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- Last Friday, I was lazing to the haze of the midday with Zeynab by my side, I had to reluctantly answer the phone that told me I had won 4 cruise tickets and dinner at the Real Jerk cruise on... |
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- Click here if you want to see where I'm posting. It's the new TypePad blogging system from the people who created Movable Type, and it rocks!!! |
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- No hay dos sin tres... Hoy toca liberar otro libro, y esta vez el elegido ha sido "La Letra Escarlata" de Hawthorne. De él he escrito en su diario de BookCrossing: "Fanatismo, luchas de poder, dominació |
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- For the first time in years, the list of Apple's weaknesses is actually shorter than its list of strengths. Much shorter, in fact. By Del Miller (MacOPINION via MyAppleMenu) |
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- Fighting with other software companies and the lack of innovation could slowly bleed Apple to death. (AppleMatters via MyAppleMenu) |
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- Leo en Fortaleza Oscura que del 30 de Agosto al 5 de Septiembre la asociación Círculo de Rol organiza la que será la 12ª edición de las habituales jornadas roleras San Antolin en Palencia. No se da más información relevante o direcciones de contacto así que los interesados tendrán que buscarse un poco la vida. |
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- The head of Motorola's China subsidiary has resigned his post to lead Microsoft's operations in the country. Microsoft said Monday that it has tapped former Motorola China Electronics Chairman and President Tim Chen to take the newly created position of Corporate Vice President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft Greater China. |
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- Rob has an excellent question about keeping track of blogs where you've left comments. Got a good tip? Share it with him. |
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- Apparently HP has announced 158 new products, all at the same time! Seems their marketing department may have gotten a little carried away. Guess they wanted to get noticed for quantity if nothing else. It appears that despite the land slide of new products, a new Tablet PC wasn't among... |
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- If you’re going to be in the San Diego area on September 20 (or maybe you would like to be), we are going to be holding a benefit concert as another Team in Training fundraiser. All proceeds will benefit the... |
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- Faith Fippinger, one of the "brave" human shields, is being fined by the US Treasury Department for violating the pre-war... |
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- Hi everyone! I just wanted all of you to know that we're in DC and soon we'll be leaving for Philadelphia. We're in a meeting at a blah hotel conference room, so we can't wait to get to the rally... |
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- It has been reported in that the US Navy has purchased a lot of Apple Xserve servers with Linux on them for image processing on submarines. Makes sense, I mean you wouldn't want to go into combat with Windows and VB.net would you? Apple Computer has scored its biggest ever sale of Xserve servers - thanks to Linux. Terra Soft Solutions has announced that Lockheed Martin will buy 260 Xserve servers running its Yellow Dog Linux, with the eventual destination being the US Navy's submarines. |
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- Exquisitely illustrated subscription proclamation rallying subscribers to ~The Industrial Worker ~ "Foremost Exponent of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism". Posted both for the beauty of the illustration as well as the quality and humor of the concept. Circa 1911. |
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- Tracking the influence of private money in President Bush's re-election campaign. So far, donors have given Bush: $46, 950, 000. 00WhiteHouseForSale. org is a project of Public Citizen, national, nonprofit public interest organization with 140,000 members that was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts. |
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- It seems that Britney is going topless for the September issue of British magazine Elle. |
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- Flash mobs -- big, spontaneous crowds that celebrate organized chaos -- are fast growing around the world. Their mission: to have fun. Their message: There isn't one. |
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- I'm going to be at Powell's Beaverton store in Beaverton, Oregon on Wednesday, for a Dancing Barefoot event. I've also just found out that Dancing Barefoot is the bestselling paperback at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, and the bestselling SF / Fantasy paperback at Powell's! |
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- Contrary to what some would have you believe, the internet is a wonderful thing... |
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- Even as Microsoft prepares to launch Office 2003 this fall, it is readying a new quality-first development process for Office 12. The company is stepping up its quality assurance, stressing a new goal, called Milestone Q, of getting code clean and solid earlier in the development process, according to a Microsoft internal memo examined by CRN. |
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- ...and boy are my arms tired! |
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- 3-D Printing's Great Leap Forward. Three-dimensional printing, at the heart of rapid prototyping, cannot yet create models that move. But research is looking for the third dimension's equivalent of color. By Daithí Ó |
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- http://www. nytimes. com/2003/08/11/opinion/11TANE. html? |
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- BoingBoing pal Mara says, "Some people I don't know (but suspect I like) went to the Siren Festival in New York and played hipster bingo with a camera." View the results here, including "guy in cabbie hat," "8-foot-tall guy," "chunky plastic glasses," "blogger with digital camera," and the ubiquitous trucker hat. Yeah! Link, Discuss |
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- Weird fashion meme in Hong Kong: hipster clothing store Izzue has a "Nazi chic" moment: Swastikas and other Nazi symbols are used as decoration in a Hong Kong clothing store, as seen on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2003. Israeli and German diplomats have lashed out at a Hong Kong fashion company for using swastikas and other Nazi party symbols. |
