Apple's New Notebooks

I know it's been a while, which is why I'm reporting on Apple's event, an event that happened nearly two weeks ago. There wasn't a whole lot of exciting news this week though, or last week, so I thought I'd talk about it some.

The MacBook Refresh

It's funny listening to podcasts after Apple's events to hear a consensus on an incorrect prediction. Apple announced a few new laptops (get all the details here), but not at the $800 price point people were speculating. Also weird, in my opinion, is that none of them support HDMI output yet (though you can get a converter to HDMI for what they do support, DVI) or Blu-ray (which is more of a licensing issue). You'd think that with dismal sales projections that Sony would be begging computer manufacturers to support it. Anyway, the new MacBooks are pretty slick:



The $1600 model has 2 GB of RAM (on a 1066 MHz FSB, but no idea what you'd do with one that fast), a 250 GB hard drive, a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor with a 3 MB L2 cache, a backlit keyboard, a 13.3" screen, and an nVidia GeForce 9400M. Yeah, it's real beefy. The $1300 model processor has 400 less MHz and its hard drive is 160 GB. Also nice is the aluminum body and glass, multi-touch trackpad (so you can do iPhone-like stuff on your computer). The MacBook really starts at $1000 though (slightly slower processor, half the RAM, and a 120 GB hard drive), but only comes in white. There are pricier Pro models though: $2000 will get you a 15.4" screen with the same specs as the $1600 one and $2400 will you a slightly faster processor, a 320 GB hard drive, and double the RAM. If you need a larger monitor though, $2800 will get you 17" and a marginally faster processor (and will cause your friends to question the size of your junk, most likely - I'm sorry, but it's true). Oh, and these all have superdives inside to play CDs and DVDs, iSights, mini display ports (supports DVI), 5 hour battery life, ExpressCard slots, digital input, firewire ports, ethernet ports, and Bluetooth. But wait, there's more! They're releasing a new Air in November with the same nVidia card, 2GB of RAM, and gorgeous screen, but a 120 GB hard drive instead and a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo with a SIX freaking MB L2 cache. As you would expect, all models are thinner than before, but I don't think anyone was bothered by their current thickness. They also have an upgrade on their supernaturally beautiful 24" CinemaDisplay monitors, which has a MagSafe power port (for your laptop), a USB port, and (of course) a dispaly port for $900 (that's more than the computer I'm writing this on costs).

He ended the presentation bragging about why Macs are doing well and razzing Microsoft, as always, but I thought that it was a strong lineup. They machines are cooler than I had predicted a couple of weeks ago, and I wouldn't say that they're really exciting but I do think they're well-built, well-designed, high-end computers. They're still a little over-priced, but I can't argue with the quality of this hardware. I think everyone was a little disappointed that they're not coping with the economy by releasing a netbook or even a $900 laptop. Can college students really afford these things? They're definitely targeting students with their marketing, but they're still not cheap. Why not drop the price on the current MacBook Air and keep it out there? Or heck, drop their MacBook Pro to be a cheap MacBook. Are they just trying to keep their image as a high-end computer manufacturer?

Samsung's Air Competitor

I love my Samsung TV, so I had to be a little excited by their entry into the ultra portable laptop market with the X360. It looks beautiful, it has an antibacterial keyboard (we've all seen how dirty our keyboards get), 10 freaking hours of battery life, it supports Bluetooth and Gigabit LAN, it has a great selection of ports (including HDMI and 3 USB and memory card), and the display is incredible. I really want one of these, and at $800 it's really not a bad deal. Now we just have to wait for it to actually be released! I think this may be one of Samsung's first laptops because I haven't heard of them being in the market before, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Joost's Grand Re-opening

I talked about Joost when it launches as I got into the public beta rather early, and while I had high hopes for it I was ultimately disappointed by its heavy software and un-intuitive interface, though the video quality was superb. Well, one of those things changed: all its content is now available straight from your web browser. The interface for browsing the site still is not as good as Hulu, and its content selection could use some help, but it has a pretty decent number of movies (including The Fifth Element) and it's still snappy, which is impressive considering the video quality. I hope its content base grows bigger, and I wouldn't be dissatisfied if it just showed a large number of ad-supported movies and left television to Hulu.

