So it’s out with 2008, in with 2009 and back to the big, scary rat race.

Noupe has an excellent list of free Photoshop tutorials.  Personally, I think you need a masters degree in Photoshop to use it to its fullest.  So I tend to look for plug-ins that will do the work for me.  I know that I could make some amazing stuff if I really knew Photoshop.  The problem is that I already have a job.

Mike Fruchter has an excellent list of steps to get started in social media.  While I continue to believe the return on social investment for blogging is very low compared to the effort it takes, Mike’s suggestions are uniformly good.  I would add that, unless you have the time and staying power to keep at it until you will your way up blogger’s hill, your blog should be focused on getting ideas out of you, as opposed to into others.  I think the slow progress towards readership and interactivity is why so many bloggers give up or move to Twitter, where the work is lighter and the audience (or at least the people who theoretically see your posts) is larger.

Gear Diary, in reviewing the Griffin Road Trip, mentions the biggest pain in the ass about iPhone accessories- the fact that any case makes the device too big to fit on the adapter.  This drives me crazy.  And no, I don’t want to try the slider case, because they are also a pain in the ass and I don’t believe that the little strip of rubber inside the case will protect the phone any better than, say, nothing.  The Marware Sport Grip is, so far, the only case I like.  Speaking of the Griffin Road Trip, not only will my encased iPhone not fit the adapter, but the neck on that thing is about half (really, less than half) as long as it should be.  I have to lay down on my seat to get my iPhone.  Otherwise, though, it’s a neat device.

As noted before, we use and love Beejive IM (iTunes link).  The forthcoming update looks awesome.  If you text at all, you should use Beejive.  It’s a bargain, even at $16.

It’s a little before my time, but if you like music from the late 50’s, here’s a jukebox for ya.  Now someone go do one for the mid-seventies.

I haven’t tried it yet, but the greatest board game of all time is now, sort of, on the iPhone.

Consumerist on DirecTV installation problems.  We’ve had one box (out of four) that has been searching for almost a year for a signal for Satellite 2.  This means no live TV on several channels, including the networks.  Oddly enough, you can often successfully record shows on those channels- you just can’t watch them live.  Our recent experience with DirecTV support has been, to say the least, unsatisfactory.

Why do I keep going to the Apple web store and looking at Mac Pros?  I love my iPhone and AppleTV.  Surely I’m not about to go all in.  Am I?

Eye-Fi, which I and my kids use regularly with our digital cameras, is coming to the iPhone.  If you have a friend or parent who is not interested in learning the technology, but wants to use a digital camera, Eye-Fi may be just the ticket.

RIM calls the Storm Verizon’s best selling device.  I wonder if they called Verizon later to apologize.  RIM seems to be putting a lot of eggs in the Storm basket.

In related news,  PC World has a list of 7 free “must-have” Storm apps.  The eighth would presumably be the receipt, so you can return it.

Dave Taylor on getting noticed online.  I need some advice on that.  Since I’ve been blogging again, I feel like this blog has the traction of a marble on ice.

There’s a new post at the Adios Lounge.  This one on Clarence White of the Byrds.  If you have any interest in classic country rock music, the Adios Lounge should be at the very top of your reading list.  Want another reason why?  How about a story and full mp3 set from a Doug Sahm, Jerry Garcia and Leon Russell show from 1972?  These posts are like encyclopedia entries, only a hundred times more interesting.  Here’s the RSS feed.

Some folks are squawking about Mobile Spy for the iPhone.  All this means is that my kids may actually get iPhones one day.  It’s easy (and critically important) to “protect” your kids (yes, even from themselves) on their computers.  We need similar tools for mobile phones.

Speaking of iPhones, I’d pay $50 for a good version of Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure on the iPhone.  Shoot, I’d pay $100 for Starflight.

12Seconds looks like a very interesting app (iTunes link).  The iPhone needs a native video camera function, but this looks like a good interim solution.  The iPhone also needs a flash.

I think it’s pretty clear that the iPhone is, in fact, the next big mobile gaming platform.  I think it is not quite an acceptable netbook substitute.  If I were Steve Jobs, I’d direct Apple to develop a device you insert your iPhone into that would give you a regular keyboard, a bigger screen and extra battery life.  Apple would own the netbook space from the first minute.

