Here are the songs that played on my awesome Pandora station while I wrote this post:  The Lemonheads, My Drug Buddy; Hackensaw Boys, Sun’s Work Undone; David Andrews, Everything to Lose; Steve Earle, I Don’t Want to Lose You; Elliott Smith, Ballad of Big Nothing; Hilken Mancini & Chris Colbourn, Situations Count; Whiskeytown, Houses on the Hill; Jon Nolan, Mary (Won’t You Come Along); Son Volt, Driving the View; Paul Westerberg, What a Day (for a Night); Whiskeytown, Under Your Breath; Danny Scherr, Fade Me In; The Foxymorons, The Lazy Librarian’s Son; Cracker, Sunday Train; Fingers Cut, Rough Dream; The Shins, Gone for Good; John Hiatt, Ethylene; Elliott Smith, Rose Parade; Ben Harper, Diamonds on the Inside.  Tell me that’s not an excellent set?  Here’s the link, if you want to listen.

Ed Bott on the non-TIVO DirecTV DVR.  I’ve had a few of them, since I convinced DirecTV to switch out my HD-TIVOs for free.  They are not nearly as good as TIVO’s, primarily because they don’t do suggestions.  But I haven’t had much trouble with them so far.

Frank Paynter on Mint: “I would like to see this application released and supported by a responsible, federally insured financial institution. I’d feel a lot better about establishing a Mint customer relationship through Citi than I would through a private firm that put their eggs in the TechCrunch basket.”

Ian Delaney on Facebook applications.  He does a good job of presenting the pros and cons of Facebook as a way to connect with others.  While I’m no Facebook fan, I agree that for most people, Facebook is an addition to, not an alternative to, personal contact.

J.D. Roth has a good read on beating procrastination.  I’m going to read it…later.

Liz Strauss has 7 Secrets to a Fiercely Loyal Community of Readers.  Good, solid advice.

Tapedeck.Org lets you relive all those mix tapes you made for all those girls all those years ago.

Tom Evslin has a great read on the meaning of livestrong.  Roger Ehrenberg has another great read on living right.  Posts like Roger’s are why I consider myself a student of the blogosphere.

Amy Gahran is checking out Jott.  I got bashed a couple of months ago for saying Jott is more useful than Twitter.  I still feel that way. {Ducking}

Citizen’s Literature: Bill Liversidge’s book is about to come out.  I think it’s cool that Bill stayed the course in the face of obstacles from traditional publishing.

Doc Searls asks if marketing can be conversational.  I have my doubts too.  Conversation with a hidden agenda is not really conversation.  I think you probably can doctor up marketing to become more interesting by using a conversational template, the same way some ads are more tolerable because they adopt a humor template, a musical template, etc.  But if you are only engaging me to sell me something, we are not having a conversation.

Engadget has a roundup of the Canon EOS 40D reviews.  Must…not…buy.  Must…not…

Shelley Powers has a thoughtful take on the Jena 6.  Doug Karr wishes things had developed a little bit differently.  Jackson Miller has some thoughts as well, as does his sister.  The whole thing just makes me sad.

Many thanks to Michael Walsh for including Newsome.Org in his starter list for online tech!

TVSquad on the new Survivor China.  I’m a pretty big Survivor fan, but it’s too early to tell how this one is going to be.  I was sorry to see Chicken go, and I really didn’t like the waitress from New York.  I think it’s interesting that they pre-selected the tribes, probably to avoid a mis-match that can lead to single tribe domination.

Now that all our computers are full of USB 2 ports, here comes USB 3.

Here’s the thing.  Mint may be the coolest thing since the wheel, but anyone who thinks the average American is going to put his or her financial data (or the names and passwords that allow access thereto) into some online Web 2.whatever application is completely out of touch with mainstream America.  I want someone, anyone, who believes differently to debate me on this topic on one of our podcasts.  Please, I’m begging you.  Paul Stamatiou has a review that discusses Mint’s security measures.

I wonder if these cats know tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Good new music: The Spider Bags.  HearYa has some MP3s.

Can you think of anything more boring than social networking for lawyers?

Beware of Dog:  Pluto goes on the attack.

I don’t use Internet Explorer much, but those of you who do should check out IE7 Pro.  Dwight has the details.

