Startups - Where are they now?

I came across the December 31, 2007 issue of NetworkWorld with an article "Start-Ups That Should Matter".  I took a look and this is what I found:.

3Leaf Systems	RIP
Apatar	It lives
Atune Systems	URL available for $1,195 from hugedomains.com
mValent	Server wasn't responding
NewStep	Owner is listed as a post office box in Vancouver, WA, but the server was not responding
Palo Alto Networks	Looks like a success. Their website displays Gartner's analysis of the company as a leader and visionaries who could execute.
Scalent	Acquired by Dell in 2010
http://Sipera	It lives!
http://Tango Networks	It lives!
http://http://Xangati/	It lives!

Not too shoddy a track record.  I'd count Scalent as a success.

Corey Booker Races Through Flames

Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ rushed into a burning building to rescue a neighbor's daughter.  Fire officials cautioned that such heroics can often end badly.  Here's a link to a CBS News story.  (The story contains a typo, "here" instead of "her":

The WNYC news story quoted Corey Booker as saying, "I was chiseled, now I just jiggle."  ("When chiseled turns to jiggles" might make good copy in a come-on for a health club.  It might be in use already, but a quick search with Google didn't uncover it. )

I would have liked to quote directly from the WNYC site, but it was down for maintenance:

Google Cartoon

I went looking for a picture of the 450' x 4' vinyl cartoon mural attached to the scaffolding around Google's New York headquarters at 111 Eighth Avenue. The cartoon went up today.  WNYC had some pictures, but I was unable to find an image of the whole thing.
 Instead I found this:

It seemed just the thing for people I know who feel that the government is watching them.  In their mind, the surveillance is not specific, just business as usual for the government.  I quickly fired off a link for our amusement.

Stephanie Plum

I was gathering paper to recycle when I came across the name "Stephanie Plum" written on a sheet of paper.  The paper was originally a note from the department secretary about a student, but had been annotated with notes about MARIE assembler, a few phone numbers I didn't recognize, but seemed to be local, and some calculations related to computer memory addressing.
A web search quickly found Janet Evanovich's web site and then Katherine Hegl's film, "One for the Money".  The film was not released for critical review.  Uh oh!  A very bad sign.

Setting that aside, Stephanie Plum is the heroine of novels written by Janet Evanovich and I'm sure I got the name from an NPR interview, either for her latest book, Explosive Eighteen or "Stephanie Plum: Trenton's Scrappy Bounty Hunter".

Now with that out of the way I can recycle the paper.

I'm So Behind the Times: Social Vending Machines

Stumbling through the May 16, 2011 hard copy edition of InformationWeek I found "Pepsi Takes Vending Machines Social".  Who knew?  Certainly not me.  It's amazing what I miss by not watching TV or listening to commercial media.  I seems that you can buy drinks as gifts for other people in the form of redeemable codes delivered via text messages.  It doesn't work in bars. 

Might this work in countries where corruption steals from the destitute?  the public-private key encryption probably figures into the authentication of the request.  If I can think of it, others must be working on it.

(I couldn't find the article on line, but this is similar: http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/retail/229402472?cid=nl_IW_daily_2011-04-30_html.)

"I'm quite the guru"

While rooting through some papers I found some notes from a staff meeting.  A former director had said, "I'm quite the FileMaker guru."  She said this shortly after indicating some confusion between a database and a database table. My notation after the quote was "Perhaps she was tired."  In truth it's closer to the classic "a legend in her own mind."