Wanna meet new random people on the net? But you don't know how to make it randomly fun? (I don't know what that means either, lol :P )
Email Roulette seems like a fun idea and you might wanna try it out ;)
"When you submit your message, it gets sent randomly to another player who has signed up. They have the option of responding to you or not; you won’t know who it went to unless they write back… so you better make it interesting!
Of course, it goes both ways. If you want to send emails, you have to receive them as well. When you get a message, it will tell you the username and email address of the sender. You can choose whether to write back or not - the sender does not get any information about you unless you choose to provide it."
via:
plastic bugs
News After a Long Break
It's good to be back and have (a little bit of) time to blog again... let's start with the news, shall we?
-
SBC is in the talk to buy AT&T for $16 billion
(
SBC =
Cingular, who has
already bought AT&T Wireless)
update: the boards from
both companies just met to voted today
- Wanna see how
places in the US look like?
Amazon
A9 is photographing every corner just for you(and its Yellow Pages)... Now you can virtually walk through the street as if you are there. (They even have
videos showing how they are doing it)
-
Sirius and XM are in a merger talk? FCC might step in due to anti-trust
- Google has registered "
gbrowser.com" and
hired the lead programmer of the Firefox... I guess we can expect one more browser in the market
- 8 Simple Steps You Can Take to
Keep Your Mac from Falling Apart
- HOW-TO:
Turn your Mac mini into a media center
(not as easy as it sound, but you can give it a try if you really want to)
- More strange people on eBay: have a look at
this guy's comment replies
via:
plastic bugs and
leoville
update: Sirius CEO
denied the merger rumor
Long Catch Up Post
Oh yea, still busy as hell... I'm doing a little better tho. Lately I've been doing a lot for
Murphy--proving his
theory true.
Anyway, I'm not sure whether this post is really worth something; but I just want to mark down what I've missed for myself... sorry if it's too long, but
feel free to skip it since I'm sure a lot of you have already read/heard most of these.
- New article from Playlist mag:
Podcasting: Hear What the Buzz Is About
- Google launches
TV search service
- Not exactly a "podcast" imho... but still, a strange worth-mentioning idea:
"Fuck You" From Around The World
- More
voting for best weblogs
- G4
TechTV joins
podcast craze (I was able to catch the
TSS rerun when they were introducing it and, as expected, they are taking it the wrong way--just like how they are taking "
TechTV" down the drain hole)
- More trouble for RSS standard:
My MSN icon
- Academics give
lessons on blogs
- Real life
Romeo and Juliet... well, only the end romantic (sad) part... at least
-
Vloggercon - a video blogger conference (a little late for the 2005 meeting now)
- MSNBC comments on
blog and journalism
- Google invents a way to
cut back blog comment spam
-
Inside the new Airbus 380
-
New security threat - " '
evil twin' wifi routers. Here's how it works. A criminal rides up and down in the elevator of an office building looking for unsecured wireless routers. When he finds one, he rents an office nearby for the sole purpose of installing a high-speed line, and a super-powerful wireless router. He names it the same as the open router he found. Now when people come into work their computers will discover the more powerful router, and the users, none the wiser, will do their unsecure transactions, entering passwords, account numbers, mother's maiden names, etc, none the wiser that a criminal is recording all this juicy data and selling it to identity thieves in Russia or Nigeria"
via:
Scripting News and
curry.com
update:
Scoble has interesting comments/FAQs on Google's
rel="nofollow"
Too Busy to Even Say "Busy"
I
've been am so busy it's not funny... I'm really behind on all the readings and I wish I have time to blog >.<... but yea, don't
we all most of us want to have more time.
- "A Zero Configuration,
All-In-One Podcasting Device"
- Bicycle Mark took "
soundseeing" to the next level!
