101 - Wikis explained

Good stuff...

13 Fantastic Free Wallpaper Images

Pretty nice wallpaper images.

VRML 2.0

Microsoft has an interesting approach in the labs right now trying to convert the 2-D world of your screen into a 3-D world of images. Kinda like the illegitimate offspring off Google Earth and Photoshop.

Pretty different.

Public Policy

Google has launched a public policy blog. Blogs seem like the absolute best and absolute worst place to vet these ideas. Worth watching.

Mooter

Interesting concept, so-so search results, cool logo and name... the search tool Mooter

Who do you think we are?

Ever wonder who you look like. Here is a pretty handy way to find out online.

Wis.dm

Have you checked out Wis.dm ? Pretty interesting social networking concept. Basically built on participants answering yes or no questions. No sure of the value, but pretty darn fun.

Simpsons Intro

I love the Simpsons and always look forward to how they handle their intro. One of my favorites....

A beheaded body can take 32 steps

No real value here, but the title caught my eye.

If at first you don't succeed....

post, post again.

http://www.thefamousguy.com/blog/

Timeless truth #124

And oldie, but a goodie...

PDFs... BAAAAAAAAAAAAAD

Cognito ergo google

So does using Google make you dumber or are you dumb not to use Google?

Linux car crashes

The Linux car crashed and finished dead last at the Indy 500.

The Vista car did not fair much better. The driver complained about the partially inflated tires that he had pit early to fill up the rest of the way, and difficultly in seeing the track through a blue screen.

Legless chihuahuas

First of all, my life is now complete since I have used "legless chihuahuas" as a title for a post.

Check out Google Hot Trends if you get a chance. Pretty cool stuff. Still a work in process though -- on May 21 results included “legless chihuahuas” at 25, and “legless chihuahua” at 36.

Cola 2.0

OK, now there is open source cola under a GNU Public license. Passions run amok.

60 elegant designs

One of my favorite design-focused sites posted their view of the 60 most elegant website designs.

Once I overcame the shock the foulballguy.com was not on the list (buy a freakin' tshirt!), I thought the list was pretty good.

All the sites fall into the emerging web 2.0-ish feel, which strikes me as a meld of Fisher Price and Microsoft clip art with a hard to explain dose of cool.

Not buying it

The Defense department has banned several social networking tools due to bandwidth concerns, not content concerns.

Riiiiiiiiight.

Blogging rules

Interesting read on the concept of regulating blogs. Covers the issues from both sides. I continue to struggle with the "right" to be anonymous. Free speech - I get. But accountability should also be there.

Let everyone be free to say whatever the want -- but have the courage to stand behind your words.

Boo DoD

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/pentagon-blocks-myspace-and-youtube/

For your reading pleasure

Clearly, FierceCIO would only publish material from insightful individuals.

Well, usually.

Today they were willing to include Jeff Grimshaw and me.

http://www.fiercecio.com/node/3760/#part2

IM traffic

There is a pretty cool layer you can add to Google Earth to watch realtime IM traffic. Not sure of the value, but a nice little time waster/mashup

Say Cheese

What did we EVER do without the Internet???

http://cheddarvision.tv/

Numbers game

Hang on past the first few slides on school hardware and you will see some very interesting numbers on China and India.

http://www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/fisch/didyouknow/didyouknow.wmv

Even Zaphod might feel a tad less significant after viewing this.

Mr. Grumpy

With a lead like...

There are a few things I have learned about the Internet since I first logged on to a chat board back in the late 1980s. It promotes anger far easier than it promotes tolerance.

As the public immigrated to the Internet from once productive lives, the real focus has been on the goofy, ridiculous and weird, not on the serious or the productive.

... I am pretty sure this guy needs some decaf.

Read his full grumpiness.

Ed Wood would be proud

Here is a rogues gallery of lame technology mascots. Fairly comprehensive except for the glaring omission of MicroSoft's Bob. The last mascot in the gallery (the bunny in the space helmet) by Plan 9 from Bell Labs is my favorite. Named Glenda... Ed Wood would indeed be proud.

http://www.wired.com/culture/design/multimedia/2007/04/gallery_mascots

Two days in a row of useless stuff

Of equal or lessor value than the GPS post. But a stupid kind of fun....

http://monster.namedecoder.com

Kinda funny

Playing off our big brother fears

http://www.sat-gps-locate.com/

Go figure

You would think that the growth of authoritative (news sites) and non-authoritative (blogs, wikis) information sources - coupled with easier ways to stay on top of them (RSS, Google start page) - would make it easier to know "the truth" about events.

