Evening Reading: 5/4/09

So Now I Actually Know What They’re Talking About: I’ve seen all these articles about waterboarding, without really knowing what it is. Some reporter bet he could withstand 15 seconds of it. Think he made it? Take a look.

Girl Power Department: Dr. Isis at the Science Blogs is doing a really cool series called the Letters to Our Daughters Project, in which accomplished female scientists write letters of advice to young women considering a career in science. As the father of two daughters who would be thrilled to see them pursue and enjoy a career in science, I think this is interesting and worthwhile. Here’s a excerpt from the first one:

About a year later a classmate turned to her and called her a bitch. She thanked him for noticing, and then related how she had not reached her mother’s level of “bitchdom” yet. He said nothing more, and did not try to insult her the rest of the year. She came home from school empowered rather than insulted.

Here’s an excerpt from the second and most recent installment:

Fortunately for me as a smart girl, my family and my teachers never told me that I could not be who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Amen. I have consistently told my girls they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. They aren’t going to (and shouldn’t) choose a career just because I want them to, so they might as well do something that makes them happy. I like to expose them to stories about smart, cool women who chose their path, as opposed to having it chosen for them.

We Came to the Pyramids: Speaking of Isis, there’s this on the day before the 5th day of May:

Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child.
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin’ rain.

If Kafka Did Airports: This is really funny (via Will Truman):

Do Bears Poop in the Woods Department: Yes, yes a million times yes. Like every other thing in the Web 2.0 space. But as far as I can tell they haven’t sought out the overhype.

Burma-Blog: I would’ve guessed it was Texas. Oh, that’s right, we’re still a state.

Writing blog posts
Well you can dream
That they’ll be
On Techmeme
Burma-Blog

Caveman General Says: That some dinosaurs survived the asteroid cataclysm. I wonder if it was Space Invaders that got ’em. Or maybe this:

dinosaurs

Speaking of the Surgeon General: Just remember that “the Surgeon General has one lung and a voicebox but he could still kick your sorry ass.”

Mythbusting Department: I love the epic battles between fairy tales and scientists.

Deep Art Ment: I go to great lengths to avoid all ads. DVR, XM Radio, Adblock Plus, you name it. Yet I like to read old Sears catalogs (I bought two from the 60’s off of eBay a few years ago) and old print ads. Here are some ads you won’t see anymore. And here’s a neat list of vintage illustrations.

Now I Can’t Eat that Either: Want to know how much sugar is in that healthy dish you’re about to consume?

Nice Monkey: On the other hand, some teas allegedly increase your metabolism. I’m not sure I buy it, but it makes me feel better about the Arizona Diet Peach Tea monkey I carry around on my back.

The Hunt for Gollum: Not Your Father’s Home Movie

I noted the other day that Cassidy and I are reading The Hobbit together. It, along with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was a defining moment in my early reading years. I’ve been looking forward to sharing these books with Cassidy, and we are having a blast. She has not seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, and I told her that we would watch each movie together after reading the book. Just the other night we were lamenting the fact that there is not a movie version of The Hobbit.

Now, thanks to a dedicated director and a bunch of very talented actors/volunteers/fans, there is a very well-done movie inspired by these books that we can use to whet our appetites. In our reading, we are just past the point where Bilbo Baggins finds the ring and escapes from Gollum and the goblins, with some help from the eagles. So Cassidy knows about Gollum and the ring.

Filmmaking is not like journalism. Unlike the ever narrowing gap between traditional journalists and bloggers, citizen filmmakers have not narrowed the gap between themselves and their Hollywood counterparts. In fact, I think the difference between a Saturday night made for Sci-fi Channel movie and a Hollywood feature film is bigger than the difference between a good blogger and the New York Times. Words all look the same and stand in their own merits. Movies are multi-media events, where cinematography, special effects and other factors have a lot to do with the end result. Accordingly, even talented actors look bad in a film with no production budget.

