Technology Bytes

First off, we have a couple of birthdays in the house this month. That’s Hizzy or hiz-ouse for Dwight.

H.G. Wells 143rd birthday hit earlier this week, and may have slipped under the radar of many an Internet user if not for Google’s doodle’s the last few weeks.

If you haven’t had to search for anything on the web lately or if you’re one of those “bing people”, then you may not have noticed the recent outbreak of crop circle activity and alien abductions on the main Google search page.

In addition to arranging an alien abduction of the second O’s in the Google searcg page’s main drawing or doodle, as they’re officially known, Google sent out a Twitter containing a string of numbers that, when swapped for letters in the English alphabet, stated, “All your O are belong to us.”

Which is the perfect segueue into our second birthday of the month, the 1989 side-scrolling Japanese arcade game, Zero Wing. The original release date is a little fuzzy, though many speculate that it was earlier this month. What we know for sure is that the PC Engine port of that game was released on September 18th. I’m taking a little license with the original birthday. Google did it first, though, so it must be OK.

Someone else turned 50 this year, though I’ll save that for next week’s BarretTime. A hint is that they have more lines of code in financial institutions that just about anyone else, and they caused quite a scare a little under a decade ago.

So, with that said, this Saturday, September 23rd, plays host to the 2009 Houston Tech Fest at the University of Houston.

What is a Tech Fest?

First off, it’s by and for the community.

TechFest’s are about the community at large. They are meant to be a place for developers and IT Professionals to come and learn from their peers. Topics are always based on community interest and never determined by anyone other than the community. It’s also always free for attendees. The organizers understand that many times people can’t leave work for a day or two to attend training or even seminars. The beauty of the TechFest is that they always occur on weekends.

Another Tenent? TechFest uses community developed material.

The success of TechFest is that it is based on community content. All content that is delivered is original. All presentation content must be
provided (including the presenter’s code and any slide decks). The organizers state that, “If you have content you don’t want to share or provide to attendees then the TechFest is not the place for you.”

Now, this sounds a lot like a code camp. What’s the differece, you ask?

A Code Camp is strictly focused on the Developer where our TechFest is all about Technology, any technology. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be a lot of talks aimed at the code slinging masses. It just means that if you can’t crank out a Hello World in CoBOL, there’s no need to worry.

Surf to www.houstontechfest.com to see the specific goings on of the day and be sure to register if you plan to attend.

Also this Saturday, the Houston Linux Users Group is having the second of their two monthy meetings at the HAL-PC Headquarters, located ever so conveniently close to Microcenter on the West side of the 610 loop. The presentation starts at two, with things wrapping up at four. I’ve never attended anything short of a good presentation at this groups meetings, and have always taken something away from it.

Hit www.hal-pc.org for details and directions.

That’s it for this month’s Birthday Bash and that’s that for BarretTime.

This Saturday, September 19th, the Houston Area Apple Users Group will host a talk by Apple’s Dreaux St. Marie on OS Ten dot Six, aka Snow Leopard. This month’s meeting will be held at the Bellaire Civic Center, located at 7008 South Rice Avenue in Bellaire, Texas.

Special Interest Group Meetings run from nine AM to two PM, with a break at eleven for the main presentation.

One SIG name worth mentioning is the Green Apples SIG for new Macintosh users who have switched from another Operating System or who have never used a computer before. Hit www.haaug.org for details and directions.

And not this weekend, but the next, is the Houston TechFest at the University of Houston. TechFest is more of a tech conference than a tech show. Meaning that if you attend in hopes that booth babes will be showing off the hottest new tech gear, you’re setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. The point of this event is to confer with other people in the tech industry. So unless you find automated builds and continious integration sexy, this may not be the show for you.
If you do fancy those things, there’s plenty more where that comes from. There will be Test Driven Development, Practical Inversion of Control and a track called Making Productivity a Priority from President to Peon. If any of this floats your boat, you’ll want to head over to www.houstontechfest.com for details and registration information. (Registration is free, by the way.)