- Another
BBC show joins podcast parade
- How-To: Automatically Transfer A
Podcast to Your Bluetooth Phone (via OSx)
- Adam Curry has a
Flickr account too
- 2 new articles
added
That's all for me today... I hope you all on the east side (US) are doing well with all the bad weather >.< ...It's time to go back to work for me T-T via:
curry.com
See art unfolds before you eyes!! The video is 18MB (9 mins) long but it's well worth watching... Best clips I've seen in a long while, and I was glued to the screen, seriously.
Sand Animation
update: I just found more info, the artist name is
Ferenc Cako
more today's extra links:
- Ever had an
iPod dream? :P from BBC
-
Beautiful sunset drive by Dave Winer, via
Scripting News
- 60 Minutes
"googles" on Google (58 MB, 22 mins, good quality ;) sorry narrowband users ^^;)
Fast News for Fast Read
-
New York ISP got their domain
hijacked
- OpenNet Initiative report on
filtering blogs in China
-
ThinkSecret.com is
sued by Apple and its owner, an Harvard undergrad!, is seeking aid because he can't afford to fight
-
150-km-long iceberg is expected to smash into the end of an Antarctic glacier
- Having bad headache?: Colorado construction worker had
four-inch nail embedded in his skull and he didn't even realize it.
- An interesting
Postal Experiments for USPS
- TV networks fiddle schedules
to break PVRs
update: You know it, links from Engadget read:
-
iPod Shuffle and
Mac mini dissected
-
First case for the iPod shuffle
- Americans spent
$113.5 billion on consumer electronics last year
- Volvo officially adds
iPod option
-
Text-to-speech cellphone features
-
PowerBook G5 coming in Q2?
This guy is really selling nothing-ness
eBay item: PlayStation "Crystal Pepsi" Ltd. Edition. Game - Rare!
(
update: i guess he took all the pics down after the auction ended, but u can still read all the descriptions)
I'm not exactly sure whether this is a joke or not since he(she?) has 305+ feedbacks and if you look at
his profile, there's even more items he's selling:
eBay item: Ultimate Video Game Kitchen Appliance Set!
"All items are pick up only, and if you do pick them up, all you will get is a laugh in the face because they don't exist. I made them all up! Now go back to playing your Crystal Pepsi and leave me alone. :) ...This auction is not to be bid on. It's fake."
:rolleyes: Someone is having too much money AND TIME, in his hand; and/or is hungry for a 20-sec fame to be mentioned on some talk show.
And since when "listing fake stuffs on ebay" is a hobby??
I know it's a little late, but it's better than never? :P Well, anyway, I just stumbled across it...
QTVR Panoramas
btw, it's dang memory hog, you might wanna try to close off some running programs or extra browser windows before viewing the video... I'm having to switch computer just to see it smoothly... well, I'll give this post an update if it doesn't work. If you can still see this, then it means I was able to get it to work, lol :P
Biggest Gadget News in the past few days is, of course, from Apple (refresh
apple.com a few times to see new pics)
Steve Jobs' keynote is also online, so you can fully catch up if you've been missing out.
There are more news from Apple than their big gadget announcements though:
- More Cars to Deliver
iPod Integration in 2005
-
Question from YahooGroups:
iPod Shuffle vs.
iRiver Ultra?
-
EFF Defends Rights of Bloggers, against Apple
-
NY Times on
Apple pricing
- TechTV gang regroup at
Leo's blog (with
TechTV gang podcast, their future plan, and rumor on Sony acquiring Apple?)
-
Engadget posts on all
MacWorld
update: Engadget:
"Unpacking the iPod Shuffle"
-
Samsung Develops World's 1st "Motion-Recognition" Phone
- Apple launches “
Made for iPod” seal
- "Men are more likely to buy cellphones as
fashion accessories"
- Honda fuel-cell cars to be
available in U.S...by year-end
- "
Lasco.A": Attack of the cellphone viruses
-
Creative’s CEO: "iPod Shuffle [is the same as] our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature)."
-
Turn your iPod into an iPod shuffle...
