Google Suggest Beta

Google Suggest Beta is a search tool I have mentioned before on this blog. It is a replacement for your standard Google homepage, the only difference being that as you type your search terms, Google provides a real-time list of suggestions along with a result total for each listing.

Interestingly, if I type "www," the first suggestion Google offers is actually "www.yahoo.com" which is pretty odd considering that this is Google's service.

Christopher Walken Wears His Pants Too High

5 Myths Debunked

1. Meg White is identified as Jack White's TD Ameritrade consultant
2. Toyota's new RAV4--now only inches shorter than the Hummer H3--is recalled when researchers discover a Toyota Tercel lodged inside its engine compartment
3. Duracell's strong market performance is traced back to allegations that the Energizer Bunny used performance-enhancing drugs
4. Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's former-Prime Minister, failed to return home to address civil unrest because Thai International Airlines refused to transfer his "Super-Saver" fare
5. A significant decrease in viruses reported on the latest Windows Vista release candidate is a result of Microsft's campaign to keep its customers safe by "disabling the internet"

Sunset from the Balcony

Rule for the New Fall Lineup

All 1-hour dramas must have at least one song by The Fray in it.

Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder

It's official. I've accepted an offer as an Associate with an intellectual property litigation boutique in Cupertino, CA called Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder ("DCMB").

The only sad part about this process is having to say no to another firm that I also enjoyed working at named Morrison & Foerster. I was lucky enough to be in the position where I had two great choices. So for anyone thinking about interviewing at MoFo, I'd encourage it and add that there is a reason it is consistently ranked one of the best companies to work for in the United States. I don't think a comparison of the two would be very fruitful, especially because they are different types of practices.

Just a few remarks and general thoughts on DCMB:

I worked at DCMB the summer after my first year of law school and also returned for a short stint during this past summer. I worked very hard, but loved the work, the people, and the general demeanor of the firm. People know how to joke around, but get down to business at the same time, which is a surprisingly difficult balance to achieve. My own motto for practicing:

Take your work seriously, but leave yourself out of it!

DCMB bucks the trend in several ways. It is what I would aptly describe as fiercely independent. It does not spend on unnecessary things like outrageous lunches every day and super-fancy outings every night, but manages to schedule plenty of great events for its summer class. I think if you are working there for a summer, it is made clear--and I cannot agree more--that the reason someone should join a firm should not be based on the fact that he/she is going to be taken out to dinner. This matter-of-fact-ness is something I respect a lot.

DCMB is much smaller than most full-service law firms. DCMB has approximately 30 attorneys right now. The Firm specializes in IP litigation, handling high-stakes patent cases for clients including QUALCOMM and Amgen, among others. I think one of the things that sets DCMB apart from other firms is that it combines long-term attorney/client relationships with a willingness to turn down cases that are not of ultimate strategic importance to the client. I think in reality, most large IP firms will take almost all of the cases they can get, dropping only those cases in which there is a conflict of interest. The reasoning behind this is that with a large enough firm, you can always staff a large case or just hire new people in case you need more help.

At first it seemed to me that a lack of bandwith might hurt DCMB's long-term viability, but the Firm's size has, in fact, had the opposite effect. The Firm is in a great position to pick and choose the cases it wants, avoiding the problem of expanding too fast by taking on to many attorneys. It also avoids the--often underrated--problem of conflicting yourself out of the market by taking a few too many cases. DCMB is small, though it is small by choice, which is admirable especially because boutiques are very hard to come by these days. This, of course, doesn't rule out the possiblity that the Firm will expand as time goes on, but it will expand on its own terms.

The final thing I will mention that drew me to the working environment has to do with a quasi-intangible quality of the litigators training and working at DCMB. The only way I can describe it is that I am surrounded by people who take the time to appreciate the art of litigation--that is--encourage a style of advocacy that does not shy away from nuanced arguments and creativity.

People ask me if I'm psyched now that I've chosen a firm to work with. The answer is, I'm not quite sure. Apart from having to make a tough decision and turn down another great firm, the reality is that I won't start working full time until a whole year from now, which means it is difficult to get excited for something so far in advance.

This brings me to another topic, the BAR Trip. I'll post some thoughts on this in a few days.

Untitled

Sather Tower, UC Berkeley

Rescue Me - Comedy Short

If you are or are not yet a fan of Dennis Leary's series on FX, there's a fantastic comedy short availabile for free on AOL.com. What's great about this short is that it doesn't require you to know the plotline because it's a comedy short that doesn't stick to the ongoing storyline. Go to http://www.aol.com/rescueme.

