schedule. To maintain a culture of innovation, occasional failure must be allowed - even encouraged! As long as you learn from your mistakes and move on and get better, the team and the company will be better off.” (from Fear of Failure)

Technorati Tags: softwaredevelopment management

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Check this post 30+ Must-Have Updated Firefox 3 Extensions from Mashable!:

We’ve put together a list of 30+ must-have Firefox 3 extensions that we know you’ll enjoy, whether you’ve upgraded to Firefox 3 and are looking for something new to add to your browser, or have yet to make the upgrade and are looking for a reason.

Lots of good stuff there if you are a FireFox 3 user. Check ‘em out!

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I haven’t seen anyone pointing to this article about TechCrunch and Professor Arrington, but it’s very interesting. I remember when it was first starting and how he would write an unbelievable number of interesting and useful reviews about new products. Mike Arrington was a machine! Say what you will about him, TechCrunch is the labor of some extremely hard work:

“Of course, Arrington’s success is about more than partying like a frat boy and schmoozing like a Hollywood agent at a cast party. With the exception of a three-week vacation (during which he worked half-time) at the end of 2006, he says he has worked every day for two years straight.

He gets up at about 10 or 11 am, is at his desk 10 seconds later, and tends to the business side of his operation until early evening, seeing entrepreneurs, doing phone interviews, tracking the news of the day, and writing posts. He’s often at parties or other events until 10. It’s typically not until 10 or 11 pm, when things quiet down, that he has time to think and write more thoughtful, analytical blog entries. “I’ve actually cut back,” he says. ” from TecCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz

Learn all about TechCrunch and Michael Arrington

Technorati Tags: techcrunch arrington

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I am on a Mac and I have lots of odd little things running, doing backups, syncs, who knows what. Every so often my computer goes “boink!” with no error message or display and I wonder, hmm, I wonder what just happened?

I have a suspicion it’s my hourly backup which is boinking because one file couldn’t be backed up. But it might be finder saying that it was done copying all those files (oh wait, maybe that’s a “bing” not a “boing”) Or might it be something else totally?

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