- The iPod shuffle:
Do not eat in the US or chew in the UK
via:
Engadget
Some random sites I found
-
PopGadget: Personal Tech for Women (Interesting for guys too)
-
Tsunami Simulator Project:
"[The] water on the top is moving very fast towards shore. And this is where the destructive power comes from. Not from the height of the wave, but from the speed and the huge amount of water piled up behind the wavefront."
via:
Boing Boing
- Fast Company:
"Lessons on Innovation From Microsoft"
-
First BitTorrent Arrest in Hong Kong, slashdotted
I don't think it's any part directly as a result of
my rant, but it's good to hear that
open source project ideas are getting bigger and bigger. We can only get better quicker when the ideas are shared, and not restricted just because someone "own" them.
Speaking about sharing idea, Dave Winer (the inventor of RSS) has proved that making it too open is a bad thing too. Once an idea becomes popular,
everybody tries to jump on it and start changing the standard just because they want to--making everything complicated again since the ideas are not anymore
shared, but yet again owned by someone.
There are lots of good RSS supporters recently though:
-
ABC news RSS headlines
-
WebMD News RSS
- More
BroadCatching?:
Wired: "Videos Quick, Easy and Automatic" -
Videora
more RSS
update:
-
"Seattle Public Library...RSSified!!"
-
MSN Search supports RSS,
differentiated self from other search sites
via:
Scripting News
It's been raining so hard here in LA, with a lot of flooding, landslides. On Topanga Caynon Road, Malibu, there's a
25-foot rock blocking the road. Luckily, no injures where reported.
I use that road once in a while and it's scary to see rock that big falling on a 2-lane canyon road. >.<
(The pic looks photoshoped, doesn't it? Though I doubt AP photoshops their pics.)
via:
Boing Boing
pic by:
AP
MIT Technology Review: Get Ready for Podcasting
"You heard it here first: the technology word of the year for 2005 will be 'podcasting.' "
- CNN now has
official page on its RSS feeds
-
iPodderSP: Podcasting client for MS Smartphones
via:
Scripting News
Blogophobic Companies: "[List of] organizations that have fired, threatened, disciplined, fined or not hired people because of their blogs"
update: "
Waterstone's fires 11-year-employee for blogging"
also: CES stuffs are everywhere on the net lately
-
CES 2005 Day 1 - Walking the Show Floor - report with a number of good pics from TheTechLounge
-
OQO: video of the ultra Personal Computer(uPC) which fits in your pocket; fully-functional WinXP, 1GHz, 20GB, 256MB RAM, a color transflective display, integrated wireless, FireWire and USB ports. (
official site)
Minor Updates on Previous Post
I just added 2 updates on old post and I think I should at least point to them since I know blog readers don't normally check back old posts:
- More
Adam Curry's "studio" pics, this time in his "Studio A8"
-
Hands on Kodak Easyshare One Wireless Camera at CES
"
It is standard operating procedure for students of art to learn by example by sketching masterpieces in an art museum."
But Julia Illana, second grader, was told by a museum guard at the North Carolina Museum of Art that sketching was prohibited because the great masterpieces [that she was drawing in her notebook] are copyright protected.
Come on guys, it's not like she is going to sell her drawing and get some kind of profit from someone else's work. We all start out by practicing with someone else's work or idea. Even today, how many things in the real commercial world are really truly original? People's ideas are like building blocks, we learn and use previously invented idea to reach a new one. And all these copyrighted frenzies are slowing us down because everyone wants to "own" the ideas and sucks everything right out of the public domain, as well as not wanting to let go. CC idea has grown much in the past few years but surely it's not enough where it should, or could, be.
via: Boing Boing
update on CES:
- Cnet CES 2005 the Next Big Thing
-
Dolby 13.1 channels, 6 Mbps sampling rate
- Cell Phone with
Flat Panel(the screen) as Speaker
"I realized how silly it is to take anything too seriously. Plus I look forward to a good cry. Feels pretty good."