But instead I keep getting this

What are you looking at?

At last... a professional league I have a shot at... Pro Staredown-ing

Amiga memories

Just came across this great look back at the top Amiga games. Wonderful list (Beast and Another World completely rocked!!), but they omitted TV Sports Basketball, Rocket Ranger, a pretty good submarine simulation that I can't recall the specific name.

My first computer was an Amiga 500 with 512K RAM. Then I went BIG TIME and got an Amiga 2000 with 3 Meg of RAM. I loved Deluxe Paint as the graphics package. And the Sonix music package. And multitasking just to be cool.

Sigh.

Apple sell its 100 Millionth iPod

Hmmm. That is A LOT of iPods.

Pretty sure we will sell our 100 millionth t-shirt on www.foulballguy.com shortly before the sun burns out.

Like 5 minutes before.

Tops.

Google Maps mashups made easy

Since I washed out when I was playing with Google's APIs for Maps... this is welcome news.

I am at peace with being demoted to a lower level geek status.

Vaderpalooza

Three, for the price of one:

1. Darth Vader meets Hello Kitty

2. Chad Vader - Episode 7



3. An oldie, but a goodie - Triumph the Insult Comic at a Star Wars meet and greet.

"Spoiler? You will die alone."

They forget the USB rotary dial

One of the better April Fool's items this year.. the Apple iPhone will NOT be cordless.

Apollo musings

Adobe's Apollo is an interesting concept. AJAX and dhtml narrowed the gap between installed and browser-based applications quite a bit - Apollo looks to blur the line differently.

Flash seems to be a major element here and Flash has always been the Swiss army knife of software - you can do so much with it - good idea or not.

It will be good to watch and see what kind of legs Apollo develops. And then to see it Google apps follows suit.

There is always a bigger fish

While I liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's version of this a bit better, this is an amazing Flash thingie that puts you in to scale with the universe.

Hint... you are smaller than Pluto.

http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/index_f.htm

Best logo ever

Well, maybe not the best ever, but pretty darn clever....

http://www.electricsheepcompany.com/

Vote 2.0

So, is THIS going to be the election cycle where YouTube politics and MySpace politics end up having a true, lasting impact?

The whole 1984 Apple ad mash up with Clinton/Obama was pretty darn clever. I wonder what ad will show up next for Dems or the GOP

There is probably something with the current Mac/PC commercials and Clinton/Obama again... (one is getting charisma installed, the other comes with it...)

#31 for Alice

Alice Cooper's 31st album will be released in May! Titled "Along Came a Spider" he promises it, and the tour, will be "full Alice Cooper".

Who could ask for more :)

McBlog

I continue to think McDonald's "Open for Discussion" is a good example of a large organization making a heartfelt attempt to blog meaningfully. They just improved their blog (grew Iconistan, simplified).

Worth watching.

Video Onion

I love the Onion. I waste a lot of time on YouTube. Well, combine them, and I am in big trouble :)

My My Space

Interested in setting up your own social networking site? Ning may be the ticket.

Even if it is not, you gotta admit, Ning is a pretty sweet name :)

Time waster #3,432

Of no value at all, but if you are familiar with the "force push" featured in Star Wars... worth a chuckle. If not, I would pass on this if I were you :)

And the Sears Tower wins with 1000 dead people voting

Be sure to stop by and cast your vote for the New 7 Wonders of the World. Not sure of the electoral process involved setting the original list, but I am sure half of Florida got confused and voted for Pat Buchanan.

Cool digital radio

Most importantly... the volume goes to 11. You know, one more than usual.

Public service announcement

Secure those home wireless networks.

Woof

One of the better dog-penned blogs out there...

http://spinonedog.blogspot.com/

... "dog-penned"... heh, heh, heh

First life?

A different, and certainly reasonable, perspective on Second Life...

GET A FIRST LIFE!

Too funny. Thanks to Jeff for pointing this gem out.

Clusty and Wii

Now that is a subject line I never would have imagined typing a few years ago.

Looks like one of my favorite search tools, Clusty, is now "Wii friendly". Not exactly sure what that means, but I fully intend to use this lack of understanding as an excuse to pursue getting a Wii at home.

