Word art

Not the cheesy work art in a major word processor... but real word art can be found here:

www.wordle.net

Fun stuff. Here is one way a very cool Capt. Beefheart song turns out.

Thanks to Jeff for sharing.

Enterprise success with Web 2.0

Short, decent write-up on Best Buy's success with social computing.

Yahoo, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Best Buy all seem to be making progress in actually using web 2.0 capabilities. Others you would point out?

Wall-e

Disney did a pretty nice job with the site to support their last movie release. Simple fun, but fun none the less...

Wall-e

Creative business cards

Great post showing 42 clever business card designs, with links to other posted in the past. Some creative thinking here!

One year of iPhone

Not for me personally unfortunately, but one year on the market. I did score an iTouch awhile back, and I love the wifi. But here is a nice read reflecting back on the iPhone itself.

Lists on Blender

While I often disagree with the rankings/selections, there are few better time wasters than the music-related lists on blender.com.

I really enjoyed the Dastardly Villains list, including the Jabba-esque Lou Pearlman.

Social Networking fatigue

Downright funny look at social networking. Friendster seems to get the IE treatment. Surprised it didn't end with a link to FirstLife.

Thanks to Joe for sharing.

YouTube Warp

Just when I thought YouTube could not grow into a larger time gobbler for me, I stumbled on to this crafty Flash-based interface... Warp. Even spiffier than OS/2 Warp.

Productive time, I will miss ye.

A cautionary tale

I have continued to warn to the idea of my data being stored in the cloud. Gone would be the days of backup and hard drive upgrades. Then stories like this come along and I begin to re-ponder.

Tornado

Same caveat as last time, but this was pretty amazing....

Not good

Not good at all.

Million rounds per minute crowd control

Check out this nifty little accessory for the iRobot. Trying to figure out what makes me the most twitchy...

1. The manufacturer is described as a "troubled electronic gun producer"
2. This thing fires a million rounds a minute
3. "Crowd control" and "border control" are listed as a potential uses
4. There are defense trade shows
   

Mars lander

Very pleased that this was a lander and not a crasher. Pretty good info on Nasa and the University of Arizona site if you want to keep track.

Weezer part two

Actually more of a prequel.. a Barenaked Ladies video done with the same theme, some common players...

Weezer's "Pork and Beans"

First this crew got famous on YouTube, then most of them were killed off in a recent South Park episode, now they hang with Weezer. Looks like new media and mash-ups gives folks multiple installments of their 15 minutes of fame....

Joe Torre

I try and be diligent in keeping a clear separation from my employer and my personal blog. In the spirit of full disclosure, the video below is indeed from my employer, but I really enjoyed it and wanted to share.

BTW.. Joe Torre always reminded me of a more pleasant version of Jim Fergosi (low bar, I know)...

Mr. Lazy

Rather than cut and paste... I posted over here with some thoughts on privacy and Google Maps. While... OK, who am I kidding... IF you are there, might want to check out Lena West's post about the anti-social networking movement.

3-D space stuff

Nice overview of several interesting utilities to view space images.

101 - Zombies

The folks at commoncraft put out tons of useful overviews of technology topics. Their zombie work is clearly a departure, but fun and informative none the less. Thanks to Jenny for sharing.

Passage

If you are interested life rendered in big pixels... check Passage out.

World's first digital camera

Big, slow, and 0.01 megapixel image.

Björk's 3-D Video

Wanderlust, Björk's new 3-D video is pretty cool.

Of course you will need to scare up the old stylish red/blue 3-D glasses, but you KNOW you have a few lurking around your place. I won't give the final count of what I found here, but it does look like I could have a nice 3-D party sometime and few would need to BYO3DG.
For this video, I sported my vintage ones last used for watching Elvis Presto.

And speaking of Mr. Presto... here a 10 more Superbowl halftime horrors.

Smell you later

Learn all about the future of messaging with scents in the article that reads like April 1 material. This has bad idea written all over it. Favorite line of the article:

"scent technology is increasingly attractive."

Really. :)

Homer and friends

Homer Simpson, Mario, and Jessica Rabbit as "real" people. Interesting and creepy.

Funny commerical

As all of us should have learned in Marketing 101 -- never underestimate the humor in a cute baby monster eating people.

10 most important technologies you have never heard of

OK, I expect you have heard of several of these pervasive technologies, but perhaps you will have renewed appreciation :)

101 - Semantic Web

Pretty decent explaination of the "semantic web"

Plus a less visual, but also helpful, text overview of cloud computing

World's largest internet population is in...

... China. Go figure. And this is only with 16% of the population having access. Was also surprised to see the average % access worldwide is only 19% or so.

