I'd like to express my condolences to the family and friends of Packy Hyland Sr. who passed away last week at the too young age of 67.

I first ran into Packy at a meeting of the John Carroll University Private Sector Group back in 1990. He knew I was in tech and asked me a few questions about what I thought of this idea his kids had for a business.

Later he stood up at the meeting and said that his kids had an idea for a business and they thought it would be a big success. He (self-deprecatingly) said he didn't understand it 100% but they thought it would be big. He asked the group for our opinions and support.

Of course, Hyland Software has become the most successful software story in the region. Sure the products and culture are terrific but the quality of the people, like Packy and his family, are what made Hyland succeed.

I'd run into Packy at events several times each year and he always had a good word and an interest in what would happen next. He could have easily rested on his Hyland Software laurels but he stayed active in working on new ventures. It was in his blood.

I last saw Packy when he stopped in at my church (St. Philomena's in East Cleveland) for Mass one weekend. I was surprised to see this Westsider in my neighborhood but Packy was always trying new things. We had a good chat about business and life and went our separate ways.

I will miss these meetups with Packy. He was truly one of a kind. Heaven just got themselves a heck of an entrepreneur and a heck of a guy.

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Wolfram Alpha LLC announced the general availability of Wolfram|Alpha, the world's first computational knowledge engine, offered for free on the web.

Wolfram|Alpha draws on scientist Stephen Wolfram's groundbreaking work on Mathematica, the world's leading technical computing software platform, and on the discoveries he published in his paradigm-shifting book, "A New Kind of Science." Over 200,000 people from throughout the world have contacted the company to learn more about Wolfram|Alpha since news of the service first surfaced broadly in March.

The long-term goal of Wolfram|Alpha is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. Wolfram|Alpha draws on multiple terabytes of curated data and synthesizes it into entirely new combinations and presentations.

The service answers questions, solves equations, cross-references data types, projects future behaviors, and more. Wolfram|Alpha's examples pages and gallery show a few of the many uses of this new technology.

"Fifty years ago," said Stephen Wolfram, the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, "when computers were young, people assumed that they'd be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer. I'm happy to say that we've successfully built a system that delivers knowledge from a simple input field, giving access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms. Wolfram|Alpha signals a new paradigm for using computers and the web."

Wolfram|Alpha is made up of four main "pillars" or components:

1. Curated Data. Wolfram|Alpha contains terabytes of factual data covering a wide range of fields. Teams of subject-matter experts and researchers collect and curate data, transforming it into computable forms that can be understood and operated on by computer algorithms.
2. Dynamic Computation. When Wolfram|Alpha receives a user query, it extracts the relevant facts from its stored computable data and then applies a collection of tens of thousands of algorithms, creating and synthesizing new relevant knowledge.
3. Intuitive Language Understanding. To allow Wolfram|Alpha to understand inputs entered in everyday language, its developers examine the ways people express ideas within fields and subject matters and continually refine algorithms that automatically recognize these patterns.
4. Computational Aesthetics. Wolfram|Alpha also represents a new approach to user-interface design. The service takes user inputs and builds a customized page of clearly and usefully presented computed knowledge.

Wolfram|Alpha has been entirely developed and deployed using Wolfram Research Inc's Mathematica technology. Wolfram|Alpha contains nearly six million lines of Mathematica code, authored and maintained in Wolfram Workbench. In its launch configuration, Wolfram|Alpha is running Mathematica on about 10,000 processor cores distributed among five colocation facilities, using gridMathematica-based parallelism. And every query that comes into the system is served with webMathematica.

"Wolfram|Alpha is an extremely powerful way of harnessing the world's knowledge. Now, anyone with web access can tap into that knowledge to find relevant information and discover new insights," said Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research.

The Wolfram|Alpha launch process has been broadcast live on Justin.tv and documented on the Wolfram|Alpha blog and on its Twitter and Facebook accounts. The site first went live for testing on Friday, May 15, 2009, and has been rigorously tested and further performance-tuned since then in preparation for today's official launch.

More information

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Want to know how to write programs for the iPhone and iPod touch? Beginning this week, a Stanford computer science class on that buzzworthy topic will be available online to the general public for free.