Which makes it very hard for independent films to measure up.

The Hunt for Gollum is a very pleasant exception to this rule. This is an excellent 40-minute film, in HD no less. The fight scenes were excellently filmed, choreographed and acted. I really enjoyed the entire thing, and intend to watch it again- with Cassidy.

Take a look. But be quick, because there’s no guarantee that some walking bad decision at New Line Cinema, who owns the rights to the Lord of the Rings movies, won’t try to squelch this little labor of love, and all the good publicity it will generate. I hope that doesn’t happen.

Because it is a cool and well made film.

Good and Bad News for Old MediaSmart Servers

I was a very early adopter of the HP Media Smart Server. I bought an EX475 model, upgraded the storage to 4 terabytes and haven’t looked back. Until, that is, I noted that the new version of the MediaSmart Server software (which includes the iPhone media streamer among other goodies) was not compatible with the older models.

That was a bummer.

But today I noted in my feed reading that someone has hacked a way to install the new software on the old machine. I’ve built computers from parts, and I hacked my Mac Mini right after I bought it. So I figured I was good to go.

Until I saw the required steps.

Are you kidding me? That’s looks about on the scale of building a space shuttle in your garage.

I don’t really need the software update. But if I did, I’d buy a new server from Amazon for $585, and move my bigger hard drives to that box. Compared to all that work, $585 seems like a great deal.

Evening Reading: Rational Swine Flu Edition

One of the most annoying problems of modern journalism is the trend, born out of competition for attention, to overstate everything. To create some headline that stands out from the crowd, and as a result occasionally stands out from the truth. The result is that headlines that used to read like encyclopedia topics now read like used car ads. That’s annoying enough when it concerns the newest Web 2.0 application that is somehow going to “kill” Google. It’s inexcusable when it involves a strain of flu that could kill a bunch of people.

I live about three blocks from the (now temporarily closed) school attended by the girl (thankfully recovering) who had Houston’s first confirmed case of Swine flu. All three of my kids go to a school that is literally right beside that school. So, yeah, I’m pretty interested in getting reliable information about the Swine flu.

There’s a lot of bad information flying around out there. Here’s where I’m getting my Swine flu information.

First, I ignore 100% of the stuff I see on Twitter. All that talk about Twitter as a reliable source of breaking information has been debunked. Photos of planes in a river, yes. Information about a developing public health hazard, not so much. Unfortunately, Twitter is not the only place to see panic-inducing reports. Major media is doing its part too. In fact, I completely tune out, figuratively and literally, the TV coverage.

The first place I look, and probably my number one favorite daily read even before the Swine flu story, are the Science Blogs (About page; RSS feed). I enjoy their scientific topics all the time, and I find the various science blog writers to be generally level-headed, informative and super-smart without being eggheads. And in at least one case, super-smart and pretty (Good heavens Miss Sakamoto – you’re beautiful!).

So what have the scientists taught me so far. . .

First, that it is always better to be safe than sorry:

By raising the pandemic threat level to phase 5 have done something very important: served notice that it’s time to mobilize resources in the event this virus shows sustained transmission in several countries. The severity of the disease it produces doesn’t have to be extremely serious or lethal for a widespread outbreak of flu in a community to do a lot of damage in productivity, economic loss and quality of life. It’s the job of public health agencies to warn communities this might happen and so they can prepare to manage the consequences.

They’ve taught me what the WHO pandemic levels mean:

Phase 5: characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short. This is the key–Phase 5 is a signal to governments to get their act together, because the shit is about to hit the fan.

More, including a handy chart, here.

And that it’s not a good idea to start tossing antibiotics at everyone at the first sign of trouble:

We wouldn’t want to resistance to evolve when, overwhelmingly, most cases will resolve on their own (and without extensive hospitalization).

I got a little background on the name thing. As an aside, those who are getting their panties in a wad over what we call this disease are, in my opinion, idiots. Period. It’s not about pork, it’s about people. And do those dumbasses really think it’s ever going to be known by any other name?

