January 2007 - Posts
I have meetings today, followed by training on how to make pages like this and this, followed by drinks on the boss' tab, so pardon today's hodge podge of links as I compete with my own schedule.
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The most commonly heard utterance in the cube farm yesterday was, "Harry Potter naked?!?" This, as links spread to promotional photos for a performance of Equus starring Daniel Radcliffe. The most complete collection of the photos is here. They're not exactly NSFW BUT, he's 17, he's naked from at least the waist up in some of them and from the waist up and the hip bone sideways in a couple of them. Plus, there are also a few featuring a woman in her underwear. They're more artful than pornographic, but there's the strong possibility that looking at them will make you feel creepy. Here's the story. Apparently he is fully naked in the play, and that girl is his girlfriend.
This truly is the biggest bridal freak-out ever. Over a million and a half people have cringed through this in just two weeks. Someone needs to book her to get the full after-story please (assuming it's not some kind of hoax, but it looks pretty authentic). The bride enters at 1:41 so you can start there. NOTE: There are a few curses, but most significant is the occasional freak-out scream. You'll want headphones or understanding co-workers.
Thanks to Scott for the tip in the comments of the previous post.
UPDATE: Looks like there's already a solicitation from Good Morning America in the commetns of the video. Even if this turns out to be a fake, enough people want to see the wedding video and the aftermath that they could probably get a pretty successful little video series going.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hoax!
Fifty years ago a study found that black children preferred white dolls to black dolls. The study was conducted again, less formally by a girl making a film for her high school class. Plus... Singing for your searches, new coke, and the sickest amusement park ride ever
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This post is almost entirely video, beginning with a look at the public space battle between advertisers, street artists and Dadaists (?). Also, the blogging backlash, a bar trick, and a few others.
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I meant to include this bit of mail in today's entry:
Hey Will,
Isn’t this kind of stuff that makes the net great... A magazine makes a list of the best guitar solos, and a blogger makes it even better by digging up a youTube clip to go with the top 20! Even if you don’t post it I really hope you check it out.
The clips are amazing finds. I spent my whole weekend on YouTube and Yahoo vids sorting out the best live versions, just amazing historic (and now archived!) stuff.
If you're not a mainstream guy, at least peep... Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King & Albert Collins "Texas Flood" 1988, so great...
They're all pretty much incredible. I wasn't much of a Skynyrd fan and the Freebird - Collins/Rossington clip is one of my faves.
Hope you're well and very best regards,
-CityRag
Will replies: Outstanding effort! Really well done. My challenge to readers is before you click the video, see if you can sing the solo from memory. Even if you don't agree with the songs, most of the people I thought of are represented on the big list. There's no Willie Nelson though. Y'know what I always thought was a catchy solo? The one in "What I am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians with the heavy wah pedal. I haven't heard that song in at least ten years and I can still sing the whole guitar solo. I don't think I saw any Boston on the list. Their songs are so guitar heavy they'd have to be close to top 100 for something -like maybe the More Than A Feeling solo. Who else? It feels like there's a category of pop metal hair bands that's being left out. Dokken, Poison, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Cinderella, White Tiger Lion, Whitesnake... all those kinds of bands had proud guitar soloists, but nothing from their catalogs is coming to mind so I can't really argue that any of them should be on the "great" list.
Photo: Smoke3 by Swiss Bones / Jonny Watt **
I found out why I've been seeing smoke photo instructions lately. According to this post it's been gaining interest around the Web following this inspiring set by Graham Jeffery.
**The Creative Commons license on this photo forbids commercial use of the photo. Do you think I violate that by virtue of being on a commercial site or do you reckon I'm cool so long as I don't try to sell the photo?
UPDATE: I asked the photographer how he interpreted "non-commercial" and whether it was OK if I used his photo anyway:
:: Re: non-commercial use
I'm not sure about whether it falls within the CC license but i'm more than happy for you to use the shot. I guess the term Non-commercial can be seen different ways. I always felt that as long as someone's not trying to directly sell my shots as their own then any other use is fine.
Thanks for the link and if you want to paste this reply on your blog you're welcome.
Cheers,
Jonny
Has there ever been a true Web celebrity? Someone who everyone knows, and they're in magazines like a real red carpet celebrity, but they got their start on the Internet? Plus... Battlestar Galactica gag reel, State of the Union toys and prehistoric deep sea creatures.
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As the president describes for us the state of our union, I'd like to highlight the latest in what is shaping up to be the Internet's most important democratic function. More than giving everyone a voice and more than providing an essentially free platform for leaders to communicate with followers, the Web has proven to be an effective tool for the enforcement of accountability... (Plus magic secrets, video games, rocket scooters and the world hates us.)
