Google Charity Department: So Google is thinking about putting Yahoo and Live Search buttons on its home page, huh?  Some folks think that’s charitable.  Maybe, but I tend to think it’s an attempt at a knock-out punch via comparison.  It doesn’t look like Yahoo is very appreciative of the grift.

Milhouse Department:  Eddie Bo, a legendary New Orleans musician, has died at 79.  I love his 1962 hit Check Mr. Popeye.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes also did an excellent cover of that song.

Privacy is Dead:  A couple of people are all jazzed up because Google is going to add Google Analytics to Gmail.  I could sit here for a thousand years and not come up with even one reason why anyone should want Google Analytics embedded in their email application.  We are becoming a nation of chimpanzees while Google plays the Jane Goodall role- for profit.

And Twitter is Thirsty:  Be careful or Twitter may appropriate your meager supply of Google Juice.

Ark in the Andes Department:  Maybe that wasn’t Noah’s Ark we saw.  Maybe it was the Galactica.  If you don’t like science fiction, you’re boring.  If you aren’t boring, you need to subscribe to io9.  Great blog.

Good Bill/Bad Bill Department:  It’s a slippery slope with a fine line, but if there’s a way to severely punish online bullies without catching message boards and other content platforms in the net, I am all for it.  Send a couple of anonymous assholes to jail for a decade or two and maybe everybody will stone up and act like grownups.  Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to create an accurate net.

Revenge of the Nerds Department:  You know that guy you call a Goose?  Well he may kick you ass.  Or your dog’s ass.  Those Canadians are always looking for a fight.

Death by Wikipedia:  Microsoft is going to shutter Encarta.  I remember buying Encarta on a DVD back in the day.  Crazy how far we’ve come.

Bad Things Are Made of This:  Since most people online are lying about who they are anyway, Omegle lets you chat with a stranger with complete anonymity.  Here’s the exciting transcript from my one and only Omegle chat:

You: Hello
Stranger: I SEE WE MEET AGAIN
You: Yes, my name is Fred.
Stranger: me too!
You: Ethyl is my wife, have you seen her?
Stranger: yeh shes in my garden
Stranger: under it
You: with Ricky, no doubt. . .
Stranger: sorry

That was almost as fun as trying to talk to Steve Gillmor on Twitter.

Classic TV Department:  Someone at MTV has lost his mind.  They are actually going to show. . . music videos.

Extreme Coolness:  One of the many reasons I love vintage science fiction is because of the cool covers (seriously).  Harry Borgman, who drew some of them, is blogging.  I want a poster of the cover of Andre Norton’s Daybreak – 2250 A.D. cover.  It was the first science fiction book I read, and it’s still one of my favorites.

MK and T:  I like this post by Marshall Kirkpatrick about Twitter.  We’ll have to see what the secret special features are, but I don’t think I’d pay for my Twitter account.  And I’m not alone, as nothing leads Marshall’s how much would you pay poll with 57% of the votes.  Combined, nothing and less than $5/month have 81%.  Having said that, Marshall makes a compelling case for Twitter’s value.  Twitter has largely replaced my Delicious “popular” feed for purposes of scanning for new post material.  I only have one mild criticism of Marshall’s post.  I hate the phrase “thought leaders,” because implied in that phrase is a decision as to who the thought leaders are, and we all know that on Twitter, like the blogosphere, popular is often confused with smart.  Jason Calacanis is popular.  Seth Finkelstein is smart.  But, sadly, you know who has more influence in the blogosphere.  Here’s a good rule of thumb one of my professors drilled into my head: any time there is a group to be created, the most important question is who decides who is in it.

Bad Counting Department:  PC World has a list of the Top 5 NAS devices, that contains 10 devices.  Bad counting notwithstanding, it’s a good list for those looking to create a private cloud.  I’d move the HP MediaSmart server from number 2 to number 1.

One Down, One to Go:  Google Docs has added a much needed find and replace feature.  That’s great, but if Google wants any significant business traction, it simply must figure out a way to allow tracked changes.  This is an indisputable fact.

Good Memories:  Wolfenstein 3D is out for the iPhone.  I remember countless hours playing that game back in the day.  I want Civilization for the iPhone.  Any chance?