I just finished watching
Garden State DVD... still waiting for it to sink it, lol... (I admit I missed a number of pointers watching it the first time. I learn quite a bit more watching the deleted scenes and listen to actors'/crews' comments) I love it actually. If you look at the overall of the whole film, it's not
the best film but surely it's pretty good. Definitely there are a lot of scenes that stood out to me. Especially the dialogues. Zach Braff, you sure can write great stuff, man. I LOVE the dialogues throughout the movie, and Natalie Portman did great on acting.
"If nothing else, that's life, you know. It's real. Sometimes it fucking hurts. To be honest, it's sort of all we have."
btw, the quote in my title is from one of the deleted scenes called "Interior Ark"... one of the best lines/contexts in the movie, too bad it had to be cut out.
If you haven't seen it, definitely pick up the DVD. (I know, if you have yet to see it, the lines mean very little to you... sorry I'm not gonna tell the contexts which they are in, you have to see the movie itself to really appreciate them. ;) )
I hate it when I miss seeing good movie like this in theater and have to catch up watching it from DVD. >.<
picture by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
update: I didn't know
Zach Braff did (still does?) a
Garden State blog o_O... Where have I been? :D
Too many news, too little time
Sorry I can only list link today, I'm already late reading all the news, lol
-
ourTunes: Download shared iTune songs from open wifi
(not exactly legal)
-
Concrete TV: TV mashups, great for mashup fans and channel surfers
- How to win
Monopoly, I mean the game
via:
plastic bugs
- CES 2005: Bill Gates and...
Conan O'Brian??
- Kodak's
new beauty, but not so much on pricing (
update:
Hands on)
- Toshiba's
60GB Photo MP3 player
- SD card with
built-in USB adapter
- Sony
4GB Memory Stick PRO
- RCA's
Mini Photo MP3 player
-
Sirius partners with Microsoft to launch video in 2006
-
Temporary vehicle paint
via:
Engadget
update 1/7/04: Couldn't bother make another post for short update:
- Samsung's
the world's largest plasma TV and
the world's largest LCD TV
- Motorola’s
iTunes phone (
Slashdot) (
Previous post)
Press release via
Scripting News, sorry no online page yet:
"WNYC today announced that NPR’s
On the Media, is now available for podcasting. This is the first National Public Radio program to take advantage of this new technology."
The RSS feed can be found
here.
Yes, you've heard Adam Curry trying to explain his set up many times in his podcast... how about
see it for yourself? ^^
Thanks to Dave Winer who took the pics ;) (They are both in Miami btw, enjoying the warm weather)
update: more pic for his "
A8 studio" from Curry's
Wired mag photo shoot.
via:
curry.com
The Fresno Bee: Pod people
" 'Well … I hate radio [as opposed to podcast]," [Evangelho] says. "It's so sterile. The DJ is so detached from his audience...' "
today's extra links:
-
ITunes user sues Apple over iPod, saying it is unfair he can only use an iPod to play songs.
-
Six Apart acquired LiveJournal
- For podcaster who wants to get into playing copyrighted work but have no idea where to start:
How to Podcast RIAA Music Under License
- GM Vice Chairman
Bob Lutz starts blogging
via:
Scripting News
Microsoft just came out with
Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)
o_O I don't know should I be happy or sad... how about create an OS that's not volunerable at the first place...
And let's hope this isn't the only fix they've came up with, since this is really not fixing the problem at the source
update 1/14/05:
Slashdot - Two Reviews of Microsoft AntiSpyware
On a budget for travelling? Or maybe you wanna know what to expect at your destination? Check out
SleepingInAirports.com. Yea, I think it was first started out (in '96) as a joke but surely the information there now is serious. Lots of posters, stories, recommendations. Got to love the
airport sleeping tips :D
- New
TimeTrax iPod docking station allows one to schedule recordings ahead of time and record satellite radio programming directly to their iPod.
-
3G cell phone network coming to US later in 2005.