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I don't have a strong lead item today but that's no reason to go home with links on the clipboard while the blog goes stale. Today's entry has new battery technology, a new music business model, time wasting games, a time saving clock, a cool new video site...
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The best thing I clicked all day is this video of a water buffalo being purchased for a Chinese family. PLUS: writing like clockwork, American Idol MySpace pages, cancer cured again and other "book" links.
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Plus, my best New Year's Eve picture from this year:
(This post is actually a test of importing YouTube and images. In case I don't get the video to work right, you should watch it here, it's very good.)
"Okay, so we already know that the White House has now taken the unprecedented step of firing at least four and likely seven US Attorneys in the middle of their terms of office..." -- Plus, car crashes, CGI morphing, yet another Saddam video, bird v. windshield, wiieight loss...
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Since I'm not keeping up with sharing mail as well as I'd like, I'm going to try to make a more frequent habit of posting mail a little at a time instead of trying to save it up for a big post that I never get around to compiling. And because Vivian in the first letter has raised an issue I'm self conscious about, today's the day it starts.
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Having heard the full Barbara Boxer quote I think the question of whether she was attacking Condi Rice for being unmarried and childless is a red herring to distract from criticism of the war, but the fact that it has blown up the way it has is an indication that the country is itching to have this fight.
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I spent the morning poking through the outstanding research of Devlin/Hornbeck online profiles done at Boing Boing. It turns out there are a large number of gamer profiles and social site pages that are connected to the case...
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Some Web reports are speculating that the deciding factor in the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray may have taken place this week as we've learned that Sony (Blu-ray) won't put adult content on their discs. Since porn is credited by some for shifting the critical mass to VHS, this could be a bad (business) move by Sony.
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Folks are saying she appears inebriated in this interview. I think some of her awkwardness comes from a bit of satellite lag in what she's hearing in her ear. She also seems to be trying to appear enthusiastic about something she doesn't really care that much about. Those two alone are enough to make a viewer ask, "What's wrong with this guy." Anyway, it's not my job to make excuses for Paula Abdul.
Draw your own conclusions.
I've said before that I'm not very gadget savvy but it was hard not to notice that the entire online world came to a slack-jawed, neck snapping halt at the announcement of the new Apple iPhone. To the extent that I'm as dazzled by shiny new things as anyone else, I fully admit that this looks really cool and exciting and I want one. Recognizing that there's not much rationality to that opinion, now that the dust is settling I've mostly clicked critical items to balance my enthusiasm. What I clicked:
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I ended up with a lot of YouTube video in my notes today so I decided to use them all in one shot.
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Yahoo is adding some "wisdom of the crowds" to its local listings. I think the idea is cool and should make for better listings. I wanted to give a good example or something, but while I was able to edit the entry of one recently closed restaurant in my neighborhood, I found their local listings generally a mess and hard to deal with. Maybe this new feature will be the first step in their improvement. If I were cynical I'd wonder if Yahoo already knows their listings are a mess and they found a great free way to fix them with a timely Web gimmick.
Speaking of contributing info on your local scene, I read Susan Mernit's announcement of Placeblogger which aims to index (with your help) all of the handy hyperlocal news sites and blogs that you use on a regular basis to get news that's relevant to where you live. I have mixed feelings about this one. As an avid fan of local reporting who is very familiar with my local offerings this doesn't look particularly useful. As a reporter who often looks for regional blogs where news takes place, this is probably one of the first places I'd go. It has a real retro feel in the way it makes raw lists. No tag clouds that might sort the locations more visually, no map mash-ups which would be the obvious interface. It reminds me of years ago when blogs were for socializing and people submitted their blogs to regional sites with the goal of mixing with and getting linked by their neighbors. When I was writing the Blogspotting blog for MSNBC.com in 2002/2003 I would regularly report on new cities with new lists of bloggers. Boston, New York, Dallas/Ft.Worth... Recently we saw a nice Cleveland round up. Anyway, it's interesting to see that model with a new journalistic mission. The folks commenting at PressThink seem enthusiastic about the term "placebloggers." Could that be the term I was looking for in place of Time Magazine's incorrectly imprecise "you"? "Oh, my husband isn't here right now, he's down the street taking pictures of the flooded creek. He's a placeblogger. I am a placeblogging widow."
Since I got a lot of critical mail last time I used the phrase "wisdom of crowds" let me quickly offer The Dumbness of Crowds. It contrasts collective intelligence with the averaged blandness that is collective negotiation.
