College students today

For me, college and grad school were opportunities to see the future; at Stanford we used the Internet 10 years before everyone else, and Wharton let me learn concepts about finance or marketing that are only now becoming mainstream. So I am very interested in knowning what today's students do, because that ought to hint at what will be mainstream 10 years from now. Today I talked with a 20-something who gave me a couple of insights:

• Students go to http://www.vault.com for the inside scoop on what it's like to work at a company.


• Everyone uses IM, of course, usually with hundreds of buddies. It can be awkward when you split up with your girlfriend, because what do you do with all those "buddies"? There is software that can tell whether you are on somebody's block list.

I've been disappointed with some of the college students I've met through Stanford's alumni program. They aren't as gadget-centric as I would have expected, for example, though maybe that's just because gadgets are expensive.

Infra Red Webcam

Here's how to convert an old webcam into an
Infra Red Webcam. The basic idea is to remove a piece of glass from the lens that serves as an IR filter and replace it with a visible light filter you can make from a black photo negative.

(From Slashdot)

Radio Time: Recorder Software

Radio Time: Recorder Software is well-reviewed by Wired and CoolTools. I've been using Replay-Radio instead, but I should check this out as well.

• Cons compared to Replay-Radio: $40/yr subscription fee.


• Pro: much better guide, more professional-looking site.

Investment ideas in consumer electronics

Here's my Big Bet: iPod will not be the dominant music player in five years. I'm not sure who will replace them or how, but this market will have a lot of volatility.

• NAPS: a pure-play digital subscription service. Current stock price is around 7, significantly down from its high of about 10 a few months ago.


• RNWK is priced very low (about $6), partly because of the competition from Apple and Microsoft.


• PLAY makes the chipset used in the iPod. At $26, they're off from their post-IPO highs in the low-30s in November. These guys are controversial because of the short-term nature of their contract with Apple. I wouldn't touch them unless I understand a bit more about their technology. Are they in Apple because of some fluke? or do they have special non-imitatable technology?

dapreview.net: News

I'll need to add this site to my blogroll: dapreview.net: reports on MP3 audio players, including iRiver.

Interactive Periodic Table

Here is a cool Periodic Table of the Elements that I wish I had known about in chemistry class.

Challenging Chomsky

News: "At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, the linguist Professor Andrew Wedel of Arizona University challenged the Chomsky model of universal grammar with his own view that language has an innate property of self-organisation."