Granny J on some fancy gingerbread houses.  I love to watch my kids make their houses every Christmas.

I have always been interested in game theory.  Mind Your Decisions shows us why Toyota wants GM to be saved.

Here’s someone’s list of 5 steps to a successful corporate Twitter presence.  Unless your corporate purpose involves marketing or goofing off, the best step for Twitter in the corporate arena is to step away.  Twitter is semi-interesting, but like everything else in the social networking space, people are desperately and futilely trying to convince each other that it has a legitimate business purpose.  There are exceptions, but in general it has about as much of a business purpose as a Wii.  Take your Wii to work and play it for an hour or two a day and see how that works out for you.

If you need empirical evidence that Twitter ain’t all it’s cracked up to be: here you go.  As my buddy Mike says, when you hear the words “Semantic Web,” your bullshit meter should go to 11.  And he is a believer.  No offense to Nick Bilton- he just happened to use Twitter and the “Semantic Web” in the same blog post.  I will say, however, that I’m not interested in anything that will serve me ads.  And there are no ads that I want to see.  None.

Meanwhile, Mashable says the way to clean up your Twitter space is to stop listening to the little people.  Don’t de-friend them, that would be rude.  Just filter them out. 

Staying on topic, Robert Scoble mounts a defense of FriendFeed.  I finally updated my FriendFeed today to include my blog posts.  There’s something about FriendFeed that appeals to me, but wasn’t Yahoo Pipes already aggregating this stuff?  At least for now, FriendFeed is on my radar.

I think it comes down to the concept of sharing.  Ease of sharing lowers the threshold for putting something in front of me, much more so than a regular blog post.  I don’t think people would be interested in tracing my route across the Interwebs, and I’m certain that I don’t have the time to trace the routes of others.  Other than “because we can,” why do we need all this redundant connectivity?  Why can’t blog posts and RSS centralize this for us and, at the same time, create a bit of an editorial threshold?

Louis Gray Mike Fruchter has some advice for generating blog traffic.  Louis Gray’s blog is a great example of how to build a blog via excellent content.  It may depend on why you read blogs (as far as readership goes, why someone writes a blog is irrelevant), but I really like it when people combine professional (whatever than means for those of us who don’t blog as a business) and personal.  There are teens of techie-bloggers out there; I like bloggers who draw me in by showing me who they are.  OmegaMom is the best example of this.  Louis rocks though.  If you don’t already read his blog, you should (RSS feed).

C|Net has a list of the top 5 music-streaming sites.  Here’s my micro-review of each:

Grooveshark: I’ve never used it, but Steve Spalding told me about it, and if he likes it it must be good.

Last.fm: I can’t explain it, but I really dislike the interface.  So so user experience.

MySpace Music: The pages at MySpace are ugly and I’m a grown man.  Never used it, never will.

Pandora: Rocks.  Excellent.  Love it.

Rhapsody: I used it until a few years ago.  I liked it OK, but I couldn’t get past the fact that it was a cousin of that bloat ware, the Real Player.

Here’s one of those brilliant ideas you can’t believe you didn’t think of.  The private lives of toys.

And, finally, some Christmas music:

Mashable has 100 ways to organize your life.  After reading the list, I set up a Zefty account to manage my kids’ allowances.  I also recently capitulated to the inevitability of Evernote.  I think the web interface is crappy, but the iPhone app and integration is excellent.

Mashable also has a comparison of Pandora and Last.fm.  Pandora is hands down the better service.  Mashable seems to agree.  Want to hear some good music?  Here’s my Pandora station.

Apple released a list of the most popular iPhone apps.  Here’s the list via iTunes.

Everybody wants to stream movies.  The problem is that is doesn’t always work.  Hacking Netflix reports on problems with the Roku Player.  Louis Gray’s report on Amazon via Tivo is the scariest thing I’ve been exposed to since The Strangers.

We don’t have standard def streaming working yet, but here comes HD streaming.

