On today, this day of endless blogging / talking (and hopefully downloading) of Google Chrome, I thought I’d go retro and write about my renewed hunt for the 4GL. But first, a little context on how this came about. This summer I spent some time playing around with Google AppEngine to try and understand it better. It didn’t take long before I realized I needed to really understand how to program in Python to do anything. So I spent some time reading about Python and ultimately realized that if I wanted to make any progress, I needed to spend a chunk of time actually learning Python. Fortunately, I found a nice MIT course titled 6.00. I took the equivalent (6.001) in 1984 when it was taught using Scheme; now it uses Python. Oh goody – I can re-live my 18-year old student self if I want.

The very first folder in my browser toolbar is called “Daily” and it’s the folder I right click and choose “Open All in Tabs” first thing in the morning when I do my email / web / blog drill. For a long time my.yahoo.com was in there; I took it out about a year ago because I was getting all the information I wanted from other places. Last week, Alan Warms from Yahoo sent me an email about the new Yahoo Political Dashboard. Fred already beat me with a blog about it titled Polls vs Markets but I totally agree with him – Alan and his team have done a dynamite job creating a political dashboard that I’ll now look at every day. It’s now the 11th item in my Daily folder.

Scott Converse has a wonderful post up titled Is Apple a Republican? After reading it, I pondered my relationship with Apple and realized that it is just like my relationship with the Republican Party – there are some things that theoretically appeal to me, but endless deal breakers that push me away and head fakes that leave me cynical. If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that every six months or so I try again. I go to the Apple store and buy whatever shiny new Mac toy there is. A G5 – yeah. A MacBook Pro. Sure. An iPhone – definitely. A MacBook Air. Yeah, this will be the one. After tens of thousands of dollars spent on Apple products, the only three I am using today are my Apple 30" Cinema Displays (I love them), my G5 in my office (which I’m running Vista on), and my iPhone 3G (which has now lasted three weeks notwithstanding the endless dropped calls and lack of Outlook Task synchronization.)

Om Malik discovered that Microsoft has received a new and exciting patent on “page up and page down.” It was issued on 8/19/08. I just read the summary and this is truly a ridiculous patent. The USPTO must have gotten confused by the fancy math included in the patent (e.g. “{[(p-1)/c]h}+r”) that is included in claim 1. 1. In a computing environment, a method comprising: displaying at least one page of a document that has multiple pages, at least one of the multiple pages, and the displayed at least one page including a first page displayed beginning at a starting point offset from a top of the document and from a top of the first page; calculating a height of at least the first page; calculating a row offset of the starting point of the first page; calculating a vertical offset at the starting point of the first page, wherein the vertical offset is calculated according to a formula of the form {[(p-1)/c]h}+r, where p is equal to the number of pages in the document, c is equal to the number of columns of the document which are simultaneously displayed, h is equal to the height of at least the first page, and r is equal to the row offset of the starting point of the first page; receiving a command indicative of a whole page-based incremental scroll request related to changing first content currently being displayed in the at least one page; determining a whole-page increment for scrolling from first content to second content, wherein determining the whole-page increment includes calculating a vertical offset at a second starting point in the document, the vertical offset being calculated according to the formula V.sub.1.+-.(cr), where V.sub.1 is the vertical offset at the starting point of the first page; and changing the display to display second content, by replacing the at least one page of the document with at least one other page, the display of the at least one other page beginning at the second starting point.

On Saturday I ran the Mesa Falls Marathon. I’ve now completed a marathon in 12 of the 50 states – almost 25% of the way there. My co-conspirator for this one was Matt Blumberg, who ran the last half of it with me and wrote about it in Half as Long, One Third as Hard. This was a small marathon – my guess is around 150 people ran it. My goal was to finish in the top 200 which I accomplished comfortably. My serious goal was to break 4:45. My official time was 5:02, although according to my Garmin 305 my running time was 4:52. I can confirm that I lost about 5 minutes to a bathroom break at mile 10 and another 5 minutes at the half way mark and on a few pee breaks. So – I was close. However, I finished much stronger than I had two months ago at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth so I’m pleased with the progress of my training under my new coach Gary Ditsch.

Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family. I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service. Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together. I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 – Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports). So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group). Dogster is doing great and looks like it’ll be a nice winner also. I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks. I’ve learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster. It also looks like I’ll have a nice “aggregate financial outcome” for my investments in this area.

The parents of a close friend just had a direct lightning strike on their house. It immediately burned to the ground and everything was lost. The simple advice from my friend if this ever happens to you is “get out fast and not go back for anything that is not a human being.” She also suggested that you check your home insurance to make sure you are covered for this.

One of the big topics that came up on the panel I was on today at the DNC was the issue surrounding the labor supply in the US in computer science and IT. There is a growing shortage of software engineers in the US that is getting worse as every year passes. I’ve talked about this in the past as my main motivation for being involved in the National Center for Women & Information Technology as one of the ways to build the long term labor pipeline is to encourage more women and girls to get involved in careers in computer science and IT.

I’m having my half day DNC experience this morning. At 10am I’m on a panel creatively titled 2008 Technology Roundtable*.* It’s limited attendee (200 people at the Ricketson Theater) but appears to being broadcast live on the web. It’s an interesting experience. I really didn’t want to deal with the traffic and people around the DNC, especially after running a marathon this weekend (and still being in a recovery phase), so I took advantage of my early wake up time and drove to downtown Boulder around 6:30. I’m now sitting all alone in the breakfast room (green room equivalent) waiting for them to pull together the coffee service. It’s kind of tranquil in a weird way.