Speaking of collective creations, I spent some time Friday installing software on a new laptop (It's got one of those dual core hard drives microprocessors in it. Hoo!!). I got this machine so I could better monitor news in places like Second Life, so I popped in there for a bit. Realizing I had yet to see the Reuters facilities I teleported there. If I'd done a bit more exploring I might have seen their reporter filing this very story: Anshe Chung Studios cracks down on griefing photos. The story is so full of fascinating issues I can hardly list them all, but at the heart of the matter is the idea that in Second Life you own your character's image so there's a chance that people who "photograph" your character are infringing your copyright if they reproduce that photo. To my mind, it's fair to use a picture of someone if they're in the news, even if that someone is only a "second" someone. See also Boing Boing's reporting.
Speaking of Second Life, "Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2." There's still some question about what this means exactly, but from the user/observer perspective it can only get more interesting.
Still speaking of Second Life, next time in I'm going to check out Sears.
Welcome to Wi-Fi-Ville Pop. 300 towns and growing - Eventually the Internet will be a public utility and you'll be able to say you remember when it wasn't.
"But when confronted with contrary evidence, we become "motivated skeptics" ... picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs..."
See also: Selective Amnesia
In talking about online atheism in my previous post I could have also pointed out the distinction between the atheists and the very vocal critics of the American Christian right.
Just how much money can you make from blogging? Don't quit your day job.
I missed the premiere of the new Rolling Stone reality show, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up. Meanwhile, I understand it's possible to play along at home on their Web site: "At noon every Monday, we’ll announce the week’s competition, based on writing assignments the kids received on the show the night before. Entries are due Friday at noon, with weekly winners announced the following week." It's past noon now but I'm not seeing anything. Maybe they mean West Coast time? UPDATE: Here it is.
Wait a minute, I just realized that this is a reality show based on writing ability. No eating bugs, selling ice cream in animal costumes, so wrestling in the sand in bikinis? I'm almost afraid to watch the show to find out I'm wrong, but can you imagine if reality shows were cerebral instead of stupid?
Isn't there a Gary Larson cartoon somewhere of an astronaut looking at the bottom of his moon boot and saying, "Oops."
"More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends."
Speaking of social networking and who's doing it, I don't have a LinkedIn page, but I'm beginning to think I need one. Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn
Speaking of not keeping up with the cool kids, yet another means by which people can assess my utter uncoolness: achievement points.
The Law Catches Up To Private Militaries, Embeds - "They're now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws that governs soldiers. But here's the catch: embedded reporters are now under those regulations, too."
Currently listening to DJ Steveboy. I clicked somewhere that he had mixes that are good to run to, but got sidetracked by the Kate Bush remix. NOTE: If you're playing dance music out loud at work you probably don't need this warning, but there's a sample of a moaning woman in the Kate Bush mix that may make the person on the other side of the cube wall ask you what the heck you're listening to.
Double maze - Level 1 took me forever so I didn't play beyond that but I did get the hang of it by the time I completed that level so the others would probably go a little more quickly.
Mariah wins porn battle - Not that I care, but this feels like justice to me. I never really understood why porn stars needed to have pun names.
Speaking of justice at war, Leahy Introduces Bill To Combat War Profiteering - Though I don't doubt that a company savvy enough to be in a position to commit this crime would be savvy enough to avoid being punished for it, it's still a nice sentiment.
Techniques for interviewing kids on camera
Funny puberty instructional animation, probably NSFW.
No, goats do not climb trees. I refuse.
How death by hanging works - No photos or anything but still pretty disturbing. I don't recall if it was reported how long it took Saddam to die. By the way, there's another Saddam video out there, but I'm not bothering with a link. The camera catches up with his dead body on a gurney and pulls back the sheet. We see him still in his suit, his head turned sideways and a weird red spot on the side of his neck, which I decided was too gross to link to. It's all over the place though, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding it. I even clicked it by accident once wondering what "News Adam" could mean.
How to go to M.I.T. for free - Answer: take the courses online. No degree though.
This should be a holiday tradition in every office.
This guy drew a map on an envelope instead of an address and it still got there. I'm guessing this is also the reason why this page of random things sent in the mail is in circulation lately.
"Cancer cured" headline of the week: Remotely Activated Nanoparticles Destroy Cancer - Targeted nanotech-based treatments will enter clinical trials in 2007.
Remember the article a few days ago asking if the U.S. was playing any role in the war in Somalia? I guess we have our answer.