The Houston TechFest takes place on Saturday, September 26th at the University Center at the University of Houston. Registration and check-in starts at eight am, with the keynote taking place at nine.

And if you’re a Houston Web Developer or Designer, then there’s a meetup for you, too. The Houston Web Design Meetup Group will be getting together for the fourty eighth time this coming Tuesday,

September 22nd. The group devotes itself to all thing web. Interactive activities with a good chance to learn and participate are halmarks of the groups’s meetings.

This month’s meeting gets started at seven PM. If you attend, you’re invited to bring your laptop, as attendees will getting a chance to work with 960 Grid and Blueprint, two popular CSS frameworks. You can find details on the meetup at meetup.com slash web design dash seven seven.

And finally, there are those that say you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to get a leg up on the crew of Technology Bytes. Well, according to HAL-PC, you just have to wake up early enough to attend the 9:30 AM PC Upgrade and Trouble Shooting SIG at the HAL-PC Headquarters this Friday morning. www.hal-pc.org for details and directions.

That’s it for this week’s wakeup call and that’s that for BarretTime.

The Houston Press is conducting their 2009 Best Of Houston awards and we’re asking our listeners to take a moment and vote for us in the category “Best Radio Talk Show Host” which is item #12

Rather than pick one of us, please write in “Crew OF Technology Bytes” as your pick for the category.

The link to vote is at polls.houstonpress.com/polls/hou/bestof2009

A FOTOFEST EXHIBITION
FotoFest
1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas, USA

HOUSTON, TEXAS – June 23, 2009 – The increasingly pervasive, user-created content of online social media – tweets, confessional video, status updates, online gaming – are these subjects for art? In online parlance a poke is a virtual gesture intended as interaction without any specific purpose, usually interpreted as “hello.” POKE! is also a new FotoFest exhibition featuring six technologically savvy artists who explore online social media and its evolving relationship with the public, the media, and art.

On view September 10 – October 24, 2009, POKE! explores the inter-personal intentions of social media technology and the nature of modern internet-mediated relationships with work that references and uses source material from popular online social media websites such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Craigslist, and YouTube.

Curator, and FotoFest Exhibitions Coordinator, Jennifer Ward says, “It’s hard not to acknowledge the impact of web-based social media technology on contemporary life. Video and photos from demonstrations following this summer’s Iranian elections shaped global perception of the event. Cellphone video of Oakland, California police shooting a handcuffed man on a train platform was broadcast on television stations that downloaded it from the internet. An online campaign brought to light and eventually freed a young Chinese woman jailed after killing her rapist in self defense. These are three extraordinary examples plucked from a vast sea of content, most of which is far less spectacular.”

The cultural impact of unfiltered online content, created, accessed, and obsolete within the same moment, is not likely to be understood in the near future. What is clear is that social media, and the buzzwords and jargon surrounding it, have captured the imaginations of individuals and institutions alike. Political candidates update supporters from their Blackberries aboard campaign buses. News reporters cite online sources and micro-blog from warzones. Adolescents secure recording contracts based on the popularity of their viral videos.

“Contemporary artists are also turning to the online world for source material or inspiration,” says Ms. Ward. “Reaching into the stream of online information, artists are pulling out a great variety of content, from the profound to the mundane. The artists in this exhibition do not merely consume media. They take the disposable bits of electronic information – tourist photos, personal documents, status updates, instant messages, random confessions, viral videos, etc. – and process, rework, and re-contextualize it before throwing it back into the stream for others.”

The artists exhibited in POKE! work in both digital and analogue media, and the exhibition features two-dimensional framed works, video pieces, online projects, and installation works.

POKE! is on view at FotoFest, 1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas 77002, Monday – Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday noon-5pm. Admission to FotoFest exhibitions is free.

For more information on FotoFest Exhibitions and other programs, please visit www.fotofest.org.

For further information, interviews and visuals, please contact:
Vinod Hopson, FotoFest Press Officer, T: 713.223.5522 ext 26,
E: press3@fotofest.org

Click here to read the entire press release.

IRC log for Aug 19 2009

Technology Bytes Podcast For Aug 19th, 2009 [ 1:59:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download