Passwords

It is bad enough that every single site on the net makes me register with a new username and password, but the rules that sites implement to "preserve security" are downright ridiculous.

Some sites require 5 or more characters for your password, while others require 8 or more. Some sites require that you include a special character and some give you the option while others prohibit special characters altogether. Some sites say you can't have any numbers, while others require them. Some sites say you need at least one capital letter, some give you the option while others are case sensitive, others require all lower case letters and a few require all uppercase letters. A few sites will not let your password include any known English words. I came across a new password rule today that I haven't seen before: no repeating characters.

The worst part is that even if I were to pick a completely random set of characters and commit it to memory, I still would have to remember at least fifteen different passwords--not to mention the different usernames, which have their own ridiculous conventions.

To add to the frustration, if I forget a username or a password and attempt to log in, a few sites will freeze my account. Verizon Wireless's online site is very frustrating in this respect. It not only freezes my account and forces me to call in and have my password reset, I can't change my password back to what I want because it was "orignally a password on this account." So, now I'm forced to come up with some new password that fits their ridiculous rules.

Down with the password Nazis!

Pandora Internet Radio

Yahoo's LAUNCH.com has been a bit stale ever since Yahoo! unveiled its pay service called Yahoo! Music Unlimited, so I was naturally looking for something new. In my search, I came across a very interesting service created by the Music Genome Project. Started in 2000 and made up of tech-savvy musicians, the Project created Pandora Internet Radio, which helps you find and listen to music you like. The group's mission statement:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 6 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

Granted the whole "genome" thing is a bit hokey, the concept itself is still interesting. Although perhaps not technologically identical, it reminds me a little bit of the various audio "fingerprinting" projects started on http://www.musicbrainz.org.

To use Pandora, all you have to do is enter in the name of an Artist or Song, and Pandora does the rest. I tried to enter in some songs with some very specific sounds, just to test it out. I tried: (1) Guided by Voices' song "Game of Pricks"; (2) Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Graveyard Train"; (3) Neil Youn's "Guitar Solo 5"; and (4) Hooverphonic's "2Wicky." The suggestions were dead on target and I've come across quite a few new artists and tracks that I would not have otherwise heard.

Pandora is not just a database that spits out suggestions, it's a full-fledged streaming internet radio with phenomenal sound quality. The sound is vastly superior to LAUNCH.com and other streaming sites, which usually stream at or near 64 or 96kbps. Pandora, on the other hand, streams at 128kbps. And the songs don't stream constantly; they download at full speed at the beginning of the song so that it doesn't skip out suddenly. This is what internet radio should be; it is an absolute pleasure to listen. And, best of all, there are no advertisements interrupting the music.

And by far the greatest advance over LAUNCH, when you "skip" a song, the music smoothly fades out and the next song begins almost immediately. Compare this to LAUNCH, which goes into convulsions every time you hit the next button, making that annoying IE "click" noise about fifty times before the next song loads (and you'll be lucky to get album art or any information displayed).

Pandora's interface is quite smooth. There is no separate download or program to install; the player is, like LAUNCH, embedded in a web browser. It works flawlessly on both of my computers running Maxthon (IE 6.0 based). I have not tried it with FireFox or Netscape, but feel free to comment and let me know if it does.

When you hit the "Minimize" button at the top of the player, the player dislodges itself from the main webpage. The player opens up in a smaller IE window -- a lot like LAUNCH. While this is a good feature, it seems bizarre that you need to hit the "Minimize" button to get this. The other problem is that if you unminimize the window--that is, restore the player back into the main webpage--the player completely restarts and you lose the song you were just playing. This was a shame as I was right in the middle of Creedence's "Keep on Choolgin" (amazing song, by the way).

Something missing from the interface is a time field, letting you know how much of the song you've listened to and how much is left. That's a small price to pay at this point, but it will be quite annoying if they don't take care of it soon.

Pandora lets you pause your music, adjust the volume, email a station to a friend, and skip to the next track. A limitation not readily apparent, however, is that Pandora does not let you "skip" more than 6 tracks per hour PER STATION, which is fine because you can just quickly enter in the name of a new song or artist and create a new station.

You don't need to register with the site in order to use Pandora, but registering allows you to save all your previous stations, which is quite convenient if you want to use Pandora at home or at work. Registering is painless.

Pandora apparently offers a version of its service that you must pay for, or else you have advertisements displayed. However, I have yet to really notice any obstructive advertisements. If you open up the normal webpage and are playing music through that, all you really see is a box ad that advertises Pandora itself. This is not a problem at all because I usually keep the jukebox open in the background anyway.

