As impressed as I was with Blue Man Group, I was even more knocked out by the wizard that opened for them. Mike Relm is harder to describe than BMG. Take 1,000 milligrams of military grade amphetamine, mix it with an arena-sized sound system and a MacBook Pro.
Magazine publisher launches broadband network
Magazine publisher and media/marketing company Meredith Corporation has launched Better.tv, its first-ever broadband network.
Better.tv offers a range of video programming on twenty “channels”, based on Meredith’s magazines, television stations, books, websites, and live events.
Better.tv topics include food, family, home, style, remodeling, entertainment, relationships, fitness and health. Programs and videos featured on Better.tv range in length from 2 to 30 minutes, and are targeted at “better serving younger customers,” according to President-CEO Steve Lacy. [More at Podcasting News]
Sometimes a Poloroid is better
Like all regulars at the Coffee Zone, I’ve been anticipating the arrival of Izabella Schereen Yanis (6 pounds, 11 ounces), the newest addition to the Yanis Family. We hope and assume Taisir used something other than his Treo to capture the first images.
One hundred million iPods sold
“Apple today announced that the 100 millionth iPod has been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years ago, in November 2001, and since then Apple has introduced more than 10 new iPod models, including five generations of iPod, two generations of iPod mini, two generations of iPod nano and two generations of iPod shuffle. Along with iTunes and the iTunes online music store, the iPod has transformed how tens of millions of music lovers acquire, manage and listen to their music.”
Thank you for dying
The new novel by Christopher Buckley proposes a way to fix the Social Security mess. From the BusinessWeek review:
“As the baby boomers shuffle into their sunset years, Uncle Sam will hand them a bundle of juicy tax breaks and assorted perks in return for agreeing to a painless lethal injection at age 65. Too draconian? Not to worry. A second option would give slightly less generous benefits to those who prefer to hang around to age 70.”
Only the genius who gave us Thank You for Smoking (the novel, not the movie) could make us laugh at something so serious. And, just so you know, I never trusted our government enough to think there would be anything in the fund by the time I need it and I’m not counting on it.
Oh yeah, the main character is “Cassandra Devine, a 29-year-old Washington public-relations executive by day and diva blogger by night.” (talk about a great stripper name).
flickr back on top
I’ve been using flickr for a long time. I fell out of love for a bit after Yahoo! acquired the service and the conversion didn’t go as smoothly as it might. But I’ve been making an effort to better understand and use flickr’s many, wonderful features.
Flickr Map is hardly new but I just never got around to playing with it until last night. The short version is, you can locate a photo on a map to show precisely where sit was taken.
For example, during my affiliate relations days in Iowa, I stopped by the farm where the movie Field of Dreams was filmed. I knew the farm was near Dyersville, Iowa, but couldn’t remember the exact location. So I checked Wikipedia and found the exact latitude/longitude. Plugged that into Flickr Maps and, voila! And I was able to zoom in close enough to see the shape of the ball diamond.
I now have about 500 photos in my Flickr account. Unfortunately, when I started saving digital images, I foolishly sized the images down (to save space). So my rez is poor on those older images. Alas.
But the organization tools on Flickr are pretty amazing. And –you knew this was coming– it works so nicely with iPhoto that uploading images is even easier than before.
Boomsday (Christopher Buckley)
“You loaded the software and typed in the search words. Say you’d been arrested for drunk driving or soliciting a prostitute, or you’d been in a gossip page biting the ear of some pretty young thing in a nightclub. Or, for that matter, you had been charged by the SEC with swindling your shareholders. You typed in your name, along with “drunk driving” or “prostitute” or “ear” or “embezzling.” Spider Repellent found all the references to you on the Web and – deleted them.”
…
“As the baby boomers shuffle into their sunset years, Uncle Sam will hand them a bundle of juicy tax breaks and assorted perks in return for agreeing to a painless lethal injection at age 65. Too draconian? Not to worry. A second option would give slightly less generous benefits to those who prefer to hang around to age 70.”
…
“I’d like to be in charge for just five minutes. Balance the books. Get us out of debt. Be nice to our friends, tell our enemies to fuck off. Clean up the air and the water. Throw corporate crooks in the clink. Put dignity back in government. Fix things.” — Randolph K. Jepperson
…
BADMAP is an acronym for Bio-Actuarial Dyna-Metric Age Predictor. It works like this:
” A person’s DNA profile, family history, mental history, lifestyle profile, every variable –how many trips to the grocery per week, how many airplane flights, hobbies, food, booze, number of times per month you had sex and with whom, everything down to what color socks you put on in the morning– were all fed into the software. RIP-ware would then calculate and predict how and when you’d die. In the testing, they had programmed it retroactively with the DNA and lifestyle profile of thousand of people who had already died. RIP-ware predicted their deaths with an accuracy of 99.07 percent. In a simulation, it predicted the death of Elvis Presley — just four months from the actual date of his demise. The ultimate “killer app.”
Insurance companies had been working on similar programs. What a windfall it would be for them if they could sell life insurance to someone they knew was going to live another forty years–and conversely decline life insurance to someone the computer predicted would be pushing up daisies within two years.
Another field of vast potential were the old folks’ homes. typically, these demanded that a prospective resident turn over his and her entire net worth in return for perpetual care. You could live two years or twenty years; that was their gamble. But if a nursing home knew,in advance, that John Q. smith was going to have a fatal heart attack in 2.3 years while watching an ad for toenail fungus ointment on the evening news, they would much rather have his nest egg as advance payment than that of, say, Jane Q. Jones, who RIP-ware predicted would live another twenty-five years and die at the ripe old age of 105.
…
“In cyberspace everyone can hear you scream”
Can your country do anything big and important?
Scott Adams is jealous of countries with governments and wishes he had one:
“…the Democrats are poised for a big win during the next election based on their excellent track record of doing nothing for years. Doing nothing might not sound like a good strategy to you, but if you compare it to what happens when the government actually does something, you can make an argument.
A good test of whether you have a government is this: Can your country do anything big and important? For example, could the United States start a new war, or end an existing one, or change its dependence on foreign oil, or provide health care to all citizens? Apparently not.“
I hate it when the cartoonists are the only ones with a clue.
Google Earth
Just installed Google Earth on the MacBook and….oooh! Nice. Last time I looked at the app it had just come out and I was on a PC. Everything about Google Earth is better. The images have been updated and the tools are amazing. Here’s the smays compound:
Like Steve McQueen, All I need’s a fast machine
I posted a short video clip last month of some of Sheryl Crow’s clothing and costumes which she donates to raise money for a childrens home in Kennett, Missouri.
What I did’nt mention (for fear of ruining the surprise) was the item I discovered hanging on a rack in a back room: a slinky top (T-shirt?) Ms. Crow wore in the Steve McQueen video. I thought that would be a cool gift for my pen-pal and Sheryl Crow uberfan, Ann.
I liberated the shirt with a donation and sent it off to Ann, who lives in Belgium. After a month held hostage in Belgian customs (the shirt, not Ann), Ann has the shirt and promises a photo.