PARC researcher Mark Yim builds amazing modular robots that can self-reconfigure from a snake to a loop to a spider without stopping. Check out the videos--very Transformers-esque! For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yim is speaking on Monday in a public seminar at the Intel Research Berkeley …

[How do people make license-restricted software? You know, 30-day trial edition, but when you enter your name, company, and keycode, the software says "Yeah, that's fine." Do people roll their own (and, if so, are there "best practices"), or is this a commercial market in which there are a few …

[I love the Tablet PC as a platform. But in light of some recent postings about it, I have to say one thing: application software that takes advantage of the pen is still extremely rare. There's a current ad from Microsoft showing a literary agent marking up a book proposal …

Tim Bray: Of course, if we need to do some extension work to fit this out for financial applications, that can be done, right? [via]{.302140415-20062003} [Sam Ruby]

[RSS was, I think, the very first XML format I ever saw (I may be repressing VRML, but that's not surprising). And …

[Praise for books by Fritz Onion, Shawn Wildermuth, Don Box and Chris Sells, Jeffrey Richter, and others in my latest .NET and Windows Watch column in SD Times.]{.886495814-20062003}

Eric finally hits the world of blogs via [Sam Gentile's Blog]

Eric Gunnerson is the most publicly vocal member of Microsoft's C# team and his blog is likely (I hope) to be a primary source for early word on Microsoft's take on C# directions, rumors, etc. If you're interested in …

http://www.twelve71.com/archives/000125.html A Web Server in PostScript !!!!!... [via]{.766544218-19062003} [TWELVE|71 : dull. dull. dull.]

[The mind boggles. The mind, em-boggled, tries to conceive of a way to top the stunt. Even a Web Server written in Visual Basic for Applications would not be as wonderfully …

A couple of years ago at OOPSLA I saw a wonderful panel format. On stage there was a table, short side facing the audience. People sitting on one side of the table had to support the motion, those on the other had to oppose it. At any time, anyone could …

Even though Radio Userland, my blogging software, has a built-in aggregator, I recently paid to register my copy of NewsGator. Even though NewsGator goes out of its way to make it easy to export subscriptions to be reintegrated with the Userland aggregator. My ear infection is too bothersome for me …

[The dullest blog in the world]{.557295220-16062003}