I urge you to give this site a try. Let me know what you think. For more information, visit http://www.pandora.com.

Deep Sea Fishing at Pilar Point Harbor

HP DV2000t 12 Cell Battery

As requested, I'm posting two pictures of the DV2000t's 12 cell battery and give you an impression of what it looks like. The first picture has the notebook completely upside down and shows the bottom of the notebook with the extended battery sticking up (adding thickness, not length).

The next picture is me holding the back of the notebook, so you can get an idea of how the battery is oriented.

FolderShare Beta: A Windows Live Service

I. The Problem

I have been using a notebook and a desktop simultaneously since junior high school. There are a number of problems facing someone who uses more than one computer regularly--problems now compounded by the fact that I have a computer at work, too. The majority of the problems I've faced have to do with keeping files, settings, e-mails, IM logs, appointments, contacts, and favorites synchronized.

There have been plenty of ways to keep things synchronized. Various Windows operating systems have used "Briefcases," which is basically a file folder that you move from one computer to the next and update as you go. The problem with this solution is that you need to manually move that filing cabinet from computer to computer, and at the time Briefcase files were popular, you were basically limited to floppy disks or zip disks. This quickly proved too cumbersome.

Up until now, I have been using Advanced Directory Comparison and Synchronization, a synchronization program made by HeatSoft Corporation [http://www.heatsoft.com]. With this program, you could compare two directories on two different computers and the program did a great job of picking which files on which side to synchronize. The program has fantastic advanced features.

One of the major problems with ADCS, however, is that if there is an error, the file on the computer being overwritten completely disappears. This glitch, combined with and an inadvertent mistake upon my part, wiped out 8 years of e-mail archives. ADCS still has a lot of good uses, but the biggest limitation is that the two computers need to be on the same local area network, which means that if you're on the road or anywhere away from your house, you can't synchronize anything.

I have tried to use Microsoft's quietly introduced synchronization program called SyncToy 1.2 for Windows XP, which has a slick interface, but suffers the same limitations as ADCS. Obviously, SyncToy is free, which is better than ADCS, which costs around 30 bucks.

II. A Two Prong Solution

Solutions are always best introduced by explaining exactly what you want, and then working backwards to show how the solution fits (or does not fit) the ideal. Ideally, what I want is to have my e-mail, IM logs, contacts, appointments, documents, and settings to be synchronized in real-time upon any computer of my choosing via the internet or LAN. In trying to meet this goal, I have employed a two prong solution, which I am very happy with.

First, e-mail, contacts, and appointments need to be dealt with separately. I have begun using Microsoft's Outlook Live, which is a suped up MAPI e-mail account that synchronizes Outlook clients on as many computers as you want and also gives you decent webmail access to up to 2.0GB of information. I have used this service for about five months now, and I will be posting a review shortly.

Microsoft's new "Live" services are really catchy. Navigate to http://ideas.live.com/?mkt=en-us and take a look at the almost two dozen different services now offered by Microsoft. A number of them are quite innovative, including Microsoft Office Live Beta, Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta, Windows Live Mail Beta, and Windows Live Favorites. Now I will be the first to admit that Microsoft usually puts itself on the line by releasing uncooked programs, ones that have missing features or features that do not work properly. However, despite this drawback, I think it is great that I have access to these kinds of programs now, rather than later. Know why? It is because I now have a lead time, which gives me time to think over these new services and understand how they may fit into my daily life and possibly replace older technology. This is in steep contrast to the wait and see approach of Apple, which releases well crafted, well designed products -- three or four years late.

III. FolderShare Beta

Microsoft does a terrible job of introducing its products into the market. That's why I wasn't at all surprised to stumble across FolderShare Beta, available at https://www.foldershare.com/index.php? FolderShare was acquired by Microsoft in November 2005 and it appears Microsoft has plans to integrate the program into its emerging, highly amorphous, and quite mysterious "Live" offerings.

FolderShare is completely free. Once installed on at least two computers, a small utility appears in your tasktray. When launched, you are brought in your browser to FolderShare's website, where you are asked to login. You can share folders from both of your computers, and the interface makes it quite simple to pick corresponding folders on your machines. Once chosen, the service does all of the work, automatically syncing any files that are changed.

According to the website, here's what else you can do:

Synchronize all your devices - Retrieve work files at home or
access photos at work. With your devices in sync, you no longer have to be
frustrated that your information is on another computer.

Share files, photos, and home videos with your peers - Select
the content you want to share, invite members, and they will be able to access
the shared files directly from their device.

