The Galley Slave

Intel 32Gb flash sets stage for solid-state drives | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

This is interesting news. God knows what it’s going to do for my next Ipod purchase

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

So I’ve been using Ubuntu on a spare machine in my home office (much to the chagrin of my wife) for a couple of years now and have generally been pleased with the direction that the distribution has taken. However, the latest upgrade broke my network connection and has left me deeply annoyed.
The box in question has only a wireless connection which prior upgrades have seamlessly left intact. 8.04 broke it and I’m left with trying to figure out a way to get new kernels on my latest doorstop. It shouldn’t be this hard….

Firefox 3: Firefox 3 Add-on Compatibility Report

In the Firefox upgrade sweepstakes, this is one of those annoyances that can detract from test driving a new version. There’s something warm and comfortable about the near perfect (it can always be better with one more extension!) setup of your primary browser, and something barren and almost suspect about a totally clean Firefox installation. Well, to the rescue comes Likehacker with a nice quick read out on some of the must-have FF extensions.
For those of you unfamiliar with Lifehacker, bookmark it now (trust me).

skippermarc.com

A good friend of mine has bought a boat and is actively sailing along the East coast and Caribbean. He is unmarried - and still a scourge of the female population - and left AOL at a good time, around 2003/04 as I recall. Anyway, it looks like he’s having a great time and I - for one - am envious!

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Venture capitalists undeterred by lack of returns from Web 2.0

Lots of good ideas and very little in the way of a plan to monetize them. Doesn’t this all sound vaguely familiar? If I were a VC, I would want to see a concrete plan for making the business sustainable before I threw any cash at some of these half-baked, copy cat start ups. I mean, how many calendar/to do list/social networks/etc/etc. does the world need?

Microsoft’s Vista: New Horizon or the End of the Road for PC Operating Systems? - Knowledge@Wharton

I don’t usually like to be so pessimistic about what normal people (as opposed to folks who work in technology driven organizations) will be doing from a technology perspective next year or five years from now, but with the prevalence of conversion to Web 2.0 tools and applications it is very hard to see how an MS operating system continues as a going concern. Sooner or later, a critical mass of users will become comfortable with managing their data remotely (instead of having a local machine as your primary storage device, as most of us do) and at that point having a Personal end user computer with anything more than a browser will be overkill. I can say from my own case that the convenience factor alone should be enough for people to begin migrating in that direction - and they already are - but will enough do so to make regular OS upgrades viable for MS? Somehow, I don’t think so….

Look out, Apple TV: The $100 Netflix Player has arrived | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

I’m not sure how cool this is, my wife has been streaming NetFlix movies to our family room TV via a server we have set up as a media device. I suppose this would make that service easy for the masses. What would really be cool is if I could stream their movies in HD to any TV in my house wirelessly (I’m not sure if that’s a word).
There are so many set top boxes with so many options (that all cost extra $$$’s) it’s no wonder that Mr and Mrs Normal think the cable companies are ripping them off. I just want to be able to record on one box and play anywhere in my house - everything - whether it comes from the cable company (in our case FIOS) or not. Free me from my entertainment shackles!

AOL-Bebo: $850M Deal Closes; AOL Combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ Into People Networks Headed By Shields | paidContent.org

So, the deal finally closes. Looks like a mini re-org along with it and now 4 total business units(?). I’m not sure if Q2 will be a good indicator, but I’ll be interested to see how Bebo affects our numbers going forward.

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library | The Art of Manliness

I have a shameful pile in my reading list at almost all times, but nonetheless I’m always on the lookout for lists like these to provide new fodder. Plus I get that additional jolt of validation when I see books on the list that I’ve already read:)

The Toyota ™ Prius turns one million - BloggingStocks

I can see myself in one of these in the next few years. $4/gallon gas is going to make ferrying kids around seem less and less palatable.