Standing 8 Count Department:  The Drama 2.0 Show lands a hook to the jaw to Mike Arrington and TechCrunch.  I think Mike often defeats his own purpose by acting like a petulant baby, but I still read TechCrunch, simply because it covers stories that interest me.  If Mike’s unwillingness to mange his personal brand hurts TechCrunch’s bottom line, maybe he will realize that you can be lucky, successful and humble.  I’ve never understood why so many of these former-nerds who manage to achieve a high profile in the blogosphere (the blogosphere, for heavens sake) start acting like they think rock stars act.

Kill the People- Just Save the Puppies:  Extremist groups also defeat their own purpose by alienating the undecided- the very demographic they should be trying to appropriate.  When this PETA does one nutty thing after another, like protesting the fact that dogs get killed in a video war game, this PETA is the result.  Philosophically, I am sympathetic to animal rights, but idiotic moves like that make me want to eat a tasty cheeseburger.  Or a dog.  Here, Lucky Dog.  It’s time for dinner.

Worried About the Beaver:  Here are 6 Things You Didn’t Know About the Leave It to Beaver.

Personal Fouls:  If you have tens of thousands of followers and I am unable to engage you in relevant conversation, I will eventually un-follow you.  If you have a few hundred, I will immediately un-follow you.  My Pink Floyd policy required me to remove several people from my list today.

Revisiting Alltop:  I finally got around to setting up my custom Alltop page.  I don’t plan to use Alltop for general feed reading-  Google Reader is the best choice for that.  But I think Alltop will be useful for setting up certain content for easy reference.  For example, my first step was to add feeds to help me get better at Photoshop.  These aren’t feeds I want to read every day, but it will be helpful to aggregate them in one place.  Here are three MyAlltop features that should be implemented right away, each of which would vastly improve its usability: the ability to drag your subscriptions around on the page, for better organization; the ability to have multiple MyAlltop pages or tabs, also for better organization; and the ability to add feeds to your page that aren’t already included in Alltop.

Yes, I Was Right:  I was afraid that this was going to happen.  It’s really too bad the blogging establishment completely ignores me, because if you go back and look, I actually get a lot of stuff right.  Well, except for this.  I didn’t get that right.

Apple Love Department:  My DirecTV HR20 recorder died this week, taking a bunch of saved sporting events, all of my and Cassidy’s “monkey movies” (we had all the original movies and the TV series) and several episodes of the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse and Supernatural with it.  Via the most wonderful AppleTV, I was able to buy and watch all of the lost network episodes- in HD.  It was fast, easy and the picture and sound were perfect.  If the shows were just a little cheaper, I could envision dumping large chunks of my satellite subscriptions for AppleTV.  That’s pretty amazing.

HBO Irritation Department:  Many people have told me that I would love True Blood.  So I am trying to catch up by recording the reruns, but I missed the first several episodes.  So why in the world has HBO elected not to make episodes available in iTunes?  I simply don’t understand that decision.  Unless they do a marathon, I guess I am hosed.

All Woz all the Time:  I hadn’t thought much about Woz since I read an Apple history book a decade or so ago.  And, other than his clips, I’ve never watched a second of Dancing with the Stars.  But Woz is highly entertaining.  He needs his own TV show.  Seriously.  First, he dances through a fractured foot and a bad knee.  Now he’s pulled a hammy.  He may tighten up, but like Archie Bell and the Drells, he just can’t stop dancing.  At a minimum, I want to see Woz on the next Amazing Race.

iPhone Love Fest:  Looks like we may be getting new iPhones this summer.  I hope they don’t waste effort and space by trying to herd us all into the U-Verse.  It would be a mistake for Apple to let ATT use my pretty as a vehicle to increase U-Verse subscriptions.

Have You Been Served:  I use and highly recommend the HP SmartMedia Server.  Power Pack 2 for Windows Home Server, the OS, is now available.

Fear Department:  I just noticed that Signs is on TNT right now.  I think that is one seriously scary movie.  Highly recommended.

No Stupid Names:  Let’s all agree to keep calling it the Sci-Fi Channel, OK?  It looks like the Sci-Fi Channel has some interesting things in store after the sad but beautiful demise of BSG, simply the best science fiction series ever (relegating my beloved Firefly to number 2).  I am particularly interested in the Riverworld series.

