I Surf So You Don't Have To

(pic from http://digital-photography-school.com)

So I'm thinking of starting a regular post (maybe weekly) of what I call "I surf so you don't have to". What the heck is that you ask? Well, it's exactly how it sounds.

I'll do the surfing. You're welcome.
I'll go through my 272 feeds on my Google Reader (at the time of this writing).
I'll bring you news along the tech ally.
I'll bring you news either you care about them or not, muhahha....
I'll bring you tibbits about me, my wife and Charlie.
I'll do all these from Cupertino where I live and work, so maybe there will be somethings about Apple too. But only once in a while, you know how we roll here, I'm afraid of Moshe.

So here's how it will work. I start a draft on my blogger.com account. As I find interesting news or interesting things in my life, I'll add a bullet. When there are enough bullets, I'll publish it and start the process all over again. As a co-worker who I got on Twitter 6 months ago said: "Let's see how it goes."

1. Bay Area had a big storm. The biggest in years. Apparently about 1M residents lost power. Fortunately, we got lucky. Like my wife said, even the California trees are wimps and can't take the wind. This is our orange tree in the backyard.
   
   
   
2. Jean and I recorded a 3 minute video of me opening the OLPC's XO green laptop back in Dec. I went back to the video and found that it has been viewed 1,100 times on YouTube. Who is heck is watching me in high pitch?!?! If you still haven't seen it and has 3 minutes to waste, here you go.
   
   
3. Thanks to my friend, Steven (who also just started twittering @skywalkerchi, follow him and say hi). We both learned a Mac tip while chatting on IM. Mac laptop has the "delete" key, which deletes from right to left (like the backspace on PC keyboard). But where's the key to delete to the right of the cursor? Fn + delete will do the trick. And as a bonus! option + delete would delete left to the beginning of the word.
   
   
4. Famed blogger Robert Scoble got himself kicked out of Facebook recently. Oh yeah, kicked out! Account locked out, all his data erased. It turned out because Plaxo got him to test some beta-screen-scraping technology to get all his contact's information out of what some call the walled-garden of Facebook. Apparently this is a violation of FB's TOS. Facebook later reinstated his account, but it caused quite a stir all over the blogsphere and twitterverse.
   
   
5. In response to the above news, Loren Feldman and his gf Michelle Oschen of 1938 Media put out this video. If you don't get it, then you must not have seen this video on YouTube, 15 million people have.
   
   
6. Before I joined Apple, I had a job offer from a small startup here in Cupertino called SugarCRM. Just found out they got $14.5M series D funding. Congrats to them!
   
   
7. Speaking of jobs. I once briefly worked at NASA Ames on a mission called Kepler (bet you didn't know I worked for NASA, huh?). It is currently scheduled to launch in 2009 to look for habitable planets. In laymen's term, looking for ET's home. The new Space Science Division Director, Dr. S. Alan Stern is now holding projects to their budgets and Kepler is prominently singled out in a NYT article as an example, not a good way to get publicity. Hope my ex-colleagues there are OK.
   
   
8. I've decided that this is now my new favorite ICHC caption.
   "is mah brutha... from anotha motha"
   
   
   
9. Through Twitter, we had coffee with a new friend. @gody just moved to the Bay Area this weekend and will start AAPL on Monday. Follow him and say hi too. Welcome to the Bay Area!
   
   
10. Apple's "Get a Mac" campaign release a new "Referee" ad just in time for the Super Bowl.
    
    
    
11. In case you're not in tech. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is going on at Las Vegas this coming week of Jan 7th. Then Macworld will follow during the week of Jan 14th. Lots of geek toys will come out in the next two weeks! As I nagged/blogged few posts back and drilled into my Lunch 2.0 friend Lisa's head. Don't let me catch you using the big Dub-yah!!! it's Macworld, not MacWold!
    

Reporting live to you from Cupertino. Out.