Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

Featured Blog Posts (422)

Vote for Hawaii to receive 50,000 new books for children in need

Go to this page:

http://booksforkids.firstbook.org/whatbook/friend.php

You can fill in optional fields, or just hit submit. Winning state gets 50,000 new books for children in need. Hawaii is currently in third place, so we have a fighting chance. You can vote once a day - multiple votes are encouraged. The site appears to be legitimate with other opportunities to help as well.

Vote early and vote often! And don't tell your friends in other states… Continue

Added by Ken Berkun on September 14, 2009 at 7:24pm — 4 Comments

New Kam School Train Study Merits Real Consideration

Apparently, the Kamehameha Schools believes there is a better alternative to the overhead train package supported by the Hannemann Administration and many developers and contractors. This alternative would cost a lot less, be less disruptive for local businesses during the construction… Continue

Added by Alex Salkever on September 13, 2009 at 7:00am — 5 Comments

An Overview of Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Aloha TechHuians! If you have been hearing about

GWT lately, but don't have the time to get into it, maybe this post sheds some light on more notable features that GWT offers, so you can make an educated decision about picking the right web technology for your next project. Google Web Toolkit is a Google product that aims to ease the pain of…

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Added by Konstantin A Lukin on September 12, 2009 at 11:00am — 10 Comments

Featured Scientist: UH Aquaculture Guru Dr. Tetsuzan Benny Ron

We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Ron at the last

HVCA monthly luncheon. Benny gave an

engaging presentation on the past,… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on September 3, 2009 at 4:30pm — 3 Comments

Facebook Exodus Non-Story in the NYT

I normally don't comment on this sort of thing, but I received numerous links to Virginia Heffernan's vacuous NYT article titled Facebook Exodus. It must have been a very slow news day. By Virginia's own admission at the top of paragraph two, Facebook is growing at a furious rate. ComScore puts last month's unique visitors at 87.7 million and monthly growth at over 20%. To what exodus is she… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on September 1, 2009 at 3:00pm — 6 Comments

Synergy Between New & Traditional Media

With all the hype over Facebook, Twitter and other flashy social media channels the cries of, "Traditional Media is Dead!" are everywhere. Its clear that the traditional 30 second TV ad spot doesn't have the efficacy it once did, and papers that can't make the transition to well designed interactive web properties are in trouble. That being said, the declaration of the death of traditional media is premature.

When TechHui is mentioned on a local news channel or covered in a local… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on August 30, 2009 at 11:00am — 4 Comments

A New Model for Venture Capital Investment in Tech Companies in Hawaii

It is time that we put on our thinking caps and create a new model for venture capital investment more suited to our real circumstances in Hawaii. I advocate three major changes to the Hawaii venture capital model for tech companies:

1. Allow Act 221 to sunset, and implement the Act 215 State Private Investment Fund (SPIF) to be funded with up to $38 million in state tax credits that can be used to guarantee secured interest-bearing notes issued to lenders.

2. Have the… Continue

Added by Leighton K. Chong on August 27, 2009 at 5:00pm — 49 Comments

An Overview of Google App Engine (GAE)

These days, web developers are faced with a lot of difficult choices. One of them is which technology to pick for the next app, another is which hosting to use. It takes time and experience to make winning choices, especially when dealing with time sensitive deliverables. Back in the days developers had to do it all: configure a server, set up database access, get a static ip, etc... Configuring and supporting such a system could probably be a full time job in itself. Hence another… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on August 24, 2009 at 8:30pm — 3 Comments

Maui Super Computer center in the news

In todayʻs (8/22/09) Honolulu Advertiser, there is an article on the substantial increase in power for the Maui High Performance Computing Center and that about $350,000 in electricity a month is being used to power the Center.

To read the entire article CLICK HERE. The article shares what the center is used for. Among the users is… Continue

Added by Derek on August 22, 2009 at 11:25am — 1 Comment

Seawater cooled, solar powered data centers in Hawaii?

I was just readting this article "In the New Data Center, It’s Roofs Off and Taxes Down" and this phrase really caught my eye:

"Both Google and Microsoft continue to scour the globe for locations with cheap power, lots of bandwidth and friendly tax policies for their new data centers."

