Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

All Blog Posts (786)

SDL/Swing

Over the weekend I dusted off an old project that has always interested me and did a little recreational programming. Yes, I know I'm a geek. The project is called SDL/UI. Its a declarative framework for creating platform independent UIs using the

Simple Declarative Language. By cross platform I mean the screen definitions are portable and the controllers are portable if you are using a cross platform language for the logic. SDL/UI's design goals are…

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Added by Daniel Leuck on January 20, 2009 at 1:30pm — 2 Comments

Time to Let Your Voices Be Heard

Posted on behalf of HVCA President Bill Spencer

On January 21, 2009, at 7:00AM, the Hawaii State Legislature will begin its 2009 term. If you care about keeping Act 221 intact and extending it into the future, you must be present and show your support.

The EXTEND221.ORG group will assemble at the capital at 7:00AM on the morning of January… Continue

Added by Mika Leuck on January 9, 2009 at 11:30am — 3 Comments

Featured Techie: Kaz Hashimoto, President of Avatar Reality

Kazuyuki "Kaz" Hashimoto has the most exciting job on the island: Overseeing the genesis of Blue Mars, a massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW) set on a futuristic terraformed Mars. Blue Mars sports graphics that make Linden Lab's Second Life look like 1980's Ultima. Kaz has all the… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on December 29, 2008 at 1:00pm — 13 Comments

Are Hawaii's Tech Tax Credit Worth the Cost?

Today, the Honolulu Advertiser ran an article on 221/215. The article is primarily a strong attack on the prudence and viability of the tax credits. The article cites a new 25 page report by the Department of Taxation that is well worth reading.

The numbers look bad and the public reaction (both in quotes and… Continue

Added by John on December 29, 2008 at 9:45am — 226 Comments

Finding & Retaining Talent in Hawaii

In Dave Takaki's forum post Action Committee for Threatened Hi Tech Tax Credits John raised an excellent point, "But maybe the issue is: Hawaii has insufficient tech talent so we are simply throwing money at the wrong problem." This is definitely a serious issue for a number of reasons.

1)… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on December 24, 2008 at 9:30am — 57 Comments

Lobbying to protect Acts 221, 215 HI Tech Tax Credits

This year’s legislative session will prove to be critical for those of us who find the current tax credit laws integral to our development plans.

Georgia Skinner over at DBEDT had confirmed a number of weeks ago that the Lingle Administration was going to look at these Hi Tech industry tax credits in attempting to balance the state budget. Rumblings have also been heard from a number of Senators and Reps.

The Honolulu Advertiser ran an article on the upcoming budget and it contained… Continue

Added by Dave Takaki on December 23, 2008 at 10:50am — No Comments

Anyone in Hawaii doing development on top of Twitter's APIs?

Just curious. I wanted to talk to someone about what's involved in building something out that piggybacks on microblogging networks. For reference, see www.stocktwits.com. Happy holidays!

Added by Alex Salkever on December 20, 2008 at 11:34am — 11 Comments

the internets won't answer my question

I thought Google and Yahoo knew everything. Where are the lyrics to the Copper Nickel song Come Run With Me? This Internet thing is useless, just a passing fad.

Added by Wayne Hirata on December 15, 2008 at 9:22pm — 2 Comments

Launching a Niche Social Network

Aloha TechHuians. Fresh off the plane from Tokyo, we are going through the familiar ritual of adjusting to our home time zone. We had some interesting conversations during our trip with companies thinking about launching niche networks. Over the past few months we have had similar conversations with companies and academic institutions in Hawaii interested in launching new social networks or adding social… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on December 13, 2008 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

Renowned T-Shirt shop needs web site upgrade

A renowned local t-shirt shop would like to get their web site upgraded. They currently sell shirts by having customers fill in an online form with the product name, quantity, size, etc., then submitting. They also have customers manually fill in the form, print and mail, or they ask you to call their shop.

They would like to upgrade to some kind of shopping cart system with cost/shipping/tax logic.