Access your computer or device remotely - FolderShare mobile
access allows you to access your computer from any web browser.

You can share files up to 2GB in size, which is amazing. And because your computers are serving files to each other, you have unlimited file transfers with no limits on quantity of files transferred. You can also sync any file type in their original format.

So, not only are my files, IM logs, and everything else synchronized automatically, I now have instant remote access to the files on my computer, which despite the clunky interface for document retrieval, can come in handy in a pinch. For remote access, I still much prefer Symantec's pcAnywhere 11.0 -- though it is a lot more finicky in terms of connecting

IV. Unanswered Questions & Conclusion

It is still unclear to me how often an "automatic" synchronization takes place. I have not been able to find any documentation about this on the site yet. However, I am quite happy with the fact that if you lose your internet connection or turn off the service, FolderShare will pick up where it left off the next time you start it up. Thus, it is truly an automatic solution.

If you would like to download the service and register, please visit http://www.foldershare.com.

JetBlue: Evil Empire?

I've been flying JetBlue consistently for six years. With leather seats, DirecTV, cheap tickets, and online check ins, JetBlue had fashioned itself as the cool new kid on the block with a slick image in comparison to established fat cats. But these days it seems like JetBlue has put on a few pounds.

I've been flying mostly to NYC, Boston, Oakland, and San Jose. I've noticed that JetBlue's flight prices have not only crept up, but exploded; not only are they on par with most other airlines, they are actually higher in a lot of instances. They've removed a lot of their flights to Boston from the Bay Area and reduced them to the most inconvenient times. Now I understand that gas prices and compliance with federal security regulations might have a lot to do with the price increases, but that doesn't explain JetBlue's gutted rewards program: TrueBlue.

TrueBlue was never the greatest program. Southwest offered better deals, but if you fly JetBlue a lot, it is better than nothing. With every flight you earn some points, and 100 points supposedly gave you a free round trip to any destination. A cross country one way trip gave me 12 points, and a short flight from Boston to JFK gave me 4 points.

I redeemed a flight from San Jose to JFK last summer, and thought it was a half-way decent program.But since then, JetBlue has quietly introduced some changes to its gratitude program. And what do you know? It is virtually impossible to redeem your free flights now because almost every flight to a popular destination or popular time is unavailable.

JetBlue insists that its flights have no blackout dates. I called and e-mailed JetBlue and inquired about the availability of TrueBlue tickets. The first woman I spoke said that information about how many TrueBlue seats are available on each flight is "not available to anybody at JetBlue." The second two representatives that I spoke to insisted that each and every flight has at least two seats open to TrueBlue redemption.

An email from JetBlue says the following: "TrueBlue is different in regards to other airline programs as we do not have blackout dates; however seats may not be available on all flights and some flight dates are better than others. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays tend to be the best days for securing flights and, of course, booking as far ahead as possible greatly increases the likelihood that you will get your preferred dates and flights as well."

JetBlue's own Terms and Conditions confirm the fact that "Award travel is subject to capacity controls and may not be available on all flights. JetBlue Airways reserves the right to modify, amend or revise the redemption award levels."

Can someone explain to me how not offering any flights to a certain city on a certain day is not a blackout date?

When I try to redeem my free flight in mid-August, early September, early October, mid-November, late-November, or late December--surprise surprise--JetBlue's says the following:

We can't find flights to match your request. This may be because:

The flights are full on the date you selected. Search again?

We're not selling seats yet on the date you selected. Currently, we're selling seats for all destinations through January 08, 2007. Please check back again soon for flights after that date.

You've selected a city we don't serve yet.

Absolute shite.

Is the flight full? Well, try to search for the same flight without entering in your TrueBlue information. And guess what, if you want to pay full price, those same seats are magically available.

JetBlue isn't selling seats on the day I selected? Sure you are, see above.

I've selected a city JetBlue doesn't serve? Last I checked, JFK was your hub city.

I think JetBlue forgot to mention the real reason why no flights show up: "We are throttling back on our free flights. We've decided to not allow you to redeem your rewards on any good flights that we choose and limit them so that you have to pay full price on all of our best flights. Oh and by the way, even though we black out particular flights and particiular days -- we're not going to call that blackout dates."

So what do we have here? We have a major airline running a program that blacks out dates and says they aren't. There is simply no accountability; nobody can tell how much JetBlue is throttling back on flights, or how many flights are actually available, or how many were actually redeemed.

Evil empire? Not necessarily. Officially one of the fat cats? Indeed.