Speaking of Endings:  Here’s a post on the movies that influenced BSG.  And the evolution of the ending is a must read.  As is the original ending of Bladerunner.  This is good stuff

Agriculture Department: I need to plant some tomatoes.  I’ve been putting off the resurrection of my garden, post hurricane.  Here’s a great tutorial on growing tomatoes.

Dropbox on a Stick:  I’m on record as a Dropbox fan and user.  Now you can install it on a thumb drive.  Maybe.  That’s great, now go do an iPhone app.

One More Time:  Speaking of Dropbox, if you’re interested in free, easy to use online storage, give Dropbox a try.  If you sign up via that link, both you and I get a little extra free storage for the referral.

iPhone Love Fest:  So the iPhone OS 3.0 preview happened, and in general it looks pretty good.  I still don’t know whether the tethering feature will be in this release or not.  There was a question about it, but the summary of the answer I saw was vague.  I don’t give a hoot about background processing, but I really want the tethering feature.

Devolution Department:  Speaking of that preview, here’s how to live blog.  And here’s how not to.  I do not like that little box with all the comments and whatnot.  Everything is not broken.  Newfangled does not always equate to better.

Deal Stopper Department: I have been experimenting with Ustream and thinking about doing a weekly video feature.  But what in the wild, wild west is the deal with those pop-up ads Ustream puts in the video stream?  That is an absolute deal stopper for me.  Are all Ustream videos like that?  That is horrible.  I can’t believe anyone would use Ustream if that’s how all videos are presented.  What am I missing here?

The Blogosphere Needs More Seth:  Seth Finkelstein on the Wikipedia oligarchy.  While I find Seth to be one of the most logical thinkers on the internet and generally agree with much of what he writes, I have to admit that I dig Wikipedia and use it all the time.  Granted, I wouldn’t write my dissertation based on research done there, but I think it has a tremendous ease of use advantage over most of the other alternatives.  And I don’t see the problem with taking money out of the pockets of the big companies that once had a virtual monopoly on the writing and selling of encyclopedias and spreading it around a little.  It’s sort of a Mozart/Ramones thing for me: I’m sure Mozart was a more talented composer, but I’d rather listen to the Ramones.  Seth’s undoubtedly accurate description of Wikipedia also describes every one of the so-called social networks: “cults where idealistic unpaid acolytes work themselves to burn-out, while a few people at the top benefit enormously.”  Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen Seth on Twitter.

Underwhelming:  I want to hear from someone who thinks the newly released Dell Adamo is worth $1,999 for the entry level model, with its 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2GB memory and a 128GB solid state drive or $2,699 for the upgraded model.  Underwhelming is right.  I don’t think I’d pay half that price for either of those models.  PC World has a closer look.

Mass Stupidity Department:  The Sci-Fi channel, one of my favorites, is changing its name to SyFy.  Have the idiotic Web 2.0 naming conventions evolved into mass hysteria.  Did I say that was a stupid name change?  A dumb name change allegedly done for a dumb reason.

Interesting iPhone app:  JotNot turns your iPhone into a document scanner.

Interesting blog department:  Seth points me to this as a possible Web 2.0 Jon Stewart.  Funny and interesting.

Rhetorical question of the day:  If some unknown person was behind Alltop, would it get a tiny fraction of the coverage it gets?  Non-rhetorical answer: of course not.  Whatever it was that made Guy Kawasaki such an internet celebrity (it had something to do with Apple, beyond that I have no idea), I think getting Alltop the coverage it gets in the blogosphere is a much bigger accomplishment.  Imagine what Guy could do with something really cool.

One more time:  If you’re interested in free, easy to use online storage, give Dropbox a try.  If you sign up via the above links, both you and I get a little extra free storage for the referral.

First a couple of updates, and then today’s rants.

Update 1: I played around a little more with Photobucket, and have concluded that, jacked up interface and all, Photobucket combined with this Firefox add-on is very useful.  You can right click on any image, upload it to Photobucket and then immediately share or embed the image.  It’s quick and easy.  I found one of the vintage Outpost of the Week awards I used to give out back in the mid-nineties.  It took about 4 seconds to upload it and get the link to add it here.  I have to admit- that is sweet.

