I've created a CodePlex project for managing alerts in SharePoint 2007 called SPAlertManager.It's a limited scope layouts application for managing alerts for all of a user's sites in a single place, along with the ability to sign up for an alert for a site (it creates an alert for all lists in the site). Just a proof of concept sample, but might be useful to someone someday.

I can across this article (from slashdot, I think) on Parallel Path Electromagnetic Motors - interesting technology that could mean a lot ...
An excerpt:
“ Joe Flynn from Flynn Research is working on a new technology called "Parallel Path" with Boeing Phantom Works. The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier . They have received a US Patent.  ”.
check it out at opensourceenergy.org

CNN has a story about the Microsoft URGE service they'll be launching, yet another attempt to take the music market from Apple and iTunes - fair enough ... But, according to the article, the service will not be compatible with iTunes, or iPods .... That's brilliant, isn't it? Since the iPod line is the hottest selling player, and is the gateway product for introducing consumers to legal online music - let's leave that market in tact for Apple.
I'm no marketing guru, but I would want to eat Apple's lunch if I was Microsoft.First off, you have this massive potential audience of iPod users - They may or may not buy music from Apple - but they probably do buy some, or have at least considered it. There isn't a subscription model service available from Apple with an All-You-Can-Eat model - so at very least some of these customers could still buy some music from Apple, and subscribe to the subscription service from Microsoft if given a chance. If they did, it wouldn't be long before they would buy songs and video from Microsoft if the prices and quality are good - why wouldn't they?
The technology for this is available, Audible has content that works in any player - with DRM intact. Microsoft has a Macintosh development team, and they are likely more than capable of writing an application for the mac to load music on the iPod, or a plug-in for iTunes ... can't be that complicated to a team that wrote Entourage and Office for mac - and with IE mac out of the picture, maybe they have some time on their hands, maybe.
Maybe it's just the thought of validating that the iPod is a great player that they're afraid of? Get over it, the money is in the content in the long run, and even a pretty iPod will eventually break. If they user has a broader perspective of the digital media player marketplace and formats, they're next player might just be something other than an iPod .... but not if their entire media buying experience is with iTunes .... Wake up guys.

If you look at Apple and Google's stock prices, it may not appear that there's a great similarity, but I noticed that they seem to on similar trajectories over the last year when you look at the percentage gains of both over the last year (see for yourself, at least at the time of the post). Does this have some significance in relation to the tech industry? Are we entering a up cycle?

According to InformationWeek.com, Database Architects and DBAs are in demand! Great news for Database folks!
excerpt:

" The positions most sought after and their hourly wages include: database architect, $60.53 an hour; embedded developer, $57.67; Oracle DBA, $54.73; Java developer, $53.38; applications developer, $51.15; Cisco engineer, $48.99; SQL DBA, $45.56; clinical data manager, $43.79; and clinical research associate, $37.79"

This story is realy interesting, yet really short on facts and other details:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,1627425,00.html

excerpt:

" It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.
Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation"

So a battle should ensue over the credability of the science and the meaningfulness of the discoveries that Mr. Mills has made in regards to conflicting quantum theory. He claims to have a prototype, so the proff should be in the pudding (so to speak) - and the scientists examining it should be able to say if this is something 'new' to the scientific world, a fraud, a mistake, or something that works and is able to be explained with the known principles of science.

Exciting times ahead.

This is pretty wild sounding, and if true, would seem to be the ideal solution for today's energy and environmental issues concerning transportation. I hope to hear more about this one in the future.
Excerpt:

"IsraCast recently covered the idea developed at the Weizmann Institute to use pure Zinc to produce Hydrogen using solar power. Now, a different solution has been developed by an Israeli company called Engineuity. Amnon Yogev, one of the two founders of Engineuity, and a retired Professor of the Weizmann Institute, suggested a method for producing a continuous flow of Hydrogen and steam under full pressure inside a car. This method could also be used for producing hydrogen for fuel cells and other applications requiring hydrogen and/or steam..." Link

This is pretty wild sounding, and if true, would seem to be the ideal solution for today's energy and environmental issues concerning transportation. I hope to hear more about this one in the future.
Excerpt:

"IsraCast recently covered the idea developed at the Weizmann Institute to use pure Zinc to produce Hydrogen using solar power. Now, a different solution has been developed by an Israeli company called Engineuity. Amnon Yogev, one of the two founders of Engineuity, and a retired Professor of the Weizmann Institute, suggested a method for producing a continuous flow of Hydrogen and steam under full pressure inside a car. This method could also be used for producing hydrogen for fuel cells and other applications requiring hydrogen and/or steam..." Link

Besides the landslide of changes, improvements, etc. of .Net 2.0 I've been looking at several other more specific technologies of late. I've been intrigued with the Laszlo Open Server, and Ruby on Rails. Specifically how these technologies can be leveraged using the skills I already have decent proficiency in.
I really hold on to the premise that you have to look at these technologies in their native surroundings by digging in and learning how to do the basics in the original, so I rolled up the sleeves, Googled for tutorials and software, and gave them a try.
Laszlo's product is interesting to me because it allows developers to design and deliver web applications that will look and operate the same on most platforms and browsers by taking a programmatic approach to using the ubiquitous Flash plug in as an application platform. They've abstracted the Flash elements into a coding API that can be used to create applications with a pretty simple means to develop and deploy. It works as a server based technology and in a server-less deployment (with a limited set of functionality). It's really cool, and it works.
Where this system falls short for me is that it runs on a Tomcat Java server, and the syntax is simple, but unique to the system. Xamlon takes this approach as well, but leverages .Net as the environment I like that idea, but as of yet haven't tried the product to see how well it works in practice. This looks promising though.
Ruby in Rails is everywhere. You can't help but to see agile development and testimony about R-on-R around the developer community. I tried it, and I liked it. It really is a quick means to an end, using O/R and Model-View-Controller approaches to rapid development works. But again, I want to do this in C# so I can leverage my platform knowledge and expertise in other related technologies and still get the gain of this approach. Well, the Castle Project has done this (and a bunch more) by combining the efforts of several other projects into a framework that brings agile development and MVC to .Net. I'm just digging in to this, so there's more to explore, but it has me excited.
What I'd like to see in a framework is all that is in the Castle Project and Xamlon, combined with tools that work more at the design level for design the object model, marking the persistence options, and generating the database and code stubs automatically - Kind of like what Apple's XCode does on the mac. Add automatic degradable async communication (AJAX) and I'm a happy developer. This may exist, I'll be looking.

Besides the landslide of changes, improvements, etc. of .Net 2.0 I've been looking at several other more specific technologies of late. I've been intrigued with the Laszlo Open Server, and Ruby on Rails. Specifically how these technologies can be leveraged using the skills I already have decent proficiency in.
I really hold on to the premise that you have to look at these technologies in their native surroundings by digging in and learning how to do the basics in the original, so I rolled up the sleeves, Googled for tutorials and software, and gave them a try.
Laszlo's product is interesting to me because it allows developers to design and deliver web applications that will look and operate the same on most platforms and browsers by taking a programmatic approach to using the ubiquitous Flash plug in as an application platform. They've abstracted the Flash elements into a coding API that can be used to create applications with a pretty simple means to develop and deploy. It works as a server based technology and in a server-less deployment (with a limited set of functionality). It's really cool, and it works.
Where this system falls short for me is that it runs on a Tomcat Java server, and the syntax is simple, but unique to the system. Xamlon takes this approach as well, but leverages .Net as the environment I like that idea, but as of yet haven't tried the product to see how well it works in practice. This looks promising though.
Ruby in Rails is everywhere. You can't help but to see agile development and testimony about R-on-R around the developer community. I tried it, and I liked it. It really is a quick means to an end, using O/R and Model-View-Controller approaches to rapid development works. But again, I want to do this in C# so I can leverage my platform knowledge and expertise in other related technologies and still get the gain of this approach. Well, the Castle Project has done this (and a bunch more) by combining the efforts of several other projects into a framework that brings agile development and MVC to .Net. I'm just digging in to this, so there's more to explore, but it has me excited.
What I'd like to see in a framework is all that is in the Castle Project and Xamlon, combined with tools that work more at the design level for design the object model, marking the persistence options, and generating the database and code stubs automatically - Kind of like what Apple's XCode does on the mac. Add automatic degradable async communication (AJAX) and I'm a happy developer. This may exist, I'll be looking.