I’ve learned why this variant is resistant to certain antiviral drugs. I’ve read a little about the genetic history of the virus, and why that is important. And I learned about the Flu Wiki, and about a 2007 outbreak in Ohio.

I read a legitimate reason not to panic, but to be a tad nervous:

The real bad news is that since this is a new flu part of which (flu has different parts that may have different histories) only recently entered the human environment, there might be a slightly higher than we would like to have chance that this flu, while it swaggers around the human population making people sick, will recombine with one or more other flu viruses that are already out there with very nasty results.

As a bonus, they sometimes call an appropriate bullshit on other media sources:

As my readers know, I hate the Huffington Post’s “science and health” reporting. The main reason is that they approach health and science the same way they approach politics: ideologically. I have no problem with people holding particular political ideologies. My medical partners and I have very different political views, but we all practice the same science-base medicine, and that’s what unites us (that, and our daily kumbaya sessions). But science in service of ideology is always problematic.

Here’s the latest- on the questionable benefit of travel and border restrictions.

Another good source of information is Harvard Medical School (even if for some insane reason they want you to buy their full report):

The initial symptoms of this flu virus are like those of the regular, annual flu viruses: fever, muscle aches, runny nose, and sore throat. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may be more common with this swine flu than with the regular flu. If this epidemic hits your community and you develop flu-like symptoms, it is likely your doctor will take samples from your throat or material you cough up and send them to the
st
ate public health laboratory for testing.

Of course, the CDC’s web page is also a reliable source of information, that is updated regularly.

We need to have reliable information about the Swine flu. Rather than extreme headlines from both ends of the spectrum, we need reporting right down the middle. The sources that do that will do better in the long run than those who toss up used car ads in the name of attention. We deserve better than that.

Getting the Picture with TweetPhoto

I’ve used TwitPic to link photos to my Twitter posts almost as long as I have been a semi-active Twitter user. I like applications that do one thing, simply and well. Sort of like Foxmarks before they ruined it, but that’s another story. TwitPic works perfectly for my purposes. It’s embedded within Tweetie, my preferred and only iPhone Twitter application. I also like the TwitPicGrid in small doses.

Today, I read about TweetPhoto, a new Twitter photo sharing application (isn’t it great when multiple developers fight to see who can give away stuff to more people?). At first blush it looks like TweetPhoto suffers from the internet stats obsession (who saw my photo, god-awful trending tags, etc.) that I most affirmatively do not share, but let’s take a closer look.

Once you sign in with your Twitter credentials, you get a nice looking upload screen.

That seems like a lot of work compared to the Tweetie/TwitPic integration or the integrated Trunc.it photo sharing via TwitterGadget, my Twitter app of choice. When you upload the photo, a box pops up asking if you want to push the photo to Facebook too. Nope, I don’t. The app then adds a Twitter post with a photo link to your Twitter stream.

OK, that’s fine and dandy. But it’s no different than TwitPic. Let’s see what else TweetPhoto has to offer. It shows me how many times my photo has been viewed, but (1) I don’t really care and (2) so does TwitPic. You can enlarge the photo, as you can on TwitPic. You can retweet it, which is a feature that’s not important to me, but one that TwitPic doesn’t have. And you can mark favorites.

Test Photo: 1970 in the Astrodome

It geo-tags photos posted via a mobile phone. I emailed a photo to test out the geo-tagging, but it hasn’t shown up on my TweetPhoto page 20 minutes after I emailed it. Hopefully that’s a glitch. If not, that’s not good. Time is everything online, just like offline.

The My Friends Photos tab leads to a page where you can see other TweetPhoto users’ photos and invite your friends to join (I don’t like my chances). You can supposedly show photos posted by your Twitter friends, but the app said I didn’t have any Twitter friends. It may be that this option only shows photos posted by your Twitter friends who also use TweetPhoto- which would be of limited value. The Public Stream looks like it shows other photos posted via TweetPhoto. Again, that’s not as interesting as TwitPicGrid. You can upload photos via email, which is nice, but, once again, not as easy as the Tweetie/TwitPic combination.