Update 2: Dave Wallace continued his quest to free Rancho Radio from the unnecessary walls of Live365 and seems to have deciphered a permanent stream URL.  It seems to work, at least in iTunes.  The artist-song information doesn’t show up for me when I load the stream directly, but that’s not the end of the world.

Here is a great parenting article from Grass Stain Guru, a new blog by Bethe Almeras.  Highly recommended.

Here is a very serious article about the 10 Biggest Intellectual Fights of All Time.  The web is a stern and serious place.  In some alternate reality a huge internet war rages over Marsha vs. Jan, and whether Mannix was a better PI than Barnaby Jones.

On a much more interesting note, a scientist explains Star Trek warp speed.  Excellent!

Here’s a list of classic DOS games that can be played online.  I would LOVE to be able to play The Perfect General II, Starflight and Master of Orion again.

If I can’t do that, it’s almost as fun converting PDF documents to Word.  For free.

Here are the 32 most commonly misused words and phrases.  I’d put your/you’re at the top of the list.

In the too little, too late department: Second Life clamps down on sex and violence.  Isn’t it weird how often the words sex and violence are used together?

If everyone who is there for the sole or substantial purpose of making a buck was kicked off of Twitter, would Twitter be a better place.  I think so.  Absolutely.

There are several burrs under my saddle today.

Here’s why people don’t walk around naked anymore.

Today is Worship of Tools Day for everyone.  Every day is worship of tools day for lots of Twitter users.

If you drive your car into the water, here’s a tutorial on trying not to drown.  They had me at “you’ll need self-composure.”  I’m pretty sure if my car was sitting in the ocean, I would not have a lot of that.  On the other hand, I like this topically relevant record by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

There’s a new version of iTunes available.  I just want folders.  F-O-L-D-E-R-S.

Who needs cowbell? What we need is more mobile app stores.  I won’t be sated until there is one mobile app store for every person on earth.

In another before and after moment, some PR firm launched a “Twitter trend analyzer.”  Here’s a trend for you- the single biggest buzz kill on Twitter is watching all the PR people trying and failing to post without sounding like the host of a Tupperware party.

Photobucket has new sharing features.  I need to try Photobucket again.  I tried it a year or so ago and found the interface to be lacking.  I’m going to take another look.

I’m not all that excited about Google targeting ads at me.  I’ll pay the ad tax by having them occasionally litter my browser space, but I’ve never intentionally clicked on a third party ad and Adblock Plus and I intend to keep it that way.

In the greatest sales job since Tom Sawyer’s fence got painted, Google now lets you target ads at yourself.  Please, please, please tell me there aren’t a bunch of nerds over there mapping their own advertising genome.  Some of the stuff that happens on the internet defies description.

This breaking news just in:  it’s March 11, 2009 and Steve Gillmor has still never responded to a single one of my @replies.  I need Garrett Morris to translate.  Actually, I just wish if these cats weren’t interested in conversing with anyone other than each other, they’d take it offline.  Sure, it’s sour grapes on my part, because I’m interested in some of the stuff they talk about and would like to join in.  It’s like the blogosphere all over again.

Harry McCracken is cracken’ on Office Depot with a semi-secret cashier script and a link to a more troubling allegation.  Office Depot should be so happy about the demise of Circuit City that they give away those service plans for a while.  Post CompUSA and Circuit City, the lines at Micro Center have been epic. Someone should do a dead pool for computer stores.  Computer City, Incredible Universe, CompUSA, Circuit City.  Who else?

The other day, I took a look at online storage services.  I tried ADrive, and liked it, but today came the deal stopper.  An ADrive email informed me that public links to files stored on free accounts expire after 14 days.  I don’t fault them for this policy, but it means I’m not going to stick around to see if ADrive wins the feature race.  That’s too bad, because ADrive has some favorable features, not the least of which is 50GB of free storage.  Dropbox is rapidly becoming my service of choice.

I am probably repeating myself, but if you like music and/or art, you simply have to subscribe to LP Cover Lover.  Highly recommended.