Speaking of Hulu though, they've been showing the season premiere of 30 Rock a week in advance of its actual premiere on network television. I thought that was really awesome and bodes well for old media adapting to new media, in my opinion.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is Out

The Mozilla Foundation released Beta 1 of Firefox 3.1, and it looks to have some nice improvements. At the top of the improvement list is the TraceMonkey Javascript engine, which makes it easier for it to process Javascript-laden websites (which is pretty common in this post Web 2.0 era). It also has improved tab switching behavior and a visual tab switcher with graphical thumbnails, which I'm guessing is an upgrade from what's at the far right in the tabs row. I'm really looking forward to the smart session restore though, which allows you to micro-manage what it will restore better on boot-up or after a crash. For being a 0.1 version change, I think it has some pretty solid improvements - possibly the best of any 0.1 version change they've previously released. I can't wait till its ready for prime time!

Closing Notes

It's past my bedtime and I'm on call this week so it would be wise for me to get my rest. Here's just a few final items real quick:

Oprah has endorsed the Kindle! My confidence was never low for our performance in Q4, but with Oprah's army turned on to the Kindle
I feel even better about it. Maybe Amazon will have a section for Oprah's book club? That's not insider information, I have no idea what the Kindle team is working on (I don't think they're even in Seattle).

CNet has a sobering list of tech layoffs if you want to see how this economy has affected techies. It's not pretty, but it could be much worse so I think we should definitely be thankful that we still have work out there and many of us still have our jobs.

The Android platform is now fully open source! I think that's pretty cool, and literally the exact opposite of Apple's stance with the iPhone, it seems.

Lastly, Gizmodo has a list of gadgets that give infinite pleasure (get your mind out of the gutter, not that kind of pleasure), and it's just really fascinating. I could totally get into the one of bubble wrap that you can just keep popping forever.

Have a great week everyone, and pray that I survive my first week of on call!

Comcast's Day of Reckoning is Here

PAX

I just wanted to start off the post with some great news: I received by badge for PAX! So it's now a sealed deal. I'll be twittering updates directly from the exhibit hall and I'll probably blog at the end of it about the things I saw that I'm most excited about. I've always wanted to go to E3 so to finally be able to go to what's probably now the largest gaming convention in North America is pretty cool. I really love putting up original content so this will be a fun learning experience for me, too, on that front.

In other slightly notable news, I bought Devil May Cry 4 on Friday and it's definitely like Devil May Cry 3 but much prettier. It may end up being easier, too, we'll see. I'm going to probably be more focused on Metal Gear Solid 4.

One last personal note: I finished reading 'Salem's Lot and I was really impressed by it. I feel like every Stephen King book I read is my favorite King book, but this one really is ;) If you're interested in vampires or horror, this is a must-read. It's actually less about mayhem and more about the characters and how the town copes with the anomalies that start to occur.

A Red Letter Day

If you don't know what Net Neutrality is, I urge you to watch my short film explaining it in laymen terms.

And now for my headline story: August 1, 2008 was a red letter day for the fight over net neutrality. In a shocking ruling, the Kevin Martin's FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking content (they were blocking P2P connections quite regularly in some areas) and publicly disclose how it handles Internet traffic. It's shocking because it's the government telling the people that they're right, and Kevin Martin isn't necessarily known for standing against the industry but I think that Congress was suspicious of this so I guess he's changed his ways. Also, this ruling sets a precedent against blocking Internet traffic and support the FCC's so-called four freedoms.

As you can imagine, some people are excited and some people are really pissed. Comcast and other ISPs have already begun rattling their sabers and are considering litigation. I imagine that they'll question the FCC's authority to pass such a ruling, but they having stated publicly (yet) what legal recourse they have. Time Warner has gone so far though as to say that the ruling will have a "chilling effect" on investors and innovation (funny, they haven't had problem with either before restricting content). Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the decision and look forward to this being the start of a bright future for the Internet, if this trend continues.

One more thing on the FCC: they're proposing a nationwide wireless Internet service with the pornography filtered out. This makes sense coming from a typically conservative FCC, but it definitely steps on the fingers of the first amendment, as some advocacy groups are fighting for. It must be rough fighting for the rights of people who film sex, but any censorship on the Internet could lead to a slippery slope and such access control should be left to parents. I mean what problem would doing this solve? There's Internet not controlled by the government that's not censored, so there's always a way for determined minors to get around it. Also, why are we wasting money on a national broadband service? Why not just promote more competition in ISPs?

