video blog and strippers, of course: "
Many thanks to gearhead Robert, who sent me this link:

Los Vegas amateur stripping contest video blog

Subscribe and have the strip-off automatically downloaded to your iTunes, My Yahoo or FireANT account. They even publish a version for your mobile phone.

I can tell you right now that the website design does not impress me (see today's other post). But I guess this time, the website is hardly the point, right? It exists merely to give you instructions for subscribing to the video blog

Somehow it seems like cheating, that you can deliver video without bothering to design an attractive and useful website. And I find myself skeptical about the quality of the video, based on the ugly site."

(Via Sex Drive Daily.)

ThemePunks: "
Cory Doctorow, articles 1 - 12


Teach a man to replicate
In the midst of death and mayhem, Perry thinks up the ultimate killer app. Chapter 8 of 'Themepunks.'
By Cory Doctorow [2005-10-31]

Remixing the shantytown
Can Kodacell save the homeless? Chapter 7 of 'Themepunks.'
By Cory Doctorow [2005-10-24]

The blogger as starmaker
Never mind the inventors -- Andrea's posts make things happen. Chapter 6 of 'Themepunks.'
By Cory Doctorow [2005-10-17]

Sony hints at PSP upgrades

Streaming movie function, video chat e-mail application, and Digital Rights Management are among the potential features in store for the handheld's future.

Although the new PSP update came with a Web browser, one thing the machine still lacks is an e-mail application. Users can use some Web-based e-mail sites, but Kawanishi revealed that he is currently thinking of a new mail program for the PSP that will let users communicate with one another using both video and voice. "We're currently considering [the implementation of an e-mail system], but we want to think over the fundamental concept behind e-mail. We think it would be great if people could communicate together with the use of video and voice," said Kawanish

(Via .)

The Net: How Much for a Jetpack? - Newsweek Periscope - MSNBC.com

Newsweek on Second Life

I have been increasingly interested in this "game" since I tried it out over a year ago. I re-tried it recently to find, pleasantly, that things are even better. If you want to find me on SL, IM Squif Marquez.

Cocoalicious 1.0b37: "

I feel like I’m keynoting my very own MacWorld Expo today, what with being able to announce updates across the entire Sci-Fi Hi-Fi product line. In addition to a rather routine PodWorks update, I’m pleased to announce the first new release of Cocoalicious since I went on my summer hiatus, and, if I do say so myself, possibly the best release evar. As Steve would say, we think you’re really going to like it.

(Via Sci-Fi Hi-Fi.)

I was talking to my dad today about Clearwire, wi-max, and unwiring cities, and mentioned that I had read something about one of the close to LA beach cities doing that. Then, opening up MarsEdit, I found a draft of an old blog post:

SoCal surfside town to become America's first unwired city?

Wifi's up: L.A. area beach town Hermosa Beach may become the first U.S. city to be unwired by its own municipal government. Totally bitchin', dude.

Imagine living in a town where you're able to move your laptop from one place to the next without ever having to log off from cyberspace. You can leave a coffee shop, travel down to the beach and then over to a park, all the while still surfing the Internet, free of charge. Hermosa Beach just might be that city if a proposal led by Mayor Michael Keegan to make the tiny beach community completely wireless comes to fruition. The completed plan would make Hermosa Beach famous as the first Wi-Fi city in the United States.
"If it's successful, I think it will be a model for the rest of the country," said Keegan. "It will be the first service that we know of, run entirely by a municipality." Keegan hopes to formally introduce the proposal to his colleagues on the City Council this month. If the municipality votes to approve the project, the San Diego-based firm, Wireless Facilities Inc., will then install antennae towers in town.

Link, Discuss (via SOCALWUG) [Boing Boing]

Official Google Blog: Guess what just turned 34?

Official Google Blog: Guess what just turned 34?

It's difficult to pin down the exact origin of email, but in October 1971, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email.

At the time, it must not have seemed very important – nobody bothered to save that first message or even record the exact date. I've always thought that it would be fun to witness a little bit of history like that – to be there when something important happened. That's part of what drove me to join a little no-name startup named Google, and it's why I was excited when I was given a chance to create a new email product, now called Gmail.

Smug, tiny, inflexible brains. Yay!