Speaking of The Strangers, some numbskull at work tried to tell me that Funny Games was scarier and better than The Strangers.  Wrong.  The Strangers is a darn good, and very scary, movie (here’s the Netflix link).  Be sure to get the unrated version.

Block Posters makes cool wall posters from photos.

Randy Morin with a lesson on how not to treat your customers.  Reminds me of the time I got completely blown out by this hag at the airport because I tried to pay for a water bottle at the wrong cash register.

MG Seigler brings truth to the Continental free not-Wi-Fi story.  Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and the Blackberry network?  Obviously, Yahoo is paying Continental some money to force people to its network, at the expense of everything we really need.  This is bad news getting spun as good news.

Stereogum points to some new Sun Kil Moon.  Here’s where you can listen to it.  Glen Tipton was my favorite song of 2007.  On the retro hand, Stereogum also has some vintage Hall and Oats, complete with bad hair and intermittent lip synching.

After all the (very tasty) deer I ate this past week, it was troubling to learn that vegetarians are healthier, smarter and richer.  Maybe, but that deer was a vegetarian and he got eaten.  That’s not so smart now, is it?

So 80 people go to Chuck E Cheese, get in a brawl and end up getting pepper sprayed.  The next day it almost happens again.

I really enjoy Survivor and the Amazing Race.  But a show about Michael Vick’s dogs is absurd.  I wonder if they go visit him now that he’s in the pound?  I hope I don’t accidentally record every episode and watch it.

Here are some cool photos of a diamond rush ghost town in Namibia.  Here’s more about the town’s history.

Thomas Hawk on Barack Obama, Dave Winer and pot.  We have a good friend who is very interested in politics.  She’s always putting signs for all the wrong people in her yard.  I told my kids they don’t have to study up on elections- that all they have to do is drive by Sharon’s house, write down every name on the signs there, and vote for the other person.  I’m pretty sure that I would take the same approach with signs in Dave’s yard.  Or on his blog.

Here’s reason number 112 why I say no when my kids ask if they can play with their turtle.  Reason number 1 is because if he bites you, he won’t let go until it thunders.

Good advice for living a happy life.

It was bad enough when he didn’t see the first one coming.  Then there was the second one.

PDFTextOnline converts PDF files to text, for free.  Oh yeah, and online.  Text…PDF.  It didn’t work all that well for me based on a couple of test documents, but it’s a cool idea.

Lifehack has 7 Habits to Win in Office Politics. I’m a little bothered by the “win” in that title. How about to manage office politics? Anyway, habit number 6 – seek to understand before seeking to be understood – is also one of traits of the best negotiators. And probably the best bloggers too.

Rick Mahn says bye-bye to Facebook. You know, no matter how hard people try to make it otherwise, Facebook was, is and always will be primarily for college age kids. I really agree with Rick when he says:

While some have made a pretty good case for Facebook, it doesn’t change how it’s viewed by business, or how useful it is for me. I’m astounded at home much time everything takes and how limited everything is. Not to mention the data-ownership question.

Facebook, like most of the social networks, is amplified cocktail chatter- everyone talking over each other and no one really listening. Net out the advertorials and you end up with a lot of really marginal content.

Today’s list: TDavid on the 8 types of blogs for 2008, with a little Newsome.Org editorial:

1) Linkblog. Only marginally interesting without added content. I can find plenty of links in my feed reader.
2) Moblog. Accretive if used in moderation.
3) Podcast. Fun to do, but does anyone really listen to them?
4) Video blog. Home movies were boring in the 70’s. Videos are a plus if done well and in moderation.
5) Microblog. A graffiti wall. Fun in small doses.
6) Miniblog. I don’t know much about these. Why spread your content all over the seven seas when you can consolidate it in your main blog? All this data spread can actually work against personal brand building if it’s unchecked.
7) Liveblog. Seems like an awful lot of work and not much bang for your buck. As soon as the event is over, you’ve lost the advantage over regular blog posts.
8) Regular Blog. Here comes my main point: why can’t a regular blog encompass all 7 of the others?

Now that we’ve managed to bring wolves back from the brink of extinction, let’s start shooting them. Amazing.

