I recently launched a coming soon landing page for Engineering Tourist – a side project I’ve had in mind for a while. The goal is to highlight and discover engineering or technical tourist sites depending on your location. For example if you were in Tucson Arizona, you might discover the Pima Air & Space Museum which is really fantastic. Putting together this landing page was pretty simple (after all, it’s just a single static page), but involved learning and wiring up a bunch of services. Also, every service here is at the free or nearly-free level, so that keeps the…
From the Twilio Customer Stories page I learned about Remind101, a free service designed for teachers to keep students and parents up to date via text messaging or email. From their website you can learn more about the service, or about the team. This is a very useful service. While it was primarily designed for classrooms, it could also be used for sports teams or anywhere else you need a 1:Many text messaging system. Remind101 designed their system to be very focused for this type of communication. By keeping with a narrow focus, they’ve got a strong set of features…
The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that CSAA (California’s branch of the AAA) is going to stop producing their own paper maps later this year: The California State Automobile Association produced its first road map in 1909. It showed major highways in California and Nevada, and was sent free to all members. Ninety-nine years later, San Francisco’s CSAA is set to produce its last paper map, another victim of the shift to digital technology. The auto club, which serves Northern California, Nevada and Utah, is phasing out its 12-person cartographic unit by year-end, the association said. Members will still be…
Today marks the 150th anniversary of San José State University, here in the middle of Silicon Valley. Both the San Jose Mercury News and San José State have put up a bunch of historical documents, photographs, and interviews. The Mercury has an interactive timeline that is especially good. Also, check out the list of notable alumni from Stevie Nicks to Jessica McClintock to Gordon Moore to Bill Walsh.
I was paying bills tonight when this message appeared in my inbox: February 19, 2007 To: SIRIUS Subscribers Today is a very exciting day for SIRIUS customers. As you may have heard, SIRIUS Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are merging to form the nation’s premier audio entertainment provider. I’m pretty excited about this if they can pull it off. I was first thinking this might compare to the VHS vs Betamax war, but this is more of a content battle like you’d expect from two broadcast networks. Having two incompatible satellite radio providers was a pain in this case…