Someone Keeps Stealing My Letters

There is a great game, time-sink, “work-day accelerator” that I’ve been using for the past few months to help while away the time between meetings. Its called “Just Letters” and the point is… well their really is no point. You move letters on a page and spell words or make short phrases, when you can keep other people from stealing the letters your working with. Great geek fun to be had by all.

Research Summary: Cycles of Corporate Venturing and The Most Popular Rapper

This weekend I was cleaning out my briefcase (its really a bookbag) and discovered two yellowing, dog-eared research papers, covered with my chicken scratch and pink highlights from my favorite Sharpee. At some point I clearly thought these reports were important enough to print out and write on, but my mind works like the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie,  “read it and forget it”. So these papers have spent the last few months shuffling between my cubicle at Turner and the “house farm” where I sleep.

Two Cartoons Infinite Insights

If a picture is worth a thousand words then I would have to write a book to say what these two cartoons do. Both cartoons via Boing-Boing.

This is is from a great book entitled Files are not for Sharing by Matthew Baldwin with art by Goopymart.

This one is from The Joy of Tech on Geek Culture.

Research Summary: Google Takes On TV

There is alot of google bashing these days from sites that track its "evilness" to pundits urging it to embrace its evilness. As an early, and modestly loyal, user of most Google applications I'm inclined to like their products (except Google Video, which sucks ass and Picasa, which still isnt as good as ACDSee8 ). So when I came across a paper called "Social- and Interactive-Television Applications Based on Real-Time Ambient-Audio Identification" I thought it would be about as interesting as reading a Microsoft patent application. But I took the plunge and came away with a startling realization; Google groks the future. While the cable networks are throwing video at every buzzword that appears in the WSJ and tripping over each other trying to replicate broadcast on the web, Google is thinking about ways to bring mass-personalization into your home.

MusicGremlin: The iPod for Suckers

A small consumer electronics company in NYC has launched another digital music device, called the MusicGremlin. The unfortunately named device is billed as a "Wi-Fi Music Player" and supposed to provide access to over 2 million songs from major label and indie artist. The $300 8GB MusicGremlin device offers anyone looking for a clunky, obscure alternative to the ubiquitous iPod , an option.

5,000 Words Just to Get it Wrong: A Summary of DIGITAL MAOISM

Arts and Letters Daily, which I read weekly, has a link to an essay by Jaron Lanier where he takes everything from Wikipedia to American Idol to task to its slavish adherence to a "collective mind". It is an interesting critique of many of the core ideas prevalent in online communities but its also five-thousand words long. I've read the whole thing, along with a bunch of the response so that you dont have to.

The Register Out-Law’s Intergrity

This may come as a bit of a shock but I didnt invent the idea of witty commentary wrapped around news, editorials ramblings and wild conjecture. The boffins at Vulture Central have been offering the tech community this kind of fare, apparently since 1994. While a loyal reader of El Reg, recent articles have made me begin to question their editorial integrity and commitment to journalistic ideals.

Buggered Brit Lobby Group Announces Bollocks

Rejoice! The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) wants music lovers the world over to rest easy. In a display of grandstanding and showmanship not seen since P.T. Barnum, the BPI issue a grand proclamation of its own ineptitude. Here's the summary:

They wont sue consumers. Hooray!
But they are going to sue AllofMP3. Booo!
They wont sue customers of AllofMP3. Hooray!
But they do want to extend the copyright term to 100 years. Boooo!
They wont sue you for putting MP3's on your iPod. Hooray!
But they do want to dictate how Apple does business. Booo!

With a Yo-Ho-Ho, The Pirate Bay Sallys On

In case you havent been keeping up, there is an ongoing war between the Luddite content industries and the ever popular BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately for the content industries, the scrappy torrent site has continually given them a very public and oft humors thrashing. Well last week they though all of that had come to an end, when about 50 police raided the offices of PRQ, the ISP that hosted the Pirate Bay's servers, and tool away all the equipment (full story: here , here and here).

Sandisk Says iDont like iPods

Formerly counter-culture Apple is now a symbol of conformity. One could say that Apple is the new IBM. At least thats the impression you get from the AWESOME iDont ad campaign by Sandisk to promote their new Sansa MP3 Player. This has to be the best marketing campaign I've seen in a while. No "our device is the ipod killer" styled FUD, no huge marketing campaigns and no vapid product annoucements. Just a few images, some sublte references to a general sentiment, a certain "clued-in-ness" and lots of links. Brilliant!

The memory card maker gets 8 out of a possible 10 for the effort. Follow the link for my favorite images or check out the site for more iPod mockery and other interesting links.