05.31.06
Posted in amuse, entertainment at 6:51 am by mridley
So I happened to be checking out the officlal Google Video Blog and found this video with my new favorite TV host, Chelsea Handler. But this isn’t from The Chelsea Handler Show. Apparently she was/is also on Oxygen’s Girls Behaving Badly which I have never seen, but I am vaguely aware that there is such a show on the Oxygen network. Anyway the video clip is amusing.
And in the interest of completeness, I suppose I should mention there is some further video of Ms. Handler available over at her show’s website at E! Online.
Tags: Chelsea Handler, Oxygen, Google Video
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Posted in tech at 6:48 am by mridley
Not sure if everyone already knows about Google Notebook but I thought I’d mention it in case not. Basically it’s a little web site/browser plugin that lets you make clippings of web pages as you browse, along with anotations, etc. You can share your notebooks, or keep them private.
Not sure if this is something I’ll use a lot or not, but I’m gonna try it out. For casual browsing I don’t think this kind of thing matters. But when I’m in “research mode” I really do long for these kinds of tools. So we’ll see.
If anyone has any cool notebooks I should check out, lemme know!
Tags: Google
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05.30.06
Posted in tech at 11:33 pm by mridley
I have been a long time fan and user of the social bookmarking site furl. Unfortunately they seem to have been somewhat forgotten after they were gobbled up by LookSmart. I know a lot of the technorati are in love with del.icio.us and I have an account there too, but I always have preferred the furl interface.
Of course, since I have been out of touch for the past few months, I haven’t been tagging anything on either site. But now that I’m getting back in the swing I’m trying to decide if I want to make more of a go of it with del.icio.us. I’m not really sure what the benefits of switching over would be.
Or perhaps there’s another, perhaps newer, perhaps even better, site that I should be looking at? I’m interested to hear suggestions. Or if you do prefer del.icio.us over furl, why?
Tags: Social Bookmarking, furl, delicious
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Posted in business, entertainment at 7:17 pm by mridley
I saw this story on Slashdot about some “alternate reality” game called “Perplex City“. It’s one of those games that bleeds over into real life, with physical clues to find in the real world, sort of like a big treasure hunt.
I haven’t read the whole story on this particular game, but I’ve seen these in the past and I know some of them have been marketing stunts. But I think normally the marketing stunts are tie-ins for video games and movies and the like.
I wonder if such an “alternate reality” game would work as a marketing tool for a real life destination. I would think that liesure busineses in a downtown area could be banded together to create a cross-venue game. Perhaps the bartender in a nightclub would have the next clue, but only if you knew the secret passphrase which you’d have to learn by having attended a certain theatrical performance or perhaps seen a movie at the theatre next door.
It seems like a reasonable part of an economic development strategy for anyone trying to revitalize an urban area on its way up. I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows of anything like this being attempted.
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Posted in tech at 6:55 am by mridley
So the social networking Web 2.0 bandwagon has finally undeniably lost a wheel with the launch of fo.rtuito.us. I haven’t signed up, and I somewhat doubt that I will, but from what I read in the press coverage this is apparently a site where you sign up and it connects you to a random person that you don’t know. And you don’t see their profile or anything. You just exchange emails. Then after a few days if you both agree, you can be permanent friends.
I suppose the idea is to take away all the superficial barriers to social connection like location, age, race, gender, etc. It sounds nice in theory, I guess, but I really don’t see the application of this. I’m busy enough without trying to make conversation with someone I don’t know, and know nothing about. That model of social connection makes no sense to me.
True social connections are based on shared interests, or at least a strong interest on the part of one party to sleep with the other. But who knows. I still have no idea what the point of myspace is, and it sold for a shit ton of money, so maybe the guy who made this thing will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Tags: Social Networking
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Posted in life at 6:45 am by mridley
Apparently they do indeed have fight clubs in Silicon Valley now. There’s something fairly comical about thinking of my former Bay Area coworkers duking it out in parking lots or what-not.
