Satoshi’s Wireless Weblog: User Interface is an Art: PDA with integrated GPS – so why don’t PCs have built in GPS by now? Do the Intel Centrino chipsets have GPS built in? I don’t think so, searching for GPS on the Intel website doesn’t bring up much. It would be so helpful for so many apps if you could find out definitive lat/long info for the PC.

Lots of great info here – PayPal Connect! - Conference Agenda & Sessions – and fascinating that PayPal has a dev conference. Found via Scott’s blog.

A nice air cannon prop at Iron Kingdom – Pneumatic Props – they have lots of good stuff up here.

Seen at PhotographyBLOG -:- Home – the new Casio QV-R40 will have a shutter lag of just .01 seconds. I’m not a camera wonk but I hate the latency of my digital cameras today, so this sounds great to me.

Lots of options starting to show up for mini-PCs – Tom’s Hardware Guide PCs & HowTo: The Mailman Has Arrived: Four Mini-PCs on the Test Bench - Summary: Design or Practical Value - No Barebone System Has It All – the future of the PC lies in the compact form along with high performance and universal interfaces. The computer should do its job virtually noise-free and, above all, be based on a thermal concept. Operational convenience and ergonomics are a must, as are quality appearance and aesthetics. The mini-PC of the near future will compete with the low-cost notebook; the traditional, chunky metal PC in the form of a container on wheels will at best be confined to the shadows. I’m waiting until someone has a design that really cuts down on heat generation/power waste.

Update – Rich has had some trouble with his Shuttles but also loves the form factor. But the heat is a remaining problem – I have a room with 5 PCs running in it and the heat is terrible. I would go to a mobile CPU or maybe even blades if I could, I have to get rid of the waste heat problem.

Great article – SecurityFocus HOME Infocus: Forensic Log Parsing with Microsoft’s LogParser – found by way of Furrygoat

GameSpot Presents: GameSpotting - GameSpot

OK in my previous post I used the word “typewritten”, meaning an 8-1/2 by 11 document, doublespaced, courier or times font, right justified, produced by pc and word processor. Of course it is not really typewritten – it has none of the signature artifacts of a typewriter – strikeout, whiteout, mishits. It could have been fully justified, creation of which is painful and clumsy on a typewritter. So i need a word to take the place of “typewritten”. “Laserwritten”, “laserjetted”, “inkjetted”? All are tradenames, all imply a certain technology which may or may not be in use. “Pc-generated”? This has none of the style of “typewritten”.

Great counsel – Fool.com: Living Below Your Means [Post of the Day] July 17, 2003 – we lived well below our means for the first 10-15 years of our married life and it has paid off huge. We didn’t really miss any of the “stuff” we didn’t have then, and our savings then contributed to our improved lifestyle later.

At Cannon Beach for the last 5-6 days – stayed at the Ocean Lodge. Beautiful new lodge, good service, tho some oddities – stained typewritten hotel guide; a cardboard sign out front naming the hotel; AC in only some of the rooms; very stilted praise of one of the owning partners in the hotel guide. I just got the sense that something odd was going on behind the scenes, there were just enough little details that were askew. Maybe the owning partners are at odds? We’d stay there again, tho the Stephanie Inn right next door is nicer and has none of the odd signs. Weather was great. And of course the beach was the beach, best beach in the Pacific Northwest? Sadly I broke my toe last day of the stay and am now hobbling.

When I go on a little vacation I always take a bag of paperbacks, books which I don’t mind if I leave behind. This last weeks bag of books: The Braided World – OK sci fi with a strangely similar planet to earth; Link -- so-so action/thriller about the origins of humanity – not very original; Curtain by Agatha Christie – another great Poirot story; Area 7, a very entertaining albeit highly improbable action thriller. It didn’t break my heart to leave any of these behind at the hotel.

Tinderbox sounds like a cool app.

anil dash points towards amazon’s payment service, coming soon for our use. Very cool.

Met Frank Boosman this week – great guy, anyone who even remotely compares me to Tiger Woods and Yao Ming is ok by me. Oh and by the way there are other great ex-MSFT VCs too – my partners here at Ignition for instance, or Pete at Second Ave, and many others I am forgetting.

Dana points to the CarChip, a digital recorder you can plug into the standard interface in a car and collect diagnostics. Looks like fun! A great holiday gift for geek friends.