There is, at least, a wishlisting blog up. For anyone interested in status on what we’re up to, when the site goes live, etc. those types of announcements will be made on the blog.
Author Archives: tlianza
Harrison Ford keeps making the same movie
My brother sent me this link – it’s pretty funny. The segment where they show him talking about how they’re after his wife and/or family in every movie is hysterical.
More reports of people jumping ship from Bloglines
I guess Fil and I aren’t the only ones. Gina Trapani from Lifehacker jumped too. For people sticking with it though, they have a post today about how to make it less ugly.
Creeping featurism
Under the definition of “Creeping featurism” (aka feature creep) at Wikipedia is this screenshot of Microsoft Word with all of the possible toolbars activated. It’s pretty funny:
Washington Senatorial Debate
Last night there was a debate between 3 of the candidates for Senator in Washington state – they put the full debate online here. I enjoyed it, mainly because for once a Libertarian candidate was able to put together enough money to get into a televised debate alongsinde a Democrat and a Republican. Bruce Guthrie had to mortgage his house and donate that money to his campaign in order to meet the criteria for inclusion.
To my surprise, he didn’t come off as sounding crazy, like so many Libertarians do. He approached the issues fairly moderately, effectively saying we’d take steps to gradually move towards Libertarian ideals (decriminializing drugs, lowering spending, etc). He appeared a little nervous and not as polished, but I was still impressed. He called out both Democrats and Republicans for their failures – both being big spenders, playing politics with every issue, etc. He joked that rather than testing people on welfare for drugs and alcohol (as McGavick wants) they should be testing congressmen.
From one article:
But if anyone “won” the televised exchange — Cantwell’s and McGavick’s second and final formal debate — it was a third candidate, Libertarian Bruce Guthrie, just by being there.
Cool Color Trick
My dad sent me this link. It’s pretty cool, and one of the few cases where he can relate part of his work (as a color scientist) to something I can understand.
The colored image that you stare at has the color chroma data reversed. When you bring the mouse into the field you will suddenly see a full color image appear, and then fade to B&W as your eyes adapt to black and white image. The color you see for a short instant is based upon the eye locally adapting to the previous negative color image.
Nerd Restaurant
I always wanted to open up a restaurant that appeared, to the patrons, to be fully automated. Lights on the floor would indicate what table to sit at, ordering would be done via touch screen, delivery of food would be done via conveyor belt. No waiting for the check, no waiting for refills, no tips necessary at all.
It appears that someone is doing something similar at uWink in California. There is a multi–part review that’s pretty interesting (summary: it’s not ready for prime time yet). They’ve chosen a video game theme and targeted gamers, which makes a lot of sense. I had always struggled with what type of restaurant it would be – a pizza place? burger joint? It couldn’t be a bar, because bars should be more social and human. uWink hasn’t gone as far as I was envisioning… they appear to have a fully human-staffed bar and I think you’re still seated by a human. They call their waitstaff “runners” because all they do is bring you the food you’ve ordered via the touchscreen at your table – they don’t actually wait on you. Kind of interesting… definitely nerdy.
Google Reader – Sharing Articles
One of the reasons I’ve stuck with the Google Reader over Bloglines is the ability to star and share articles. As Fil pointed out, someone should eventually write something that will integrate this sharing feature with del.icio.us. In the meantime, the articles that I’ve shared are here.
The starring feature is kind of cool because sites like craigslist let you bookmark searches as RSS feeds. For example, I used an RSS feed from craigslist to keep an eye on apartments for rent in Seattle. I then used the star feature of Google Reader to remember which ones I wanted to go back and look at. It worked quite well (aside from the fact that I didn’t switch apartments). It’s also a prototypical experience of the new web. Craigslist may not need to build a starring feature, or a sharing feature – they just need to expose their content in RSS, and let other applications layer on additional capabilities.
Podcasts
I sold myself on the fact that I was a nerd when I started subscribing to podcasts, and listening to them regularly. That really just happened over the last few weeks. It feels like a free education – pick the topics you’re interested in, and hopefully there will be shows out there that talk about them. I’m still trying to determine which podcasts are worth keeping in regular rotation, and yes most of them are nerdy, but here’s what I’ve found so far…
Let the blogosphere explode… Google acquired YouTube
From TechCrunch:
In their largest acquisition to date, Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in an all stock transaction. Both companies have approved the deal, which should officially close in the fourth quarter. YouTube’s 65 employees will remain with the company at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.
I don’t understand spending well over a billion dollars for something that is positioned to get hammered in copyright-violation-related lawsuits, uses technologies that you, by and large, already have, and probably loses money. But, clearly I’m a simpleton.