Given my kids are all in college, or out in the working world, my wife and I decided that after 25 years with the same land-based phone number … we went cell phone only. Monday morning when I woke up the old familiar dial tone was gone, and the phones around our house were really just archaic art work!

This morning, by happenstance I received an invite to Google Voice … reminds you of the early days of GMail. I'm a somebody … Google Voice wants me! (learn about Google voice)

Anyhow, I signed up and activated a phone number (no charge). The service is free in terms of received phone calls and allows me to screen callers. It will even try to translate phone messages into text and send me an email when I receive a new call. Want to try the service? Leave me a message … I'll try to post some of the better comments here (either in audio or text mode).

• Call my Google Voice Number: 763-445-9155
  (you'll get my voice mail by default)
  

Comment upon any of these items (or pick your own topic):

• Does Google Voice scare you?
• Give an opinion about this blog?
• Do you remember Apollo 11?
• What blog posts would like to see from the Northstar Nerd?

Watch a short video about Google Voice (less than two minutes long). Here also are two screen shots from one of my calls (voice mail notification). Click to view full sized.

One of my favorite engineering blogs has died … because of web 2.0 concerns on the part of MathWorks. In one sense the story behind Blinkdagger's demise is both happy and sad. Mathworks, the manufacturer of MATLAB and Simulink liked the this blog so much, they hired one of the two blog owners. However, Mathworks found it difficult to support an "open web" strategy once they made that hire. Read more via the Blinkdagger blog. Coincidentally Bill Ives just published a post which has links to employee social media policies for  IBM, Intel and Sun.

I will very much miss posts such as MATLAB and Martians. However, Marvin lives!

I'm following Apollo 11 … just like I did 40 years ago, are you?!

• We Choose the Moon
• Twitter
  • Command Module
  • Eagle
  • Capcom

Every once in a while I find something new in technical education which excites me … in this case its some classic physics lectures (1964) taught by Dr. Richard Feynman. Why?

• The lectures in question are truly classic
• The technology behind the video streaming service is impressive

Even if you don't care about physics, you need to link over to Project Tuva. Make certain you start up at least one lecture, and enjoy! My thanks to the eScience at Microsoft for making me aware of this initiative. This content will be added to the Engineering Learning Wiki and its Google custom search engine within the next few minutes. I've attached two screenshots below … click to expand and view full sized. The images doesn't do justice to the experience.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo … these were space programs which fascinated me in the 1960's as a child growing up in northern Minnesota. When President Kennedy dedicated our country to land on the moon by the end of the decade, this quest inspired me and many other young children to life long love of science and technology. I still remember getting up in the middle of the night to watch Apollo moon walks live on TV.

We need this kind of inspiring science to attract a new generation of young scientists. In the short term, rather than these heavy thoughts, I will relive that first moon flight (Apollo 11) … and you can too starting this Thursday. Link to:

• We Choose the Moon
• NASA: Apollo 11

Definitely visit the "We Choose the Moon" web site … it's big time cool. Click upon the image to view a copy of the root page full sized.