Life After Coffee

Oracle EMEA has launched a pilot Web 2.0 program where a character called ‘The Oracle Node” can do a search on the entire OTN website for content you are interested in. This was created and aimed at developers to help encourage registration and downloads on OTN.

The program has a strong web 2.0 aspect with details about the Node on many of the networking websites. Since this is a pilot program, we thought you might be interested in getting involved with the project by suggesting new sources of information, building up and spreading of the Node virally. We welcome your feedback, suggestions and ideas you may have to help improve the Node.

Go ahead, click through and form your own opinion… All I can say is what the hell is Oracle thinking? If you can stomach the orbiting pod long enough to navigate to the end of one of these paths you’ll be faced with a sliding wall of nausea which may somehow contain some relevant information, but with no discernible organization.

I have come up with two acceptable explanations… Someone at Oracle just finished a class on Flash and needed a project, or someone at Oracle just finished a study on motion sickness and needed a project.

You can grow a beautiful garden out of a pile of shit, but it’s hard to see anything fertile about iamthenode.com at this point.

Not since the early days of dial-up Internet have we had to worry about how much we use our Internet access, but today Internet service providers are searching for a way to make the folks who use the most bandwidth either pay up or get out!

As I wrote on InternetEvolution recently, it’s time we start treating the Internet like every other utility.

Using the utility model, an ISP could charge for the maximum bit rate available (many already offer several maximum bit rates at graduated prices), then a reasonable price for each gigabyte used. To simplify the user experience and reduce concern about overages, it makes sense to include a generous amount of leeway with the service — say, 200 Gbytes — but it will be essential to give the user a way to monitor how it’s consumed.

Ideally, enough bandwidth and storage would be included with the basic plan to more than satisfy the typical user, including allowance for downloading a reasonable amount of video and audio. (For reference, movies available on iTunes tend to run just a bit over 1 Gbyte.) With packages in the hundreds of Gbytes, the average user’s Internet experience and usage pattern is unlikely to be affected at all. But customers should not hesitate to stay up to date on their system updates and virus software.

Check out the full article and feel free to comment on Internet Evolution or here and let me know what you think!

Update: As Gary points out in a comment below, this is a very USA-centric view. I know internet rates and billing policies vary quite a bit around the world. Please leave a comment if your area already has bandwidth restrictions and let us know how it’s working out!

I’m the type of person who absolutely must disassemble just about everything I can get my hands on. (Carla still tells folks about me taking apart a small battery operated truck I received for some single digit birthday — before we even left the parking lot of the post office!) Few things amuse me more than magnets and gears, but this video of non-circular gears (found on MAKE really bent my brain!

If you watch to the end, or click straight through to YouTube for related videos you’ll find that there are tons of cool gear videos including some nice Lego projects.

Now that USB flash drives are cheap and common producers clearly need to get creative to compete. Here are a couple great ideas for storage with a more personal touch:

Stuff this cuddly USB bear with 1GB of photos, music or documents.

I have to admit this is the first blue fortune cookie I’ve ever seen, but imagine how many fortunes you could fit in this USB fortune cookie

Also from the freshly baked line the USB Hamburger may not be a half-pound burger, but it is a 2GB drive!

Of course none of these beat the USB Humping Dog but you can’t store files on that (and let’s face it, it might not quite be appropriate for that executive board meeting.)

Thanks to Don for the USB bear.

Being an eternal optimist I loved this xkcd cartoon from earlier this week:

Gotta love xkcd!