Apple Update

Apple has been having some trouble with its MobileMe service. I don't use it myself but users have been abuzz with near daily outages for some users. It's at the point that Jobs is personally overseeing the fixes, probably with a long whip. It amazes me that they would release this sort of service without stress testing it more thoroughly. My guess is that it was triggered by 1G iPhone users upgrading to 2.0, because my brother's update was taking forever. I guess it runs on the same hardware as MobileMe? By the way, if you want your own iPhone but don't want to go to AT&T, then you'll have to wait until at least 2010.

One last bit of Apple news, and this one has been everywhere: they're telling retailers to stock up on their MacBooks and iPods, theoretically in preparation for fresh merchandise. This would mean some sort of drastic change on both lines, but why would it be drastic enough for consumers to not want it? They are expecting lower profits next quarter, so maybe they're just being bear-ish about it? Also, if they expect demand to be so high for the existing lines, why not keep this a secret from the retailers (i.e. the public) and just stock up in their own warehouses? Something is fishy about this...could it be a smoke screen?

Firefox's Market Share Grows

Firefox is going strong with its market share exceeding 20% while Internet Explorer shrinks to below 70%. This is pretty impressive considering that they were under 10% just a few years ago. The Firefox team is also gearing up for version 3.1, which includes visual tab switching (kind of Aero-like) and wildcard searching in your address bar for past URLs. They're minor adjustments, but I'm really looking forward to the latter.

Midori

Microsoft has been working on a project called Midori that is supposedly an alternate OS to Windows. The speculation is that it'll be an Internet-based OS as Microsoft observes the growing trend of virtualization, and if that's true then this is probably the first time in a long time that Microsoft is really thinking ahead of the curve. If we could sell thin clients then even more households could have computers and laptops for less.

Adsense for Games

Google is looking into how to put advertising into games, something that I thought would've already been implemented by now by somebody. They've already developed a technology to insert video ads (probably in "beta", knowing Google), but I personally think that video ads will just alienate customers frustrated with it and wishing they could pay to just get rid of them. Why not do things like product placement, billboards, and other forms of more subtle advertising without having the game characters cop out and say "and now a word from our sponsors!" I could get behind something like that if it significantly reduced the price of a video game or if it made the game free with a paid, ad-free version, but I can't find any more details so hopefully we'll learn more soon.

In other Google News, their Street View (in Google Maps) has been approved for the UK, which isn't too surprising given that the government there already has cameras everywhere to monitor the people, but people have been suing Google in the U.S. without much success. I don't think Street View is all that bad, unless it's regularly updated. One more thing from Google: they've been investing in eco-friendly vehicles, including the awesome 300 MPG Aptera. I think this is kind of straying from their core business a bit much, but I guess diversification isn't a bad thing.

Quick Notes

There's just two more things I wanted to mention. The first is Gizmodo's explanation of every cable you'll probably encounter right now. It has a lot of information you never know you wanted to know, so it's at least worth a glance. The other thing is the best primer to the Linux command line that I've ever seen. If you're scared to touch a Linux machine, then read it and don't be afraid anymore!

A Fresh SP Emerges

I should really be working on my lexical analyzer for Compilers, but I keep putting off this post because of my work and now there's just too much going on for me to not talk about it. So what is an SP? The Church of Scientology uses that abbreviation for a "Suppressive Person" and is mainly used for antisocial personalities, apparently, whose personalities focus on violence against groups intended for betterment. As you may already know, such a supposed group has emerged call Anonymous, Anon, or Legion. Most of the media prefers Anonymous. They've released 3 videos on YouTube so far, though the second one has been taken down. If you don't know anything about Scientology, I highly recommend this episode of Southpark. It's a surprisingly accurate depiction of what we know about Scientology, minus Kyle being the leader. Anyhow, it's almost pyramid scheme where you have to pay to learn more about the teachings and, because of this, they've gotten testy about people releasing information about the church or their videos not at all afraid to sue and manhandle people into silence.



Well, this hacker group decided that the last straw was when they took down this video from YouTube of Tom Cruise spewing out his nonsense about Scientology. They're pissed about the censorship, they're pissed about all the litigation, and they don't like how they deprive the people they "brainwash" (I put that in quotes because it's not fact, but I believe they do) of certain freedoms and of a lot of money. In fact, there's a lot of people who claim foul play in the death of one of their believers because of signs of undernourishment and physical abuse. In essence, they view the church as an oppressive regime and feel that it must be stopped. I'm fully in support of this, though I've unfortunately had no part in anything they've done. I think it's really ballsy. They're doing what the mass media can't because they can act without identity and get away with what they feel is right.

