The black day is nigh!
Posted: Thursday, November 16, 2006 9:53 PM by Will Femia
Black Friday, the nation's biggest shopping day, is fast approaching and the smart advice is to make your plans now. A number of sites are tracking the many sale items that die hard shoppers will be lining up at the crack of dawn to take advantage of.
I also clicked this collection of Black Friday tricks for getting the good stuff.
In a bizarre twist Best Buy is claiming that sites publishing their Black Friday sales prices are violating their copyright. I think their real issue is with publishing the prices too soon, tipping off the competition.
Following yesterday's skateboarding item, I don't think the "stiff and rigid" is one of the moves in the encyclopedia.
KFC becomes the first logo to be seen from space.
The best thing I clicked today: Helsinki Complaints Choir. Funny in and of itself but also says a lot about Helsinki and the human condition generally.
There's one for Birmingham, England too, but it's not as good. I want one for my city!
How to build the manta plane
Most election coverage by national media focuses on the federal positions. Democratic activist blog MyDD looks at how things changed across the country on a local level.
Murtha and ABSCAM: What Really Happened
Maybe I don't understand how new software is released, but it seems surprising that the new Zune isn't compatible with the new Microsoft operating system, Vista.
Remember the video of the stick figure that fights with the person using the computer? This is the sequel, animator/animation 2.
Larry King has never tried the Internet. What's weird about this to me is that I've done at least one online chat with Larry King. It was a long time ago for a fiction book he'd written, some kind of detective novel I think. He didn't have to log in though, we just had him on the phone with a typist. Could that have been the closest he's ever been to getting online?
How to sharpen your senses
Map: What Does the Internet Look Like? It's not a map of the sites but of the actual network, the literal Web.
But speaking of a map of the sites, a new study says only one percent of Web pages contain sexually explicit material. That wouldn't have been my guess, but I can believe it when I think about all the other stuff that's out there. Of course, the real statistic that matters is the percent of Web traffic that encounters sexually explicit material. It's a grim joke I've heard a few times in online news circles that for all the effort put into theorizing and strategizing online news, the actual graph of online traffic is nearly half porn, nearly half gambling and a little sliver of "other." And within that sliver is another sliver that is online news.
Speaking of a lot of noise from a small percentage, 200 Spammers Create 80 Percent Of Spam. I wonder how many people respond to spam such that it's worth the time of these 200 people.
The UCLA community is in a state of upset over the tasering of a student in the school library. The story has a place where it looks like there should be video but it doesn't load for me. Naturally it's on YouTube. It takes a few minutes to warm up. I thought there was going to be a riot when they tased the kid the second time.
A Star Wars virgin was made to watch all six episodes in a row to see if a fan can be created or if it requires a more long term indoctrination starting from a young age. In the end he claims to get it, but a part of me doesn't believe him.
In a related item, Wil Wheaton wonders why Star Wars geeks take the movies so seriously. NOTE: Suicide Girls are a sort of punk/goth pin-up girl site. I clicked around and I'm pretty sure you don't find any actual nudity unless you're a member, but still, be aware that that's what this site is.
To the Han Solo/Greedo controversy Wheaton mentions, I took the below photo this morning.
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