Yearly Archives: 2005

I always try to watch TV when I’m on the freeway, thing is, I don’t have a TV in my car. Following a SUV on the highway at night almost guarantees a TV with The Little Mermaid playing for a car seat or two in the back seat. I like the Disney collection as much as any seven year old, but I can’t handle the same the heavy rotation that they consume most animated features. My tiny collection of DVDs coupled with the poor reception for broadcast TV stations on the road would provide a very repetitious viewing repertoire.

Sirius sees this problem and plans to tackle it just as they did with top 40 radio stations that include 24 minutes of commercials in each 30 minute segment of heavy rotation pop songs. Sirius Satellite Radio (whom I did a review on earlier) is planning to release stock quotes, sports scores, music videos, and cartoons via their service in the end of ’06. With content like this I just may validate spending four digits on a video/audio system in my car. As of now I just don’t see spending $1000.00 or so in order to watch my 7 DVDs in the car on 5” monitors. Let’s see if Sirius will add channels like Food Network and G4TV, I may not leave my car.

Found via wired.com

Historically, I have never met a gadget I didn’t like, and within, say, an hour or two it’s usually sitting up, rolling over and eating out of my hand. Forget about RTFM, I’ve become a power user over night.

Until now.

I’ve met my match, Cisco’s VoIP communication systems. Day 1 of a new job, I couldn’t answer the phone at all. Day 2, I was able to answer it and check my voicemail, but I deleted a message I meant to forward. Day 3, an additional added line was accidentally set to call forward into oblivion, but I did manage to plug in a headset. Today, Day 4, I finally solved the mystery of saved receipts in my voicemail box; They were email return receipts, able to be deleted as either text or messages.

I’m not sure if it’s technically progress when it takes me four days to gain telephone competency.

FAB (Foundation for Accuracy in Blogs) has conducted a precise survey about the real numbers of blogs and bloggers on the net today. I read this article and realized that one had to read in between the lines on this one. At first one would think that this organization, FAB, didn’t know their math or have a rough idea of the global population. In fact FAB is so advanced that most readers fail to see that they are not limiting this report to humans or the planet earth. There are planets far far away in galaxies far far away blogging far far away.

How else could you explain the fact that there are 32 Billion blogs to date? Their numbers show that the average blogger holds 3 blogs. I don’t know very many humans with 3 blogs so that means extraterrestrial life forms are keeping roughly 6 blogs each! Boy, are us humans behind on the blogging scheme of things. 27% of the current bloggers blog each day, and 82% of the bloggers don’t blog daily. At first glance one would think that 27% + 82% = 109% and you can’t have 109%, but I see this as 9% of the bloggers blog daily and then don’t blog daily, then jump back to blogging daily. It’s an overlap of percents that is taught as basic math in the intergalactic gradeschools.

In my childhood there was a song we’d sing every time we formed a ‘single file line’. “First the worst, second the best, and third the one with the hairiest chest! It was mostly sung by me, and only when I was second in line. Being first in line had an importance to it, a special place next to the teacher.

Google and I share so many things in common don’t we? Google wasn’t first in internet search, but they are definitely the best. Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps have been around for ages, and only 4 months ago Google joined in the online mapping world. If you haven’t used maps.google.com, then go there now and map something! Google has done it again, they’re the best. Different websites are incorporating their information into Google maps and creating quite a stir. Websites plot apartments for rent, crime locations, sex offender’s residencies, gas stations with the cheapest gas, and many other map-able entities. I can’t wait till can see this incorporation heading towards the online dating/matchmaking industry real soon.

From reading this site you most likely have assumed that I’m 6’4”, with a chiseled body, extremely popular with the ladies, played starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and straightened out the crooked administration that ran my H.S. Well I have something to confess, I was and am none of those. In high school, my mom was a teacher at my school and I turned all my homework in on time. Only a few school bullies picked on me and I only had my locker egged once in the four years I was there.

It’s payback time, and I’m not doing this the same way the Trench Coat Mafia did it. Us techy geeks are smart enough to know what’s fun, what’s real, and what’s not. We also know what’s real fun, beating up bullies, school principals, and getting the head cheerleader to plant a wet one on you 100% qualifies for that. Rockstar plans to release this procrastination-helping bit of software in Oct of 2005.

Lawyers have the reputation for holding the “scum of the earth” title since before I can remember. They use our overly complex legal system to make the most money possible, regardless. Recently in Kentucky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no –it’s a blog! Blogs have taught lawyers in middle America a quick lesson.

A Kentucky lawyer who has a blog got caught in a trap that his own kind set many years ago. For a lawyer to advertise in Kentucky they must pay a fee, and each time they change or add to that advertisement, the fee must be paid again. This lawyer’s blog is viewed as advertisement, and each time it changed (added a post, someone posted a comment, uploaded a picture, etc…) he needs to pay up. Looks like blogs one upped ‘the man’ yet again, blogs 1, lawyers 0.

I was in New York a couple weeks ago visiting a friend who is a teacher. Watching her class made me wish I was in 3rd grade again. Not because they are care-free, or still small enough to hide underneath a desk, but bcause they already know how to operate OSX. They use the Smart Board.

The Smart Board is a touch sensitive screen hooked up to a computer. The monitor is projected onto the board and it becomes like a computer chalkboard for the class. The picture above is a first grader using iMovie to show her class a project she worked on. I wonder if her mother helped her.

Read up on the Smart Board to find out more of the cool things it does and how going digital helps education.

I read Gizmodo religiously, and I’m sure that you do too. The “5 stages of Intel Macs” comic strip linked by one of my top blogs made me laugh, and cry. I’m an avid Mac AND PC user/fan. I know I know, choose one or the other you all say, well I can’t… I’m bi-computeral. I was excited the minute that Apple announced they’d use Intel chips, with the same enthusiasm basket ball fans had when the 1992 Dream Team was announced.

Most of my Mac friends (who don’t know I own a PC, and should continue to believe so) went through this exact cycle. Check out the comic strip and see what you think.

A file isn’t something that you can pick up, look at, hand to your friend, or put in your pocket. You can put files onto a CD, DVD, flash drive, hard drive, memory card, or other medium that stores files. Files are physically an entity, yet so intangible that people feel they are simply thin air. Qiu, a 41 year old online gamer in Shanghai, China stabbed 26 year old Zhu to death. The 26 year old sold Qui’s virtual sword, acquired in the game “Legend Of Mir 3”. This is a sad story; $840.00 US is not worth a human life. The real issue I grasp from this act is the fact that Qui went to the police first, and was given no assistance.

“Qui went to the police to report the “theft” but was told the weapon was not real property protected by law.” Continue reading →

Each morning I jumpstart my day with three tasks: 1.) get up and visit the bathroom 2.) check my email –my laptop sleeps under my bed so I usually check email while still in bed 3.) watch RocketBoom. You may be familiar with the acts of going to the bathroom and checking email, but RocketBoom may be a new concept to you. As I noted before, they are my favorite Vlog (video blog), and today covered a story regarding podcasting and museums together at last.

In New York, NY at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) David Gilbert and a few of his students talked about their spin on podcasting, Art Mobs. The idea is to download a podcast from the internet, then go to the museum and listen to that podcast as a museum audio tour guide. Here’s what David had to say:

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get people to take control of their own information consumption. Rather than being passive consumers of media whether it’s television radio or even a museum guide, we want people to realize that with digital technology they can now produce their own news, their own television, their own radio, and even their own audio guides for museums.”