- Taking VoIP to the
next level. (
update:
Hands on)
-
Stapleless stapler punches holes in whatever it is you want to staple together and then uses the remaining flaps of paper to bind the pages together.
btw,
CES is today so we should get more interesting gadget news soon.
Pew Internet & American Life Project: "By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys... in November [showed:]
- 8 million American adults say they have created blogs;
- blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users;
- 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers...;
- and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
- Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is."
via:
Leoville
The Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA) has
filed suit against Loki Torrent,
another BitTorrent tracker site.
LokiTorrent says it will fight, asking users to donate to support its $30,000 per month legal fees. First month looks good so far. It would be very interesting to see how everything ends up.
New podcast article
added to the list:
Wired: You, Too, Can Be a Podcaster
via:
curry.com
also: today extra link:
"Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet. ...[FBI agent Robert] Hawk said the laser had to have been fairly sophisticated to track a plane traveling at that altitude. Authorities had no other leads."
It just wierd. Why would someone want to track the cockpit at that height? o_O?
update:
"FBI is pretty sure terrorists aren’t shining lasers at airplanes"
Looking for new blogs to read but don't really know where, or how, to find them? Try Steve Tibbett's
Long Tail of the Blogosphere.
From its
about page:
"One thing that sets this site apart is that what you read is anonymous, until you choose to read more. An item is presented to you, without telling you who wrote it. It could be your favourite author; it could be someone you've never heard of. Probably the latter, of course. It's a great way to discover new sources of information - keep clicking Next until you see something you like.
...Every time you press Next, you'll see something fresh - often submitted within the last few seconds. ...This takes the power of determining what blogs are interesting out of the hands of Google (via PageRank) and other large sites, and democratizes it."
via:
Scripting News
Dave Winer's rant on his work not getting credited. Lmao. Really, it's interesting how people overlook the
importance, or have yet to learn about the importance of
RSS; especially in blogging and podcasting. Without RSS, blogging wouldn't be so successful and we wouldn't have podcast altogether. Without RSS, people would have to manually check every sites by themselves just to see if something new has been posted. If you read 20 news sources you would have had to type or click through 20 sites, if there isn't anything like RSS.
You think song and video files are safe to randomly download and play? Well, it's now time to rethink that since
PCWorld has reported
"A loophole in the Windows Media DRM process allows companies to create ersatz media files and link them to adware."
"Not only did we get bombarded with unwanted ads, but one of the ad windows in a video file tried to install adware onto our test PC surreptitiously, while another added items to our browser's Favorites list and attempted to change our home page. And a window from the original music file asked to download a file called lyrics.zip, which contained the installer for 180search Assistant, commonly categorized as an adware program."
more comments on this topic
here (
2) (
3).
via:
Scripting News
The Companionship Factor
Ok, believe it or not; I'm way behind on listening to the
Daily Source Code (maybe that's a good thing since I now have more left to enjoy? :P ) I was saving up a lot of episodes to listen to on the planes going to, and from, my new year vacation; but in the end I wasn't feeling well on the planes so I'm now nearly a month behind >.<
Anyway, what I'm trying to segway into is Adam's comment on the "companionship factor" of the media. On the
DSC-2004-12-08, around 21:20min, Adam was talking about
[successful] radio(or any successful media, for that matter) is also about the relationship between the listeners and the presenter on the show--exactly what is going on with podcast. And it hit me for why every media should well understand their audience and never abandon their audience just because they can get better monetary reward from elsewhere (a few particular sources came to mind: advertisers, investors.) It sure should be one of the top rules broadcasters need to look at, and remind themselves, everyday.
It's The Brand New Year!
Happy New Year everybody!
I'm officially back from vacation and am sick as a dog >.< To make it worse I'm having a terrible jetlag together with the flu/fever... sorry about not being able to update the pages in the last few days... I'm hoping to be back blogging as usual soon.
Hope you all had a great time during the holidays!...
