4.1 quake hits the Bay Area

The USGS reports that a 4.1 magnitude earthquake rattled the Bay Aea this morning.

The quake is another in a recent string from the Calaveras fault, and no damages have been reported.

The quake felt pretty strong in San Jose with lights swinging and cabinets rattling.

Sadly, my cats slept through the whole thing, which is probably a sign of the intensity of the quake or laziness of the cats.

Prune the San Jose Rose Garden

                                                Photo Courtesy of Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden

Volunteers from around the San Jose area will converge on The San Jose Rose Garden on Saturday to prune the roses.

The Rose Pruning Day runs from 9:00 A.M. until the roses are pruned. Staffers mentioned that this usually takes about two hours with a large number of participants.

The staffers also mentioned that they have close more than 400 people signed up for Saturday's event.

The Mercury News reported that the garden was named as an All-American Rose Selections test site, which determines what roses are pushed at local nurseries.

"Being an AARS test garden will truly make San Jose a destination for garden clubs from hundreds of miles around," says Terry Reilly, co-founder of Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden. The organization was formed in 2007 to coordinate a massive volunteer effort to rescue the local treasure from years of neglect.

The Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden was also selected by SERVE.gov as an example of community organization.

Nexus One

The New York Times reports that Google has launched its flagship cell phone, Nexus One.

The phone was designed by HTC with input from Google and boasts some serious hardware.

• Version 2.1 Android
• 512MB Ram, 512MB ROM with a microsd slot
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash
• 3.7 inch WVGA AMOLED display

The processor is fairly beefy on this device and allows for some interesting motion backgrounds and very quick menu operation.

The only downside for me is the lack of a physical keyboard as my fingers are a bit chunky. The Nexus One compensates for this with voice recognition software, which seems to work very well. Google has been working on this with voice search for a while.

All in all, this is a fine phone with nice call clarity.

Can't wait to upgrade my G1.

Jobs named person of the decade by SmartMoney

SmartMoney readers recently voted Apple CEO Steve Jobs as their favorite person of the decade.

Jobs rejoined Apple in the late 90's as it was failing and helped the company's stock value reach a 700% increase in value according to the article.

He beat out Warren Buffet, Ben Bernanke, and the Google Twins, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Bill Gates bottomed out the list.

This announcement comes at a time when rumors are swirling about the potential release of the 4th generation iPhone and the iTablet in 2010.

SJPD helmet cams

The Mercury News reports that SJPD will soon be testing helmet cams in an attempt to quell accusations of abuses of force.

The 18 cameras are being supplied by Taser international to SJPD at no cost. Eventually the equipment could cost $1700 per officer with a $99 per month fee.

The SJPD recently paid $97,500 to settle a 2006 police brutality case.

They force is also under fire for a November phone video of the beating of a San Jose State University student. An enhanced version of this video seems to show the student being compliant while officers continue to strike him.

BlackBerry Outage

Gizmodo, among other news sites, is reporting that BlackBerry service is down for all users currently.
Reasearch in Motion runs all data traffic through a set of secure servers in different parts of the world. More than likely one of these servers has gone kaput. This level of security is one of thing main reasons BlackBerry devices are so popular with businesses.

Image Courtesy of Research in Motion

In related news, productivity in Silicon Valley has received a boost from this outage.

RiffTrax: Christmas Shorts

Last night I joined a group of fun-loving nerds for a night of snarky jabs at some horrible Christmas clips at CineArts @ Santana Row.
The RiffTrax crew, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett slice and diced their way through some of the worst Christmas films ever. The cartoon short “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a 1948 cartoon by the amazing Max Fleischer (director of the early Superman cartoons) received the biggest laugh of the night as Santa sauntered into the titular deer’s bedroom at night.
“Rudolph, I need you tonight,” Santa whispered.
Uncomfortable and fun should be the motto of the RiffTrax (formerly the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew).
Sadly the group was joined by a greatest hits hawking Weird Al for a strange short about pork. Al was his usual uninteresting self.
This RiffTrax live event was broadcast in theaters across the nation and was the second live event.
Is this a workable model for potential fan favorite shows? This could be a boon for cult favorites such as Dollhouse, Firefly, and other Fox-discarded gems .
The event will be replayed tonight at 8 P.M. at various theaters around the area. For fans of MST3K, this event is an easy sell.