Do We Need More Gee-Whiz?

I was just reading an article about a new desktop called Project Looking Glass being worked on by Sun Microsystems. While the Screenshots are pretty stunning, I'm not sure I get the point.

Why do I need to flip a window over to get at its property sheet? They say it's more intuitive. The screenshot shows the user initiate the "flip" by clicking "preferences" from the menu. The window flips over, and there it is, the preferences dialog. Now, what if the user flipped the window over without selecting "preferences" first. What would be there? If it's not the preferences dialog, then I think it's less-intuitive, don't you? And if it IS the preferences dialog, now we've added a lot of CPU overhead in order to do a magic trick that's not used very often.

I love their version of the Windows Quick Launch, where there are 3D objects at the bottom of the screen, hovering in space, to launch common items. I don't understand why I need to have a 3D representation of every running program, showing exactly what degree of rotation, with respect to my viewing angle on the desktop, has been applied.

It seems like there are some engineers at Sun with a lot of processing power to kill, and access to a lot of nifty graphics cards, but I don't see the business case for spending the time on this.

The Beauty of RSS

Have you ever come across a blog or news site that you wanted to keep up with, and you just made a mental note to return later? Maybe you bookmark it, maybe you don't, and sometimes you just plain forget how to get back there, or forget to check back, and you miss out on stuff. There's a simple technology called RSS that makes all of this easy ... and will allow you to keep up on my blog, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

I was about to write a description of RSS here, but then I recalled coming across a great blog entry on Chris Sells' site describing what RSS is and why to use it. Please read his description, go get an RSS reader, then use the XML icon at the top of this page to syndicate the KyleBits blog.

Poker School

As mentioned previously, I have been playing a lot of poker. I went through plenty of ups and downs in terms of bankroll, but in the end, I always came out as a loser by the end of the month. Clearly, I need more practice. The trouble is that people playing on the "play money" tables don't play real poker... they play a game called "re-raise to the river, hope to get lucky, and ask for more chips when I lose". That's no way to learn poker.

Then, I found Poker School Online. For $15/month (actually, I immediately upgraded to an annual membership for $150) I get to play on "play money" tables with people that are playing as if it's real money. Everyone there fiercely protects their bankroll. There are a lot of poker lessons on the site, very informative forums, and decent software (though they need a decent web design guy!). I like it. And, it limits my losses to just $150/year :-)

If you check it out and decide to join, please use this link ... I get referral credit. Good luck!