Off-topic: It costs $482.79 to get a decent pizza in San Francisco

If you grew up and/or spent much time on the east coast of the US you know that the pizza you get in the tri-state area is one of the greatest foods available on earth. Wired's Joe Brown makes the joke that the only way to get good pizza here in SF is to jump on a flight to NYC, grab a cab, a pie and some aluminum foil and you are golden.

Good, even decent pizza remains my white whale here in SF. And yes, we've tried all of them, cheap or fancy; A16, Delfina, Giorgios, Pizzetta 211, blah, blah, blah. All are mediocre to "acceptably pizza" at best.… Read more

Tivo, Comcast, or HBO just screwed me by deleting a recording with no recovery

For those of you who have young children you know that you need some kind of bedtime ritual to get the kid to go to sleep.

At our house we watch the Goodnight Moon show that we Tivo'd from HBO. I should have bought the DVD a few months back instead of just now but we figured it would always be in the Tivo!

This 30 minute masterpiece does an amazing job calming the savage beast. But today we got quite a surprise when the Tivo deleted the show on it's own and doesn't show it in &… Read more

Open Season Episode 15 - Open Source and Cloud Computing

I haven't been able to kick this back problem (2 weeks with a slipped disc) but we did manage to record episode 15 of the Open Season podcast series.

This time we talk about: - The Cloud and why we need Java there - The inevitable fall-out from Microsoft's Yahoo tomfoolery - Google AppEngine - and so much more!

If anyone out there has a better way to record these things we're open to suggestion. Ashlee's latest Skype move (port forwarding and all that) is pretty much crap.

Open Season Series

My (fake) interview with Michael Cote of RedMonk

I had planned to interview Cote this afternoon after he moderated a few panels at MuleCon but somehow he got lost in the crowd. So, I've decided to make it all up and entertain myself.

Q: Being that you do most of you work in the Bay Area, why do you live in Austin? A: I had flown blimps for a number of years and I was based down in Sunnyvale at Moffett Field. I had been training for the next manned shuttle launch to the moon but then Iceland pulled the funding that they had allotted to the … Read more

MuleCon Muffins--food matters at developer events

Our big MuleCon user event started yesterday and continues today, capped off with a Developer Campground that we are hosting with all of the worldwide Mule team attending and answering questions.

So far the event has been a big success and I have been too busy to blog. However, thanks to Cote, who is hosting a few sessions here I now have an update: the muffins and pastries are pretty delicious. Pictured to the left you'll see these oddly shaped (but tasty) mini-muffin loaves that have been the hit of the party.

I just can't repress my love … Read more

Flash flaw leads to Vista laptop's fall

It held out as long as possible, but a Windows Vista laptop fell to a determined bunch of hackers Friday evening at the Pwn to Own contest at CanSecWest.

Since it was the third day of the contest, which saw a MacBook Air get hacked on Thursday, the TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative relaxed the rules even further. On the first day of the contest, only the operating system could be targeted, but on the second day that was expanded to include standard applications. An undisclosed Safari flaw led to the MacBook Air's downfall.

But on Friday, hackers could target … Read more

Former Motorola employee blasts current, former management

The assistant to Motorola's former chief marketing officer has accused former CEO Ed Zander of working his boss to death--literally--and declared that current CEO Greg Brown is "actively killing the company."

Engadget obtained a letter written by Numair Faraz, who was a personal adviser to former Motorola Chief Marketing Officer Geoffrey Frost, sent to Motorola's top executives earlier this year.

In the letter, released the same day Motorola announced plans to separate into two companies, Faraz outlines Motorola's downfall from the heights it reached during the success of the Razr.

"I've always considered … Read more

Starbucks wants you to help them charge you more

Starbucks pioneered the notion that coffee should be $3 a cup, and its been a great business model. However, the company has been late to the party on 2 areas: lower cost options and better tasting coffee, the confluence of which has caused the stock price to sag as the repeat visitors dipped.

Now the company is now trying crowdsourcing as its way to the future. (Note to self: get Starbucks to put my blog excerpts on its coffee cups)

The new MyStarbucksIdea site reminds me of Dell's Ideastorm, which was in part the impetus for Dell to start offering laptops preloaded with Ubuntu. … Read more

Reminder: Open Source Events--OSBC (March 25-26, 2008) and MuleCon (April 1-2, 2008)

The fine folks at InfoWorld Events and MuleSource are offering Negative Approach readers discounts for their upcoming events.

OSBC-March 25-26, 2008, San Francisco Reg code for $200 discount: mulesource Registration https://webreg.events.infoworld.com/osbc

MuleCon-April 1-2, 2008, San Francisco http://www.mulecon.com Mention this blog and get $50 off the MuleCon registration - just email mulecon2008@mulesource.com or call 1-415-229-2065 to register.

Disclosure: I am an employee of MuleSource and speaker at OSBC.