Navigation between those tabs was very Twitter-like (e.g., slow).

TweetPhoto is well-designed, and it has some neat features. But it’s not evolutionary enough to supplant the incumbents. Maybe like the rest of the online world, it is betting that the general population continues to flock to Twitter, so it can make its bones with new Twitter users. Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell.

Evening Reading: 4/30/09

There are Some Who Call Me Tim Department: Here’s how 10 iconic tech products got their name. I didn’t know that Firefox started out as Firebird.

Adventures in Victim Retaliation: Here’s the hilarious story of how some dude punked the guy who stole his laptop via remote access. He should have let the guy keep it and started a blog with daily updates and live webcam feeds, particularly since the police refused to swing at the softball he lobbed at them.

Living Deliberately: This fellow suffered through 2 long weeks without Twitter in the name of journalism. I think there are pockets of Twitter that function as a free-form message board, if you manage your follows well, but the larger platform is without a doubt a self-promotion and spam fest.

Good Mashup Department: This is pretty funny. Star Trek, Lost style. The funniest Star Trek parody ever were the Star Trek cats segments in the old Robotman cartoon.

Stupidity for Traffic: This is a really stupid headline. Maybe Palm is having issues with the Pre, but why don’t we act like grownups and see how it works before we bury it. The crap people do for attention really amazes me (as I give them attention, thereby rewarding hyperbolic behavior).

Fringe Movies Department: Here’s a list of the top 10 classic midnight movies. I’ve seen all of them, except the first one. I love Rocky Horror, and I thought Eraserhead was worse than horrible.

Evernote Department: Ron tells us how to encrypt notes in the most wonderful Evernote. I like this feature, as I migrate more and more of my data into Evernote. Ron needs to stop posting new tips and answer my question about sub-folders.

The E Word: Here are some educational web sites for kids that are fun. Hey, where’s Webkinz on this list! Here are some good math apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch. And here are some Web 2.0 apps for learning.

What We Need Here is a Boycott: So PC World not only does the annoying partial feed thing, it also breaks up some articles into many separate pages. I’d love to know what they think are the essential iPhone apps, but I’m not going to click that hard. Here is my list, on one handy page. Without ads. Imagine that.

What is that Bald Spot in the Distance: The universe is so flat you can stand on a sardine can and see the back of your head.

Like Wimpy’s Hamburger Money: Looks like the final release candidate for Windows 7 will be here on Tuesday. Thankfully, I’m running the beta on an old laptop with no data I care about on it.

Welcome Wagon: I’m really glad to see Seth Finkelstein on Twitter (follow him here). I just wish he’d use it more and talk with other non-BigHeads like me. Twitter needs more Seths and less celebrities.

Defrosting Windows Department: Here’s a handy way to kill frozen Windows applications.

Good New Music: I dig this new Weinland record. Here’s Sunken Eyes, and here’s the Neilish I’m Sure It Helps. Buy it here.

Chiseled in Stone: The great Vern Gosdin died recently. I loved his eighties country records and The Gosdin Brothers’ Sounds of Goodbye is indeed an overlooked classic. Groover’s Paradise has an MP3. So does Setting the Woods on Fire. The Adios Lounge has a story.

TIVO Deathwatch Department: I haven’t updated my TIVO Deathwatch in a while because I thought TIVO was already dead. Now I’m holding out hope for a resurrection in the form of this new DirecTV TIVO. The question, of course, is how do we know this isn’t a Lucy football move, that will end up with DirecTV abandoning TIVO again?

I’d Be Happy with One: Here’s a list of 10 ways to be useful on Twitter. My list would be number 5 written ten times.