Does this lead to vigilante justice? Would this degrade our justice system? It's arguable as to how good it is right now. Some people say that the acts they've undertaken are wrong in general. They have committed cybercrimes in staging DoS and DDoS attacks to take down their site and lots of spamming. They have a wiki detailing their goals and such, but I've been trying to give you the synopsis here. These guys are definitely not amateurs though. They're really good at being anonymous and they're even better at Denial of Service; I was really impressed to read how they subverted the church's move to a DoS-safe host (they just filter before forwarding to the real IP of the site) by just finding the real IP and slamming it with requests. Their wiki is a ridiculously detailed explanation on how to do everything: the faxing, the spamming, the prank calls - it's meticulous. These are not a bunch of little kids, they're experienced. I just find it wildly fascinating that this has all come to fruition. Some have commented that they should attack Christianity as well, but I, of course, disagree. Obviously, all organized religions desire money and power, but Christian churches encourage alms giving to the poor and including everyone. I don't need any money to go to church and learn; I do to be scientologist. I was never brainwashed into being a Christian either, it's a choice I made over many years of reflection and learning. And, most importantly, they believe on me seeing a doctor if I'm in physical pain; they don't hang their followers out to dry.

Anyway, that's enough of that topic, I really need to move on. Last week in my Contemporary Issues in CS class we had a guest speaker: Gary Chapman from the 21st Century Project. It was a very interesting talk about how it was started and how it promotes things like using IT to aid in disasters and OLPC and all that stuff. One thing he mentioned that I totally forgot about was that Thursday would be the auction for the 700 Mhz spectrum. That means that we're less than a year from digital transition, where any televisions relying on an antenna for programming (a lot of households, especially lower income households) will have to upgrade or get a converter box to watch TV. Despite it being a leisure, TV has become a pretty big part of our society so this is a pretty big deal because it's really going to happen after years of dilly-dallying from the government. What's more important though is the aftermath. What does winning the spectrum mean? That's still being speculated. The point is to raise over $20 billion (and also keep a small range for emergency services), but now it becomes a game of strategy. AT&T and Verizon want it for longer-range cell phone signals, but Google has their hat in as well. Why? They're trying to force open standards, which would be awesome and is probably in their best interest what with Android and all. Would they physically use it? Would anyone for that matter (they may just not want anyone else to have it)? No one is for certain (except for the big whigs), but Google could trade the spectrum to Sprint (not in the auction) for a piece of the WiMAX pie they have. After all, this spectrum is best for voice, not data. It's kind of an interesting issue and definitely a huge deal. There's going to be a lot about it in the coming months though, so stay tuned for more.

Engadget put up a bulleted clarification of Remote Disc, the add-on for the MacBook Air that promised that having an optical drive was unnecessary. As it turns out though, you can't use it to play commercial DVDs, burn CDs, play music CDs, or rip DVDs among other things. I don't know about you, but that's all I'd really be using an optical drive for anyway. Of course, I don't have a DVD-ROM because this computer is old (but still awesome), but I would rip my DVDs on a laptop to save the power when watching them. Anyway, I think this Remote Disc thing then is totally useless. I don't understand the logic behind it anymore, and the MacBook Air looks even more unattractive from a technical standpoint. Despite the appeal of digital content, it doesn't beat hard copies of stuff for a lot of users. My disappointment has been reflected further in the steep drop in Apple's stock price. It has dipped 30% in just two weeks. That's pretty intense. Steve Jobs alone lost $220 million (unrealized losses, I presume). Will they bounce back? Of course, it's Apple. I'm just shocked at how long this drop is going on for. I guess the market being down is hitting everyone hard and I want to blame that more than just Macworld.

It's getting late, so just a couple of quick, last things. Joel Spolsky put up a great article on reducing your concerns for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in exchange for just asking the five whys when problems occur to get to the root cause so they don't happen again. It makes a lot more sense than putting your blind faith in ridiculous statistics and backup schemes. IE8 is intending to be the most standards-compliant version of IE to date. The problem that has always plagued IE, however, is backwards compatibility with their old stupidity of horrible standards compliance. It's not that great even today, but it's better than it used to be. This has been a headache for me since I've had to be a site administrator, and a lot of people get so frustrated that they claim their site only works in Firefox, which is not the correct response (though I sorely wish it were). Anyway, their solution back in IE6 was doctype modes: a quirks mode if your site is to be rendered with the old engine and standards for IE6 and IE7 (yeah, it's weird, they're both on the same doctype though they're very different in compliance). Well, now they're doing a meta tag thing. If you have that tag it'll render as an IE8 page, otherwise it'll use an older rendering engine. It's one more pain to deal with, but I prefer it to having to hack things up more and shove IE8 into the standards doctype. It's better than the doctype thing, I think.