Caveman fun

OK, so this is just brazen marketing by their web folks, but a nice/fun little environment.

Cavemans Crib

(and mildly disturbing too)

101 - Teaching the machine

Thanks to Blake for making me aware of this insightful web 2.o video....

Wikimania

While Steven Colbert continues to torment wikipedia from time to time (as evidenced by his locked page), I wonder how this bad boy fits into the picture...

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page . (thanks Robyn)

Sort of wikipedia meet The Onion. Hours of enjoyment, seconds of value :)

Check out the McDonald's entry... pretty funny.

Don't mess with the 20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox has issued subpoenas to find out who is uploading some of their content.

YouTube has itself been protected by the safe-harbor provision and as the article states, this provision does nothing to shield the individual uploaders, whose boats are kept outside the harbor, subject to wind, waves, and pirates.

Most people think the worst that can happen is your YouTube content is taken down and maybe your account is suspended. Looks like there might be more to it in some situations.

Imagine the poor soul in the big house who has to explain to his cell mate that he is in for uploading "A Very Special Brady Christmas".

Disco Alice

Can hardly wait for this year's theme for Alice Cooper's Golf event. Disco Alice was kinda scary.

Oh, and... DA BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!

Web 2.0 winners and losers

Some good and bad Web 2.0 company activities.

The Museum of Unworkable Devices

A museum celebrating fascinating devices that don't work.

Missing a link to www.foulballguy.com, but otherwise a keeper.

Text book untruth

This article on how the Israeli army takes a dim view on D&D players is a great example of how something that has no basis in fact can live for years as non-fiction.

Seems like if the story is funny enough, actual facts are not overly important.

P.S. I was a chaotic evil thief in my D&D days and frequently turned on my buddies. Shocking, huh?

e-voting

Interesting article on electronic voting. What I found most interesting is the software company claims their source code can not be reviewed because it is trade secret.

Hmmm. My coding days are fairly distant, but let me try and reverse engineer their code...

IF {vote is for person A} THEN {add 1 to vote total for person A}
IF {vote is for person B} THEN {add 1 to vote total for person B}
IF {no vote} THEN {go to next ballot}

Hope I didn't let the cat out of the bag here

Alice

Ms. Spears, Donald, and Rosie get the headlines... but Alice Cooper is the one doing newsworthy things.

Seek and ye shall find.... nothing

VERY dismaying article that asserts:

In a survey of 1,000 middle managers at large companies in the U.S. and U.K., Accenture found that managers spend as long as two hours a day searching for information and more than half of the data they find has no value to them.

Kinda makes you wonder exactly what you are getting out of those managers :) To further drive this point home (also from the article):

Just less than half -- 42 percent -- of those surveyed said that they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week.

Yikes Robot

If this is the most human-like robot developed to date, I HIGHLY recommended we keep trying.

Creeps me out on several levels :)

How I spent New Year's Day

About six months ago my niece bought a laptop (with a little advice from her uncle). In early October it began to REALLY slow down at start-up and even clicking a desktop icon was a major time commitment.

So, I offered to look at it over Thanksgiving and did my traditional trouble shooting process:

1. Run PC Pitstop
   
2. Check for spyware
3. Defrag
4. Reboot and hope it is a good karma day

Well, round one made it a little better, but over Christmas it was brought to my attention that the "slowness" remained. It had. Drat.

So on January 1 with the aid of CPU-Z and PC Pit Stop again (and 17 reboots at last count), I was eventually guided to discover DMA was not enabled on her hard drive anymore. Finally! A reason why the laptop could from fast to slow and NOT be motherboard related.

A few more Google searches got me to winhelp.com's DMA info and fix. And wonder of wonders, all is well and MySpace, Sims 2, and IMs galore are whistling through the laptop.

Also learned the "Always On" power profile can help make sure your laptop CPU is running at top speed.

So, why share this thrilling tale? Many others had shared similar tales of woe and their experiences - good and bad. These helped lead me to the promised land of a fixed problem. Maybe some other uncle will be out there some day searching for a solution to a similar problem and this posting will help.

Ink-blots

A tardy Christmas present... ink-blot wallpaper for your computer

Wikipedia vs. Google

Looks like Jimmy Wales thinks he can create a "Google killer". We will see. I am betting on Google.

A Wikipedia search would be based on the "wisdom of crowds". Crowds are not perfect (and mobs are worse). Keep in mind...

