No to WiFi iPod, Yes to Better YouTube

Again, I left the office today at 8:30 PM, but I must say that the day flew by except for a two hour department meeting I had to go to (at least I got a book bag and some free food out of it). I'm going to be going through this post as fast as I can, and there were two little things that really piqued my interest today. Apple rarely acknowledges rumors, let alone confirm or disprove them, but they've now actually come out and said that they are not planning on releasing a wireless iPod, or at least not anytime soon. The funny thins is that Steve Jobs came right out in an interview last September (somewhere around September, at least) and said that there wasn't enough demand for a video-enabled iPod for him to justify selling one. What a big lie that ended up being! The biggest drawback to WiFi is the power drain, and I'm sure that they'll push forward with it faster when they figure out how to keep down that disadvantage. Meanwhile, YouTube has told Reuters that it plans on making all the music videos ever made available within the next year and a half for free! A few music labels have confirmed that they are indeed speaking with YouTube about such a possibility, and I think that it would be really awesome because I sometimes really enjoy watching music videos (since MTV doesn't like showing them anymore unless you pony up the dough for digital cable), especially the older ones. Oh YouTube, when will you stop bringing joy to the masses?

While I'm on the subject of video, Apple has now created a page under its TV shows part of iTunes that just lists episodes that are free to download. This reminds me of when they first started the free download of the week thing for music, and it makes me happy that I have iTunes. Google has upgraded Google Talk to allow for voicemail, file sharing, and photo sharing. Definitely a big step up for the IM service that was severely lacking in features when it first came out, especially the voicemail thing. Also, Google has opened up Google Analytics to all its users, not just those in its private beta and on AdWords, and it looks to be a pretty neat little service. I've just installed the code on this blog and the NSC site (which I maintain) and I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in the near future. So far though, I'm impressed at the ease of installation across a site and the ability to add users to view your reports. I've definitely spoken before about how bad IE7 seems to be with standards compliance, but now one of the developers is vehemently debunking those claims and saying that they're working harder on standards than anything else in IE7 development. I don't think the article I had cited before was necessarily bad overall since it's true that they're still far from total compliance with the latest CSS standards, but I'm glad to see that they're putting some honest effort into it. Lastly, Earthlink lost an appeal to an FCC ruling that telcos can lay new fiber networks without having to lease them out to other companies, which is a really bad decision, in my opinion, but they idea was to not deter telcos from laying new lines. Then again, I guess it is in their best interest to keep all their bandwidth just for their own customers.

I'm not going to cover movie news today because I'm tired and there's nothing so great that I have to talk about it today, but I will show you an interesting PostSecret postcard that reminds me of my own speaking disorder. I'm not proud of it, but it does kind of define me now, which is a tad scary.



Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Do you have a true love? If so, tell us a little about him or her.
Nope, I suck at life.

2. If you don't have a true love person, I'm sure you have a true love hobby. What's your favorite activity?
Besides programming, I'd have to say playing guitar. It can get annoying sometimes, but I always feel good about practicing and afterwards. Programming is always a true love kind of a hobby because it's so productive and I love feeling like I've accomplished something with the time I've spent on something. That's part of why working 12 hour days the past couple of days hasn't been too bad. Plus, I've been doing more coding at home (not this week, but in prior weeks) in PHP for the NSC site.

3. What's your favorite romantic movie?
Probably True Romance. I don't know why, I just love the way it handles falling in love and all that good stuff. I also love the romance in Donnie Darko between Donnie and Gretchen (Jake Gyllenhaal and Jena Malone) because it's so real and believable and cute. Yes, I said it, it's cute. If you have seen it and don't think so then you might be dead inside.