Scary and Funny: io9 has a good write up on Supernatural. Supernatural is a very well written show. The scary episodes are generally really scary (particularly for TV), and the occasional comedic episodes are almost always hilarious.

More Stating of the Obvious: In the second stating the obvious study of the week, some egghead got paid to determine that employees will find ways around corporate firewalls. Wow, I’d never have guessed that. I wonder if alcoholics drink more beer than meerkats?

No Gander in Sight Department: OK, this is the kind of bullshit thing that infuriates me. It’s perfectly fine to crap all over Christians, but say anything even remotely non-positive about any other group and the world stops for a gigantic protest. I’m no bible beater, but this sort of crap enrages me. Fully.

If This Isn’t an Omen, What Is Department: The Newspaper Association of America is going online-only.

Luke Needs to Study Harder. Some little girl gets inspired by some Globetrotters song or whatnot and rocks an IQ of 156.

Safety in Math: Here’s why you only have to worry about the little monsters in your closet.

Cry Baby Department: So Microsoft wants to give us all free PC security products, and we have to worry about other companies crying about it. Seems to me that any lawmaker who wants to force consumers to have to pay for what they could otherwise get for free isn’t doing us any favors. I say any company should be able to give away anything it wants, without penalty.

Celebrity of the Day: Everybody is bleating about Sarah Palin joining Twitter. She has over 10,000 followers and follows a whopping 45 people. When did Twitter turn into People Magazine?

Rich Men with Clubs: If you like golf, change sports. If for some reason you are unwilling to do that, this looks like an interesting golf game for your iPhone.

Once You Go Mac: Here’s a very interesting read about a guy’s switch to Mac after a lifetime of PC use.

Why Slacker Radio May Become My Music App of Choice

After seeing and ignoring references to Slacker Radio for a long time, I recently came across a pretty positive review and decided to take a look. While I am a long-time and loyal Pandora user, I’m a big believer in multiple consumer choices. I’m glad I decided to take the Slacker Radio plunge. I don’t know if it will supplant Pandora as my favorite online music source, but it might. What was once a Pandora landslide is now too close to call.

Here’s Kent’s Vinyl, my classic rock station for you to sample while you enjoy this exciting post. Or if you prefer, my alternative country station.

Here’s what I like about Slacker Radio. First and foremost, I like the way you create and customize a station. You start with a single song or artist. Like any sane person, I started my classic rock station with the Allman Brothers. Then I added the Grateful Dead. I really like the list of allegedly similar artists (I say allegedly because you can’t get much father from the Dead than the Eagles (see image below)) that appears on the right hand side, where you can quickly select additional artists to seed your station.

I also like the lack of ads and the ability to skip as many songs as you want, which features are available with the paid “Plus” subscription ($4.00 a month, paid annually). With that plan, you’re supposed to be able to access detailed artist information and song lyrics, but I couldn’t get the lyrics feature to work in Firefox. It worked in Internet Explorer.

The thing that keeps me running back to Pandora is the music genome thing- where the application selects songs based on the tempo, tonality, arrangement, etc. of the songs you indicate you like. There are a lot of songs I would like out there by bands I don’t know. Pandora does a great job of exposing me to songs I really like by bands I know little or nothing about. I don’t know if the Slacker Radio algorithm will do as well, but so far I have been pleased by the selection. For example, the third song that played on my classic rock station was Sea of Joy by Blind Faith- a song I love.

I also like the ability to “fine tune” your station. By selecting the appropriate level, you can tell the app how much you’re interested in songs from other artists, how many deep cuts you want to hear and, most importantly, if you want old songs, new songs or a combination. Since 95% of my favorite classic rock songs were recorded prior to 1978, I chose older. Some of my favorite bands have kept on truckin’ beyond my loyalty.

On the downside, Slacker Radio’s web design is not particularly intuitive, in a Photobucket sort of way. I also noticed a lot of hangs when navigating between options in Firefox. In fact, I found the navigation to be profoundly difficult, mostly due to page freezes, accompanied by the never-ending little spinning circle (you’ll know it when you see it). Again, I didn’t have these problems in Internet Explorer, but I’m not going to change browsers for one music app.

