According to a story by the Associated Press, Carnegie Mellon is feeling the recession. CMU’s endowment investments dropped in value about 30 percent, and preparing for the long-term effects of this drop, the University froze salaries and hiring, and put capital projects on hold.

This is definitely troubling.  I suppose we’re just starting to see the long-reaching effects of the recession, but I didn’t think it would be this devastating for educational institutions.  I’m not sure if other educational institutions are feeling this – I’m sure some without gigantic endowments will be feeling it quite a bit.  I wonder how institutions like MIT, Harvard, Columbia and NYU are faring?  There’s typically an increase in NIH funding for education and research under a Democratic presidency, but Barack Obama has some tough choices to make if he’s going to get the economy back in shape, and hopefully keeping the NIH budget won’t suffer because of that.

I suppose we’ll see.  Hopefully we won’t see any educational institutions going out of business without getting the bailout treatment the industrial and financial sectors are getting.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently started watching Heroes, streaming it through the Netflix app on my Xbox 360. Its an interesting show, but I think as far as dramatic stories of superhuman power go, its a little shallow in its symbology and the moral lessons it tries to teach.  If you’ve ever talked to me about “guilty pleasures”, I’m sure you’ve also heard my lectures about the finer points of balancing story and moral lessons in TV series.

Thats a post for another day though.  What brings me to the topic today is that I just read about Monday’s annular eclipse that’ll be visible for the folks that happen to live or just happen to be in the vicinity of the Indian ocean.  So there you go, good time to start watching the show if you’ve been thinking about picking it up – Netflix has the first three seasons available for Instant Streaming.  And if you’ve been meaning to read up on celestial mechanics, check out Wikipedia’s article about the Solar Eclipse phenomenon.

Sectera EDGE smartphone

Apparently Barack Obama will be using a smartphone, and its being called a BarackBerry.  In reality its a Sectera Edge, an NSA-certified secure communications device for goverment use. Looks like it runs some version of Windows Mobile.  And it would be perfect for someone like me who’s clumsy with delicate technology:

“The Sectéra Edge is designed to MIL-STD-810F specifications for Drop, Shock, Vibration, Operating and Storage Temperature, Temperature Shock, Water Resistance, Dust, Humidity and Altitude.”

Now, if it was really a BlackBerry, I might actually be doing research about how to get my hands on one right now.  From past personal experience with Windows Mobile smartphones, I’m not too turned on by this particular mashup of gadgetry.  I’ll just have to be happy with my BlackBerry Bold for now.

A response to this CNN blog post struck me as hillarious:

BarackBerry, Barack the Vote, etc. Did we just elect Batman president? What’s next Barackarangs and the Barackmobile?

Indeed.  I don’t think its unnatural to get label-happy like this.  And if nothing else, the Batman comparison indicates the “coolness” currency that President Obama has.  I guess we’ll just have to see if he follows up on the things he said he wants to do and the things the electorate is expecting of him.  If he starts wearing a utility belt and/or a cape – then we’ll be in trouble.

I got a ping-back about my last post, the second of its kind actually.  Looks like there’s a Wordpress plugin called RSSDoodle that allows automatic compilation and posting of posts based on a keyword search to your blog.  This is definitely a fascinating way to create awareness about your blog – essentially by auto-commenting on other people’s relevant blog posts.  The only disappointment is that the initial “wow, I’m flattered that somebody had something to say about my post” quickly disappears once you realize it was an automatic comment. 

I became interested in text-to-speech and voice recognition recently.  Partly because I started recording voice notes on my BlackBerry Bold recently, instead of adding new todo items and typing out text memos of new ideas.

Back in 2003, I pondered using text-to-speech to perform intelligent “morning buddy” tasks.  Originally it was motivated by a post on Seth Godin’s blog,  In other words – how would you like somebody to wake you up (and I mean persistently bother you until you actually get out of bed); and somebody to read you the morning news, weather and todo list; and what if that thing was your computer – or even a little bed-side appliance?

Over the last couple of days I started thinking about this idea again.  Originally I thought it would be very cool to control your instant messenger application with voice.  Think about driving and getting an IM alert from your phone.  Unlocking your phone (as I use the BlackBerry password lock feature religiously) with voice would be cool.  Then you could have the phone read the IM message to you.  Prompt it to read you the previous message to give you context of the conversation – and it does that.  Prompt it to reply and it uses voice recognition to type a response and then read it back to you.  Tell it to send the message when you’re ready, and presto! – voice-based instant mobile messaging.  I’ve used the Voice Command feature on Windows-based mobile phones like the Treo.  I know this kind of thing can be done.  But if somebody created something like this already, why don’t I know about it? Tell me if I’m wrong, I’d love to just use something like this that’s already built.  But somehow I think its either not a reality yet or perhaps it hasn’t been properly marketed.

Either way, I’m going to make this a little pet project, or something like this.  I have no doubt that there’s a demand for something like this.  Now I’m gonna have to get my google search on, and then get my hands a little dirty with code to make it happen.