So there’s this cat.  With no eyes.  Yet it hunts birds and squirrels.  That’s pretty frickin’ awesome.

Rob Gale has a nifty Rambo Death Chart.  When Rambo finally goes in another year or so, they’ll have to add old age to it.

Richard Querin discovered that you can embed Google Docs Presentations.  That’s pretty cool.  Here’s one I did in about 2 minutes:

I have to admit, the more I really look at Google Docs, the more impressed I am.  I have set my kids up with Google Docs in lieu of Word.  They’re happy and it saves me money.

Sad news of the day: we’ve got global warming extincting polar bears in the north and the U.S. government extincting jaguars in the southwest.  You can always make another dollar, but you can’t make another polar bear or jaguar once we kill them all.

RIM upgrades the Blackberry, which is fine and dandy, but until it opens up the system to third party developers, it’s always going to be playing catch-up.  If (and based on the fact it doesn’t already, this may be a big if) the iPhone is ever able to pull Microsoft Exchange email, Blackberries days will be numbered.

I was wrong about Last.fm.  Rather than join the video herd, it’s joining the audio streaming herd.  Here are more details.  As usual, Techdirt brings truth to the equation.  I went to Last.fm, looked unsuccessfully for the new features for a minute or so and split.  All this streaming may (or may not) be wonderful, but if no one can find it, it doesn’t matter.  It looks like Yahoo (and eventually every other site on the net) is going to get on the bandwagon.

Penelope Trunk has an interesting read on happiness.  I agree with most of what she says, particularly the part about people too often blaming their jobs when the true happiness inhibitor lies elsewhere.  I’m a little underwhelmed by her good job or bad job test.  I scored 5, which is pretty good.  Somehow, though, I’m not sure 4 questions is enough to tell how good or bad your job is.

Prob Logger (sorry, that’s just how I read it) has 9 benefits of Twitter for bloggers.  Here they are, with a little editorial:

1. Research tool.  Maybe but searching your Google Reader feeds is a lot better and easier one.
2. Reinforce your personal brand.  Definitely, as long as you use Twitter to supplement your blog and not to replace it.
3. Promote content.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is spam.  I’ve done it once or twice, but I generally un-follow people who do this too much.
4. Find new readers.  Probably, but this is dangerously tied to number 3.
5. Networking.  Nah, I don’t buy this.  I think the social networks are neither.  They are just amplified cocktail chatter, where everyone is yapping and no one is listening.
6. Previews.  I wouldn’t know.  I doubt I have a single reader who’s interested in a trailer for my future blog post.
7. Speedlinking.  I don’t know what speedlinking is, so I’ll pass on this one, other than to say I suspect sharing via Google Reader is easier and more efficient.
8. Story gathering.  Maybe, but again feeds are much better for this.
9. Find out what people really think.  Here’s what I think- I bet the percentage of Twitter posts that actually get responses is miniscule.

Stereogum has Patterson Hood on the Drive-By Truckers’ demanding, and excellent, new record.

Cracked just gets better and better.

Netflix beats its fourth-quarter estimates.

PC World has a pretty detailed look at the forthcoming Windows Vista SP1.

Blunt drops out of the Missouri governor’s race.  Cheech and Chong reportedly bummed.

CBS and Last.fm about to announce…something.  Undoubtedly something video related.  Yawn…

For those who, like me, wonder why in the world Bank of America is buying Countrywide, CNN has the answer.  Sort of.  All I know is that I bought BOA one morning at $40 and change, thinking it wouldn’t go below $40.  It did that very afternoon.

When I was a kid, I loved the Brady Bunch.  I’ve seen every episode, and I even read Barry Williams’ Growing Up Brady book.  So I was excited to read that Barry has joined the blogosphere.  Mashable has more.

In addition to a few other services, most notably Haloscan’s trackback service, that increased my pages’ load time, I have also dumped Technorati and started tracking inbound links and comments via Google Reader.  Louis Gray tells us how to track inbound links with Del.icio.us.

The Telegraph has a list of 100 books every child should read.  It’s a good list, but where in the world is Goodnight Moon!?  Or the Nutbrown Hare?

