All Conference Player Commits to Keelhaulers

Mon, Apr 27, 2009 - [Men's Basketball]

Cal Maritime head men’s basketball coach Bryan Rooney has announced the signing of Foothill College forward Michael Weimer.  Michael recently finished an outstanding career at Foothill where he played for head coach Shannon Rosenberg.

“We are thrilled that Michael will be joining our program.  He played in one of the top junior college programs in the state and has a proven track record of being a winner.  Very simply, he makes positive plays on the floor. Not only has he been a double digit scorer the past two years in junior college and a prolific scorer in high school but he has done so with efficiency.  More importantly, he is an excellent student committed to getting a great degree at our school,” commented Coach Rooney.

Weimer graduated from high school at Westmont High School, where he averaged 22 points and 8 rebounds his senior year under Coach Bill Gerth.  Also during his senior year, Michael set a career high with 52 points against Evergreen High School

At Foothill, Michael established himself as one of the Owls’ main offensive threats as he averaged 11.5 points per game for his career.  At 6′5″, he possesses the ability to score inside but by evidence of his 117 made three point shots, Weimer also is able to stretch the defense. For his play, Michael was a two-time All Conference selection in the always tough Coast Conference.  He will major in business at Cal Maritime.

“We are at an exciting time in our program coming off a solid year with 17 wins and looking to take the next step.  Michael will have the opportunity to be a significant contributor in helping us do so,” concluded Coach Rooney.

via California Pacific Conference.

A lot of new and interesting things for developer’s has been announced at the Apple developers conference, yet I was struck by this article from PC World:

 WWDC No Shows: 10 Things We Wanted From Apple and Didn’t Get.

What was number one item?

1. The Apple Tablet

Much of the tech community expected Apple to unveil some sort of tablet-like device at the WWDC this week. Reports suggested a 10-inch touchscreen could be coming our way, priced between $500 and $700 and running a Mac OS X-like operating system with multitouch capabilities.

Every since Moses its seems humans have been fascinated by Top Ten Lists and Tablets.  

Forget the entry levl smart phone market.  Apple will own this too.  This pricing probably just killed the Palm Pre and the company I am afraid.  There are many reasons for this, the web only platform (yet to be released) like Android’s is limiting, virtual machine only.   Native apps within a rich OO framework that supports the de facto standard for low level coding leads to rich/fast innovation.  So if you believe rich/innovative apps will make or break the next gen of handhelds…Pre is  handicapped.  So is Android.   (What the heck is MS doing? Trying to stay PC…)

So, the only chance was Pre’s awesome U/I and design would make it an awesome consumer (non early adopter) choice as a great entry level smart phone …but a $99 iPhone 3G kills this.

There is a snowball’s chance in Pre’s hell however, given that AT&T is still the only provider for the iPhone, but I don’t think the entry level market cares.

Apple - iPhone - Mobile phone, iPod, and Internet device..

Interesting stuff going on at Google, the the “Wave” et al…

Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O - O’Reilly Radar.

I understand the point of an emerging web application platform and web apps can do what many native apps did 10 years ago. I  don’t get the graph…is it another way of preaching the silly idea that the superiority of the native app reign (or OS) is about to end?…it looks here like the point in this graph is today’s web apps (RIAs or HTML5) are as good as today’s native apps…and I hear it over and over again.

Let’s not get carried away…please.  Google Earth compared to Google Maps, seriously, one is like flying, the other is simply useful, that’s all.

There is an excellent point in the article though, the observation that mobile browsing is driving a lot of the web platform now.  Yep.

Even so,  the native apps (and the mobile browser on an iPhone for example, is a native app) will always be superior. The native iPhone apps blow away the iPhon web apps  or any other mobile.   I just downloaded Google Earth on the iPhone, web apps can’t do that.  The real disruption to talk about began over a year ago, not in 1991.

Its not the web application platform that is displacing native apps, its that web connected mobile platforms are displacing personal computers.

In case you are wondering, SEO stands for Snake Engine Oil, ,,,just kidding, but close, its stands for “Search Engineer Optimization”

So when you get email ads (i.e. SPAM) or phone calls asking you about whether you want to improve traffic to your website and help you make all this money, usually the term “SEO” comes up.
There’s seminars on this, there’s books, its an industry.  What is it exactly?  Its supposed to be what it stands for.   It is about techniques you can use to improve your website’s ranking on search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo.