And I started thinking about the… Continue

Added by Peter Kay on August 17, 2009 at 7:56am — 3 Comments

A Visit to the Computer History Museum

Entrance to The Computer History Museum Mountain View, CA Nestled between the Google campus, LinkedIn and downtown Mountain View, is the Computer History Museum. Housed in the original headquarters of Silicon Graphics, the museum is the largest repository of computer equipment artifacts in the world. I never knew of its existence until I stumbled upon it a year ago while visiting a cousin in Mountain View. We use computers everyday yet we often take… Continue

Added by Francis L. Camacho on August 9, 2009 at 11:16pm — No Comments

Featured Techie: Astrodynamicist Moriba Jah

We had the pleasure of e-meeting Dr. Jah on TechHui a few months ago. We were excited to hear about the type of work he is doing on Maui at ASTRIA and AFRL in the areas of …

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Added by Daniel Leuck on August 6, 2009 at 10:30am — 3 Comments

How to use GMail as a handy personal database

GMail has been my email of choice for some time, but only recently that I've learned about some of its 'lesser known features', and especially their potential applicability. In this blog I'd like to describe how some of such features can be used to turn GMail into a handy personal database. For example, quite often I need to store information, such as scriptlets of code, notes, blog ideas, etc.. Before this recent discovery,… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on August 3, 2009 at 10:00am — 5 Comments

Excellency in Aquaculture Science, Extension and Education

Excellency in science does not depend solely on the amount of talent one has. Healthy competition, based on peer review, trustful and effective collaboration and the amount of grant money available to the researchers are playing an important role in providing the appropriate ingredients for high-level research. We need to look into ways to tighten the collaboration among UH researchers and submit together larger scale grant proposals that will enable us to compete for the biggest possible… Continue

Added by Tetsuzan Benny Ron on July 30, 2009 at 6:41pm — 3 Comments

Making Changes

It is too often in our lives that when we make up our minds to do something out of the ordinary, beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone, it leads to even greater things beyond our boldest visions when we made that original decision.

When weighing the different options that come with the territory we give up something in our lives to pursue what we love the most to do. A price is indeed paid whether large or small but a price is exacted from us somehow; leaving one’s immediate… Continue

Added by Francis L. Camacho on July 30, 2009 at 5:15pm — 2 Comments

iPhone coming to China as soon as September of this year!

So I read on the news yesterday, that Apple and a Chinese cellular network company (Unicom) has finally signed a deal to release the iPhone in China!

However, a lot of the news reports are saying that these Chinese iPhones won't have Wifi capabilities. I'm slightly confused about what this actually means: is it just the wifi chip that's restricted, or are the 3G/Edge… Continue

Added by Sherwin Gao on July 20, 2009 at 9:55pm — No Comments

First TechHui Conference: Mahalo to All Participants & A Call for Feedback

Aloha e TechHuians. We just returned from taking neighbor island panelists to the airport. We are exhausted, but I wanted to make sure to thank the Lt. Governor, keynotes, moderators, panelists, sponsors, AV folks, volunteers and everyone who attended for contributing. The keynote speakers did a fantastic job. Kaz's Blue Mars is a thing of beauty. Moriba made us put on our thinking… Continue

Added by Daniel Leuck on July 25, 2009 at 8:30pm — 12 Comments

Amazon buys Zappos: Lessons from Bezos

Amazon announced last night that it bought Zappos for about 10 million Amazon stock, worth $807 million, and $40 million in cash and stock to Zappos employees.

In the following video, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tells an interesting story of what he has learned and why Zappos is a great fit for Amazon. It seems that Amazon bought Zappos because they have the same values (i.e., customer… Continue

Added by Truman Leung on July 23, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

The visually impaired and internet access

This isnʻt much of a blog entry, but given the subject matter of this website I thought I would mention a brief news snippet I read in todayʻs Honolulu Star-Bulletin, it provides,

Blind man sues SBA over Web access

A blind business owner from Honolulu has filed a complaint against the U.S. Small Business Administration over access to its Web site.

Virgil… Continue

Added by Derek on July 23, 2009 at 9:25am — 6 Comments

Tech Attorneys

Recently I've talked to a number of tech entrepreneurs looking for an attorney to help with structuring a company or protecting their intellectual property. Its always helpful to find an attorney who has experience dealing with technology start-ups. There are a lot of attorneys in Hawaii and it can be difficult to pick the right one for your company. I've dealt with about a dozen Hawaii based attorneys for things ranging from QHTB filings to structuring a company and filing a patent. Here…

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Added by Daniel Leuck on July 19, 2009 at 9:30am — 1 Comment