James Kendrick responds with his list of travel gear.  If JK carries it, you know it’s good.

Om Malik on the overuse of 2.0.  Amen, brother.

A Brief History of Computer TV Ads has some must-see videos. (via Robert Gale)

DirecTV launches another satellite. Too bad it’s not for more national HD programming. I am starting to like DirecTV less than the cable companies.

Here are lots of old Apple II games online. (via John Dvorak)

Kevin Burton announces Tailrank 2.0.

Digital Photography School has some Halloween photography tips.

Gizmodo has a chart of what the earth would look like over time if all humans vanished.

Mark Evans doesn’t get the virtual world phenomena. I think Second Life is cool, but like everything else at the crossroads of business and the web, people keep trying to make it more than it is. A Reuters office and dedicated reporter in Second Life? Sounds like a momentum play at some new readers to me. I’ll be curious to see if it’s still there in a year.

Warner is right about the latest Walmart/Edelman fiasco. I called it on Sunday and, other than Tony Hung, no one responded (including Steve Rubel, even though I was one of the few not to get on the bash wagon). Why? Because Steve not knowing anything about it wasn’t as juicy as some great conspiracy.

Tony Hung on another Walmart, Edelman, sponsored blogging mashup.  Here’s his follow-up.  I don’t know what if anything Steve knew about all of this, but I can tell you from experience in working at a large organization that (a) he may have known nothing about it, (b) he likely had zero ability to control what senior management at his company did or didn’t do, and (c) no one should try to make him accountable just because he works there, because unless it was his idea, he is not.

Matt Craven on growing a blog.  He’s spot on when he says the key is to write a lot.  Some other bloggers will reciprocate when you link to them, other won’t.  My advice: stop trying to embrace the ones who don’t and pay more attention to the ones that do.  Bonus link: Google Blogoscoped on good blog writing style.

Hugh has captured the essence of blogging when you aren’t trying to make a living off of it.  Blogging is so much more fun when you aren’t sitting around hoping for a link from Scoble or Doc or Hugh or Kent.

I don’t like Google Reader either.  And I find the sharing feature (discussed here by Richard Querin) to be too dilutive of the blog and feed reading experience for me.  If you see a link you like, just link to it.  The 30 seconds it takes to link to it in a real post serves as a de facto filter to make sure people are sharing interesting content.

Charles Cooper on why he still loves Star Trek.  Me too.

Here’s how to carve an amazing jack-o-lantern.

Rick Mahn on the move to online applications and the home network.

Dwight Silverman on the Sony Reader.  This is the first post I have ever read that makes me the least bit interested in an e-book reader.  The company that puts one in a book-looking form will be the one that gets my money.  I read the DiVinci Code on a Tablet PC and it was OK, but I haven’t read a book that way since.

Extreme positions are scary to me, because there is no willingness to see the other side of the argument.  I am big on animal rights, but PETA is making all animal rights people look like idiots.  I’m going to go find a cockroach…and eat it.

I meant to write an entire post agreeing with Seth Godin’s excellent take on museums and marketing, but I never got around to it.  Museums are losing the mindshare of our kids because they feel too much like school and not enough like fun.  I say amen to this:

I can’t remember the last time a museum visit made my cry, made me sad or made me angry (except at the fact that they don’t try hard enough).

Ben Metcalfe has a thorough analysis of Deutch-gate.  I have no personal knowledge about this situation and have never read Barry’s blog, but it seems to me this is just another case of using value generated by customers to make a buck in true Web 2.0 fashion.  Do all the Google hating YouTube users have similar grounds to complain?

David Krug has a series on the disappearance of David Krug.  If this is true, this is an amazing and frightening story.

Wolfgang’s Vault has acquired Tower Records’ Tower.Com domain.  If you like classic rock, you simply have to listen to Vault Radio.

Mashable on the distribution of spyware via social networks.  This is another reason why I do not like these social network sites.  The main reason, of course, is that but for the desire of developers to centralize our content so they can make money off of it, the blogosphere would be the only social network needed.

Robert Gale links to video clips of the best of Homer Simpson.  Funny stuff.

Wally Bangs found a very cool album shootout on YouTube.