Any time I see a list of the worst anythings, I just know number one or two will be something absurd, just for the sake of a reaction.  Calling Vista the second biggest all-time tech flop is ludicrous beyond words.  Is it perfect, no.  Does it need work, of course.  But it is on way too many computers and soon to be on way too many more computers to be placed up there with DRM and push technology.  Speaking of push technology, I had a PointCast receiver (or whatever you called it).  It was, by far, the best screen saver I’ve ever seen.

For every job found due to web cams, ten will be denied or lost.  I hope this fad goes the way of the pet rock before my kids hit their teenage years.  And, yes, I’m really glad it didn’t exist during mine.

Stereogum has a new Springsteen video.  Good song.

Why in the world would Google buy the New York Times?  All it would be getting is the brand name.  Newspapers are dead, but there’s no way the folks who own the New York Times would admit that in public.  If I were Google, I’d wait a few years and watch the price go down as old media continues to struggle with online distribution.

Lifehacker points to 4 ways to make your family rules stick. I need to call a family meeting right away to apply these.

Who needs Roy Jones and Felix Trinidad when you can watch Louis Gray vs Mashable. So far, I’d say Louis is winning convincingly.

JkOnThe Run takes a look at Amazon’s Kindle. I’m mildly interested in the Kindle, but I’m not about to pay $400 for something unless I know I will dig it. Based on this review and my increasing far-sightedness, I’m thinking the lack of a back light is a deal stopper. Somebody must like them, however, since Amazon is currently sold out.

Brad Kellett takes a look at Office 2008. It’s Mac only. Sort of like Earl 🙂

The butcher is dead. Long live the butcher.

I wrote the other day about my issues with PETA- that when you become so extreme in your position, you lose the ability to convince the undecided and actually have a negative effect your cause. Now, PETA says smiling chimpanzees in CDW ads are not OK. Maybe CDW should use macaques instead. I’m all about animal rights, but give me a break.

Some good stuff tonight…

Here’s a different kind of alternative dispute resolution.  It’s much cooler than arbitration.  I once agreed (with the client’s consent) to settle a major business point in a large acquisition by flipping a coin.  We won.

Speaking of legal mumbo jumbo, this might be the most incorrect ruling ever.  As mentioned in the update, however, when something sounds this idiotic, there is often more to the story than we know.

Bonus (and hopefully last ever) legal tidbit: plaintiff’s lawyers everywhere are lamenting the fact that, as unbelievable as it may sound, monkeys and chimps can’t bring lawsuits.  Not even these monkeys.  Trying to rescue them.  Right.

The people who make Jericho are clueful.  They filmed two endings, in case they don’t get a third season.  Stuff like this makes me want to lift my ban on new network television shows.

Here’s a way to add public holidays to Outlook.  Now if they’d just figure out birthdays, we’d be all set.

All songwriters write songs about chicks.  Some of us actually tell the chicks about them.  Then there’s Ryan Adams.  He later took the video down, saying “I removed the videos ‘Sad Days’ and ‘Jessica’ because it is really just hard enough as it is. Good Luck, Jr. in your future.”  Personally, I think it’s cool he lays it out there like that.

Calling all entomologists.  Here are the 5 most horrifying bugs.

Here’s a nifty list of 200 free online classes.  I bet if you learned all that stuff, you could make a living from it.  Or you could just panhandle.

I recently dumped Bloglines.  Holoscan is next.  It makes my pages load slow.  Preview of things to come:  I am about to issue an RFP to recreate my blog in a WordPress template and move all of my current content over.  Get your pencils ready.  All page post links must be preserved.

Frank Paynter has a really interesting post about…well…I’m not really sure.  Fake babies, abortion, hippies, the Grateful Dead and Jean and Edna Ritchie all play a part.  I have no earthly idea who or what Firenze Ghia is.  But it’s a good read.  If Jerry Garcia was alive, he would make a great blogger.

I love it when people scam the scammers.  This is funny.

Star Trek is now on Joost.  That’s pretty cool.

For the three people who care:  the Crunchies winners have been announced.  One guess what won best of show.