Best Products of '05

I hope your weekend was better than mine because I spent half mine wishing I was back home. Ironic, huh? Some family came in from out of town I haven't seen in a while and plus it was my mom's birthday last week so it would've been nice to go back, but I had a lot of work to take care of and at least I got some cooking done, too. Plus, I finally had a guitar practice session. Anyway, PCWorld actually put up a decent article listing the supposed best products of 2005, but they probably meant tech products. It probably shouldn't be too surprising that Firefox came at the top, but I'm kind of surprise that I didn't see the Nano on there. My brother's cell phone made the list though (the Treo), and it is pretty neat. Given that some people were let down by Tiger I'm surprised it was in the top 10, but I guess they like Dashboard. It was nice to see some of the lesser known things on there like A9, Wikipedia, and ACDSee. I thought it was kind of a diss to Nintendo that the PSP made it on there but the DS didn't, but the PSP is much craftier in my opinion. Anyway, a great list to browse and learn more about truly some of the best of this year so far.

I think the Aibo is a rather cute little invention, though largely pointless unless you want to play robot soccer (which looks pretty damn cool actually). The reason I have a picture of one up there is because it's part of Sony's new line that now talks and interacts with you when you pet it. I wonder if this really makes them that much money. An even better invention is a beer mat created by some German students that can tell a bartender when the mug in question is out of beer via a radio signal to his computer. That just has "more drunk people" written all over it. Yahoo has been roped into the recent trend of lawsuits over supposed theft of trade secrets with regard to some oral search technology. A pretty serious offense I think, but who knows if they're really guilty. Lastly, in a rather surprising announcement, Paramount, who was a staunch supporter of the HD-DVD format, has decided to also support Blu-ray. I think that having it built-in to the PS3 helps the latter, but companies going both ways is not helping the war.

The box office slump has gotten even worse with Flightplan springing up to take hold of the #1 spot at a measly $15 million and Serenity, which was supposed to be the big opener, only bringing in $10.1 million. Corpse Bride held onto #3 and A History of Violence opened right behind it, which was also supposed to be pretty good. This slump is surprising given a couple of decent movies being out there, but I myself have just been too busy to go for a movie but maybe gas prices are partially to blame for the trend. Christopher Nolan's next directorial adventure is going to be based on a book called The Prestige and pits Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman against each other in a battle for trade secrets. This is very good news and I hope to hear good things very soon. And lastly, a couple of new video journals are up. KongIsKing has a new entry regarding the motion capture process for King Kong himself in the Peter Jackson movie and Blue Tights Adventure Network features the meeting of the old Jimmy Olsen with the new one. Speaking of Superman, did anyone else thing the season premiere of Smallville was actually pretty good?

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings to end the weekend:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Quaint::Cozy
   
2. Rind::Pork
   
3. Disease::Viral
   
4. Queer::as Folk
   
5. Pork::Chops
   
6. Soaked::Clothes
   
7. Skeleton::Bones
   
8. Mold::Gak
   
9. Finished::Done
   
10. Buffalo::Bill