The I used to play street hockey occaisionally with the Napster guys on SGI’s tennis courts. That’s about as violent and rebellious as we got.
Kids these days.
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05.29.06
Posted in business, tech at 10:49 pm by mridley
I’ve installed a new WordPress plugin I found on bignuts.com. It inserts adsense ads into posts so that authors don’t have to think about putting them in manually. We’ll see if it does anything interesting for my revenue, of course since I have neglected this site for ages and ages my revenue and traffic is very close to zero. Perhaps I’m not the best test-case for the plugin, but it looked cool so I installed it anyway.
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Posted in entertainment, music at 7:33 pm by mridley
I had totally forgotten that I have an account at last.fm. I’m not sure what reminded me that it exists, but I headed over there today and downloaded their plugins to reinstall them on my box. When I first used the last.fm plugin I don’t think last.fm even existed, it was just the AudioScrobbler project. No clue how that turned into last.fm, but the bottom line is that it’s a cool web site where you can be a musical voyeur and see what other people are lisetening to.
I’ve put up a little sidebar javascript thing on here to broadcast my recent plays for all to enjoy and laugh at. Alas the last played chart looks like crap as I haven’t done anything to integrate it well into the CSS layout for this site, in part becuase I think I might hate this layout and want to change it soon. Who knows.
In any case, it’s not pretty but it’s there. Now prepare to be schooled on some music.
EDIT - I’ve moved the recent playlist to its own page as it was way too ugly and busy crammed into the sidebar. Plus it takes a few seconds for the image to be generated and load from last.fm and I’d rather not have every page rendering hang on that. So now you can find the “recent playlist” link under the “static” section of the side navbar. Enjoy.
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Posted in life at 6:59 pm by mridley
I bring you, gentle readers, an anecdote and a breaking news exclusive as well. The other day I was chatting with my California buddy Jen online, and I was thinking about how I used to enjoy eating at Il Fornaio with some regularity when I lived in the Bay Area (Burlingame one is the best, for the record).
So anyway I figured I’d drop them a line to suggest they open one in the DC area. I mean, they have that feedback form on their web site - isn’t that what it’s for? And I’m sure they do their strategic planning based upon unsolicited advice from the Internet - who wouldn’t?
So I dropped them a line to suggest they open one in DC, or better yet closer to me in Northern Virginia - specifically I think Tyson’s Corner or Reston would be great locations. I clicked submit and figured I may as well not hold my breath on that, since the closest location they have currently is Denver.
Sure enough, about 15 minutes later I got a reply from a nice young lady over at Il Fornaio (well I have no idea if she was nice or young, but given her name I feel pretty confident on the lady part of my charcterization). She informed me that in Spring/Summer of 2007 they are indeed opening an Il Fornaio in Reston. How exciting is that?
Ah, the power of the Internet. You want something, and all you have to do is send an email. Since I’m sure it was my suggestion that put them over the top on their decision to open the Virginia restaurant.
In any event, I’m looking forward to eating there.
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Posted in life, tech at 3:40 pm by mridley
I’ve been living perhaps a bit too hard and fast these past couple months. A lot has been going on in my personal life, and my strategy has been to distract myself from reality as much as possible. But with various happenings over the past few weeks, I’ve started to feel as though that approach has played itself out.
Unfortunately now that I do turn my attention back to other things, I’ve noticed I’ve been very derelict in taking care of my Internet projects. I don’t refer to this web site, so much, as I’ve never found my voice here. Maybe I will eventually.
But shownotes.info looks a bit like a condemned building, and I probably should put some time in over there. And of course my own podcast, Showbiz News - Online has remained still-born.
But beyond my own projects, I haven’t even logged into my bloglines account in months. While I do bring up slashdot and digg fairly regularly, beyond what they cover I have no idea what’s been happening online for the past 6 months.
Might be time to focus again.
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