And the rest of the site could do with some ono local-kine Web 2.0… Continue

Added by Blaine Fergerstrom on December 13, 2008 at 1:36pm — No Comments

iPhone App Competition for Hawaii? Quick Way to Get UH Undegrads Build Experience in Software Dev for Commercial Products

Dan Leuck and I were talking a while back about this. I wonder if some angels here in Hawaii could underwrite summer programs that would select two or three teams from UH or other local university students to develop a commercial iPhone app over the course of a summer. This could be a paid internship. The iPhone market has really blown open the commercial software market because it completely solves the distribution platform problem and it lays bare how cheaply and quickly quality apps can be… Continue

Added by Alex Salkever on December 7, 2008 at 3:02pm — 9 Comments

Hawaii Science, Tech, Engineering and Math Workforce Development Survey On Facebook

The STEM Workforce Development Program at UH-Manoa needs your help. We are currently trying to find out how well science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) school programs and activities have prepared Hawaii's students for careers in these fields, and discover what happens to former participants after they enter the workforce.

If you attended any school in Hawaii--any grade between kindergarten and graduate school--we would greatly appreciate it if you would take our survey,… Continue

Added by Kate Dohe on December 4, 2008 at 9:04pm — 5 Comments

Great Video on Software Startups from Hubspot Founder Dharmesh Shah

The key take-aways from this excellent video:

*VC money is really expensive because you spend so much energy getting it. Build a product instead.
*Write a blog not a biz plan
*Your ideas suck. So get started anyway.

Added by Alex Salkever on December 1, 2008 at 7:37pm — 1 Comment

Featured Techie: Wayne Karo, Pipeline Micro CEO

I can't say enough good things about Wayne and his world class team at Pipeline Micro. Simply put, they are some of the sharpest and most motivated people we've met. Pipeline is working on an amazingly small and quiet liquid cooling system with the potential to improve the efficiency of everything from microprocessors to lighting systems. We have had the pleasure of seeing the product evolve since… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on November 30, 2008 at 10:30pm — 1 Comment

Hawaii Broadband Task Force Report Nearing Completion

The Hawaii Broadband Task Force was created by the 2007 Legislature to recommend how to improve broadband access in Hawaii. It has been a long road and there's always more to do. But our final report is due next month and deadlines work wonders.

A few quick summary comments:

* Broadband is fundamental to advances in education, health care, public services and economic development;

* Broadband needs to be viewed as 21st century infrastructure rather than left to… Continue

Added by David Lassner on November 30, 2008 at 8:43pm — 2 Comments

Analytics that tells you Gender-Age Demographics

I came across a pretty interesting stats program called user insight in Japan that was recently released by UserLocal who are also the creators of Japan's cell phone analytics program ugokuhito and nakanohito.

At first glance, user insight looked pretty normal. Heat maps, page views, gender analysis...wait gender analysis? Yeah, apparently this product… Continue

Added by Scott Murphy on November 24, 2008 at 10:30pm — 6 Comments

Twitter Gets Serious

Twitter traffic is reaching such huge volume it is becoming statistically accurate and contains so much real-time data that it is becoming relevant. Like a survey, the larger the sample the more accurate the conclusions, so if 500 Twitterer's are giving real time information about a large-scale event the cumulative data can prove very precise.

This new source of data and it's accurary have not gone unnoticed by California authorities who used it to track the recent brush fires in… Continue

Added by Keith Rollman on November 20, 2008 at 4:41pm — 7 Comments

Yahoo! Japan Worth More Than Yahoo!

Shareholders are looking back at Microsoft's original $44.6 billion offer and crying. I thought they were crazy to turn down this deal and the subsequent offer in June. Today Yahoo! is worth $14.33 billion, $31 billion down from its value when Microsoft made its initial offer. As I predicted, their market capitalization is now… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on November 13, 2008 at 12:00am — 3 Comments

Better late than never

I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has on this subject. It is being handled by HPD and the city prosecutor. It falls under one of the new cyber-laws, harrasement by impersonation.

Added by Keith Rollman on November 9, 2008 at 8:29am — 3 Comments

Nov 4: A Historic Day for Tech

Today will be remembered as a historic day for technology as well as politics. CNN became the first station to introduce a pseudo-hologram technology to make it appear as if two correspondents separated by thousands of miles are standing in the same room. The technology works by having an animated avatar superimposed on the video stream by correlating the angle of the camera being viewed by the audience with an array of cameras positioned around the subject being "beamed". I thought it was a… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on November 4, 2008 at 4:00pm — 10 Comments