The Cynical Writer: "(Indeed, that's one of the things that differentiates science fiction from 'mainstream' fiction: Moral, political and philosophical choices are in the context of a created universe, not necessarily the one we live in. Some messaging won't map perfectly (or at all) into this universe, which (among other things) bugs people who don't want to have to stretch their smug little minds to accomodate a new set of rules -- you can tell who these people are when they say things like 'Science Fiction isn't real literature.' Just smile, pity their tiny inflexible brains, and move on.)"

(Via Whatever.)

Finally:

nasty audio stories, trashy sexy music, orgasms, perverted poetry blind sex radioactive sex: "Radio Active Sex is Audio Stories, Sex Text Stories, sexy music, orgasms, erotic poetry,
sex for the blind, mindsex for the masses and for the visual - galleries of hot naked women .

Just a note before I go...

Just a quick note to mention that I'm doing all this blogging today because I found a new tool (set of tools, really) that allow easy blogging.

NetNewsWire is an RSS aggregator that acts like a web browser. Makes reading all my stuff easy.

MarsEdit is a companion software that allows blogging as easy as word processing.

I highlight (select, you geek) some text in NetNewsWire, hit a Post to Weblog button, and boom, it gets there. Sweet.

Wil Says:

communication:

"Whenever I am interviewed about my blog, or blogging in general, I always try to get the interviewer to grok that the real power in this medium is that anyone can communicate their opinions, fears, outrage, silliness, or whatever is important to them with a large, self-policing peer network. There is such overwhelming power in communication, if that power is treated responsibly.

That is why blogging is important. That is why it's exciting, empowering, and cool. For better and for worse, the rules of communication have changed. So far, I don't see a whole lot of evidence that the mainstream media or current corporate masters of the universe understand that. I wonder when they'll get a clue(train)."

(Via WWdN: In Exile.)

Boing Boing: Crocheted infant Yoda ears:

"Crocheted infant Yoda ears
If you're looking for a way to turn a baby into a major unlicensed cuton emitter (well beyond the threshold set by the Federal Cuteness Commission) this Hallowe'en, then you could do worse than to whip up a set of these crocheted Yoda ears, as one crafty parent did."

Intelligent Design rant:

Whatever: "The only value to this whole thing so far is that it got Behe to admit that in order to get ID to work, you have to cheat -- you have to make words mean different things than what they mean. You know, the science community already has a word for the new, more lax definition of 'theory' Behe wishes to promote: it's called a hypothesis. Should Behe manage to get his way and change the definition of 'theory,' what becomes of the word 'hypothesis'? Is it demoted? Discarded? Given a nice gold watch for its years of service to the scientific community and then taken behind the barn to be plugged with a shotgun? And if is merely demoted, then what will become of the phrase 'drunken paranoid ramblings?' That phrase has nowhere else to go."

(Via Whatever.)

back. bone. scr0d

From BoingBoing:

"Have you noticed that the
Internet is a little slow and weird today? Check out this scoreboard
from the Internet Health Report. Two gigantic backbones, Level3 and
Verio, are both in the red, failing to route traffic at nominal levels."

Tact Filters: "When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary."

(Via .)

Apple Matters | Mac Laptop Market Share Poised to Spike?:

"There’s something big businesses love about working their customers into a frenzy of anticipation. For the business that is college football the recipe is simple: introduce a leather prolate spheroid amid 22 students. The trick works about 12 or 13 times a year. For Apple to generate similar enthusiasm among their fans usually all it takes is a press release noting that a mysterious announcement is coming. As opposed to college football, apparently Apple can only go the mysterious product intro route twice every six weeks. At least that seems to be the case because the anticipation of (and reaction to) yesterdays press event was decidedly muted when compared to the two previous events. The reaction, or lack thereof, is not too surprising. Apple was releasing pro level stuff and, compared the nano and TV shows via iTunes, the speed bumps and screen tweaks were a bit pedestrian. Yet for those people considering a foray into the world of Apple laptops a question probably occurred: Should I jump now or wait for the update with Intel inside?"

psp and itunes

look, we know that Sony and Apple are rivals, but so are Apple and Microsoft. And THEY figure out how to play nice on occasion.

we can be pretty sure that Sony, if they don't have their heads up their asses, will put a hard drive in the PSP eventually. Apple should make sure they get a port of iTunes over on Sony's PSP. with built in wifi, users can d/l content, and watch it on the gorgeous PSP screen. Play together, folks, it's the Kindergarten way!

safaristand

safaristand
Originally uploaded by roblef.

it's kinda overkill in this screenshot, but if you look to the left side of the safari browser, you'll see a sidebar full of all the tabs I have open in safair. kinda cool. I've been using Safari again due to some slowness in Firefox beta 2. I wonder if there's a FFx plugin that does the same.

stupid ass GCI

Ok, so I currently pay my ISP provider $55 a month for the privilege of 1 Mb per second download, and lame upload speed. They are running a promotion now with 3, 5 and 8 Mbps download for roughly the same price as what I am paying now. ($49.99). The new plan also has unlimited downloads.