Earl shares my boredom with the traditional tech-centric blogosphere.  At least TechCrunch 40 is over.  That might help a little.  Or maybe not.

My friend Mike Huffington had a frustrating iPhone experience.  It really irritates me when companies demand to collect more personal information than they reasonably need. 

I have concluded that most bloggers post too often.  When I go through my blogroll, I see a lot of quantity and not so much quality.  And while I am still testing the pattern, I have a working theory that the bloggers I enjoy the most post less than the ones I enjoy less.  I suspect this is because many of the people who churn out scads of posts are doing so in an effort to serve ads.  I’ll post more on the marginal utility of blog posts later.

The traditional tech-centric blogosphere bores me to tears.  Is anyone reading this stuff?

If you have a bunch of cassette tapes lying around and would like to convert them to MP3s, here’s a $116 answer.

On a related note, I really want to hear Graham Parker’s version of Chain of Fools off of the very hard to find That’s When You Know CD.  Can anyone help me out?

I was quoted in an article in the Dallas Morning News today.

Here are some Jeopardy mishaps.  Number 7 (SNL) is worth a visit all by itself.

Chris Brogan has some good personal branding tips: “Remember that branding isn’t logos, software, and usernames. It’s about presenting yourself in such a way that people get an impression of you and your value.”  Add an “s” to the end of that sentence, and you’ve just summed up effective personal branding in one sentence.

On a related note, Steven Hodson has a good read on blog improvement.

Claus Valca on finding balance. 

Dwight Silverman on the timeless question of updating drivers.  As a general rule, I update my drivers pretty regularly, even if I’m not experiencing any issues.  I have, however, completely screwed my computer on occasion by doing so.  The most catastrophic example being a failed update of some RAID drivers.  I am SO HAPPY to be rid of RAID.

Neither John Walkenbach nor Jeff Balke dig SpiralFrog.

Why does Bloglines (and random other sites) never finish loading in my (Firefox) browser?  This is very annoying.

Pandora is still hands down the best place in the universe to discover great new music.  Here’s my station.

Susan Getgood has a good read on the campaign to save Battlestar Galactica from a series of bad Sci-Fi Channel decisions.  The frustrating problem is that BSG is on life-support already, so the long breaks almost killed Lost argument won’t work.  And I, too, still miss Farscape, but not 1/3 as much as I still grieve over the premature death of Firefly.  Speaking of the Sci-Fi Channel, TDavid shows us how to discourage comments.  The way to be sticky is to make it easy for people to interact.  Not by making it hard to.

Louis Gray wrote the second funniest sentence of the year the other day, in a post about visiting family and getting schooled by his mom in Wii bowling:

As I battled to pick up splits for spares, she would methodically knock all the pins down – at one point, scoring five straight strikes, much to our joint delight, disillusionment and annoyance.

I so get that.  I can remember getting clobbered by my mom in games I’d played for years, just moments after teaching them to her.  I’d be at once happy for her and furious with her.  It was especially irritating when she pretended not to notice how bad she was kicking my ass.  Those were wonderful times.

Since you asked, the funniest sentence of the week, and perhaps in the history of the blogosphere, is this one from Rory Blyth:

We all would have visited with her on our own, but the four of us – separate or together – are about as organized as a thousand burning squirrels on meth trying to fly a 747 to the moon.

I am just waiting for the chance to use that line on someone.

Om asks the unthinkable question.

Penelope Trunk leaves it on the field more than any other blogger I read.  Her posts about her personal life are as raw and immediate as words can be.  And her 9/11 post is phenomenal.  She’s got stones.  And I mean that as a compliment.

Steven Streight has 9 ways to improve your web site.

Will Wheaton captures a classic family moment.  Our classic family moment, to which the girls have given a Beowulf-worthy mythology through years of retelling, is the time I stepped in cat poop while walking barefoot through the den.  I hopped screaming on one foot to the bathroom and dipped my foot in the toilet to wash off the clinging remnants of said cat poop.  The girls quote lines from that story the way my friends and I used to quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

Jeff Balke on my long awaited Led Zeppelin reunion.  Here’s Stereogum’s take.  Now we just need word of a tour.

