The Most Innovative

PC World has put up its standard list of the 20 most innovative inventions of the year, and I decided to talk about that here rather than the Microsoft scandal again since I don't want to be redundant. They put Office 2007 at the very top, which is no doubt quite provocative. Apparently, the ribbon and the live preview features really are that stunning. Is it really more innovative than the dual core processor though? I guess the dual core idea has been around for a while, but it's still a pretty big jump in the processor industry. However, the Wii should totally be ahead of Parallels, especially since virtualization is not a new concept. Some of their other selections, including that 750 GB hard drive, the Sony Reader, and Farecast, where spot-on. Some though were kind of strange, I thought. What innovation goes into a Blu-ray disc burner? Or the T-Mobile Dash? I definitely disagree with the rankings, in that sense, but if you ignore the order then it is a pretty good list. Personally, I would've put the Wii at the top with Office 2007 right behind it because the Wii was a totally new kind of concept and very ballsy whereas Office was just a clever upgrade to existing software. You can't have innovation without the kind of guts that Nintendo had.

So back to Microsoft. Joel Spolsky believes firmly that their little gift (see yesterday's post) is bribery, and he poses a convincing case. No matter what, the gift recipients will feel an obligation to return the favor, and it's really Microsoft trying to buy good will and publicity (though it hasn't worked all that well). I didn't know that Consumer Reports actually buys everything it reviews. In a slight backpeddling move, Microsoft has been telling the chosen bloggers to either return the laptops when they're done or to give it away. Why didn't they say this all along? Though I guess it wouldn't have made much of a difference, because people still would've jumped on their back; such is the consequence of being a giant. Gizmodo put up a pictorial of the hottest female bloggers, but the best ones by far (as far as quality of their content, not looks) are Amanda Congdon and Karina Stenquist (of MoBuzz), which is why I've finally added them to my links on the right sidebar. Is it just me, or does Karina look like she's 17? The funniest one is Wendy Chen though because of Girls Out Loud. If you've ever wanted to prank text message your friends, you'll love this. I really want to use AnonTxt, but I'll probably wait til classes start again. Lastly, stop going to Dictionary.com and start using Ninjawords for all your definition needs. If you use YubNub, ninj is the command and it's quite handy.

As usual, movie news is in a bit of a post-holiday slump. We have a trailer for I Think I Love My Wife, the upcoming Chris Rock flick, and I like the premise of the movie. However, Chris Rock movies have historically sucked and blown (except for, of course, Dogma), so I'm not too optimistic about a solid execution here. We have a couple more posters for Smokin Aces and they look pretty neat, but not as neat the other ones did. Lastly, we also have a few more pictures from Bandidas, and Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek look so hot together that I could not pass up the opportunity to post this picture of them from the new shots:



Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

1. So, what did you think of 2006? Was it a good year? How so/not?
I don't know. It was good and bad in so many ways. I didn't quite do the things I wanted to do this year, and I did break my beautiful GPA, but at least I had a fun internship and finally joined a social club (TLD) where I've begun to open up more. Plus, I did get my A in Automata theory, and my brother did get married.

2. What was the best thing that happened in 2006? What was the worst?
Definitely my brother's wedding. What an awesome weekend! My only regret was spending probably a little too much time around my cousins (apparently, people thought I had a girlfriend because of this), but oh well. We all had fun! The worst thing was definitely my near-death car accident.

3. What is your forecast for 2007? Got anything big planned?
Hopefully a nice, stable girlfriend. A weird thing to forecast for a 20 year-old guy, right? But I don't like playing the game, it's just irritating. I'd like to find a fun girl who loves dancing and can help take my mind off of school work. I think by the end of the Spring semester I'll be even more outgoing and hopefully brimming with confidence as I get more involved with TLD. I really should've joined a social organization sooner than my Junior year. Also, I'm hoping for a really fun internship, and bright opportunities for full time.