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- "0wnz0red," the novella that I published on Salon a year ago, has just qualified for the preliminary Nebula ballot! That means that in a couple of months, all the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America will have the opportunity to cast their preliminary vote for the piece, and if it gets enough votes, it will appear on the final ballot. I'm pleased as punch! Link Discuss |
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- Just came across this wonderful quote in Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril. Judy was a friend and mentor of mine, and her posthumous memoir, co-written by my friend Emily Pohl-Weary, is nominated for the Hugo Award this year. Whereas in other literary fields you wouldn't dare take an idea from another writer and use it, because that would be considered plagiarism, science fiction people loved to build on each other's stories. The business of giving away ideas and promoting other people's work was a part of the community at large. |
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- For the next few weeks, I'll be moonlighting on textually.org, a news blog about texting, SMS, and MMS. Founder Emily Turrettini also runs two related sites: ringtonia.com and picturephoning. |
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- I wrote this piece for Wired News about Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com (pissed off the RIAA) and Lindows (pissed off Microsoft) who's now aiming to overturn telecom economics with his latest venture, SIPphone -- a VOIP startup that offers free calling over broadband connections. By offering low-cost SIP phones -- $129.99 per pair, with plans to reduce the price to $40 per phone within a year and $20 within two -- Robertson hopes to tap into SIP's early momentum, just as he did with his Linux and MP3 ventures. "Wherever there's massive potential disruption, there's massive business opportunity ... |
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- Hippie poet "Sparrow" ponders the odd beauty of wacky names attached to spam in a New York Times op-ed piece: I remember the first unsolicited commercial e-mail message (otherwise known as spam) I received. It began with a friendly greeting: "Hello Sparquee." It went on to offer me various drugs like Valium and Viagra, "no prescription needed. |
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- Inspired by Unwirer, the story that Charlie Stross and I co-wrote in public, on a blog, Warren Ellis has decided to write a novel on a blog he's created for the purpose (parts 1, 2, 3 and and 4 are already online). Link Discuss (via Charlie's Diary) |
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- The "Loo Roll Browser" is a browsing app that lets you send pages to your crapper to be output on your toilet-paper roll, so that you can fill your bathroom with reading material from the net. Me, I just bring my WiFi-equipped laptop into the porcelain reading-room and balance it precariously on the tub-edge when I need both hands free. Link Discuss (via Geisha Asobi) |
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- Someone blacked out the windows and posted out-of-business notices at several Starbuckses in San Francisco. The Starbusian ambassador decried these actions as a "venti hate crime," against his people, whose tribal customs have become a source of great and vehment prejudice in many metropolitan centers and college towns. The culprits went as far as to stick "closed" and "for lease" signs and notices on the stores -- using bogus Starbucks Corp. letterhead -- announcing that "thousands of retail locations worldwide" were closing, and the Seattle- based company was "making room for local coffee bars." Link Discuss |
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- The British Library has licensed a number of its archival animal-sound recordings for use as mobile ringtones. Hippos Bellowing House Martin Song Lapwing Calls Lions Roaring Lions Snarl Loons Yodelling Mallard Calls Female Mallard Calls Male Manx Shearwater Caterwauling Marsh Frog Link Discuss (Thanks, Big Ed!) |
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- Dave Sifry has begun a series of articles explaining the inner workings of his brilliant blog-mining service, Technorati. 1) We spider weblogs, and correlate each weblog's outbound links to any page on your blog/site 2) Technorati works on any URL - not just URLs for weblogs. For example, you can see what people are saying about an interesting article or favorite company, and get an instant read on the conversations going on around that article or site. 3) The simplest way get your weblog included in the Technorati index is to ping us whenever you update your weblog. That puts you in the high-priority queue for indexing. |
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- A tobacco company is offering big bucks to celebs who agree to publicly smoke its products in public. Freedom paid covert actresses, called "leaners," to smoke the cigarettes in Manhattan bars and nightclubs for several weeks this spring in a New York effort to promote the fledgling brand, company spokeswoman Nancy Tamosaitis said. Link Discuss |
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- A postal reg allows US residents who aver that they find a junk-mailer's crap obscene to demand that the junk-house refrain from all future mailings. A court precedent says that it's up to the recipient to define obscene, and that each resident's idiosyncratic definitions are above skepticism by postal inspectors. I wonder if this would work with credit-card solicitations? A little-known Federal law allows individuals to send a Prohibitory Order against companies that are sending unsolicited sexually provocative or erotically arousing mail. The Supreme Court went one step further, allowing individuals to decide what constitutes "erotically arousing" mail. |
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- Salon's run a really good long feature abotu Mash-Up Mixes, the remixed music that combines contrasting vocal and instrumental tracks from different songs -- like the brilliant "Come On Eileen"/"Bring the Noise" combo, which remains one of my favorite MP3s to this day. The wacky juxtaposition spawned its own kind of revolution, inspiring legions of the club remixes now called "mash-ups" -- with one classic example being "Smells Like Booty," in which Destiny's Child wails over Nirvana's classic dirge and drone. Also referred to as "bastard pop," mash-ups involves blending samples from two songs -- generally, one song's vocals atop another's instrumental or rhythm track. The sum of the parts often surpasses the originals. The more disparate the genre-blending is, the better; |
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- I'm really taken with this two-person Japanese vending machine costume. Link Discuss (via Geisha Asobi) |
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