Macworld Wrap-up

As usual, the focus has been on Macworld this past week rather than CES. I think that the media and even a lot of geeks have just become disenchanted with CES and have begun to care more about the words of Steve Jobs. Barely anyone really seemed to care that it's Bill Gates last CES keynote ever. By this year's end, Ray Ozzie will be the new CEO of Microsoft. Of course, there is the fact that this video from the keynote of his supposed last day at work spread pretty fast and is pretty funny. I love that he can make fun of himself and that he managed so many great cameos. Oh, and I have a lot to talk about today to make up for not writing this post like two days ago when I should've.

Anyway, back to Macworld. There are a few things I thought were worth mentioning related to that keynote. Game Daily has a great article pointing out that this was another Macworld without any focus at all on video games for Macs. I agree with them in calling this a huge oversight. I have no idea why they don't believe the power of video games. That industry has really exploded in the past 5-10 years and PC games have seen a come back with titles like Half-Life 2, Portal, World of Warcraft, The Sims, and Civilization 3. They're losing the gamer market by forcing them to run these titles on a dual-booted machine or even a VM. They should be making it easier to run them on native hardware and they could be touting the consistency of Mac computers as ensuring that any game developed for Mac could work on potentially all Macs or say right from the get-go which ones work on which. For PCs, the hardware combinations are so diverse that you lose this slight advantage, which really only hurts you when you want to get someone a game as a gift, most likely, and don't know if they can use it. They're clearly not pushing iPod/iPhone games ostensibly, though Sonic has come on board, and I just imagine that there's a bigger market there than Game Daily believes because of how many people play phone games when they're bored. I just can't figure out why Apple has no interest in supporting this market.

Joy of Tech has a pretty great comic
about the MacBook Air that kind of reflects my views also.

This isn't really related to the Apple TV even though you may see articles around with people billing this as a big blow to Apple TV, but Time Warner is trying out a new pricing scheme similar to your power bill. The more you download, the more you pay. This indirectly affects Apple TV because renting/buying those HD movies is not going to be all that attractive rather than buying/renting the hard copy from a store. In any case, the point is that they're trying to penalize you for piracy or using up the "unlimited" Internet access you pay for too much. This is like opening an all-you-can-eat buffet where you see a few fat people and decide that if you're fat then you have to pay more money. It's crazy. Unlike your power bill or your water bill, it doesn't cost them anything extra to serve up more of the Internet to you, in reality. They make so much money with their outdated networks and large base of users that they really just want more money. In some areas you may see a higher quality of service, but the quality of your Internet should be higher because they're re-investing your monthly payments into thicker pipes and not because less people are online. People are not going to like this idea in this society of rising gas prices and other things where you pay a variable cost. They claim it'll only affect 5% of users, but in this increasingly broadband world, it's going to hurt more people than that. It's frustrating, but I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Maybe it'll end up being a tiered plan, which would be slightly better but still irritating since your service won't get any better for paying more money. Somewhere at Time Warner corporate there's a guy in a tall, black leather chair laughing diabolically. Oh, and whether this is a conspiracy against Apple TV so that people buy digital cable rather than watch TV online is a little bit extreme. I honestly do not think that it has anything to do with that. I believe torrents and P2P are hurting them, and they'd rather pass the buck than adapt. They're not smart enough to think ahead to IP TV; put their execs in a room of Neanderthals and you wouldn't know the difference.

I love PicLens. I think it's the best add-on since IE Tab (or the best thing since sliced bread, if you prefer). It works in IE and Safari, too; just not the new feature I'm going to talk about. I casually updated recently only to later realize that they've upgraded the UI. You can see it in the screenshot to the left, but it doesn't do it justice. It's just so ridiculously intuitive. They've made the pictures into a wall of thumbnails rather than a filmstrip at the bottom so that you can use the fullness of your screen to navigate and use your scroll wheel to casually glance at whatever piques your interest. They've also really improved the Facebook functionality. I don't think I've ever browsed pictures so effortlessly before; not even in Picasa. I was so struck that I took the time to actually port several galleries from the NSC site to the PicLens format (really easy with PicLens Publisher tool; you just surround the code it gives you with your layout) and will be using it permanently for the NSC site. It's a great thing to try out if you're running a website where you value viewing images over comments and ratings and descriptions and all that junk, and it even has a Flash-based thing to view the images in a slideshow even if you don't have PicLens. Oh, but word to the wise: look at the CSS I have on my galleries. I had to hack it up for IE6, which doesn't support max-width.