To which I say:  Sure, as long as me and my buddies can play pickup hoops in Madison Square Gardens.

I rarely use the music features on my iPhone, but I would be mildly interested in a Sirius/XM player, if it is (as the rumor says it will be) developed by Sirius/XM itself and doesn’t have a bunch of neat in theory but useless in real life extra features.  What I’d really like is a Blip.fm app that would let me add to my Blip.fm page and listen to Blip.fm music.  I’m guessing that’s not going to happen, but to paraphrase the great philosopher David Wooderson, it’d be a lot cooler if it did.

My Facebook experiment continues, sort of.  While Facebook is the best if not only place to efficiently reconnect with old, non-geek friends, the depth of content on Facebook is pretty minimal. For most of my internet-acquired (lower and upper case) friends, there’s just the same regurgitated content I see in my feed reader and via Friendfeed (which is exactly what they see on my Facebook page).  On a positive note, I’ve been rejected as a (upper case) Friend by a lot of the blogging elite, and that’s almost as fun as observing their private conversations on Twitter.

I’m no economist, but I’m not seeing the payoff to these rolling bailouts.  Mark my words, the states will be next.  What is the realistic end-game here?

I am getting a lot bored and a little annoyed with all the smoke people are blowing up our butts about so-called social media.  These people must think a Tupperware party is the highlight of the real life social season.

Speaking of the hype, how can anyone really argue that Twitter can replace RSS feeds?  That’s like tossing out your Tivo in favor of rabbit ears.  Can’t we just agree that Twitter is sort of cool and leave it at that?

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but I’m starting to think I may opt out of the expensive Microsoft Office never-ending update cycle in favor of Google Docs.  If you have to put these applications on a family’s worth of computers, and there is a free app that can serve as a reasonably acceptable alternative, why not choose free?  The oft-rumored GDrive could become the straw that breaks Microsoft’s back.

This quote is funny: “It’s a phenomenon the geeks are already calling “Dancing with the Woz” and is potentially the greatest terpsichorean trainwreck in television history.”  I have never watched a second of Dancing with the Stars, but I may actually tune in for this.  Maybe.

I’ve tried several networked web cams over the years, and none of them worked worth a crap.  This looks promising enough to make me try again.

I’m also going to buy these for my girls’ iPod Touches.  These little microphones and (one day) a Skype iPhone app would turn an iPod Touch into a pretty decent phone.

Does anybody other than tech writers trying to fend off writer’s block really care- I mean really care to the point that it would change your mood one iota- whether or not the White House uses YouTube?  On the other hand, all three Flock users are highly concerned about this.

Today’s Thought: Ping was a duck.  In a book.  I read as a child.

Here’s a list of the Oscar nominated movies on Netflix.  I wish Mickey Rourke had won, just for the acceptance speech.  Mostly, I’m glad the Oscars are over so I won’t have to keep reading about them.  Unfortunately, SXSW is about to take its place in the media overload department.

You know the economy is irrevocably messed up when it costs more to use a bank’s ATM than to buy a share of its stock.  My hands are bloody from trying to catch that falling knife.

Two-fer squirrel humor:  sort of funny & utterly hilarious.

I love my iPhone.  I love my AppleTV.  I like my Mac Mini.  I hate iTunes, mostly because it pisses me off that I can’t create folders.  I’m glad to see I’m not the only one.  The Apple command center should be as elegant as the hardware it controls.  It is not, by a long shot.

News Flash: Bebo now emphasizes lifestreaming.  Wow, I wonder why nobody else thought of that.  More on this earth shattering development.  I love me some Bebo.

I am very, very interested in ZumoDrive.  Anyone got a beta invite to spare?  If it does what it says it does for something close to the quoted price, I’ll sign up for at least 50G on day one.  Come on Dudes, hook me up!

Whoa, Last.fm puts a Mike Arrington-like beat down on TechCrunch for claiming Last.fm gave listener data to the RIAA.  I don’t care if they did or they didn’t, but I like a good blogospat.  Mathew Ingram defends TechCrunch with the everybody does it argument.  I’m not sure I buy that, but, again, I could care less if they did it or not.  Like NASCAR and hockey, I’m just here for the violence.