Apple's "Second Life" store

Apple is trying out the Second Life thing for a storefront.

I stick by the "just 'cuz you can, don't mean you should" credo. Maybe I just don't get it, but it annoys me when I am shadowed in real life be a "helpful" store clerk -- why would I want to upgrade to annoyed AND mildly creeped out online?

Shopping isn't something I want to "experience", I want to just do it - quick, easy, and avatar free.

Still, in terms of the grand mal misuse of virtualization, I will stick with this.

Name the robots....

Interesting challenge to see how many robots from TV and film you can identify... packaged as a geeky t-shirt.

Top 10 Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Interesting thoughts. I miss this guy.

Destroy all gadgets....

... well, at least some of them. Fun pics of gadgets being dusted - you can vote for your favorites.

Social media - en francais

Bonjour Facebook...

Cool chart - in French - but that is the international language... n'est pas?

Super Mario in 14kb of javascript!

Pretty amazing. Check out a very reasonable version of Super Mario coded in javascript - only requiring 14kb (35kb uncompressed).

Would take me twice as much code to create 1/10 of the functionality here

Bizzare history of phrases

Backstory for 10 common phrases. I could have lived happily without the "wrong end of the stick" explanation (2nd page).

Ewwww.

We have BOTH kind of ships...

... frozen AND abandoned

Online, free, Photoshop

Given my remarkably limited graphic skills, my circa 1950s version of Paintshop Pro meets most of my needs - and when it doesn't Picsa usually does.

Now there is a free (with 2 gigs of storage) online version of Photoshop out there. Perfect price for me to try out.

Ten worst job interview questions

Fun list of the ten worst job interview questions ever. Some sound vaguely familiar, but the whole "why did you take the pen?" one is news to me.

Argus, creature of 1,000 eyes...

... meet Mogulus, creature of 1,000 video feeds.


Pretty cool, thanks for sharing Dave.

Worst - online game - ever

And these bums CHEATED the White Sox out of an opening day victory to boot.

http://www.cleveland.com/snowball/

Patchwork nation

I am really impressed on how this site conveys a ton on information visually.

Also seems like a fairly nonpartisan analysis of voting blocks... our patchwork nation. A tad more nuanced than the standard red state / blue states thing.

Tracking delegates

Plenty of nifty delegate counters/trackers out there. There is USA Today's circle dominated version, the NY Times table approach, or CNN's slider-o-rama.

Mildly disturbing that each one has different current counts - one would have thought we would have nailed this voting thing down by now. Well, except in Florida, not sure they will ever get it figured out.

Social media in politics

The web 2.o angle on Hillary vs. Barack

Social media in corporations

This was handy. The Social Media Workshop has just a ton of presentations offering different insights into business use of.. you guessed it... social media :)

Some pretty good stuff here.

Hubris

Old hubris, but hubris none the less....

Progressive

Google Sky

Probably my least favorite Google offering to date - Google Sky. I like how they cleverly carried forward some of the Google Maps navigation concepts to very different content, but slower and clunkier than what we usually get from this crew.

Better web development

It is worth at least skimming this article summarizing 10 handy sites to improve your web development.

I have always been an Alertbox fan. Now, a consistent follower of all the guidance they provide... not so much.

Graphic movies

I try to post examples I come across where graphics are used creatively to convey concepts (like the baseball map).

While Minard's work remains the king of the hill for me, this movie one is pretty cool.

No Street View for you!

Fort Sam Houston was available on the street view of Google Maps. The Pentagon complained. Google removed. Not sure I completely understand why a 100% publicly available line of sight had to be expunged - particularly since you can get this off the Fort's website - but no one asked :)

Sports conference meltdowns

Playoffs?? Practice?? Bobby Knight. Nice recap of some of past high energy moments in sports press conferences.

Gary Gygax 1938-2008

Thanks to this man I stayed up WAY to late with several like minded friends during high school summer vacations. Thanks Gary.

Top ten websites you never heard of....

... actually, I expect you have heard of a couple of these, but still a nice list from Fast Company.

Websites in 1996... oh my

Take a look back at what the state of the art was for websites in 1996. Does not seem all that long ago... until you view a few of these beauties.

Nanotechnology

Pretty cool video on some of the potential of nanotechnology

A history of evil

Not sure exactly why Elvis is part of the chain of evil shown here (now, Yanni, that WOULD speak to me), but a clever little animation....

Web / Desktop blurrage

Google Gears, Prism, Silverlight, and now AIR from Adobe. The blurring of the web verses the desktop continues. Widgets, gadgets, portlets, applettes... kinda boggles my mind.