1. The crowd can choose between Alice Cooper and Ashlee Simpson
2. Ashee sells more records to the crowd
3. The crowd CLEARLY is in error in this case
   
   

More free stuff

Yet another service offering a free wiki with some pretty darn good functionality... Zoho

More on online gaming taxes

If you buy the $3 an hour rate stemming from the potential value generated in the game, Everquest has a per-capita gross domestic product nearly as big as Russia's. World of Warcraft exceeds it.

This article does a very good job in explaining the concepts behind taxing the virtual gaming world. To oversimplify, the more you play and collect gold, Linden dollars, experience points, whatever... the potential value if you "cash out" (sell your accumulations on eBay for example) can be significant.

So, is it fair to tax potential value? If I was at home writing "Harry Potter Balboa", should I be taxed on what might happen regarding revenue, or would it be better to wait until it actually hit the market before I had to pay up?

I think, therefore IM

Interesting article on IM. 50% of teens IM and one in five have asked someone out on a date via this medium. Basically the differences between IM and e-mail are minor, but it seems like popping the "date question" plays out better in IM.

Wonder why. Both result in text on a screen... I guess the cultural expectation of a response (any response) is higher with IM.

My parents went to Iconistan and all I got was the stupid T-shirt

I really like declaring the terrority engulfing the bottom of so many webpages for social networking purposes as "Iconistan"

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,72282-0.html?tw=rss.index

Clearly a nation in unrest and with shifting borders. At some point, market (or Darwinian) forces will have to come to bear to thin the growing numbers of icons out at the bottom of content.

Options are good, but too many options would seem to limit the benefits we can gain from these tools.

Regardless, I totally want to apply for dual citizenship in Iconistan! Would that make me an Iconistanian?

Down the YouTube

I find it hard to believe the Bank of America's YouTube embarassment will be the last we see of some frustrated performers who got stuck in a crappy executive job instead.

Yet another reason YouTube will keep stealing time from me.

Wii

Will the Wii provide some push to the next model on human/machine interaction?

Dunno, but maybe I need to get one to find out. Research only of course.

Another gem from wikihow

I gap in my life has been addressed... I now know how to appreciate Death Metal

Swarmapaloosa

I still don't totally get it, but swarmbots are pretty interesting to read about. This article on swarmanoids further interests and confuses me.

The concept of 60 autonomous robots working in a virtual space to accomplish tasks -- coupled with all the Second Life activity lately -- makes we wonder if the deepest we end up going with AI and the like might occur in a 3-D world via your browser.

Disappointing, but not surprising

It appears Second Life recently caught a case of ring worm.

The beauty of the Internet is everyone can get into the game, the downside is "everyone" includes some troublemakers.

Alice update

Random House is going to pay Alice Cooper $500,000 for his memoirs.

At least the book market sees the wonder that is Alice :)

Mind-machine interface

While the gear pictured in this article is far from stylish, and very likely to improve (one would hope), I wonder if indeed we are within five years of a profound new way to interact with the digital world.

A future with less blackberry-thumbing, mouse sweeping, tablet inking... sounds nice.

Wanna write a book?

Join some of your closest friends at Wharton and MIT and co-author the next big book on business use of social networking.

http://www.wearesmarter.org/

I bet they'll pass on my e-mail quota chapter.

Stay calm. The camel will eventually stop

I came across a great pair of sites that show the pros and cons of lower barriers of entry to publish content broadly... eHow and its sister site wikiHow. eHow contains vetted information, while anyone can publish at any time to wikiHow.

For awhile, my favorite wikiHow moment related to "How to have a fireworks show"... the tip - "wait until it is dark".

Then I read this jewel:

How to regain control of a spooked camel

which includes the pearl of wisdom: "Stay calm. The camel will eventually stop".

Score one for the vetters :)

Meet Ms. Dewey

I have no idea if the search results are useful, but I have fun trying them out

Ms. Dewey

Second Second Life

Just a bit more on the commerce in Second Life. Maybe I need to set up a foulballguy t-shirt stand there :)

Second Life

I have barely dipped my toe in the water on Second Life, but there sure seems to be something going on.

