The Panic Guys build an amazing project status board using CSS/HTML and display a bunch of internal stats about each project. They reported that it provided an amazing degree of collaboration they never had before because all the information was always in view and held each team accountable. Some of the the most important numbers are at the top where the support queue depths are displayed at all times. The middle shows project due dates and currently assigned members. The bottom shows key metrics and bus schedules when it is time to go home. A very nice idea!

[From Panic Blog » The Panic Status Board]

I bet a dollar we will see an iPhone OS driven Apple TV platform within the next year. It is logical to consolidate to OSX (full Mac) and iPhone OS for their embedded products eliminating the Apple TV OS variant.

You could also bet we would then see the custom UI evolve on the Apple TV to be more like an iPad, and also support all the applications including Games on the Hi-Def TV.

[From Apple Plans To Run iPhone OS On New Platforms; Any Guesses? - Tech Trader Daily - Barrons.com]

via It’s Official: Google Can Sell Power Like a Utility.

It’s official.  Google is on its way to being Enron…

But in the past couple of months I have seen some real innovation out of the software giant:

Take Windows 7 Phone:

“A phone is just not a PC. It’s a smaller, more intimate device.”

[From The Official Microsoft Blog – News and Perspectives from Microsoft : Weekend Reading for Feb 20/21: Windows Phone 7 Series called, and the world said…..]

Take the Unified Access Gateway:

A really nice multi function smart proxy, SSL VPN concentrator and the connection point for Direct Access. The best feature is Direct Access which lets your remote PCs act like part of your domain even when a user is not logged into the console. Have you ever dreamed of pushing software updates to a phone sitting on a remote worker’s desk over the internet? Now you can…

Take the Outlook Social Connector:

Done right, the Outlook Social connector might just change the way we share and discover information in the enterprise. Think of a way to quickly discover details about that person who was CC’d on that email you just received, or learn more about that person who just joined your project team. Cool…

Take Exchange 2010:

Real high availability solutions packaged in a way which make them easy to deploy without a bunch of complex configuration, and to top it all off it works across data centers too! Whoa?

SIRI enhances mobile search with intelligent links to web services APIs. It provides context based on user preferences and location to bring you targeted search and help performing day to day tasks.

See the link below where Mr. Scoble provides a short interview with the founders:

building43

via A new personal assistant on your mobile phone.

Amazon and publisher Macmillan finalized their agreement for higher-priced e-books over the weekend. The deal is expected to serve as a template for other publishers, and the new prices should take effect in March, when Apple’s iPad goes on sale.

[From AppleInsider | Higher Amazon e-book prices expected to coincide with iPad launch]

Finally, OSX has lost the grey top and we have blue! It looks so much better…

Thanks Chrome team!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the change was short lived. Back to drab gray :*(

Strange things afoot. For some reason Season 3 of Chuck is strangely missing from Itunes. The bizarre thing is Chuck is produced by WB but shown on NBC.

Come on NBC let’s get Chuck up on iTunes already?

How does it work? You type in a few words, a paragraph or a sentence and add the command /picturetext to the end.

The robot looks up key words in the text and outputs a “picture-ized” version. Above you can see the results from the phrase “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog.”

The pictures come from Flickr tag lookups, so you can get very different results if you re-run the same text over the course of a few hours.