mtvU: Restaurants, Amazon, Bookstores, Movies, Video Rentals, Record stores
PenFed pending approval: Gas Discover Through March: Airline, Hotel, Car Rental
I sorely miss the early years when Citi Platinum Select and Dividend cards still offered 5% on utilities, drugstores, supermarkets, and cable bills. The Amazon and gas discounts have been around for years; I’ve actually had the mtvU card since 2006 too — oh how ignorant I was =( Amazon and gas have consistently been money-sucking black holes for me.
Oh, and my general purchase reward rate went from 1% to 1.25%, also thanks to PenFed. I’m pretty excited since I just received my Pentagon Federal Credit Union membership today. I’ll be reporting on the ridiculous discounts, benefits and deals I am anticipating.
Google changed their favicon once more (the last change happened in May 2008). Above you can see the recent history of this icon showing in the address bar and elsewhere. The new design consists of four color areas – blue, red, green and yellow – overlaid by a lowercase white “g”.
The well known problem of MD5 collisions allowed researchers to impersonate a certificate authority. This would allow HTTPS to be subverted via a man in the middle attack. For $2,000 and a day, hackers could pull off this attack using Amazon’s EC2.
Instead of relying on Google Reader’s sharing function, I think I’ll start posting tidbits on my blog.
I’m a huge fan of Amazon Web Services. I should play around a bit more with EC2.
SurgyPack was selected to complete in the final round of the Collegiate Inventors Competition. I went to Kansas City, MO, taking 2.5 days of unpaid leave. Since they have not updated the site yet, I’ll post the winners.
Undergraduate Winner Greg Schroll (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Spherical Vehicle with Flywheel Momentum Storage for High Torque Capabilities
Graduate Winner Paul Podsiadlo (University of Michigan)
Ultra-strong and Stiff, Optically Transparent Plastic Nanocomposites
Grand Prize Winner Timothy Lu (Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria and Bacterial Biofilms with Engineered Bacteriophage and Synthetic Gene Sensors
I’m usually really annoyed and disappointed when I don’t win, but this time I was actually happy for the winners. All the finalist projects were truly amazing.
Overall, I was extremely impressed at how well organized the entire event was. Everything was on time (!), everyone on our team had their own room, limo drivers, very nice wining and dining… really enjoyable and unexpectedly lavish in all ways. The ceremonies were hosted at Kauffman Foundation, their facilities are really nice — all Aeron chairs, sound-proof paneling, etc. It was amazing meeting members of the National Inventor Hall of Fame and Neal Conan of NPR’s Talk of the Nation. I am feeling inspired.