The iPhone app is excellent. I was able to listen to my stations over wi-fi and 3G with little lag. In fact, I connected my iPhone to the auxiliary input on the audio system in my truck and listened to my station on the way home from work.

If they (or I) get this Firefox thing figured out, and if the algorithm works, Slacker Radio has a chance to supplant my beloved Pandora as my music app of choice.

What Will Office 2010 Look Like?

Here are a few early screenshots of Microsoft’s Office 2010. Candidly, I find the whole ribbons thing to be an exercise in chaos and frustration. But I’m not sure it would matter if they were as intuitive as dodging snowballs.

Why? Because here’s a screenshot of what I expect my Office 2010 to look like.

I don’t know how hard Google is chasing the corporate market, but if it has serious designs on attracting business users, it simply must implement some sort of tracked changes or version/compare feature. The absence of that feature is the primary thing keeping me from using Google Docs as my primary word processor at home, but it is an indispensable thing for business users.

Here are a few other tweaks that would make Google Docs more attractive to me.

There should be a way to synch your iPhone calendar and contacts with the corresponding Google app without affecting- or even touching- your Exchange synchs. I tried to synch my phone and the Google apps and ended up with multiple instances of the same contacts and events, which was a pain to sort out. In sum, it was an unmitigated disaster. I’m not going to risk jacking up my much more important Exchange synchs, and no big company is going to make it easy to do three-way synchs, for security/paranoia reasons. But it would be cool to have my iPhone synch separately with Exchange and the Google apps. It would even be acceptable to have contacts and calendar entries pushed out to the Google apps, without the ability to move data the other direction. But all of this needs to happen without doing anything unpleasant to the Exchange synchs.

Gmail needs to finally figure out a way to suppress the “on behalf of” business when your email is read in Outlook. I’d be happy to use the Gmail interface, but I want to use my existing email account. I’m not willing to trust Google as the sole archive of my old emails, but MailStore Home looks like an acceptable way to archive email locally.

It would also be great if Gmail allowed folders for us dinosaurs who are more comfortable with folders than tags. I think this is a design limitation, as opposed to a philosophical position on Google’s part, but I have no basis for that other than intuition.

Gmail should add an option to have spam deleted immediately, without ever being seen, and to have your trash folder emptied more frequently. I’d have it emptied every day. The best thing about Gmail is the spam filter. I want to supercharge it and let it make all spam invisible to me all the time. I’ve never noticed a legitimate email in my spam folder, but I don’t care if there is. If someone wants to contact me badly enough, they’ll write again.

I also need the ability to customize the links at the top of the Google apps page.

I’m not going to use Picasa for my photos, no matter what. I want to replace that link with a link to Flickr or Photobucket. I also want a link to iGoogle up there, as well as links to my internet starting page and my Content Master page. In sum, I need more flexibility to customize the page layout and content.

Finally, Google needs to take a page from Lost and pledge not to give up on Google Docs like it did on Google Notebook and various other apps. It’s difficult to migrate to a watering hole that could dry up at any time.

I’m close to going all Google Docs all the time, but I need a little more incentive.

Pogo-plugging into a Private Cloud

My Pogoplug came today. I opened it about 15 minutes ago. Here’s the skinny.

Setup was almost as simple as advertised. I plugged the Pogoplug in, connected it to a network switch in my study, and got an immediate green light (that’s good). I connected a new Seagate Free Agent hard drive, and activated my Pogoplug via the Pogoplug web site. With a couple of minor exceptions, it was as easy as could be:

1. It was hard to read the tiny Pogoplug identification number on the attached sticker. A quick look with a lighted magnifying glass revealed that what I thought was a letter was in fact a number (no big deal- it took maybe a minute longer to reenter the number); and

2. I had to right click and “safely remove” the hard drive from my computer after I formatted it before attaching it to my Pogoplug. I never, ever do the safely remove thing, but the help box in the Pogoplug activation window suggested I do so (also no big deal, though it cost me an extra 10 minutes or so).

