In Google's constant search for ways to become profitable without compromising the integrity of their core feature (the search engine), they've come up with a new idea that I really like. Google Answers.

I'm not claiming that this will be the key to their profitability, because I'm not sure if I like this for business reasons. But the idea of intelligent people being paid to simply answer questions on any subject, with Google acting as the service broker (and probably, the most significant source of many of the answers); well, that's very cool.

The business question is whether or not anyone will use this service, as the questions aren't answered for free. However, there's no set price for the answers: you specify how much you're willing to pay when you ask the question, and the question is only answered if you offer enough money. The answerer gets 75% of the price, and chooses which questions to answer.

Google is already an information clearing house... now it's also hoping to be an information consulting services broker. I hope it works out for them, but honestly I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay for this service. (Maybe I'm not part of their target market, though.)

Brian Carnell, either tired of how long it was taking for his server to back itself up over the LAN or simply feeling very generous, bought Macrobyte a brand new 24 port network switch. Previously, the connection between his server and the backup machine was 10 Mbps, now it's 100 Mbps so the backups should run significantly faster. (I know that's not the only reason he purchased it, but I think that's the big one.) The same is true for all of our servers, of course.

Customers who buy gifts for their vendors? Just six months ago, I would have said that such things don't happen, but Brian is the second customer to do it this year.

Thanks, Brian!

I'm so disappointed... I can't believe they've produced Mozilla 1.0 RC1 already. I've been downloading nightly builds every night for the last week, and found more bugs every day. My impression is that the rendering engine is suffering from a lot of last-minute, insufficiently-tested bug fixes.

Oh well. They make a point of saying that "this is not 1.0," so it's not the end of the world. Still, I have to wonder why they would release a version called "1.0 Release Candidate 1" if they've known for weeks that it wasn't going to be good enough to actually be a release candidate. Duh. (It's obviously a conflict between quality control and schedule control.)

My cycling season is starting late this year, as my bike repairs took longer than I thought they would. Last year, my season started on April 5, so I have two weeks of catching up to do.

On the other hand, today's first ride was better than I expected. I put weight on over the winter, but apparently I didn't lose all of my aerobic conditioning. 9.92 miles in 35' 10", for an average speed of 16.93 miles per hour. That's pretty slow, but it's my fastest season opener ever. (Compare it with the amazing rides at the end of last season to see how far I have to go...)

I'm hoping for a really great season this year. I learned a lot about training last year, but most of what I learned came late in the season, after I started riding with Mystic Cycle for half-centuries on Tuesday nights. (Main lesson: ride more/harder/longer.) The bike is in much better shape this year, also. Rick did a great job on it, even if it did take almost two weeks.