OK, much of the Alltop content aggregation pages are underwhelming to me (I’ve been doing a mini-version of that for so long I forgot about it), but this is cool.  Hey Guy, how about a Monty Python version!

Monday Night Mellowness: Gillian Welch and OCMS do the Band.  Stunning.

In the sheer joy to utter disappointment category:  Today I thought I had discovered that you can play the Apple II game Odyssey on the frickin’ internet.  This would have been a before and after moment.  I’ve posted about that game several times.  I used to LOVE that game.  Then it wouldn’t load.  Tears.

I got (upper case) Friended today by Chris Mills, one of my all-time favorite songwriters and musicians (sample of why).  That’s cool.  Go buy all his stuff here.

I am putting some good music up on my Blip.fm page.  Here’s a sample:

I really needed this in college.  Although had I had that, that would mean I would’ve had the internet and had I had the internet, I would never have graduated from college.  Got it?

This dude fought the (digital transmission) law and won, sort of.  I feel like shooting my TV every time I watch a Wake Forest game.  Maybe if I drank more, I could learn to express my feelings.

I keep posting on Twitter, and I still like it, but I’m not finding it all that “social.”  I’d estimate the response rate on my @ replies is somewhere south of 10 percent.  Maybe I’m just boring.  Nah, that can’t be it.

The other thing Skype 4 does is not work worth a crap.  Tin cans and string would have been more effective than Skype 4 on our (attempted) podcast the other night.  My microphone stopped working about every 10 seconds.

This lady didn’t know the first rule of farting:  make sure it’s a fart.

Is this litigate like a pirate day?

All these eggheads can continue to navel gaze into the future of newspapers, but the reality is that old media didn’t have the first clue about the internet, so they tossed all their content out there for free in some virtual land grab and only began to realize they couldn’t pay the taxes on that land when the black gold ad revenue dried up.  It’s a pretty simple equation: either you have something to sell that people want to buy, or you don’t.  If you do, then you can make money by selling it.  If you don’t, all the hand-wringing in the blogosphere will not create a business plan based on giving away all your goods.  The internet is the paper.  It is the words that go on that paper that determine value.  As usual, Nick Carr is the most right.

One of the cool things about my recent Facebook experiment is seeing the old photos some of my (both upper and lower case) friends have posted.  I found a photo of my first grade class.  So I created a Hall of Ancients photo album and uploaded some old pictures, including this one of me and some friends from 1978.

Kevin Morris, Karen Winburn, me, Alan Smith, Michael Graham

Both Kevin and Alan (we called him “Side”) are mentioned in my song The Kansas Reflector Incident.

As Google continues to take over my data and my life, I have capitulated to a Shared Items page.  There’s a list of shared items in the Interesting Reading Elsewhere box on the right hand side of this page and here is the RSS feed for my shared items.

I’ll still do the Evening Reading posts, just not as often.

It looks like Sirius XM Radio may be about to follow Circuit City to the bankruptcy court.  Fortunately, it doesn’t look like Sirius XM will follow Circuit City all the way to the deadpool.  I can live without Circuit City, but I need my Grateful Dead channel.

Paging Mrs. Puff: Granny fails driving test 771 times.  Maybe the 772nd try will be the charm.

Earl photographs and writes about Williamsburg.  There’s a great song about Williamsburg by 5 Chinese Brothers.

Only 6 episodes of BSG left.  Very sad.  The BBC is trying to fill the sci-fi void.  Speaking of BSG, does anyone else think the dying leader who will lead them to Earth will be a cylon?

Tropic Thunder moment: I was talking to Suzanne Carr‘s mom today, and she tells me John Denver is hugely popular in China.

I climbed onboard the netbook train with an HP 2133.  I got it because it runs Vista and has a 120 GB hard drive.  James Kendrick liked it.  I do too.  I bought it as a server for Rancho Radio, but I may end up carrying it around with me.

On the other hand, I have no intention of spending $2399+ for a new Dell tablet.  I customized one for grins-  $3104.  No way Jose.  GottaBeMobile has more.  Or should I say less.

Today’s Thought:  On Louisiana.  First it was Kirk and Spock, then just Spock, and now a couple of dogs.