I often see things online that are interesting but not quite worthy of a dedicated post so I'm starting the Signal Catalog.  These posts will be lists (catalog) of interesting tidbits (signals).  Enjoy:

Mashup Camp

On Monday (Feb 20, 2006), 300 or so folks are gathering in Mountain View for the first Mashup Camp.  A mashup, according to Wikipedia, is "a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience".  In other words, combining the results from multiple services or APIs.  There's a whole slew of mashups listed at http://www.programmableweb.com/matrix, including the Ontario Beer Hunter.  The Mashup Camp is most interesting because API consumers and producers will be there.

Yahoo Hacks

The major search engines have lots of features that you can tap into using the right search phrases.  Things like define:, site:, and link: are old favourites of mine.  CNET has a little video available showing some Yahoo tricks from the Yahoo Hacks book (O'Reilly).  A lot of Yahoo hacks apply to Google as well (there's also a Google Hacks book).  One I had not seen before that is quite cool is searching for "showtimes" followed by your zip/postal code:  http://www.google.com/search?q=showtimes+E1C+1W1.  The first hit on Google shows me movies playing near my postal code.  Cool stuff.

Jane Austen Action Figure

While making sure the term "Signal Catalog" was not going to infringe on someone's trademark, I came across this:  a Jane Austen Action Figure complete with a miniature "Pride and Prejudice", writing desk, and quill.  The silly thing even has movable arms...  I guess it wouldn't be an action figure otherwise.

Million Dollar Homepage

I may be the last person on the block to hear about this month-old story but in case you missed it as well...  A 21-year old student in need of money for college sold advertising space at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ for $1 per pixel (with a promise to keep the site up for 5 years).  Thanks to lots of media, word-of-mouth, and online hype, he sold over $1 million worth of pixel space in just 5 months.  Here's what the site looked like in Feb 2006:

Be Careful With Old Hard Drives

If you're paranoid like me, you would not dream of parting with a hard drive (in or out of a computer) without a low-level bit-cleansing ritual.  This article is just a reminder that bad people are out there looking for your old data: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177105357.

How To Save $2.43 Million Per Day

http://www.itworld.com/Man/2699/060125mslicense/

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This isn't news to anyone, but the state of patents in the software industry is a mess.  Two recent examples involving Amazon:

1. Amazon was awarded a patent for a "method and system for creating of gift clusters of multiple items in a client/server environment by users, and for the ordering of such user-defined gift clusters of multiple items".  In other words, you can tell Amazon that some items belong together as a gift.  Presumably you can write a single gift note and have the items all ship together.
2. Amazon is being sued for patent infringement for allowing users to sign in to partner sites with Amazon credentials and have access to shipping and related information from Amazon.  In other words, "Amazon.com users who go to Target.com or other Web sites only need to punch in billing details once".

As a software company owner, I find this type of stuff demoralizing.  These are great ideas but do not deserve patents.  "Staff Picks" at video stores and "Free Gift with Purchase" at retail stores are also great ideas but not patentable inventions.  All these crazy patents and infringement lawsuits are making it increasingly risky for small startups to launch innovative products and services.  What a shame.

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Robert Cringely speculates about how Apple could partner with Blockbuster to offer an iPod fill-up station for video: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060216.html

With current home broadband speeds it could be faster and more reliable to pop into the neighbourhood Blockbuster to grab a video than to download one.  And of course there are all those folks who have a TV but not a high-speed Internet connection.

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