engine

I was all ready to highlight what seemed like a very insightful comment on this blog by a co-founder of the advertising company CultureFish Media on the merits of Baidu, China's leading search engine. But then I remembered Rick at CNET Asia had asked readers for reasons to love Baidu. Lo and behold, the same comment appeared there under the name of a different CultureFish exec (and prominent blogger).

This wouldn't bother me at all, except that the comment includes personal reflection, such as this passage that appears verbatim in both posts: "Maybe I will get more … Read more

Do-it-yourself magazines like MAKE and basement-brewed steampunk anachronisms might be at the forefront of home engineering projects, but 50-year-old Lego is still the name builders know best. Now you can play with them on your computer in the official freeware program Lego Digital Designer, available for both Windows and Mac.

… Read more

The ongoing murder trial of Hans Reiser, the 44-year-old Oakland, Calif., computer programmer accused of killing his wife, took a rather interesting turn Wednesday with rambling testimony from Reiser's father, who said he had warned his son about "techno-geeks" who are into sadomasochism, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Yep, you read that right. During a break with jurors present, the witness, Ramon Reiser, 65, also did one-armed push-ups in the courtroom, the Chronicle wrote.

The trial has been living up to predictions it would be one of the most sensational in local recent memory. Driving that … Read more

Tech-minded people tend to be especially attentive to the quality, design, performance, and durability of the products they use, even products intended to enhance sexual pleasure. As an engineer and a former SWAT officer explained it to Wired lifestyle columnist Regina Lynn, they found the gear available in adult-entertainment shops less than satisfactory on more than a few levels. So they developed, and now market, sex toys of their own design.

Read more about it in Lynn's Wired column, headlined "Sex Drive"

Are you looking for that edge online? Something that your competitors don't have? Forget wasting all your energy on a great design and developing superior content--it's not what you know, but who you work with.

Sooner or later, most of us in the industry get an e-mail, either passed on by someone we know, through our own e-mail, or possibly through one of our own sites that offers to help us achieve success online. Most of these are fairly nondescript and rather generic.

Then the other day, I had one passed on to me that was more than … Read more

Infinia on Monday said that it raised $50 million to commercialize a large mirrored dish that turns out three kilowatts of solar power.

With the money, Infinia will be able to bring its Infinia Solar System to market late in 2008.

The company is negotiating with project developers who intend to use hundreds of the dishes in solar power plants in Spain and the southwestern United States, according to Infinia president J.D. Sitton.

The series B round was led by hedge fund GLG Partners and private equity firm Wexford Capital, and included prior investors Vulcan Capital, Khosla Ventures, EQUUS … Read more

I'd meant to note this earlier, but SEO Hong Kong posted a summary of some findings when Chinese Internet users were tested comparing China's leading search engine, Baidu, with the newer Google.cn.

In a test conducted with Chinese subjects, eye scanning on Google.cn was more focused in the upper left hand corner compared to Baidu despite the fact that both search engines have nearly identical page layouts. Baidu users also scrolled down the page more than the Google users, but clicked on less sponsored listings--less than 1 percent compared to 3 percent for Google. ...

On Baidu, … Read more

For a while now, I've been reading bits and pieces about the concept of geo-engineering: undertaking macro-scale actions in the atmosphere to counteract the impact of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. From what little I'd read, it seemed like the ideas of crackpots.

That was until my Cleveland Foundation colleague Kathleen Cerveny sent me a most intriguing link to a videoed lecture by David Keith from the University of Calgary on the Web site TED.

No kook, professor Keith argues that it's very possible to inject large quantities of sulfates high above the stratosphere, and in so doing … Read more

Last week, Benchmark announced a $3.5 million investment in Engine Yard, which provides commercial support for Ruby on Rails applications. Engine Yard is doing $3 million in business and growing. It's also profitable. It didn't need the investment.

The investment, however, is very telling. When one of the top venture capital firms on the planet puts hard dollars behind a support model, it's significant. It becomes doubly so when the firm (or its investors) in question previously invested in JBoss, MySQL, SpringSource (Interface21), and other support-based open-source companies.

It may mean that Benchmark knows something that the rest of the industry seems determined to ignore: services-based businesses may well be the future of the software industry.… Read more