Freebie details

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Microsoft Sharepoint may be the most in demand skill right now. You can now download SharePoint Designer for free!

Freebie details

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The Cleveland Cavaliers will participate in the inaugural “NBA Green Week 2009” April 2nd through April 10th to highlight the league’s increasing involvement in environmental initiatives.

Fast Facts About How The Q and Cleveland Clinic Courts are Going Green:

Talkin’ Trash. The Q collected over four tons of recyclable materials in 2007-08 and is on track to exceed that tonnage during the 2008-09 season. In cooperation with Allied Waste Management and an assist from Cavs fans, we will continue to be progressive in our greening recycling efforts.

Drink responsibly! Beverages at The Q are served in corn plastic cups that biodegrade in one to five years. Concessionaire ARAMARK, transitioned its beverage serviceware throughout the arena from traditional plastic to corn plastic.

SWEET! ARAMARK uses biodegradable to-go containers, plates and bowls that are made from bagasse­ this is what is left of the sugar cane plant after the edible portion has been extracted.

It smells so Green! Cleaning supplies like soaps, polishes and window cleaners used at Quicken Loans Arena and Cleveland Clinic Courts are 95% green sensitive and everything is wiped up with cloth towels instead of paper towels.

Who turned off the lights? Many areas in Quicken Loans Arena are equipped with motion sensors, which automatically turns off lights and helps save energy when no one is in the room. Throughout The Q standard light bulbs have been replaced with more efficient ballasts (fluorescent T8 units).

The Q powers down to save energy. All major equipment units in The Q and Cleveland Clinic Courts are controlled through an energy management software program called Metasys (provided by Johnson Controls) where the appropriate energy usage is scheduled for specific activities. Energy consumption is then monitored and provides feedback to make adjustments as needed. Twenty (20) mWhs of energy is used during a Cavaliers game at Quicken Loans Arena.

Pepsi, Thank You. Quicken Loans Arena and Cleveland Clinic Courts have 75 branded recycling Pepsi “bottle” collection containers located throughout both facilities. Courtesy of our preferred soft drink partner, it’s hard to miss an opportunity to recycle!

We Get the Dangerous Stuff Out of Here. Quicken Loans Arena works with EnviroServe, a single source waste remediation, transportation and disposal contractor who appropriately collects and marks hazard waste materials such as chemical solvents, refrigeration oils and batteries with a US DOT description in compliance with the Uniform Hazard Waste Manifest.

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Microsoft announced that they are shutting down Encarta's online encyclopedia. Why? Do you normally go to Encarta or do you go to Wikipedia? 'Nuff said.

The statement says" "The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed, people today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. On October 31, 2009, MSN Encarta websites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009."

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You know that Twitter has entered the mainstream when you starts seeing tweeting mannequins.

This ninja caught our eye outside the Lakeside Apartments.

The sign says " Yo Grasshopper! Follow my tweets at ShellyTheNinja

You can follow us on Twitter for breaking news and updates.
@DanHanson and @greatlakesgeek

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Sandra Tsing Loh does a great podcast from the California Institute of Technology called The Loh Down on Science. A recent posting tells how Fourier analysis was used to break down the famous intro chord to 'A Hard Day's Night'.

The analysis let them eliminate the tones corresponding to guitars, bass, and drums and found that the remaining sounds were from a slightly out of tune piano. Loh says it was probably played by Beatles producer George Martin.

Oh yeah. George's lead was recorded at half-speed too!

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Microsoft Press books is turning 25 years old so to celebrate they are providing free E-Books.

• Windows Vista Resource Kit (Second Edition)
• Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions
• Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition

Grab the free e-books

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So you thought that a meeting of entrepreneurs at 7:30 on a cold Saturday morning would be boring? The 100+ members of the John Carroll University Entrepreneurs Association gathered to learn about Advisory Boards from CPA Nobby Lewandoski but were treated to more than the usual PowerPoint presentation.

Lewandoski called up JCU EA Chairman Mark Hausermann, Dean Frank Navratil, EA Program Chair Andrew Connors and 2 guest entrepreneurs from Florida as he described how it takes a village to run th EA. He thus deduced that those in charge were the... Village People!