I am hopeful the most approachable solution (e.g. the one that lets the broadest audience use and understand) wins the day, but no clue where that will emerge from.

The market at work though. A good thing.

Mashing up Facebook and MySpace

Have not used it much, but came across Sociagami - a tool to blend your Facebook and MySpace profiles. Seems to be at least moderately useful.

And Pat, your were right, my enthusiasm has already ebbed for marumushi.com's newsmap

Career changing cartoons

Apparently, some management does not hold Dilbert in high regard and will even fire the poor soul who posts the wrong one on a bulletin board.

In order to support the free market, I feel it is important to note the while Dilbert is a very reliable source of career-ending material, other options exist. Came across this fine site with a the ever popular "Crap boss" category.

Enjoy - but don't blame me.

Vista and XP

Good read on the whole why people hate Vista and want to keep XP

I lack the passion of many on this topic, but it is interesting to listen to those who do have strong feelings. There is probably some Democratic primary parallel here ("Vista can only win caucus states - it is sooooooo unfair" or something like that) , but I can't seem to frame up a good one.

Keeping up on the news

I keep trying to find the easiest way to complete a quick scan of news articles. iGoogle, Feedburner, Digg, and Google News Alerts all have their positives... but I am laaaaaaaazy and I want it reeeeeeeeeal easy.

Since I am easy distracted by shiny objects and favor graphical solutions to complex problems, I think I might have found a keeper... marumushi.com's newsmap.

Thanks to Cheryl for sharing.

Online reputation help

Good read on services some companies are offering to help you manage your online reputation. Thanks to Joe for sharing.

Some interesting approaches here. Sometimes they try and load up a bunch of non-offensive links to push offending content down a few pages... sometimes they try and get the offending content taken down. The former seems like modified Google Bombing, the later faces the challenge of overcoming the amazing half life online content seems to have.

(I am proud to say a 10 year old comment I wish I had never typed- but was retained for public viewing via an AOL chat transcript - seems to have FINALLY washed away.)

Ultimately, I think these companies can help, but not totally solve this problem. Maybe the French have a some ideas here. I reccomend you do Google search on "French Military Victories" to see what they might have to offer on tweaking search results. I am sure the first result in the results will offer great insight.

Wired Multimedia fun

I always enjoy the material Wired puts out in their multimedia section. Two recent fun ones...

Cheesy Star Trek creatures

Spore - looks like Maxis is gonna have a winner here!

Blue death in Vegas

A very public blue screen of death. Oh how I long for the days when when the occasional Video Toaster or Amiga desktop made brief appearances on local news :)

Mythbusters slo mo video

One of my many geek pleasures is the Discovery channel's "Mythbusters". They have a really interesting interactive video tool available on their site to play with material they have captured using high-speed cameras. Enjoy.

Google Apps - Team edition

Google has released the Team Edition of Google Apps that is intended to allow users to "share documents and calendars securely without burdening IT for support."

Hmmm, why do I have a nagging feeling IT might not view this through the same lens.

Apparently, there is no "IT" in "Team"... ok, there IS a "t". Sue me.

7 most annoying video game enemies

Hard to argue with this list of the most annoying enemies to run across in video games. Kinda surprised a room full of imps from the original Doom did not make the cut though.

Super Tuesday tech

Nice summary of where the various candidates are at regarding technology.

Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons... part deux

Could have used more Alice, but I enjoyed it...

The commerical

Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons... hmmm, never typed THAT before

Such a good news, bad news moment.

Alice will be appearing, albino snake in tow, in a Superbowl commercial for Bridgestone Tires. While I still think the NFL is missing the boat in not securing him for part of the halftime performance, a Superbowl Commercial isn't too shabby.

Unfortunately, he will appear with Richard Simmons in this commercial. Kinda takes a bit of the luster off the deal. The premise....

What happens when a fitness icon, a rock legend and his slithery companion confront a speeding car equipped with the precision technology of Bridgestone-brand tires?

More info and a couple of screen shots are available on the Bridgestone media site.

Alice REALLY needs to evaluate the company he keeps. Golfing with David Cassidy in the 70s - and now this :)

Test your powers of observation

Fun little quiz to test your memory/power of observation.

19 for me with no cheating - tempting as it was.

Best I can tell only works in IE and not Firefox. Sorry about that.

Something old, something new

Two fun images on the web...

The old - zoom into the paint flake level on the Last Supper

The new - source image that provided the "bigfoot on Mars"

Album dead?

Interesting post regarding the demise of albums by Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick). While you can't argue with the drop in sales, what Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick) incorrectly discounts is that certain artists - usually vintage I grant - create music that is to be enjoyed as a collection.