HOWEVER: if you do not pay GCI for their cable TV, their local phone service AND long distance eservice, you may not purchase this service for ANY price. IF you have what they call "modem only" service (we use satellite TV, thank you very much), you will NEVER have unlimited downloads. They cap you at 20 G. They give you a fraction of the upload speed (the 8 mbps package becomes 3 mbps), AND charge you a "modem" fee. WTF!?

I'm switching to ACS, who will give me unlimited uploads and downloads, at 1 mbps, for the same $55 per month I'm paying now.

stupid GCI. old business model. closed market. yick.

PSP 0wnZ0res iPod video

SFist: SFist Tech Roundup: Silence of the Blogs: "What's that? Did you say something, Apple? Sorry, we weren't paying attention; we were too busy watching full-length movies on our Sony PSP's 4.3-inch widescreen.

All the tech news and gossip sites for the past week have been full of will-they-or-won't-they speculation about whether Apple was going to announce a video iPod at its big press event on Wednesday. Our best guess in the labs was that there's no way Apple would release a video iPod now, because it just doesn't make sense."

WWdN: In Exile: open the box

Wil Wheaton says:
WWdN: In Exile: open the box

Pandora.com is an incredible site that helps you discover new music. You tell it the title of a song or name of an artist, and it will create a station for you, starting from that selection. Pandora then plays a song from a similar artist that it thinks you'll like, as it builds a custom net.radio station for you. The Long Tail Blog says,

"[T]hey determine similarity not by what other people listen to but what their small army of musicologists identify as related traits in the music itself. You'll get delightful stuff you never would have thought of."

"

"

I put in John Hiatt, and am trying it out as we speak.

iPod video is NOT the news

What's news is THIS:

We now have access to TV shows (like Lost, in my household) the day or day after they are broadcast. For $2 US, I can have the entire 44 min of Lost without commercials for my viewing pleasure.

THIS is how Apple has changed the face of television.

Now, granted, you could have been downloading TV shows off of BitTorrent, using RSS, etc. before now. But it wasn't legal, was not always quality recordings, and usually had a watermark on it, showing what stations showed it.

We watched the first 3 episodes of lost last night, on my 20" iMac's screen. The quality was almost as good as a DVD, thanks to Apple's new HD264 compression. And, only weighs in at 200 - 300 Mb per episode. I downloaded episode 4 as we watched episodes 1 and 2.

I will continue to Tivo, of course. I can't see paying $2 a pop for EVERY show we watch (only 2 or 3 good ones, really). BUT, for shows like this, or episodes my Tivo doesn't catch (like Lost, again), this is the way to go.

Even further, this represents a couple of paradigmn shifts:

One, TV can be as good as movies. Period. See Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Carnivale, and Lost, for examples. People will pay for easily accessible quality (see iTunes music, for example)

Two, We don't always want to wait for the DVD for the entire season to come out. With shows using story arcs ad nauseum, missing an episode is losing critical information that is needed to fully appreciate the next show. This way of distribution alleviates that.

Anyway, just some thoughts about the new video stuff. it's not the device that excites me (my PSP has a MUCH better screen than the iPod does), but the service.

blog vs link list

so, I'm trying to figure out how to balance my blogging with my use of the online bookmark tool, del.icio.us. You can see the list of bookmarks that I want to "remember" on the right in this blog. I've been using my blog for ages just to put stuff I find interesting and relevant to me or my confederates. Sometimes, a link is enough. others, quoting part of the post or web page in question is best. it's tricky, but I'm working on it.

Matt Croydon::Postneo 2.0 � Blog Archive � Macromedia Studio 8

Matt Croydon::Postneo 2.0 � Blog Archive � Macromedia Studio 8: "From the feature tour it looks like Dreamweaver has taken some cues from InDesign with some very photoshop-esque guides. It is also great to see Dreamweaver finally start to focus on CSS-based design over table layout. It also looks like Dreamweaver is able to parse and display RSS feeds, as you can see about 3/4 through the feature tour. Interesting stuff."