The new Indiana Jones: poor Harrison Ford
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
You can’t help but laugh:
Found here via theFerrett
Amazon mp3 downloads are so much better than iTunes
I haven’t bought anything on iTunes since I learned about Amazon’s mp3 downloads service. It’s painless, cheaper, and I can play mp3’s on anything I want.
How much longer will the iTunes store remain dominant? I think it depends on how much time and money Amazon spends advertising their service. You download a little patch program, and you can order music with one-click, and it automatically ends up in your music player (in my case iTunes).
This is a good thing. DRM’d downloads are doomed.
Quote
From Ethan over at Rabid Space Dog. Hey gamers: he’s right.
Things you notice when you’re doing hundreds of blog searches
The phrase “Is it just me, or…” is probably the most popular way to start a post where you’re getting set to rip a new one in product or company X.
Something like:
“Is it just me, or does Microsoft support really effing suck?”
Interesting.
Everybody take more pictures of me
About six months ago I got a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, which has been one of my favorite toys. I never stop wishing I had it with me to try and take a picture of six or seven cool looking things.
I’ve also decided, after taking TONS of pictures of mountains, lakes, and city scenery (no flowers or leaves — that is WAY too cliche) that it’s a lot more interesting to take pictures of people or animals. Really, people are the best subjects.
So when I have my camera with me I tend to take a lot of pictures of other people. Which is awesome for other people, because they usually look pretty good. But I wish I hung out with more people who compulsively take candid photos like I do, because those are usually the best.
I realized I don’t have any in the process of picking my picture for the speakers handout I’m working on for next week’s Web Community Forum conference.
Food Photo
The toppings for my lunch today, which was a patty melt.
Food photography is interesting, and something I generally know nothing about, except that you’re not supposed to use real food.
Oh well, I think it turned out alright.
How do you want to be reading newspapers 25 years from now?
I’ve been bending my mind around “the future of journalism” for the past couple of days, and I’m not really sure I’m getting anywhere with it. The changes that are happening because of the internet’s insistence on free, ad-supported content (which is not really possible for newspapers), are fascinating.
Let’s assume, for the sake of this poll, that pretty much any relevant technology we can conceive of now can be invented inside 25 years. In other words, if you can dream it up, it could happen.
So, with that in mind:
Loading …(and remember, you can vote for comments, so if you see a better one there, just vote it up!)
Quote
Brilliant effing quote from Calacanis.
Quote
From Scoble, on Kindle.
Replicating Tumblr
One of the things I tried to set up on this blog ages ago was the “asides” plugin, that worked well for throwing short little thoughts into the mix with longer posts. They stood out because they were formatted differently.
Tumblr has that same appeal, and it adds the ability to easily quote things and add pictures and import Tweets. I’ve asked for a Tumblr Wordpress plugin, but in the meantime I’m going to do a few low-effort things to replicate that functionality.
I made a new style for quotes that resembles the Tumblr style. I’m going to start putting quotes in the mix here with the post headline “quote,” just like the post below. I’m also thinking about pulling my RSS feed from Twitter into The Loop somehow (that means in line with these posts).
We’ll see.
Quote
From Brian Solis, covering Jason Calacanis.
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving. What I’ve done today:
- Got up at 6:30 AM
- Drove for five hours
- Ate myself silly
- Watched Shaun of the Dead
And I’m about to get in a hot tub, then watch the new Die Hard film. Good times.
Big ol’ post on Facebook Beacon & Privacy over at WCF
I wrote a post this morning over at the Web Community Forum about Facebook’s new Beacon system and whether or not it’s an invasion of people’s privacy.
For those of you who don’t know, Beacon is part of Facebook’s new advertising push, and it is designed to broadcast your online purchases and rentals to your friends through the FB newsfeed. Online retailers can sign up to the system so that, for example, when I buy a coffee mug from Store X, a little item shows up in my newsfeed letting people know that I just bought said coffee mug.
The question is: does tracking and publishing your online shopping habits constitute invasion of privacy? I think that it wouldn’t if they’d implemented it differently. As it is, opting out of the service is difficult, hidden, and on a site-by-site basis. In other words, opting out of the service means going to the checkout screen at all participating retailers and unchecking a box. Then doing so again whenever new retailers sign up.
Regardless, go check out my post and let me know what you think.
I missed the Scott Adams book blurb contest
See, this is what happens when I don’t stay caught up in my feedreader. This post sat at the bottom of the whole mess until today when I deliberately looked for it.
I knew to look for it because yesterday Scott Adams posted the winners and some of the more miserable losers of the contest. I am extremely jealous. Had I known about this contest, I would have entered immediately, enthusiastically, and frequently.
I could have done way better than some of the winners. In fact, one of the winners outright steals a pretty classic take home joke:
“I was so upset when Grandad passed away from a Viagra overdose…It took us two weeks to nail the lid down on the coffin. I thought I’d never laugh again, until I read “STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN”. Scott Adams cures the jaded.”
Shame on you, John Robinson. And shame on you, Scott Adams for giving him a prize.
I think my first submission would have been something like this:
“Reading this book feels exactly like reading Scott Adams’ blog, except with less mayonnaise. What, how do YOU read blogs?”
and then next maybe “did anyone order a Pizza?”, because that’s always a good question to ask.
That said, there were a lot of good winners. Here are some of my favorites:
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
(Wins a framed original Dilbert strip)
“‘What a perfect companion for my afternoon milk bath,” I thought while picking up this little gem on my way home from work. Within the hour I had laughed myself into a neck-deep tomb of butter. My wife came in, sipping her eggnog, and topped me with meringue.”
Nicolas Feia
The next 25 winners get a signed copy of STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN!
1. (First runner up)
Like a diligent little dung beetle, Adams slogs through the online jungle searching for fresh nuggets of news to polish into his daily blog entries. Some people say you can’t polish a turd, but after reading this book, I’d say they’re just not rubbing hard enough.Matt Nelson
——–
2. As a smokin’ hot woman, I found this book hilariously funny and I’d seriously consider making out with any guy I saw reading it.
Diana Wales
——–
16. A delightful read…it has everything; humor, words, dangling participles, and did I detect a hint of nutmeg?
Chris Bachman
And then, I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is not a winner:
Before I found this, I was a pathetic, depressed, underappreciated, overworked, sexually impotent, joyless shell of a man. Now, I’m all those things with a funny book.
Kevin (disqualified)
Less blogging, more Twittering
I was talking with my mom the other day, who mentioned somewhat offhand that I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to.
This is completely true, and it has to do with a number of factors. I’d say number one is that I tend to do a lot of blogging for work at the Web Community Forum, Blog Business Summit, and InFlightHQ blogs. Reason number two is linked with reason number three: I’m tending to write longer posts less frequently because…
Reason number three is that a lot of thoughts that used to sift through my head for a day until they became blog posts now reach a quicker outlet in Twitter.
If signing up for Twitter and following me there seems too daunting, you can always load this page and check the sidebar for my latest five tweets ——>
That said, I am making an effort to blog here a bit more often again. So don’t go anywhere.
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