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Wednesday,  04/01/09  10:39 PM

What to say about today?  I ... can't.  But it was really nice :)

Once again the biggest April Fools were the ones trying too hard to be foolish.  My feed reader was clogged with their dreck.  I did like "mastering 'cat'" :)

Wired has an interesting story about the Paul Allen Institute: Scientists map the brain, gene by gene.  The story doesn't mention Aperio, but PAI are [now] a big customer, using our systems to address a key need: "The next challenge was finding a way to digitally photograph every slide. Given the output of the lab, it was obvious that robotic microscopes would be required. Unfortunately, no such technology existed, which meant that the institute had to build its own. The researchers rigged 10 Leica 600B microscopes with glass-slide loaders, barcode readers, and small computers running image-analysis software."  The italics are mine; such technology does now exist (!) 

This is really sad (and no joke): Silicon Graphics declares bankruptcy and sells itself for $25M.  Not only was SGI a Silicon Valley icon - the company that Jim Clark founded, which built that amazing campus now occupied by Google - but their computers were really cool; fast and slick and unique and definitely great looking.  I remember visiting Digital Domain in 199x and seeing a computer room full of Onyx servers and it was so cool... 

Happy Birthday to the Westlake Yacht Club, my home port, which is celebrating its 40th birthday.  Amazingly I was there at time zero, as a little kid sailing sabots.  You can't say it is the greatest sailing club - a lot of the members spend more time at the bar than at the helm :) - but it is a great little club with a great location.  I certainly had some great times there, including getting married (!) 

Another dry quarter for venture exits.  In the last six months zero companies have gone public.  Wow.  That's never happened before... 

John Gruber analyzes Apple's iPhone trajectory: Complex.  "There’s a formula to Apple’s success over the past 10 years... start with something simple and build it, grow it, improve it, steadily over time.  Evolve it."  Really good to keep in mind as I begin working on my, er, service. 

ZooBorn of the day: a baby Fennec hare.  Awww...
  (just in time for Easter :) 

Wrong Tomorrow: Time vs Pundits.  I love it.