Out came the Village People headgear as YMCA blasted through the speakers. Fortunately they did not try to spell out JCU EA. That might have led to some serious muscle pulls.

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According to Wikipedia, Unix time, or POSIX time, is a system for describing points in time, defined as the number of seconds elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds. It is widely used not only on Unix-like operating systems but also in many other computing systems.

It is neither a linear representation of time nor a true representation of UTC (though it is frequently mistaken for both) as the times it represents are UTC but it has no way of representing UTC leap seconds (e.g. 1998-12-31 23:59:60).

On Friday (Friday, February 13th 2009, 23:31:30 UTC) we will hit the Epoch time of 123456789

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Wikipedia: The Missing Manual Posted on Wikipedia

The Missing Manuals series, published by O'Reilly Media, today announced the migration of its book about Wikipedia to Wikipedia. As of today, the entire contents of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, $29.99) by John Broughton is available for free online for editing and updating just like any other Wikipedia entry.

Read more

Google News

There I was Saturday AM minding my own business. I entered a term to search on Google and got a scare. All the search result sites had the warning "This site may harm your Computer." Yikes!

I checked my anti-virus and anit-malware and closed IE.

Same results next attempt. Uh-oh. I tried an old laptop with XP on it and got the same results. I saw that Lev Gonick posted a message on facebook that he saw the same thing. Good - it wasn't just me.

I tried GreatLakesGeek.com and other sites I do and the same message appeared.

Google posted this information later in the day:

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks for your understanding.

In Rush NY, the Google Maps Van hit a deer crossing a road. It was on maps.google.com. However, it seems Google removed the pixs of the dead deer. There is still one of the deer about to cross the road.

Google's response: "Gathering the imagery for Street View requires quite a bit of driving; as such, we take safety very seriously. Unfortunately, accidents do happen — as some people have noticed, one of our Street View cars hit a deer while driving on a rural road in upstate New York. Due to several user requests using the “Report a concern” tool, these images are no longer available in Street View.

The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived. The police explained to our driver that, sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence in the region — the New York State Department of Transportation estimates that 60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone — and no police report needed to be filed.

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Wikipedia: The Missing Manual Posted on Wikipedia

The Missing Manuals series, published by O'Reilly Media, today announced the migration of its book about Wikipedia to Wikipedia. As of today, the entire contents of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, $29.99) by John Broughton is available for free online for editing and updating just like any other Wikipedia entry.

"What makes this project different than any of the other zillion books online today is the format we've chosen--a wiki," explains Peter Meyers, Missing Manuals' managing editor. "Book viewers will be able to do all the same things they do on any other wiki: view the document, edit it, add to it--in short, whatever they want. The book is going to reside in the site's Help area, naturally, since the book is all about helping people edit and navigate their way around Wikipedia."

Adds Meyers: "Once it's live, our hope is that the Wikipedia community will flock to the book and 'curate' it by adding tips, tricks, and by updating the material to reflect changes to Wikipedia since we've published the original edition. Down the road, when it comes time for us to consider publishing a second edition of the print book, we'll think about whether to incorporate some of the community's changes into the new edition."

The drive to post "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" to Wikipedia was spearheaded by author John Broughton. Broughton, a registered editor at Wikipedia since 2005 with more than 20,000 edits under his belt, says he's looking forward to seeing what changes and improvements his fellow Wikipedians will make to his book.

"Wikipedia already has thousands of pages of documentation on how to be a good editor. This 'Missing Manual' book is different--it offers systematic guidance for people who want to learn the 'core curriculum,' the critical information needed to avoid running afoul of the rules. The book is organized as a structured process for learning to edit, with numerous tips and tools for easier editing. With this book, Wikipedia now has something that charts the path from novice toward expert, with step-by-step illustrations for every topic along the way."

Microsoft is laying off 5,000 people and that may spell the end for their oldest product, Flight Simulator.

Microsoft confirmed that they have shuttered ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series of games, whose latest incarnation is Flight Simulator X. The simulation is considered Microsoft's oldest product, whose original version first shipped in 1982.

