It’s all coming into view for me. Before PayPal, eBay transactions took weeks, for a check to be delivered via snail mail, and wait then for the item to be snail mailed back. PayPal cut one of those postal pains by allowing an instantaneous money transfer. eBay should have done something like that themselves. Instead of kicking their own backsides, they decided to investigate the next best thing, Skype. Instead of emailing questions to sellers and waiting for their response, is just calling them up and chatting VoIP style.

eBay probably saw a bit more potential in Skype than a better auction site, but I’d like to call and make sure that Britteny Spears really did take a bite of that $12,598.78 piece of toast I just bid on.

Finally a show for us and by us. PBS is launching NerdTV hosted by Robert X. Cringely. While Cringely probably couldn’t get a job working for MTV he does have the chops to interview the likes of Bill Joy the father of UNIX and Sun Microsystems. The show will feature top knotch geeks in shows that can be downloaded on your PC.

Think of it as a talk show that we too can finally enjoy.

It has been some time since I have written. But now that I’m settled on the east coast, with somewhat reliable Internet, I’ll try and keep in touch more often. In light of recent disaster news I thought I’d make my first return post a little more light and fuzzy.

I came across a good discussion of online dating as the third sexual revolution in America and the notion sparked interest and discussion in my new house.

Continue reading →

My phone just doesn’t do enough for me: Call anywhere in the nation for free, instant messenging, web browsing via the GPRS network, pop email for three different accounts, games, downloadable ringtones, a comprehensive calendar, and more… I need a phone suit for Madonna, Iggy Pop, and Lil’ John. I need an Apple/Motorola phone. “Listening to my phone” is something that I want to embed into my vocabulary I can carry my iPod with me, but with an iPod and a phone in my front pocket, lots of girls think I’m just happy to see them.

Talk about combining a mobile phone and an mp3 player is older than the pyramids. Apple has been teasing us with their iTunes Motorola phone for months now. But this journalist has an idea that this next week, we’ll have some concrete information about the phone. With celebs set up to advertise the new Motorola Rokr (iTunes) phone, I’m anticipating much from Apple’s event next week.

So the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) just announced the two member list of companies participating in the next stage of its Walrus program, which aims to develop a part blimp, part jumbo jet monstrosity that can quickly (and relatively cheaply) ferry hundreds of tons of gear to the far reaches of the world. In reality show-ese: Lockheed Martin will duke it out with Aeros Aeronautical Systems in a 12-month battle to provide DARPA with a winning walrus design, using a budget of $3 million tax dollars each.

Who will be the victor?

According to Red Herring (they put it so eloquently): “DARPA wants the final product to carry 500 tons of war machine 12,000 nautical miles in less than a week.” RH spoke to Torrance, California-based Aeros, who claims that a 1-foot-wide hole in the fabric of a 140-foot-long airship would take more than an hour bring the thing down, meaning ample time for safe landings after hostile encounters. They also report asking about the potential impact of missles (war zones typically involve things more dangerous than pea shooters) – too bad Aeros wouldn’t cough up any details.

The article makes a valid point about the potential usefulness of such a vehicle in chaotic areas like New Orleans, where large quantities of supplies could be brought to a single area by one gigantic aircraft. To put it in all in perspective, the largest Boeing 747 cargo plane can only carry 400 tons – and it needs a runway.

I know this isn’t the same as forgetting to convert your units, but PLEASE don’t fill it with hydrogen…

As I sit at my desk and listen to the ongoing radio coverage of the situation in New Orleans, I have a hard time describing my reaction to what’s being said by regular citizens, journalists, emergency workers, mayors and our president. I feel shock, sorrow, embarassment, sheer confusion and I can’t get over the fact that learning more about the situation makes my mind swell with images and quotes when I hear the words “disaster area”. Coverage can be found everywhere, but I just wanted to toss out a link that’s truly compelling.

Mike Barnett’s aptly-named Survival of New Orleans Blog continues to pour out a constant stream of post-hurricane reports from his office on the 10th floor of an office building in the heart of downtown. Traffic to the site continues to swell as Barnett and fellow Zipa and DirectNIC (web hosting and co-location centers) employees make the most of what may very well be the only such site written and hosted by the city destroyed by hurricane Katrina. Hop to the site and read some of the posts…truly amazing.

Links to photos from the site can be found here and also here. Wired ran a nice article yesterday with some photos of the employees and more information about the blog.

Looting, shootings, murders, bodies everywhere, gas prices out of control, talk of the larger economic impact the storm will have…I just wish everyone out there the best and will continue to soak up as much news as I can.

This is great. All you cell phone camera addicts out there, take a moment to find a fellow photog and chest bump. The boys in blue caught up with the NY subway flasher who gained a certain amount of notoriety last week after a smart cookie snapped a pic of him with her cameraphone and posted on Flickr. The damn thing made it to the cover of the New York Daily News!

Mom and dad! See! See! Cell phones really CAN save the day…or at least enable those really hoping to get their very own misdemeanor. Throw another hash mark in the side of the board that reads “Reasons I Love The Internet.”

[Cheers to BoingBoing]

Some game news:

World of Warcraft’s success is well documented, but Blizzard just hit us with a formal announcement of how many subscribers the game actually has. According to Red Herring, it’s a cool 4 million, baby, making WoW the most popular online role-playing game in the world. Some analysts estimate that the cash cow is bringing the company more than $30 million each month just in basic subscription fees – parent company Vivendi reports its revenue up 61 percent from the year before.

The BBC has an interesting article profiling a series of online gaming addicts, building on my post from a few days ago about China’s pending restrictions on consecutive hours of gameplay. It feels like a text version of an AA meeting. The four “addicts” in the article justify their time hidden in their rooms, shut off from the outside world by saying things like “Gaming helps me escape from whatever happens to be bothering me,” and “playing games online means that other people are playing live with you.” As a former WoW player I can relate to these statements, but trying to rationalize your removal from the physical world is just that – rationalization. “Ever since I started playing, my physical condition has deteriorated,” one player says. “I get lots of colds as I don’t really exercise.” Still another has actually realized that there might be things going on in the real world that merit more attention:

“My wife is pregnant and needs a lot of attention. It wouldn’t look good if I put my energy into World of Warcraft.”

Really?