I think I've all but declared the HD-battle over in Blu-ray's favor. Gizmodo feels the same and has shed a little more light on what has been happening in recent weeks. While it's likely true that Sony did pay some of the studios to help them decide to move exclusively to Blu-ray, the fact of the matter is that they money they paid was much less than what they stand to lose/gain in a new HD format. All the studios were pretty eager to end the format war though, and I think Fox caving to Blu-ray caused a domino effect that almost ceded the battle to Sony. I don't think we know yet what motivated Fox to do this, and the exact reasoning for Warner and Toshiba hasn't totally given up yet, but I think it's pretty clear that they're gripping at straws. Only a few loyal studios remain; I mistakenly reported Paramount's switch because they haven't jumped ship yet though they legally can. Universal is bound until 2009 or the bitter end, whichever comes first. New Line, Fox, and Warner aren't small potatoes though, and it may be enough to tempt more studios to take the leap. The battle isn't over, but I think a lot of us want it to be. After all, Blu-ray has done a poor job of future-proofing the format and, not-so-coincidentally, the PS3 is the only Blu-ray player capable of supporting the 2.0 spec because it has an Internet connection and 1GB of local storage. It looks like they're trying to use Blu-ray in 2.0 to help spread gaming to movie enthusiasts from the looks of CES demos with trivia games and the like, but these Blu-ray versions will surely cause confusion (there's a 1.1 that only a few players, including the PS3, support).

I thought it was interesting that MySpace is still dominating Facebook in traffic. If you have any insight into this, I'd love to hear it because I have to say that I'm more than a little surprised. 72% of social networking traffic goes to MySpace compared to 16% for Facebook. This is more than a small disparity. I guess I live in a bubble where only a minority of the people I know have MySpace accounts, including the adults I know who are on Facebook. To be fair, Facebook's grew 50% over last year whereas News Corp's bastard child lost 8% of its prior market share. The hype machine would make it seem like Facebook is taking over the world. Hell, I kid you not, my own mother called me last week to tell me about Facebook and this guy who started the site in college and made all this money. She thought that I should do something like that someday. I'm suddenly glad that I didn't take the Facebook interview. It's not that I believe they're failing, I just think they're in this huge bubble. I don't know if it'll pop or not, but I also don't know how stable it is. In any case, my theory is that a lot of minors are loving MySpace whereas adults and many college students who do social networking use Facbook. There's also an overlap of college students who still check their MySpace but don't actively use it. That's just my theory, and I guess that it would mean that the Facebook audience is more valuable than the MySpace audience. Anyhow, I think it's even more interesting given that MySpace has been getting bad press over privacy issues. I mean when people can see private photos of 14 year-old boys/girls, that's creepy.

I have a few quick things to lump together here. AOL (AIM/ICQ) has finally caved and moved its protocol to XMPP, more popularly known as Jabber, which is what Google Chat runs on. I can't say anything about this other than that it's ostensible very cool since XMPP is open source. If you're uninitiated into the dark art of MySQL, this is an awesome primer. Woot has put up their always funny Wootable Awards from CES of random things including Most Racist Display and Best Alien Detector. I liked the new trailer for Baby Mama and so I thought I'd share. Tina Fey wants a surrogate mother because she can't conceive and so she turns to a childlike character(Amy Poehler). I thought it was quirky and funny. And last, but not least, my first upload to YouTube from going to Copa on Friday night:



Just because I miss it, how about some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. President :: Clinton (Bill ;)


2. Stare :: Glaze


3. Embrace :: Hug


4. Movie :: Theater


5. Everything :: On sale


6. Profile :: Facebook


7. Satire :: Comedy


8. Erratic :: Errata


9. Costume :: Party


10. Secretary :: of State

Phones for a Few Bucks?