Microsoft spokeswoman Kelda Rericha said, "We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, which has proven to be a successful PC-based game for the last 27 years," Rericha added. "You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great Live experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time."

The Flight Simulator franchise is a fairly broad one, and anything falling under the largely online Live umbrella would likely be fairly different than the game's traditionally resource-intensive online incarnation.

Microsoft is laying off 5,000 people and that may spell the end for their oldest product, Flight Simulator.

Microsoft confirmed that they have shuttered ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series of games, whose latest incarnation is Flight Simulator X. The simulation is considered Microsoft's oldest product, whose original version first shipped in 1982.

Microsoft spokeswoman Kelda Rericha said, "We are committed to the Flight Simulator franchise, which has proven to be a successful PC-based game for the last 27 years," Rericha added. "You should expect us to continue to invest in enabling great Live experiences on Windows, including flying games, but we have nothing specific to announce at this time."

The Flight Simulator franchise is a fairly broad one, and anything falling under the largely online Live umbrella would likely be fairly different than the game's traditionally resource-intensive online incarnation.

After prayerful consideration and much thought, my wife Janet and I have decided that I will not seek a third term in the United States Senate.

As I spent time with my family during the holidays and celebrated Janet's birthday, I reflected on God's blessings on our family: my wife, our three children, our seven grandchildren and our health.

I also spent time thinking about the health of our country. In my lifetime of public service, I have never seen the country in such perilous circumstances. Not since the Great Depression and the Second World War have we been confronted with such challenges, as a nation and as a world.

Those of us that have been given the honor to serve in these times must step up to the plate and put this country on a course that will see it through these harrowing times and make it strong and viable for the 21st century.

These next two years in office, for me, will be the most important years that I have served in my entire political career.

I must devote my full time, energy and focus to the job I was elected to do, the job in front of me, which seeking a third term - with the money-raising and campaigning that it would require - would not allow me to do.

In addition, Janet and I have concluded that once my second term is complete, we should devote ourselves to our children and grandchildren. We have been blessed with good health, but we're no spring chickens. In 2010, I will be 74 years old and will have served 44 years in public office, having been elected to more public offices than any other person in Ohio history.

I am grateful for the opportunity that I have had to serve my statehouse district, my county, city, state and nation and feel good about the fact that with the help of some extraordinary people, many of whom are no longer with us, I have made a difference and will, with God's help and a great team in my Senate office, continue to make a difference during these next two critical years. We intend not to wind down-but to wind up, just like I did in the Mayor's office as well as the Governor's office.

We have a great deal to do in this Congress, and I will continue to focus on the areas that matter most: providing the nation a responsible stimulus package; jump-starting our credit markets; re-establishing confidence in the housing market and stemming the tide on mortgage foreclosures; harmonizing our nation's economic, energy and environmental policies; ensuring safe and stable highways; and continuing to improve the personnel and management of the federal government.

After the next two years, it will be time to give someone else the opportunity to serve our great state in the Senate, someone who can devote full time to organizing their campaign and raising the money necessary to win.

This has not been an easy decision for us. I still have the fire in my belly to do the work of our nation, but after serving the next two years, it will be time to step back and spend the rest of our time with our children and grandchildren, siblings and extended family and friends.

We both are confident that God has a plan for us to use the time, energy and talents that He has given us to make a difference in another way.

Sincerely,
Senator George V. Voinovich (R-OH)

At his keynote at CES, Microsoft CEO announced the release of the Windows 7 beta release to the public.

If you are a MSDN or Technet subscriber, you can download it here.

The general public link is here.

The minimum requirements for the beta as a 1-GHz processor, 1GB of memory, 16GB of free hard drive space and 128MB of graphics memory on a chip set or card able to support DirectX 9 graphics. Sound familiar? That's what they required for Vista. But believe me, you want lots more hardware for a good experience.

It comes as an iso file so you will also need a DVD burner. It is not an executable file.

It is also an upgrade to Vista SP1 so if you just have XP, don't expect it to install. It's also a huge file - 2.4GB for 32bit and 3.15 GB for 64 bit.

Or just sit back and read updates on the beta as the Great Lakes Geek plays with it.