Wednesday, April 06, 2005

You can download the Spikesource beta here 12:40:02 PM      comment []  trackback []

Google's taxi finder Google now can direct you to a taxi? Since they normally go through dispatchers, that info doesn't seem inherently useful, unless you had the cell phone number of the cabbie (which the cab company might not like so much.) OTOH, I always thought using anecdotal/tracklog data on how taxi's get from point A to point B would be more useful than least-distance algorithms when providing directions to people. It seems like that would factor in conditions like time-of-day and transitory construction obstacles in a natural way. I wonder if anyone at google agrees? Update: Mikel Maron reports that the tracklog data is currently exposed, and has done a rather neat visualization. Supershuttle, we're watching you :-) 12:28:26 PM      comment []  trackback []

Ian Clark's Wonderful Idea The idea of patenting legal language has a wonderful symmetry to it as to who it might make uneasy and why. It reminds me of defensively copyrighting your life (advanced by Harry Shearer et al.) as a way of wielding a RIAA-sized legal club against the Choicepoints of the world. Both ideas make me wish the legal world was hackable in a way the world I work in is. (Ed. okay -- i'm sure that would be a bad idea) BTW, Harry Shearer's Le Show is available via Podcast, which means I can finally set it up to play via Tivo Desktop. If you like Jon Stewart, you'll like Le Show. 12:27:21 PM      comment []  trackback []