More Louis: Great post on internal linking by some tech blogs.  Engadget is, in my way of thinking, an eMagazine more than a blog.  Plus, they have FAR too many posts, so I generally skip Engadget during my daily reading.  Mashable started out as the people’s TechCrunch, but needs to remember that as it gets more and more popular.  The problem, of course, comes down to the prospect of money.  Rather than double linking, I’d call it double ad-serving.  I’d love to know the average duration of those internal link page views.

Larry Borsato talks about a recent focus group in which college students said MySpace is over, Facebook might not last much longer, and their best source for information is word of mouth.  Paul Stamatiou is one college guy who has chilled on Facebook.  Thank goodness there’s all those grown-up bloggers to keep the hype going.

I think there should be a law, with a very stiff penalty for violations, that every person who opines on global warming has to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.  Who do you work for?  Who funds your research?  Who funds whoever funds your research?  Are you a spoon-fed Republican or Democrat?  Do you own a bunch of stock in companies who would be harmed by climate initiatives?  Do you have grandchildren?  The scientific debate around global warming is a complete joke and I don’t think you can believe any of the advocates on either side.  Since I am convinced that American culture and policy favors the dollar over absolutely everything else, I tend to believe that global warming is a real problem, and that the powers that be are trying to muddy the waters a bit longer so they can get even richer.  But I can neither prove nor disprove my theory since the entire conversation is one big ball of conflict and corruption.

Speaking of completely made up stuff.  The MPAA, the RIAA and Major League Baseball should have a televised world championship of bogus numbers.

Nick Carr and Pramit Singh talk about Adblock Plus.  I use it.  I love it.  Like most people, I don’t like ads.  Unlike most bloggers, I think the crash of the ads as the only source of revenue model would be a positive thing.  It would force people to create things with enough value that someone would pay for it.  I was able to get through the day back in Web 1.0 when everything didn’t have to be free.  Less science projects chasing stupid money and more brainpower applied to things that matter would be a step forward.

I’m not buying the analogy.  Mechanics don’t have to give away their services, because they provide a service people will pay for.  Well there’s that, and the fact that they were too smart to give away their services because in every part of business other than Web 2.0 non-paying customers are a bad thing not a good thing.  I’ve been blogging for years.  Other than the nickel I accrued, but never collected, during my month long AdSense experiment, and the occasional Amazon affiliate links to recommended books and records (note the long-present disclaimer in the left column), I’ve never had ads and I’ve made no money (other than via the aforementioned Amazon affiliate links).  If I was trying to make money, blogging would be about the last place I’d start.  Software development is a horse of a different color.  Rather than free (with ads that get blocked and don’t work long-term even if they don’t get blocked), the corner market software industry should go back to the shareware approach of the 1980’s: the donation model.  It is still a viable approach.  I gladly donated to Zen Habits because it provides value to me.

Hugh MacLeod looks back on almost 10 years of cartooning.  He shares 45 random observations.  Here’s one:  “I increasingly find that, as I get older, the only subjects worth writing about are Love, Loss, Religion and Ambition.”

Stowe Boyd muses naively about Facebook as the big corporate business tool that it ain’t.  First of all, one look at just about anybody’s Facebook page will tell you that unless you’re selling beer, iPhones or webcams, there are better ponds to fish for customers.  Secondly, I can think of very few reasons anyone in a real business setting needs to be farting around on Facebook all day, particularly those not in sales or marketing (the blogosphere seems to believe wrongly that 99% of the workforce is involved in one or the other).  Finally, there’s a troubling, though probably true in many cases, assumption that it’s perfectly normal to use Facebook primarily to sell a bill of goods, so to speak, to your “friends.”  Poking for profit.  Or something like that.

Here are 12 Things to do with Coca Cola.  Drinking it is not mentioned.  Randy Morin isn’t a big Coke fan either.  Mike went cold turkey.  I quit sodas cold turkey about 15 years ago.  Went without for about 6 years.  Then I got hooked on Schweppes raspberry ginger ale.  Then back to water for about 5 years.  About 3 years ago, I fell off the water wagon for Snapple Diet Peach Tea.  Like any good junkie, I graduated up to Diet Dr. Pepper, where I sit today.  At some point, it will be cold turkey again.  Rinse.  Repeat.

People seemed to like the kite video.  Here’s a pretty amazing hand shadow show.

TechCrunch has a preview of Delicious 2.0.  All I want is the ability to delete “for” links.  That should take about 30 seconds of coding.