Christopher Carfi on MySpace Facebook [UPDATE: as Christopher mentions in a Comment, he was talking about Facebook.  I had MySpace on the brain- apologies for the typo] and its suitability, or lack thereof, for business use.  Of course my question is why any real world business would want to launch a MySpace Facebook page as opposed to its own web site.  Not to mention that business pages popping up on social networking pages sounds a lot like spam to me.

Dave Taylor on the statistics of blog comments.

Donna Bogatin asks a good question– one that I have talked about before: “Isn’t it time we started thinking about the long-term consequences to businesses and individuals of a consolidation of every piece of public, private, and personal ‘information’ within one $122 billion (and growing) market cap corporation’s ‘cloud’ and worldwide server farms?”

Here’s a handy chart that tells you how many megapixels you need to print various size prints.  Richard Querin has more good info on print size.

While I am generally apolitical, Ethan Johnson has a good read on the Texas gubernatorial race.

I’m 46 years old today.  That looks old, even as I type it.  My dad died when he was 46.  Thank goodness for my kids, who keep me young- even if Cassidy does think I’m “fifty something.”

Mike Arrington has an interesting tale about his trip to speak at an Online News Association (there are about ten times too many associations, but that’s a topic for another post) conference.  Old media doesn’t trust bloggers because they are afraid of moving cheese, and because bloggers are not viewed as objective and reliable (which is fair criticism in light of all the conflicts, rumors, pay per click issues, etc.).  Bloggers don’t read papers (I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in 8 years) because the news is stale and traditionally non-interactive.  Arrogant old media tries to ignore or co-opt new media, while forward thinking old media, like the Houston Chronicle, embraces it.  Arrogant bloggers do too little thinking and too much spouting off about this and that.  It’s not a good blend if you’re looking for cooperation.  Speaking of the Chronicle, Dwight Silverman has a good take on Mike’s Washington experience.

Steve Rubel on the end of an era.  Like Steve, I used to love browsing the racks at my local record store.  But I stopped doing that once Amazon allowed me to browse from the comfort of my home.  Mike at Techdirt has more.

Dave Rogers has thoughts on the season premiere of Battlestar Gallactia.  It is the best show on television, but, like Dave, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the season premiere.

The U.S. government becomes the RIAA’s puppet and demands that Russia shut down AllofMP3.  The result is a ton of free publicity that increases AllofMP3’s business.  That’s good stuff.

Here’s a collection of Weird Al Yankovic videos.  He is a very clever guy.  Numbers 9, 7 and 2 are particularly funny.

Ever wondered what the inside of a hard drive looks like when its working?  This is cool.

Tags: kents news, links

Here’s a primer on sushi etiquette.

CB radio insult escalates into a shooting. (via Obscure)

12 ways to make your mark in the blogosphere.

TV Squad has a summary of where to find network TV shows online.  Handy for when your TIVO forgets to record a season pass- which has happened to me recently.

I have been thinking and talking a lot about the Monty Hall Paradox.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Mark Cuban has more thoughts on YouTube.  Yes, the internet is a cockroach farm, but YouTube was not the first video sharing site- and it has a ton of mindshare that will be hard to displace.  Think eBay.

And finally, Harrah’s might be worth as much as YouTube (irony intended).

Claus is having his own set of problems with Firefox.  Fortunately, my crash problem seems to have magically fixed itself- perhaps via an extension update.

Did the latest Colorado gunman use MySpace to research his victims?  According to John Dvorak, a CNN story intially reported a rumor that he did.

TechRepublic has 10 ways to become a better blogger.

Here’s how to use your webcam as a motion detecting security device.

Only a Fool Would Buy That: Everyone’s favorite billionare, Mark Cuban, on YouTube.

I Know You Are, But What Am I: HP’s Patricia Dunn at a congressional hearing.

Why don’t we all just agree that MySpace is worth more than everything else on earth combined, so we can stop writing about it?

Randy Morin is exactly right.  Those who, by intent or by laziness, don’t link are damaging the utility of the blogosphere- both as a conversational medium and as an information resource.

Rogers and Seth on Seth’s Wikipedia imprisonment.