Three years ago, I wrote a tutorial called EC2 for Poets that made it relatively easy for a technically proficient user to set up a Windows server in Amazon EC2. A few hundred people tried it, and were able to get servers running. They could install apps, and run web apps that they then could access from home or on the road. Having your own server "up there" can be pretty cool, makes a lot of things possible that otherwise would be hard.

For example you can run a personal river of news. That's what I do on one of my EC2 instances. Not only for myself but for a few friends at universities and publications. I'm now working on one for a friend who teaches at Harvard. And there's a biologist at Columbia who's using Radio2 to keep a linkblog running. This stuff really works, and is not so hard to set up. And once it's set up, it pretty much runs itself.

Running a server may sound hard. But in practice it's as easy as running a laptop. In some ways it's even easier.

And Amazon and Microsoft just made it possible to run an EC2 server for a year for free!

That's a pretty big deal if you were thinking it might be too expensive just to play around.

So in summary:

1. EC2 for Poets.

2. River2.

3. Amazon EC2 pricing page.

Just to be sure everything is working, I set up a River2 installation on a micro EC2 instance, and it really went smoothly.

 1/25/2012; 7:08:12 PM.   .

I know the Repubs like to demonize Nancy Pelosi, but I really like her.

Check out this exchange with John King at CNN.

Fascinating. What does she know?

Some possibilities...

1. Newt is secretly a Democrat.

2. Newt is secretly a woman.

3. Newt secretly slept with Nancy P.

4. Newt is secretly Osama bin Laden's long lost brother.

5. New paid no taxes until he was 45 years old.

6. Instead of fighting in Vietnam, he signed up for the Khmer Rouge. He's Prince Sihanouk's long lost brother.

7. He was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In fact the bay was named after him. He's Fidel Castro's long lost brother. (Hence his hatred of Fidel.)

8. ???

 1/25/2012; 9:59:37 AM.   .

President Obama asks that we suggest ways for the movie industry to control the Internet that we might not find so objectionable.

Nat Torkington tells an old joke in a new context. It's a good one. God already gave the movie industry the Internet and it's been shown you can make many billions of dollars selling things there. So why not sell movies too?

I think the President asks the wrong question.

What can the movie industry do to freshen up their product in the age of technology to make it more fun and interesting for their customers. Rather than try to destroy the new playground, how about coming out to play!

So here are some ideas.

1. The best suggestion I've heard is to make it impossible to use a cell phone or send or receive text messages in movie theaters. Just block the incoming signal. True, some people might stay home because they always want to be online, but I bet a lot more people would come back.

2. Work with Apple and others to emit a special "no alarms allowed" signal to be broadcast in the movie theater. That way the user doesn't have to do anything to turn off the alarms. The owner of the venue could do it.

3. I find it's hard to hear dialog sometimes in movies. Maybe it's because my hearing isn't so good. I like the sound systems they have. But I could use my mobile device and headphones to tune into an audio track that's broadcast locally to those in the theater. Sure hackers could use this to get a great recording of the sound of the movie. So what. It would make the experience better for the people who pay. Those people are your customers.

4. Open the theaters to amateurs. Have contests for local creative movie people in your neighborhood. Have Saturday showing for the kids in your area. Get involved with your community. They could be a source of ideas. And we could find out where the great movies are coming from, geographically.

5. Why aren't there cafes in the lobby of at least some theaters. Aren't we always looking for a place for a snack or coffee after the movie? A place to talk about what we just saw with people we came with? Or a place to talk about the movies with people we saw it with. Instead they just move people in and out. Missed opportunity, imho.

6. Make the theaters more attractive and comfortable! Upgrade the experience. You're competing against my home theater which isn't really that great compared to the theater. But it is much more convenient.

7. Stretch the genres. So many of the movies are stupid rehashes of stories that weren't that great in the first place. Movies like The Artist show that there are still a lot of ideas that are not fullly explored. Challenge the movie-makers to be more creative. I think that's a big part of the problem.

8. Start a dating site based on people's like and dislike of movies.

Anyway, just some ideas. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments.

 1/25/2012; 9:35:52 AM.   .