Wednesday, May 19, 2004

RSS-User: "LinkTV, a channel on DISH and DirecTV satellite networks, makes its show Mosaic available daily via RSS." 

NY Times: "Wi-Pics, from Dice America, is an external Wi-Fi transmitter and storage device about the size of a portable CD player." 

News.Com: "It's easy to make money giving away software -- just don't give away too much of it." 

The first Shrek was, in Microserf terminology, Totally 1.0. The sequel, which opened today, is a continuation of the first. The new characters are pretty flat, except Pinocchio, who's a bit of a pervert, amazingly (but not so much that a 6-year-old would notice). It's a thoroughly likeable movie, we'll buy the DVD to study the cool techniques, esp the introduction of the Fairy Godmother. It has the charm of the first, but sadly, not the magic. 

NY Times: "Google, the Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers." 

4/13/02: "When Google arrives on the desktop, it will have the same SOAP interface that the global Google has." 

Google takes a stand on spyware.  

It's news to me that ESPN has feeds. I added them to our directory.  

Rich Salz: "The next thing I remember is being on a hospital gurney being asked if I knew where I was." 

A possibly interesting twist on the Is It Journalism? perma-debate. Okay, let's not worry for a minute if blogging is journalism or not. How about keeping a list of pubs that claim to be journalism that run stories that are clearly not journalism. Factual errors that are never corrected. Conflicts of interest that are not disclosed. We've learned that the pros simply won't investigate themselves, which itself is a breach of journalistic ethics, as far as I'm concerned. So what's to stop us from doing it for them?  

Five years from now, or sooner, you'll be able to enter something like this in a publicly accessible profile. "I have three months free and $X burning a hole in my pocket. I'd like to have an inspiring experience, in a place I've never been before, but I'd also like to have meals provided (healthy please) and I require a high-speed Internet connection. I like to swim, hike, and have long discussions about the future of writing, journalism, politics, networks, humans. Massages a plus. No smoking." You'd leave this hanging around, with links to places you've been and what you thought of them. Within 24 hours the offers would start coming in. They'd be pitches of course. Custom-designed for your needs. Perhaps some reconfiguring of an existing resort would be needed, that would be factored into the offer. I think they had something like this service in a Heinlein book. 

Ananova: "A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless -- they weren't having sex." 

I read somewhere that I spent $150 on a cab in Geneva (not true) and that I'm no longer a fellow at Harvard Law School (also not true, I'm here through June). Let's face it, the information you get on blogs is not 100 percent accurate.  

Time's new RSS feeds, each a beautiful demo of how incredibly simple syndication can be, includes a list of selected covers from the archive. Here's one that caught my eye, movie star Marilyn Monroe in 1956.  

A post on Scripting News led to virtual fork throwing at the Leung house.  

We'll pay, one way or the other 

Higher gas prices are the best thing for the country. The prices go up one way or the other. One way they go up is the price of young Americans fighting a crazy war in a far-away country, too many dying. That's a heavy price. Another price is the almost $200 billion we've spent, so far, to send them there. Who was it who said "a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."

Another price is the tubing stock market, falling precipitously at a time when the economy is rebounding. That may be felt in a shallow recovery, lost jobs, higher deficits.

Another price, one we hope to pay, is that the Yale-educated Good Old Boy, George W Bush, loses his bid for re-election and we have to apologize to the world for electing him in 2000. His presidency will haunt US foreign policy for generations to come. (I'd probably vote for John McCain, if the Republicans have the guts to tell Bush to step aside.)

Today's higher gas prices are just the beginning of a reduced standard of living for the American people. We've had a great ride and we've become fat and child-like. Consider this a possible way of pre-empting all the crap that's waiting for us. They call it "reducing our dependence on foreign oil," something we desperately need to do.

We're still an oil producing country, btw.