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 :)