Sure, much of this comes from my Alice Cooper bias - "From the Inside", "Brutal Planet", "Alice Cooper goes to Hell" simply are better as a collection of songs than as a one by one product. Also, I might never have bought a single track off of Capt. Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" or Graham Parker's "Struck by Lightning" - but I gotta tell ya, but they grew on me after repeated plays.

Buy "The Wall" on an installment plan? I think not.

Mr. Cuban (Blog Maverick) also offers up this point of view:

My guess is that consumers will feel better about subscribing to an artist and getting a song a week or every 2 than dropping 10 dollars at a time for an album.

I guess if they are math challenged, or have the attention spans of dogs, that makes sense... but 99 cents paid out every two weeks eventually ends up around 10 bucks for 10 or 11 songs (or 18+ songs if you buy TMBG albums).

In fairness, the subscription idea does address the need to keep things simple. I would rather not have to scan the horizon for new stuff from favorite artists. Bundling them as albums helped me keep track - pretty sure subscriptions would too.

And any approach that would have let me opt out of "No More Love at your Convenience" off Alice's "Lacy & Whiskey" has some merit.

Going green by going black

With some iffy data to back it up, Blackle promotes the concept that moving from the stark white of Google to more of a "Google noir" could save oodles of energy. Sounds a bit to me like typing in lower case to save hard drive space, but who knows.

Reminds me of the First Citiwide Change Bank...

How do we make money doing this? The answer is simple. Volume.

Hello Kitty assault rifle.

Yes.

You read right.

A Hello Kitty assault rifle. Cute, in a internal organ destroying kinda way. Still favor the Darth Vader-Kitty brand extension :)

Standard Green Bay Packer fan behavior

Res Ispa Loquitur (the thing speaks for itself)...

Packer fan duct tape caper

Being Jackson Pollock

In my quest to help others waste time, I have highlighted opportunities to fly a pig or destroy websites, but here is one that will not only VERY effectively gobble up time - but with the right printer and aggressive marketing - you might just become Jackson Pollock.

Don't forget to click your mouse once in awhile once you start painting.

Wikipedia/Wikia v. Google part deux (inversed) - Knol vs. Wikia

The fun continues. Since Wikipedia is trying to provide an alternative to Google in search via Wikia, now Google considers out wiki-ing Wikipedia with Knol.

Market forces at their best - we all win in the end as quality improves. Now, spelling (wikia? knol?), that is a different story

Roll your own RSS

Dapper is a pretty slick little tool do add RSS to a site that doesn't offer it. Easy to use. Worth playing with if you are so inclined. Thanks to Cheryl for the heads up on this.

Vintage technology ads

William Shatner, Commodore 64 (65K for $595!!!) , Burger Time, and a line dancing Link from Zelda... pretty fun stroll down memory lane with some vintage commercials.

Wikia and Google

Some time ago, I posted about the Wikipedia (Wika) search concept and how it may or may not compete with Google. Well, it is out. Got a good comment on my previous post extolling the "wisdom of crowds" and how it could indeed result in a better search. I would argue that the way Google uses links to set relevance is really a "wisdom of crowds" thing too - less direct, but that might not be all that bad. Still - point well taken.

The different thing here, is each day (at least in theory) Wikia will improve. Should be fun to watch and see.

Wi-fi virus risks

Interesting read on the concept of wi-fi based virus attacks. Anyone with a laptop and a wireless card has probably seen the surprisong large number of completely unsecured networks (often with the default SSID "linksys" or the like). Some folks take "plug and play" a bit too literal :)

I still recommend doing something

Watchus Caucus

Nope, not a long forgotten Roman Emperor, just something for the political junkies out there... here are some resources to see Iowa Caucus results as they happen.

Mike Birbiglia needs you

Mike Birbiglia could use your help on the Comedy Central "Standup Showdown". I thought about writing something clever to encourage voters (it is like Chicago, you can vote multiple times - just have to wait a day each time), but then I realized being clever is kinda Mike's thing, so in his words...

Go to the comedy central website and vote for me in the Standup Showdown. I know it’s superficial but since I haven’t won anything since author of the month in 3rd grade, my self-esteem hinges directly on the results and right now I’m almost off the list! You can put it in bookmarks and vote once a day, or hire someone who knows how to outsmart computers to vote THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF TIMES PER DAY.

Purpose of the Internet - volume 2

Without the Internet I could not have patched Bioshock to work on my lame video card (more on that later - curse you shader 2.0), I could not have fixed various family laptop problems, I could not waste time regularly on YouTube... but all this pales when I see sites like this...

