Quote of the week

“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”

– John Wooden

Happy 50th anniversary!

Today is mom & pop’s 50th wedding anniversary — congratulations, おめでとう!

Being a numbers guy, I went online and learned that only 5% of U.S. marriages make it to 50 years.

At dinner today we looked at mom & pop’s wedding pictures and heard some old stories. I think my favorites were the wedding reception stories (open bar, and no D.U.I. laws back then), and how uncle got his nickname Frank.

This Friday we’re leaving for a two-week trip to Japan to celebrate and visit with family. We’re all looking forward to it. Thanks again to Carol and Sue for all of their hard work planning the trip!

For Rich or Poor TV Buyers, It’s Price First

From The New York Times Bits blog:

It wasn’t that long ago–10 years at most–that consumers would blanch at spending $800 for a large-screen traditional picture tube TV. But today, with CRT TVs nearing extinction (even Costco doesn’t stock them any longer), many customers seem perfectly happy with plunking down even $2,000 for a wide-screen HDTV.

Free Photoshop online

Adobe is offering a free online version of its popular Photoshop software, including 2GB of free storage.

I tried signing up, but response is slow due to the heavy traffic.

Click here to sign up.

A smarter car GPS

Walt Mossberg reviews the Dash Express — what differentiates it from other GPS systems is Wi-Fi and a cell phone data modem, enabling an always-on Internet connection:

Dash Express finally brings the power of the Internet, and of community information, to auto navigation. If it becomes popular, it could be a big deal.

…unlike any other in-car navigation device I’ve seen, each Dash Express, from a Silicon Valley start-up called Dash Navigation, becomes part of a network, connected to the company via the Internet.

Each device not only receives and displays information, but transmits it as well, acting as a “probe,” as Dash calls it, to measure local traffic speeds. This information is compiled by the company and then broadcast back to all other Dash units in your area, almost instantly painting streets on your map with color codes to indicate traffic speeds.

Watch his video review here.

The Soup Nazi

Found this reading Scripting News, so had to post it here. Enjoy.

Major league season opens in Tokyo

From the Sporting News:

Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona proved to be a sage. His starting pitcher on Tuesday, Daisuke Matsuzaka, was preparing for what might be the most bizarre opening day start in the history of baseball, a Japanese national hero pitching at the Tokyo Dome — site of some of the heroics that made Matsuzaka’s reputation in the first place — in an official major-league game being played as most teams still are toiling in Arizona and Florida.

Quote of the week

“In my experience, there are people who want things and people who do things. In the end, I would prefer to have the ones who can do things.”

– Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management, AUDI AG

Happy Easter from Nicole

Just received this from cousin Amy. Click to enlarge.

A Happy Easter to everyone!

Richardson plans Obama endorsement

From today’s New York Times:

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who sought to become the nation’s first Hispanic president this year, plans to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on Friday at a campaign event in Oregon.

Mr. Obama’s address on race in Philadelphia on Tuesday appeared to sway Mr. Richardson, who sent word to the senator that he was inspired and impressed by the speech, in which Mr. Obama called for an end to the “racial stalemate” that has divided Americans for decades.

In a statement, Mr. Richardson hailed Mr. Obama’s judgment and ability to be commander-in-chief — qualities that Mrs. Clinton has called into question in recent weeks on the campaign trail.

“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” Mr. Richardson said in the statement, provided by the Obama campaign early Friday morning.

Read the New York Times article.

Obama’s speech on race

You can read the transcript of Barack Obama’s speech on race here, or watch the online video. An excerpt:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.

I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.

I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

From The New York Times.

Largest U.S. IPO ever

Today’s Visa IPO raised nearly $18 billion, topping the AT&T Wireless IPO of $10.6 billion in 2000 — on a day when the Dow fell 300 points.

Some interesting numbers: Visa earned $5.2 billion in revenues last year, handling 44 billion credit card transactions totaling more$3.2 trillion in value.

Unlike sub-prime mortgage holders, Visa has no debt exposure since it makes money by charging fees on each credit card transaction. Its management has forecast 20% earnings growth for the next two years.

From Yahoo! Finance.

Fought the good fight

Carol and Linda e-mailed to say that young Dale Inouye passed away this morning, just a little more than one year after his bone marrow transplant.

I found the above photo on Dale’s blog, from a trip to Oahu earlier this year. I thought it was a nice tribute.

