http://joeberkovitz.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:38:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's been a brutally busy fall and winter, as I see from the embarrassingly long-gone date of my last post. What brings me here is another Flex speaking event being touted in these pages -- and a good one. This time it's my ex-Allurent-colleague Daniel Rinehart, a superb ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2010/01/07/daniel-rinehart-at-boston-flex-user-group-112/ I was pleased to read on Friday about the discovery of water on the moon, but not for the lame-o, unimaginative reasons given by various scientists and reporters. Before we get to the point, let's just mention a few of these reasons so you can read how dull they ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/11/15/space-exploration-funding-crisis-solved/ Regional Flex people: do not miss this talk! Libby Freligh was the senior product manager for the Flex platform at the time of its introduction by Macromedia, and the Boston Flex User Group is lucky to have rounded up Libby as a speaker this coming Tuesday, October 13 at One Broadway, ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/10/08/libby-freligh-boston-flex-ug/ "Won't anyone think of the children?" Oh, snap. Apple may be our techno-culture poster child for great design and great execution, but they appear to have flubbed it badly while trying to keep the children sitting in front of its computers safe from whatever's out there. We recently were dealing with ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/09/17/mac-os-x-parental-controls-stomp-the-web/ This is not an entry for the recent Noteflight composition contest -- I'm flagrantly ineligible to enter. But sometimes, you just have to get something out of your system. This piece is dedicated to the memory of George Russell. http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/09/12/you-are-my-starshine/ It sounds a little like a synonym for the expression "Bronx Cheer", but we're being completely literal here.  We are talking about a raspberry in the city: a regular raspberry, the kind that grows on a bush in clusters. I was walking to the Noteflight office this morning, a walk which ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/09/10/urban-raspberry/ I just heard that the jazz composer George Russell died 2 days ago. George was a very significant person in my musical life, and I'm sorry that he's not with us any more. I first heard his music in 1974 or so, when I was 14 or 15 years old ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/07/30/remembering-george-russell/ Yesterday I paid a head-spinning visit to The Echo Nest, a small software company in nearby Somerville, at the invitation of their CTO Brian Whitman. You might not have heard of The Echo Nest, but their products power an increasing number of music recommendation engines in sites around the ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/06/13/visiting-with-the-echo-nest/ After months of waiting for an opportunity to open up in my schedule, I've finally managed to create and package the StandingWave2 audio synthesis engine for Flash. It's now up on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/standingwave/. Phew... about time! People have been asking for an open source audio library for ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/05/15/standingwave-open-source-as3-audio/ With my business hat planted on my head, I've been invited to appear at a local panel on building startups with cloud-based computing services: http://www.vilnashul.com/calendar/event/the-state-of-startups-using-cloud-computing/ This should be interesting; I know a couple of the other companies represented on the panel, and I am sure some diverting and unpredictable discussion is in ... http://joeberkovitz.com/blog/2009/05/12/panel-on-startups-and-cloud-computing/