Missing something?

Is e-mail dead?

Not according to this article.

Seems to me the "big three" in asynchronous text communications are e-mail, texting, and IM. Also seems like IM and texting get more of a volume pass than e-mail - tons of IMs just don't carry the stress factor of an inbox with 100 unread messages. Also seems like you are held less accountable to responding to texting and IMs - a good thing since all of these comminication buckets are overflowing.

Of course any long standing readers of this blog are aware that the solution to all e-mail problems has already been provided.

I guess at the end of the day, it will come down to where is the most reasonable place to find person "B" in "A" to "B" conversations, for me that is seem my e-mail inbox.

For now.

My hatred keeps me warm

Ok. Fine.

I have had several "friends" ask me if I have seen the following JC Penny commercial:

A young boy is opening a Christmas present -- it is a doll. He is surrounded by many other things pink and frilly. You see his frown deepen as the doll is revealed. It appears to be the end of a harrowing unwrapping session.

Then it cuts to a shot where he is writing a letter to Santa. Which says:

"Dear Santa Kelly is a boys name too."


Well har har hardy har.

Boys CAN be named Kelly. It is actually quite a manly name. Look it up - its meaning is warrior. Can't get more manly than that.

If you research more, you might also discover that it is further refined as female/princess warrior, but I strongly encourage you to stop before then. Once you see it means warrior, walk away immediately - with new found respect for the burly nature that is Kelly.

Remember:

Pat = what you do to a puppy's head
Matt = what you wipe your feet on
Bob = what wood does in water
Mark = a scuff on your shoe
Kent = a sissy location in England
John = well you know
Robin = now THERE is a girls name, as well as a tiny bird
Jamie = means Jamie I guess, but it is the baby sister of Robin in my book
Nick = a chip of a china plate
Art = art

Kelly = WARRIOR

(just found a no so great quality online version of this commercial here.)
(now a good quality one - oh joy)

Stop blocking?

A Canadian study suggests business and marketing leaders believe social media is replacing traditional media.

46% of them said social media is more important than TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.

85% believe it has become a vital element in communication.

66% don’t think employees should be using it at work.

Go figure.

This information, and much more insight on this topic can be found here.

X-wing rocket launch...

... and subsequent BOOM!

Someone had a tad too much time on their hands, but very cool.

You might want to watch this this version to see what REALLY happened.

Geekware

If you want to prove to the universe that you are 110% geek, have I got the laptop for you.

I figure I'll go the Horde route.

Middle Ages Tech Support

This appears and disappears from YouTube ona semi-regular basis. Ring true to me. So, while it is out there - enjoy Middle Age Tech Support

The trap for the quest for the better mouse

Yoda-like title, eh? The Microsoft Surface interface seems very cool. I would place it above the Wii as the most significantly different human/computer interaction method that has a chance to catch on.

RSS feed coming soon...

www.abevigoda.com

Virtually worthless

Some folks are looking into options to better connect different virtual worlds. The theory, I guess, is the need for some to travel from WoW to Second Life to Kaneva, etc...

Seems like a reach.

My vote would be to get webpages working the same across browsers ahead of this noble effort. I know, that is crazy talk... have html work the same across systems and browsers??? No IE tab in FireFox???

Well... yeah, I thought that was the plan to start with.

Facing Mecca from space

No answers, just questions. The challenges of a Muslim in orbit.

On this day in 1979... Pac-Man arrives

The grand-daddy of video games, Pac-Man made it's way to America's shores on Oct. 10, 1979.

A few years later, we counted the days until we could shell out around $60 (1980s dollars!!) for the Atari 2600 version. Without a doubt the WORST translation on the game possible. The "Pac-Man" looked more like a lumbering, mutated, pixelated stop sign. This remains my ultimate moment of buyer's remorse.

It would have been moved to second place in my big mistakes list if I had not bailed at the last moment in purchasing the red LED 3-D Nintendo thingie - that looked just a bit too much like the result of an unholy union between a sniper rifle and a Viewmaster.

New link added

Way more design skills and likely deeper insight than found here, can be found here... JamieFike.com

Plasma screens around the world sigh in relief

Nintendo now packages the Wii with remote holders that reduce the likelihood that the control leaves your hand like a white boxy shuriken.

Will even send these (for free!!) to early adopters.

Life is good

Cubs swept, Bears beat the Pack... all in all a good weekend :)

Prove you are human

Nope, not a fringe Dune post, just a cool Captcha tshirt.

Sony unveils the world's first OLED television

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology seems pretty cool. Thinner, brighter display... less power... more "green"

But OLED degrades over time, I guess you would call that monitor rot :)