Please send your prayers and good thoughts to Dale’s family.

Quote of the week

“When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.”

– Garson Kanin

Open for business

 

Watch free TV shows and other programming on Hulu.com.Walt Mossberg gave it a thumbs-up:

Hulu is a good start for Hollywood in finally providing a better experience for Internet streaming of TV and movies. If the service can add a lot more content and make viewing possible in more scenarios, it might strike a real blow against piracy.

One drawback versus iTunes is that you cannot move Hulu content to portable devices.

Read the entire Walt Mossberg review here.

New Pixar movie

Marc Andreessen calls Wall-E the best film of all time.

View the trailer here.

Forget the gym, do pushups

From Well, the health blog on The New York Times web site:

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.

“It takes strength to do them, and it takes endurance to do a lot of them,” said Jack LaLanne, 93, the fitness pioneer who astounded television viewers in the 1950s with his fingertip push-ups. “It’s a good indication of what kind of physical condition you’re in.”

“You are just using your own body and your body’s weight,” said Steven G. Estes, a physical education professor and dean of the college of professional studies at Missouri Western State University. “If you’re going to demonstrate any kind of physical strength and power, that’s the easiest, simplest, fastest way to do it.”

Read the entire blog post.

Family dinner

On Sunday we all went to Benihana on the 3rd Street Promenade to celebrate three birthdays: Carol, Michael and Pop.

Wasn’t sure what to expect as it’s been years since eating there, but the food was great, and the restaurant had high ceilings and lots of space which made for a nice, social atmosphere. According to their web site, Santa Monica is the newest location in Southern California.

So, give Benihana a try if you haven’t been there in a while.

Note: their Torrance location has been re-designed and renovated.

Benihana
1447 Fourth St.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Phone: (310) 260-1423

They criticized Vista – and they should know

That was the headline of a New York Times piece that captured comments of Microsoft senior executives talking about their own Windows Vista OS. Some excerpts:

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.

Brazen careerist

Learned about Brazen Careerist, a career blog, on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

And through Brazen Careerist, learned about Alltop, which has “all the top sites covered all the time.” Alltop was started by Guy Kawasaki.

Guy’s bio from his web site:

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine.

Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Quote of the week

“Let’s walk across the street and squash one down.”

– My boss’ boss re Nathan’s hot dog across from the office, in NYC in the 60s

Ready to be president

Marc Andreessen on Barack Obama after a 1-1/2 hour face-to-face meeting, with a friend active in high-tech and politics. From his blog post:

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven’t had meaningful experience as an executive — as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign — you’ll see my leadership skills in action.

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory.

iPhone goes Corporate

Dr. Mike e-mailed the other day to let me know that the iPhone will soon support corporate enterprise systems such as Microsoft Exchange Server.

Apple has given technology managers their iPhone wish list in full in an effort to make its phone more business friendly. The mission: Lure enough enterprises to the iPhone so Apple can hit its 10 million unit goal by the end of 2008.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off the company’s iPhone SDK event in Cupertino, Calif. with a few remarks, but really let Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, do a lot of the enterprise heavy lifting. See Engadget and News.com for live coverage (event just ended) and Apple’s statement.

What’s notable about that final Exchange point is that the two companies collaborated on making Exchange Server work better with the iPhone (see photo right [above], credit News.com’s Corinne Schulze). This collaboration also occurred on the back end so that iPhone users will still use the same email, calendar and contact apps they do today. Just as an aside: Why can’t these two do this for corporate email? Entourage for the Mac is a sick joke.

Read more here.

Ultra portable

In less than one month we’ll all be heading to Japan to celebrate mom & pop’s 50th wedding anniversary. Sue and Carol did a great job planning the trip, and everyone’s looking forward to it.

Since I want to stay connected during the trip, but don’t want to lug my MacBookPro, I decided to buy the new Asus Eee PC, the 2-pound ultra portable notebook that was a big hit last Christmas.

Landslide

This morning’s drive to the office took nearly 90 minutes. Found out from my assistant when I got to the office that the backyard of a Westwood home slid onto Sepulveda Blvd., shutting it down.

See the CBS news story and video.

Quote of the week

“The new idea either finds a champion or dies . . . No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that major technological change provokes . . . Champions of new inventions display persistence and courage of heroic quality . . .”

– Edward Schon, MIT