A good idea in general, make sure your website makes it easy for google automatic robot crawlers to understand what your website is all about so it can properly rank it.  If you have a dynamic website with fresh new content, and follow certain common sense rules with clear subject matter that can be indexed, Google won’t have a problem ranking it fairly.   Another technique is to make your website so exciting, other people link to it.  When google robots crawl the web they see you are linked by many other websites, so its uses some of that info in deciding where it will rank you based on certain keywords, and you get a high ranking on the search results.  Its a win win for searchers and searchees.
If you look at it from Google’s point of view, wanting to list the best and most relevant sites on a search, so we all keep using it instead of Microsoft’s search engine,  this process is easy to understand.  But google has another worry, people who play tricks, so as to get their site on top of a certain search…not by having a great website, but by cheating (Of course you can cheat legally, simply pay google for adwords, but thats another story).

An early common technique was a firm would sell links to you, “yeah, if you pay me I will link to you”…these guys were called link farmers.  This was to fool google robots into thinking, “wow, here’s all these links to a website, wow, must be important” and then it ranks that website high.
Google ain’t stupid.  It figured out link farms right away.  And it figures out the other ga’zillion techniques early as well.
If a technique works,  its like a virus, it spreads quickly, to where it doesn’t work anymore.  If it works, and it thwarts google’s quality, it ain’t gonna work no more and you can guess what happens to your ranking in the future.

So when someone calls you and says “We are SEO specialists and you need us” say this if you have some time on your hands, “what is your website?”  then go to Google, and search “SEO help” and ask them why their website isn’t number one.  It won’t be, Google’s own site will be, and I recommend you go to that site and read it.

Search Engine Optimization SEO - Webmasters/Site owners Help.

I am certain Apple’s response to this “Netbook” era will be more of a new platform, not just a big iPhone, or little Mac.  The phone metaphor for a pad size device won’t work, but it probably will use a lot of the iPhone functionality, app store for sure, and apps in general should mostly be compatible.   Speaking of Pads (lighter version of tablets) and netbooks, this technology could be the biggest breakthrough yet.

From Pixel Qi - Home.

“We are a fabless developer of a new class of screens that use standard LCD manufacturing materials and processes.

The screens will be available for mini-laptops and ebook readers in high volume mass production in mid-2009.  Our mainstream laptop screens will be available in 2010.

The readability and legibility of our new screens rival the best epaper available today.  What’s new about our screens: fast video rate update (refresh), and fully saturated color at very low pricing because we use standard manufacturing materials, processes and factories.  Our screens use 1/2 to 1/4 the power of a regular LCD screen, and when integrated carefully with the device can increase battery life between charges by 5-fold.

The choice of the screens used in a computer, or any portable, can have a huge environmental impact.  Pixel Qi screens are the greenest screens ever made and will be critical to new generations of green electronics.”

Pixel Qi - Home.

will be a Personal Communicator, as envisioned in 1993…notice the expandable screen. [link]

A little history:
A Wander-Buch is a work record for a journeyman. A journeyman must first complete an apprenticeship as they went from Master to Master to learn their trade. It was a record the journeyman
could use along with letters of recommendation or accomplishment from those various masters to earn their own master in their trade.

The Wanderbuch is usually a work record for a journeyman craftsman, but in this case Johann Jacob seems to have used it mainly a personal diary.

http://csumc.wisc.edu/FLVA/let/Wanderbuch_1905/Wanderbuch_1905.html

Another use of the word Wanderbuch was used in the Catholic Kolping Society. It was mostly called a Gesellenwanderbuch but it also documented the travels of members of the workers society as they
travelled from place to place while staying at local Kolping houses in the various cities they traveled through. It served as an admission card from one place to the next.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France

[Wandering Book] In conformity with the highest ordnance from the high royal administration nr. 21080 this wandering book, enclosing 48 pages, and its good being taken care of, its wandering owner hath to bethink, as well as of the following: the named person is to avoid meaningless, loitering perambulation, and especially begging. to direct his trips only towards places where patrons or masters from his craft or guild are to be found, in places where he will not find work, he won’t stop for more than 48 hours without the due authorities’ consent, and in each place where he meets patrons or masters from his craft or guild, even if he continues his trip without actually working, the guild chief or his assistant or, where there aren’t guilds, a patron or master is to make the following notes in this wandering book: whether he had, or not, the opportunity of finding work and whether, and on what reason, he refused the work offered. without superior permission, the wanderer isn’t entitled to leave the K & K territory, on the contrary, he is obliged to occupant his wandering time with useful work and to obtain from the master he worked for a certificate referring to the time he worked and his conduct, which is to be certified by local authorities, this will be used only by him in any situation. finally assuming a false name, using a wandering book other than his own or falsifying the book, erasing or deleting or any other falsification in the wandering book is considered, according to the ordnance of the High Royal administration nr. 2355 to be public fraud and to be punished accordingly by the law.