After many years of blogging, and consistent with my desire to move toward retirement, we have ended the Insights blog. Thanks to Doug Bedell for his years of blog support.

Amazon Numbering Its Electronic Pages

Posted on February 8, 2011
Filed Under Business, Technology, The Writing Life | Leave a Comment

You’ve got to hand it to Amazon.com, one of the most relational – if not the most relational – of the high-tech web companies. They pioneered in reader reviews and comments, allow you to buy books at lower prices from associated bookstores and have a great Kindle electronic book reader. Now they’re adding page numbers to the pages of Kindle books that will match those of the paper editions.

Why? “Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read along side others in a book club or class,” Amazon said in a statement.
Read more

Our Digital Reach Is a Benefit, Not a Threat

Posted on January 28, 2011
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

We don’t normally write about computer-based technology, as such, because lots of other blogs do. We’ve left the digital dimension of technology to others, until now. That’s because a highly stimulating and very pertinent debate is raging on the nature of communication these days. Its essence: Is keyboard communication eclipsing, indeed blighting, human contact and relationships? Read more

Great Design: It’s Simple (But How Easily We Can Forget That)

Posted on January 23, 2011
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

One of the great features of the Internet is the ability it provides to attend entire presentations – for which the attendees themselves paid travel, event and lodging fees – at your desk for free. Here’s one we especially value, just posted by Bill DeRouchey of Ziba Design. Read more

A (Computer) Manual for the Ages

Posted on January 13, 2011
Filed Under Technology, The Writing Life | Leave a Comment

The New Yorker recently had an article on the Vatican Library and about how, among many other treasures,  it houses a 1,461-year-old book (from 550 AD) by the Byzantine historian Procopius that contained a “devastating new portrait” of Justinian, the last great Roman emperor. Read more

Seeing Far Into the Heavens

Posted on January 4, 2011
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

We thought we’d start the new year with something truly awesome. So here’s a photo of  a section of the Eagle Nebula taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. What’s truly awesome is that this collection of stars – NGC 6611 – is 6,500 light-years from Earth. That’s an inconceivable distance, at least to most of us. Yet the Hubble sends back a gorgeous photo of the neighborhood. Read more

Google’s Getting It All Down

Posted on December 28, 2010
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

Like the ancient library at Alexandria, only moreso, Google wants to be the repository of all the world’s information and, for better or worse, it’s getting there. Read more

128 Years of Christmas Tree Lights

Posted on December 22, 2010
Filed Under Technology, The Writing Life | Leave a Comment

Here’s a technology brushup for this holiday time – clarification of the confusion (in case you’ve shared it) of who invented the first electrically lighted Christmas tree.

The gentleman was Edward H. Johnson and he lit his first tree in 1882, three years after his associate, Thomas A. Edison, invented the light bulb. Read more

A Federal Building With Zero Energy Costs

Posted on November 18, 2010
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

Government Technology magazine has a story about a new federal building – the Research Support Facility  (RSF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Goldon, Colorado, that produces as much energy as it consumes. It costs hardly anything to keep the lights on or the air-conditioning humming. In fact, there is no actual air-conditioning, because there’s no need for it. The building has a “pink-noise” generator that mimics the sound of a forced-air system. That’s because the lack of such “white noise” in an office is considered distracting. And the building is lit 100 percent by daylight. There’s artificial lighting, but it’s used only at night or during stormy weather. Read more

A Soaring Energy Refit

Posted on November 8, 2010
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

We’ve been on a high recently, writing about rooftop power plants, “invisible” airplanes and “skylifter” flying saucers. But here’s one more – New York’s iconic Empire State Building, now 80 years old,  is finishing up an energy-saving windows upgrade.

Yes, all of the Empire State Building’s 6,500 windows are being enhanced with an energy-saving film and inert gas being added between their double panes, at the rate of 50 windows a night. Read more

Rooftop Power Plants, Sprayed Onto Steel Plates

Posted on October 29, 2010
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment

While Dennis Owen is working in nuclear power, we need to get a word in for solar power as it’s being envisioned in Great Britain, rooftop by rooftop. We don’t mean in the form of  “conventional” solar panels, but, rather, sheet steel panels sprayed with solar cells. Read more

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