Once you get everything connected, you can log in to your private cloud via the Pogoplug web page.

The interface is perfectly acceptable, even if not perfect.

pogoplug1

The only semi-bummer is that you can’t drag items into a new folder via the web interface. If you download the Pogoplug software (see the link at the top), your Pogoplug drive will appear in Windows Explorer, just like any other drive.

There is software for Windows and OS X and a beta version for the four people who actually use Linux for this sort of thing. From there, you can presumably drag and drop uploads and drag items into folders. Very nice idea, but I couldn’t get it to work. It could be another router problem. If so, this is getting old fast.

Sharing via your Pogoplug is a mixed bag. You can share entire folders with selected people via an email authorization procedure. A neat feature is the ability to share the contents of a folder via an RSS feed. Here’s mine. You can’t share items individually (only via sharing an entire folder), and you can’t generate direct links to serve media in blog posts and web pages. At a minimum, Pogoplug needs an embeddable media player, like the elegant one at divShare.

There is a free iPhone app, which installed quickly and allowed instant views of the files on my Pogoplug, over wi-fi and 3G. I could easily access my photos and MP3s. Uploading a photo from my iPhone to my Pogoplug was easy and fast. I didn’t see an option for uploading anything other than a photo.

Overall, I am pretty impressed with Pogoplug, and it will definitely replace my current private cloud setup.

Evening Reading: Spring Cleaning Edition

This afternoon and tonight I am beginning on my quest for a more manageable email inbox, Delicious inbox and, most importantly, Google Reader starred items list. Here are some specifics:

1. Email: I am a terrible emailer. Anyone who is related to me will attest to this. So my email gets backed up for weeks. I have emails from people I know, bands I’d love to write about and developers that wanted me to preview their now public applications sitting in my inbox. No more. I’m going to move things out of there from now on. Folders or the trash can. That’s my plan.

2. Delicious: I am not a big user of Delicious, but it is a good way to save sites I see outside of Google Reader and for other Delicious users to send me links. If anyone- as opposed to only other Delicious users- could send me links via my Delicious inbox, I’d use the service more. As it is, without a major overhaul I think Delicious is dying on the vine. As such, I need to get stuff cleared out of there. For the time being, I’ll still check my Delicious inbox. One useful thing about the Delicious Firefox add-on is that it notifies you of new items in your Delicious inbox.

3. Google Reader: Google Reader, both natively and as a part of my Content Manager page, is a big part of my online experience. I use starred items as my primary holding place for both things I want to read later and items I want to write about later. I wish I liked Read It Later better, so I could move my deferred reading list there and save the starred items for writing topics. As is, I have hundreds of starred items, and they are about to get un-starred. Really interesting things will get added to this post for your benefit. Everything else is going to be tossed out, and I intend to clean out my starred items list at least weekly. We’ll see how it goes.

So here’s the stuff that made the cut.

Maybe I should use more of these. Right now I use Windows Live Writer, and that’s it. I think my list would be a lot different. Or I could come up with a bunch of form emails. On a related note, here’s someone’s list of the top 10 tools for your blog or web site. Be careful with those iPhone site optimizers. Many people, including me, would rather read a site in its regular format via Safari than to be forced into an alternate iPhone format. I used Intersquash here for a while and it worked great, but I decided I didn’t want to force people into the iPhone layout. Last and maybe not least, here are 25 blogger widgets.

Trivial Pursuit has come to the iPhone. It was one of our favorite family games when Mom was alive. My sister generally kicked out butts, but we kept trying. Wheel of Fortune is also available. So is everybody’s favorite bar game, shuffleboard.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff at Rules of Thumb.org. For example, did you know that “a farting horse will never tire; a farting man is one to hire”?