As mentioned in this article, Linden Lab, Second Life's publisher, estimates that the total amount of content being created by its users is equivalent to the output of 5,100 full-time programmers. You Tube is a movie factory, blogs a writing factory, podcasts a broadcast factory, and now this in Second Life:

• IBM is holding virtual meetings here
• Reuters has opened up a news outlet within the world
• and LOTS of commerce is going on

I still think Halo is a better platform for interacting (and resolving business disputes in a more... ummm... direct manner) -- as evidenced by the interviews conducted in This Spartan Life

Slow but sure

I have been working to get all my old posts moved over from my previous blog to this new location. Fairly tedious work. Hope to wrap this up in a week or two.

Go Bears :)

Memories

A long time ago, on a PC far far away... Start Me Up

More pointless fun

Sometimes the simpliest things can waste the most time....

http://www.florito.net/Wind_generators/applet/index.html

Four great Internet phenomena

Based on the purchase price of You Tube, I think it we would have to add it to this list, but here are four other VERY successful simple ideas that got over BIG TIME.

Raply - Browse and chat

Raply is an interesting tool to let you chat with other Raply users viewing the same page. Free, easy, and only mildly confusing :)

This is brought to us by the gang at Numly. Numly, along with docly and writely are all worth a peek when you have the time.

And the Web 2.0 winners are...

Not MySpace!

Wired has provided a list of their cut on Web 2.0 winners and losers. Interesting read. Minor quibbles from me on this list. Digg is not in the top 5. and MySpace is in the bottom 5. While I totally agree with their assessment of MySpace's shortcomings - especially the design trainwreck that nearly all sites display - I can't see how this is not still considered the 600 pound gorilla.

Who is even close to the user base of MySpace? If social networking is all about people... don't they kinda win??

Search party

New search engine out there that blends community with the search tool. Interesting.

www.chacha.com

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - an unlikely blogger

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his own blog. Once I clicked on the small, mildly defaced, American flag I was able to read his first (lengthy) post.

He also had a poll for readers to vote yes or no on America's intentions to start a world war. I am pretty sure the next poll wont be "who is you favorite Backstreet Boy"... but I will check to make sure.

The site even offers an RSS feed. Since Iran has the most sophisticated internet censorship systems in the world, not sure how necessary RSS is, but who am I to judge.

Personalized home pages

I still stick with the figure that only 10% of people will ever bother to personalize a home page. As Yahoo, Google and others develop their widgets to drop on your desktop, this seems to offer a carrot to get people to spend a bit of time providing basic information to better personalize content and apps.

So, does life begin at your browser default page or your desktop in the future? Desktop methinks. Eventually.

http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/09/programmed-personal-homepages.html

More useless fun

Digg is becoming a very effective way for me to waste far too much time.

This was a fun discovery...

Ragdoll and Spikes

Dark matter... ummm matters

Read a good article that explained the universe is made up of about:

• 25 percent dark matter (matter does not absorb or emit light)
• 5 percent ordinary matter (planets, K-Fed,and basically everything else with mass)
• 70 percent dark energy (the force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever increasing rate, maybe K-fed fits here too)
  

My e-mail inbox seems to be overflowing with dark energy lately.

Poor Pluto

In a move that will undo the ruler-based nun training I received at a tender age, looks like we are moving from 9 to 12 planets. Pluto was on the bubble, but instead of hanging with the jock (Classical) planets, it now must live with being ranking member of the geeks (Plutons).

I bet UB313 is the first to get a swirly.

The purpose of the Internet

Sure you can book travel, social network, keep up on news, yada yada... but the Internet REALLY exists to provide you this.

Meet Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager

Good for Google

Google is now posting warnings about sites in your search results list that might behave badly

I am sure someone will have a problem with this - but I, for one, am glad to see it.

URLs gone bad

This got sent my way and I thought it was pretty funny.

URLs gone bad

Making fun look like work

Web pages (text heavy please) magically transform into office product clothing...

www.workfriendly.net

While one chicken might disagree...

Alice Cooper...

national treasure

Microsoft's "Windows Principles" are definitely worth a read.

Seems like some sound thinking, but nearly every article I read on these introduced them as the "non-binding Windows Principles". One would expect that this was not a radomly chosen adjective.

IM replacing e-mail?

Interesting article on IM turning e-mail into the next snail mail.

I am guessing this rings true... depending on your age and texting skills.

XBox Portable and the World Cup Head Butt

Of little or no redeeming value, but worth 2 minutes of your time...

XBox Portable and the World Cup Head Butt