The Positivity Blog has 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People.  I think it’s a really good list.  The biggest reason people in my business are ineffective is the failure to be accessible to the client and keep the client informed.  Not returning that call or email is never, ever the right decision.

Steve Spalding on how to save blogging from itself.  Nail, meet Mr. Hammer:

We jump on every trend, ride every wave, link bait, lambast, lie and kowtow all in hopes that it will drive up our CPM. Everyone needs to make a living, and I am the last person to tell anyone how to do it but I will say that this egotistical sense that we are on some noble quest to save the written word is a load of bull hockey that we need to stop buying into.

Steve has some solutions to ponder as well.  Great post.

Speaking of trying to make money, Twitter seems to be embracing the spam – er – commercial tweet.  Spam on Twitter.  Spitter.

This deserves a post of its own, but I want to point to it right away.  Susan Getgood on kids and social networks.  My two oldest kids, and all of their friends, are absolutely crazy about Webkinz.  The family computer is in my study, and I have watched them play in Webkinz World quite a bit.  Yes, it is sitting in front of a computer, but also yes, my kids who didn’t know a mouse from a monitor 2 years ago are now more computer literate than 75% of my adult friends.  There’s no way they would have allowed me to teach them in 3 years the computer-related stuff they learned via Webkinz in 6 months.  Like any tool, the secret is in moderation.  But I’m a Webkinz fan- of both the experience and the brilliant marketing plan.

TDavid had a thoughtful response to my anti-video blogging post.  TDavid is a smart dude, and when he addresses a topic, I pay attention.  That’s the sort of authority that matters to me- not the faux Technorati kind.

Why do developers feel the need to be sneaky to get their stuff on your computer?  It’s one thing when some company you’ve never heard of quasi-spams your address book.  Newsome’s Axiom:  sign up for more than 3 social networks and, by definition, you are not concerned about privacy.  It’s something else altogether when Microsoft does it.  I really like Live Writer.  I have bashed a lot of people, some of them my friends, for stupidly saying that Google anything is ever going to displace Office.  I have long ago written off and uninstalled Real Player for trying to take over my computer.  Microsoft should know better.

Claus has a good look at the new Live Writer version. Rick Mahn has a Live Writer wishlist.

Ayelet has a good read on effectively using social networks.  She has good, specific advice.  Not just intoxicated fluff like most social network posts.  Dave and Mike, when we pick an EELS guest from my blogroll, Ayelet is my first choice.  She’d be a great guest, and we’d break our own time zone record.

Blinding me with tennis: Brad Feld quotes Thomas Dolby in a post about tennis.  Now that’s what I call range.

Don Dodge has the best primer on network neutrality I’ve read yet.

I don’t really care that there are new iPods.  It doesn’t make me happy or interested.  It doesn’t make me angry or turn me off.  It lies at the perfect center of my apathy.

I think Facebook making profiles public has a lot to do with Facebook trying to generate more traffic and very little to do with knocking down walls and creating an autonomous collective of open and accessible content.  There is a reason why social networks maintain their walls.  It’s their attempt to keep their content from running away.  It’s a corral for the conscripted.

Hayden Shaughnessy on the Facebook vs Blog thing.  I completely agree that a lot of people overstate the depth of the friendship relationship within Facebook.  Shel Israel has also written thoughtfully about this.

Even famous cartoonists get crapped on once in a while.

You may be relieved or horrified to know that there may be money in meat goats.

Guy Kawasaki wants to know if you’re an egomaniac.

TDavid thinks there might be a Led Zeppelin reunion.  I’ve been hoping that would happen for years.  I’m about to get my 3rd wish.  Number 1 will never happen.  That leaves Led Zeppelin to break the tie.

A belated happy anniversary to Warner and his better half.

Earl Moore notes that redheads may be becoming extinct.  That’s sort of a bummer, since everyone knows a woman with red hair gets a +2 bonus.

I am very interested in the evolution of Rick Mahn’s reading list.  Hey Rick, how about more details on your speed reading process?  I could use a tool like that when slogging through my swivel feeds.  I find that when I am short on time or get too far behind in my reading, I make a split-second snap decision based on the title of a post about whether to read the first paragraph or not, to see if there’s something of interest there.  It is, to say the least, an inefficient and occasionally unrewarding way to read feeds.  It also drives home the importance of titles.