Here’s a free way to make nice business cards at home.

Photography Aisle: Want to take better portraits? How about a free plug-in to make your photos look like film? Here’s another app to help mask the crappiness of the iPhone’s camera. Or you can stitch a few crappy iPhone photos together and make a bigger crappy photo. Here are 10 cool to bizarre effects you can add to your photos, and here are 10 more image generators. If you, like me, think that Photoshop is harder than writing limericks in Latin, here are some tutorials. And some more, for watercolor effects. And if you make it through all that and still have your senses about you, here is someone’s list of the 100 most popular Photoshop tutorials.

How about some cool magnet tricks?

If you don’t want to write a script to protect your email address from spammers, you can use Scrim. Here’s mine, so protected.

Now I know why I was so underwhelmed after browbeating my mom to buy me some seamonkeys. I was expecting them to look like the picture on the back of the comic. Of course that disappointment was mild compared to those x-ray glasses.

PBS has a site for streaming some of its shows. So now you don’t need a TV to watch boring shows (Ken Burns’ excellent films excepted).

I sure wish I’d had an iPhone in high school. We had to buy the Cliff’s Notes, and sometimes they made us read books that didn’t have Cliff’s Notes. How wrong was that?

Ron’s Evernote Tips has a regular supply of great ways to use the excellent Evernote application.

So YouTube has a new design for channels. I’m not sure what channels are in that context. Let me go look. . . . OK, here’s my channel, with the paltry amount of videos I have added. I like the fact you can edit the page from the page, sort of like My Yahoo. I don’t like the fact that some asshole label keeps making YouTube strip the music from my little videos. I think I’m done with YouTube until it outlives the music industry. Maybe I should take a look at Fliggo.

Here’s a roundup of VHS to DVD converters. I say if you have a ton of VHS tapes you want to convert, buy one of the Panasonic dual decks and if not, take the tapes to a shop and have someone do the conversion for you.

I’m finding out that I do a lot of stuff wrong on Twitter. Another thing I do wrong is unfollow people who don’t follow me back, unless it’s a big media news source or someone really, really interesting. Here’s an app that can help with that. I like the way it loads over your Twitter background.

If you are a southpaw like me and two of my three kids, you might be interested in this mouse. A C-Note is a lot for a mouse, but using a right-handed mouse is like sitting at those right-handed desks in primary school.

If you want a personal cloud, there’s the really hard way, the not quite ready for primetime way, and what looks like the very easy way. I’ve ordered a Pogoplug and will review it when it arrives.

Recall my pet rules. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like pets. And I am scared to death of people who are obsessed with cats. I love cats. I just don’t base my life on mine. I’m crazy enough on my own.

Yes, my email gets backed up. But I don’t really think Tweetdecking it would make me more efficient.

If the new iPhone comes out this summer as rumored and hoped, I told Cassidy I’d give her my current iPhone. What I didn’t tell her is that I would put a big heap of this on it first. If she doesn’t like that, there’s always this.

Daily Booth makes it easy to do that picture a day thing. I don’t know that I’d ever do that, but I think it’s a cool little app.

ReadWriteWeb does love the jargon. Cloud agents?

jjra This may be the coolest album cover I’ve ever seen. I can’t find any songs to sample, but you can hear snippets at Amazon.

Here’s a list of iPhone accessible news sites. I think dedicated apps is the way to go, but if not, an iPhone friendly design is a decent alternative.

Here’s a less than impossible way to make a favicon.

I love the idea behind Songfacts, but it bums me out that one of my favorite REM songs was written as a tribute to Leonard Cohen. Sorry, but I do not get the whole Leonard Cohen thing. Just like I think MacArthur Park is a stupid song (though I dig Jimmy Webb), despite the arguments I hear from some of my musician buddies.

This article sheds some light on why Taj Mahal‘s publishing company is called Cheraw S.C., Inc. I’m from Cheraw, and have always wondered about that.