NickMoline: RT @rww: Wikipedia Plans to Use Color Codes to Highlight Untrustworthy Text http://bit.ly/QSPMe

See original: RT @rww: Wikipedia Plans to Use Color Codes to Highlight Untrustworthy Text http://bit.ly/QSPMe

As I Posted about last week, I attended Mashup Camp at the Computer History Museum this week. It has been a packed couple of days. I mentioned before I was not really considering entering the Speedgeeking Contest that occurs at each Mashup Camp.

I've been a member of Amazon Prime for over about 2 years now, and I was just thinking today what brilliant marketing it is. By paying a nominal yearly fee, I get free two day shipping, or really cheap next day shipping on everything I buy from them, but does it save me any money?

This week I, as well as my Wife Barbara, and my co worker Dan, went to Google I/O. People who have read my blog for a while may remember that last year I attended Google Developer Day around this same time in San Jose. This year Google decided to expand from a single day to a whole two-day tech conference and move it to the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Has it been a year already? It seems like such a short time ago that I sat up at 2 a.m. in a hotel room in San Simeon, CA writing about 2006. I claimed 2006 incredible and, an "oddity" in my life as for the first time in recent years I was not alone and sad on New Years Eve.

Tonight I'm starting a little early, it's 11:31 p.m. right now as I type these words (I imagine it will take me a bit to finish writing this post) on New Years Eve, and I'm capping yet another amazing year in the life of Nick Moline.

This thursday I went over to my second Tech Conference since moving to the San Francisco Bay area, the first being MacWorld back in January, this time, I went to the San Jose convention Center for the 2nd annual Google Developer Day. I must say I hope that Google's CEO tells the Apple Board of Directors a thing or two about how to hold a Tech Conference.

Google Developer Day 2007 was fantastic fun, and Google made a lot of fantastic announcements just for developers, several of which I'm going to start implementing in my work at Justia.

I personally have never owned a TiVo box, primarily because I knew there were a number of DVRs on the market that did not require a monthly subscription and I didn't see the benefit to paying $12/month for something I thought I could get for a one time fee.

TiVo and Amazon have signed a deal recently that actually made me think twice about this policy however. As most people know, Amazon unveiled their Amazon Unbox program earlier this year to not much applause. After all iTunes has had video downloads for a while now, and it just didn't seem to make sense to buy movies from Amazon when I already had iTunes. Add to that the fact that Amazon Unbox does not work on a mac as their video drm is PC Only and I didn't give Amazon a second thought when it came to purchasing single episodes of TV shows or directly downloading movies. Similar to the reasons I previously mentioned why I didn't give TiVo a second thought, why would I get something that would require it's own monthly service when I could buy a cable box with DVR built in, or better yet, build a MythTV (though that requires lots of effort and is buggy).

But then TiVo and Amazon signed a deal that I believe is mutually smart for both companies. Amazon Unbox now can be linked with your TiVo account, which means that as you are browsing the web from anywhere, (even away from home) you can purchase a movie or episode on Amazon, or even Rent a movie (something you can't do on iTunes) and then when you come home (or turn on your TV if you already were home) you'll find that in your Now Playing List on your TiVo, the episode or movie is already there, ready for you to watch on your TV or (in our case) Projector.

I decided to take the plunge and find out. I purchased a TiVo and linked my TiVo account with my Amazon account, and now I've learned what I've been missing with Both services.

My last blog post before this one was in August and things have definitely changed in the lives of Barbara and I since then. The biggest change (really the only change but it has effected so much of my life it's really a category rather then an item) is that I got a new job. I now work as a programmer for Justia Inc. Justia is a company that, among other things, provides websites for lawyers and law firms. The company is based in Palo Alto, California (in Silicon Valley).

As such this change of a new job also means that we no longer live with my parents in Texas but are now Californians. We have a small, one bedroom apartment in Mountain View, California a few minutes drive from the Googleplex.

Those of you who know us best most likely know this by now, but I felt it was important to update my blog and let people know about these changes. Yesterday (December 18th) marked the 2 month (October 18th) anniversary of the day we moved into our new home here in California.

My how time flies. I went to my blog today and noticed, low and behold, that I hadn't updated it in over a year (15 months to be more exact) and a lot certainly has happened in that year. With this new post I have also replaced my old blogging software (I was never quite happy with Blog:CMS) with Wordpress, which I was reluctant to try, but now I find it to be such a good blogging software that I have no idea what I had against it for so long.