Other freebie news

Slashdot also reporting that the New York Times will be ending their paid subscription internet service TimeSelect in hopes of attracting more readers which should translate into higher advertising revenue.

Is this progress? The first fully automated restaurant

Hate interacting with humans? Well then we've got the restaurant for you, located in Nuremberg, Germany. The restaurant, called Bagger's, eschews waiters and waitresses for gravity operated ramps that sends food directly to tables. Customers order on touch screens, swipe their cards on built in readers, and wait for their food with a read-out that shows when the food is expected to be delivered. So, get ready to yell at your ordinateur when your fries are late...
From Engadget

LOP-ing Off Language-Oriented Programming

Taken from iHack therefore iBlog>
July 27, 2007

I’ve been fascinated by Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and metaprogramming for a while (particularly in Ruby), but just encountered the larger concept of Language-Oriented Programming (LOP). As someone who’s been an OOP weenie since the late 1980’s, I am intrigued by the question whether LOP and Language-Driven Development (LDD) will prove to be a similarly transformational paradigm.

As usual, once I discover something “new” it turns out people quicker than me have already been talking about it for years. Still, there’s probably people slower than me who haven’t heard of it yet, so for them I’ve collected some of the more useful resources below. Enjoy!

• Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm (PDF) by Sergey Dmitriev of JetBrains (IntelliJ)
• Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages? by Martin Fowler
• Intentional Programming: A Talk With Charles Simonyi
• Code Generation Network - Andy Evans of Xactium

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: They are fresh from college but not desperate for a job!

Eight engineering graduates from this state, known better for its thriving tourism industry, are looking to give jobs to people in their IT startup that is already being valued at around USD seven million.

This team of graduates, which actually shaped its destiny by setting up 'Torque' to provide IT solutions across verticals, now dreams of turning Kerala into the 'Silicon Coast' of India.

"I come from a middle class family. I don't have a big family tag to my name. The state has given me a good education. And, now I think, I have to pay (it) back," Torque CEO Sanjay Vijayakumar told media on asked about the inspiration behind the venture created a year before they left campus.

Obviously, the team also drew inspiration from Stanford University graduates, who helped the Silicon Valley in the US to become the metonymy for world hightech ventures.

Their brainchild Torque has in a short time grown into a pioneering technology business incubated company being currently valued at $5-7 million based in Technopark here.

"Our initial cash investment was Rs eight lakh raised by eight of us while we were in college some 18 months back," Vijayakumar said.
Read on: Young turks dream of a Kerala Silicon Coast

CNN Money -the 50 who matter most in biz, trends, and ideas.

South by Southwest conference in Austin

http://2007.sxsw.com/
South by Southwest conference-looks great!

http://www.howdoisaythis.com/
Online video collaboration for common issues

http://www.talkshoe.com

A new way to create Interactive Podcasts and talk with interesting people with similar interests around the world.

The Top Five Technologies for 2007

clipped from computerworld.com

The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07

From next-gen CPU architectures to high-powered personal-area networks, we name the five hottest trends in developing technology.

March 01, 2007 (Computerworld) -- It seems like every month a new technology emerges with the potential to change everything. Technology writers and analysts get hyperexcited. Everyone starts patting one another on the back and hugging. And two years later, we're still talking about the promise of that technology, with little to show in the here and now.

That's why as we began to look at core technologies that may have the greatest effect on the world of computing over the next 12 months, we paid special attention to how soon these advances will be available to everyday users, either at the enterprise or the personal level. The result is the following list of five emerging technologies with groundbreaking potential -- this year as well as in the future.

1. Ruby on Rails: Faster, easier Web development
2. NAND drives: Good-bye HDD?
3. Ultra-Wideband: 200x personal-area networking
4.Hosted hardware: Supercomputing for the masses
5. Advanced CPU architectures: Penryn, Fusion and more

Crowdsourcing

http://www.startupnation.com/pages/articles/crowdsourcing.asp?src=nw

http://www.cambrianhouse.com/

"Crowdsourcing – the term was coined by Wired contributing editor Jeff Howe – happens when a company relies on outside volunteers and low-paid amateurs for ideas, direction, content, problem-solving and sometimes even product launch."