Reuters is reporting the head honcho of Google as claiming that cell phones should become free in the near future, when that's not exactly what he said. Still, at least they were on the right track in reporting it. He believes that phones should become heavily subsidized by way of on-phone adverts (texts and photos), which I have a couple of thoughts on. First of all, how can you make it feasible to transmit pictures to a phone? This satellite Internet crap is slow enough as it is. Second of all, if you're giving away phones that cost hundreds of bucks for even a few bucks, don't you have to show someone a good bit of advertising? Some sites online are bad enough, and I think there's a certain point at which people tire of advertising. With your phone, you want to be able to easily make phone calls, and I think people are willing to pay a premium for reliability and convenience associated with that. That's why the pay model (minus subscription-induced subsidies) works so well. No one would pay to use Google because that'd be annoying and pricey (I'd imagine), and obviously not everyone wants to pay for television (hence antenna-accessible networks) so advertising works there, but I've never heard of someone not getting a phone because it was a bit pricey because they consider it to last them a good while and be extremely useful. The three things you always leave the door with are wallet, keys, and phone, and if the first two don't have ads strapped to them then why should the third? Maybe Schmidt is right, maybe it is the future, but I just don't buy it quite yet.

Think Secret has discovered that the newly released Core 2 Duo laptops from Apple pack a secret feature: 802.11n draft 1.0 compatibility. No word on driver availability for this functionality in the near future, but the factor of 10 speed increase on this new standard would indeed be a delightful surprise to customers if it ends up being unlocked with the proper drivers and support, which isn't guaranteed by a longshot since it's just for a draft of the upcoming standard. I ran into this list of courses that nerds would have fun with, and I thought I'd plug it simply because I've taken a few of these (or heard good things) and they really are great choices for the nerd in you. Google Earth added a neat new feature: historical maps. They're not all that detailed, but fun stuff for World History enthusiasts, I'm sure. Photo editing enthusiasts will really love Pixer, which allows you to edit your pictures via the nifty Web 2.0 application. It's obviously not as feature-rich as something like Photoshop or even Paint .NET, but it's great for the quick things. Lastly, MTV has redone their site and I just wanted to point it out for the sake of what not to do when re-designing a site: moving backwards. I wonder if the designers were thinking that it would be a great idea to make the whole site Flash so that it'd be laggy as Hell, force you to watch videos from startup (and always have it off to the side, mind you, to kick your RAM in the butt), and then pop up an ad whenever you click a link.

In case you didn't catch The Simpsons trailer yesterday, don't worry because you didn't miss much. You can see it over here, but it gives us pretty much nothing. What's much more interesting is this extremely early review of Shrek the Third. The fact that it's good in such an early stage is definitely a good sign, though I'm skeptical as to whether they'll add in enough to make it as good as the first two as the reviewer suggests it's lacking since it's already storyboarded out. An early review of A Night at the Museum wasn't nearly as good though and claims that the movie was pretty disappointing and very much lacking in big laughs.

I thought I'd end here with a rather funny Post Secret postcard that most guys wouldn't own up to, but they know they're guilty of:



Now for some Monday Madness:

1. From ch'i:
If you could only read one blog every day- which one blog would be on your daily list?
Unfortunately, many of my faves have been on a sort of hiatus, so I'll go with Delicious Days (link on right sidebar).

2. From kat:
What do you do to de-stress from a hectic day?
Dance and/or sleep =P

3. From paxil princess:
What is your favorite piece of clothing to wear in the winter?
This nice brown, stretch merino sweater my sis-in-law-to-be got me from Banana Republic a couple of years ago.

4. From sherle:
Do you prefer discussing problems with a sibling, a parent, a significant other, a psychologist, or a total stranger?
None of the above: a close friend.

5. From trista:
How long have you been blogging?
I believe I started in December 2004.

6. From lisa e:
Which side of the bed?
Left side =P Thought I have a twin bed here in Austin.

7. From elton:
How often do you pig out when you eat?
Yay, they used one of my questions! Maybe once a week or so. It depends on the week, but it's usually on the weekend if I do.

8. From karen:
Do you watch the space shuttle launches?
Nope. Astronomy just isn't my bag.

9. From dawn:
What's your favorite leisure-time activity?
Other than sleeping? Probably dancing, I suppose, because it's so social.

10. From sherle:
When is the last time you said, 'I love you' and to whom?
What about hugs? Who is the last person you hugged?
Not sure. I probably said it to my friend Jennyfer in the past few days though. Maybe I said it to my mom yesterday? Last person I hugged was my friend Raquel at TLD practice last night.