Will AdBrite spell the end of freebee Web video and herald a new age of ads on amateur video content? I don't know, but hey look, Google Video Running Commercials
Mohan Seneviratne was a man of the highest caliber. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered. He set an inspiring example of the standard to which we should hold our lives. On his model I nag myself not to settle and remind myself to appreciate what's here now.
How many bloggers does it take to replace all the light bulbs in America? Seth Godin is leading a blog-wide awareness campaign to boost the use of energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs - the one Wal-Mart is also helping promote. Did you know they're only 2 bucks now? Since the exercise calls for writing a bit about the bulbs here's my contribution:
Godin floats a semi-rhetorical question about the slow adoption of these superior bulbs. Obviously he feels awareness is a significant obstacle. I'd offer that the real reason for slow adoption is that no one is going to throw away a bulb that's working, so first all the bulbs that are currently in use have to burn out. Then we also have to use up all those extra bulbs in the pantry closet. Then, provided the new CF bulbs actually fit in the lamps we have, we might pick some up next time there's a sale. Ironically, it's the desire to get our money's worth from the bulbs we've got that keeps us from buying bulbs that get us more for our money.
Silent Star Wars - (It'd be cool to hear a ragtime rendition of some of the soundtrack.)
And of course, speaking of Star Wars, you saw the Rose Bowl parade, right?
I know we've looked at the phenomenon of people accidentally flinging their Wii video game controllers through their TV sets, but I don't remember if I pointed out that the name for someone who does this is called by the unfortunate pun "wiitard" as in, "Your mom's a wiitard." Apologies to the mentally challenged, that's just what they call it and kids are cruel.
I keep bumping into this link on New York City blogs, but really it doesn't require you be a New Yorker. The photographer asked people how they feel about their faces and put the copy along with the portrait he took. Obviously he picked the interesting ones. I wonder how many boring ones he rejected. I'd love to see this as a Flickr pool or something on a mass scale that everyone can contribute to.
In a similar vein, a reader named Dr. Charles wrote to me today about a fledgling project he's started. "It's a project that aims to creatively examine the human scar." Here's the link. It's not as gross as it sounds.
Remember that Dove video of the normal woman who undergoes all manner of manipulation before the image is posted on a billboard? Here's a funny twist on that idea.
TV ban on adverts for cheese, the latest 'junk food' - It's hard to argue with the "high salt, high fat" point. I wonder if this seems absurd because of all the Dairy Council propaganda we've consumed as Americans or if it's because cheese is such an obvious dietary stable anyway.
God inc. - "A comedy about life in the corporate offices of God." - This is episode one. Episode 2 came out the other day. It's a little like "The Office" but just a little.
Speaking of not taking God seriously, Digg and YouTube Powering Atheism 2.0 - I was glad to see this headline because it's certainly been my anecdotal experience that there's a rising tide of atheism online. I don't know if there's any study that is actually keeping track of the actual number of atheists in the world, but this piece does a good job of rounding up links that support the impression of growing ranks. Also pointed out is the surprising prevalence of Richard Dawkins and his writings among social sites. It's certainly interesting that the guy is a bona fide celebrity online but I'm pretty sure most people in the mainstream would think you were talking about the Family Feud guy.
Speaking of Richard Dawkins, here's the latest from him receiving wide online attention: Executing Saddam Hussein was an act of vandalism - Here's his point: "I want to add another and less obvious reason why we should not have executed Saddam Hussein. His mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research: a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars." The Hannibal Lecter theory.
Speaking of giving serious thought to religion, I'm informed by mail that, "FYI: The thirteenth Biblical Studies Carnival has been posted at Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspot. This Carnival highlights over 70 posts relating to academic biblical studies in the blogosphere for the month of December 2006. There is also a “Biblical Studies Carnival: Best of 2006” post coming in the next day or two."
Speaking of studying the Bible. It took me a minute for me to figure out how to use the Bible Map, but try something like Acts 13 and you'll see some hyperlinked text. It's slow to load, but it'll zoom the map. Cool mash-up.
Speaking of cool maps, the map of happiness asks you if you're happy and then color codes your response on a map based (I'm guessing) on your IP.
Five Hackers Who Left a Mark on 2006 - Includes one female for those of you with daughters looking for impressive, non-bikini wearing figures in computer sciences.
Web pilots and their unruly passengers - NOTE: This is a great story that includes some Web culture history and a mention of "The September that never ended" that you don't hear often in day to day online chatter, so I'm including the link. If you just read the text of the story, all is well and you'll be satisfied with a tale of justice exacted on the sloppily incompetent. The story has to do with someone linking directly to one of this fellow's images without his permission and putting a huge strain on his bandwidth. To punish them, he replaced the image with the most unholy awful obscene terrible psyche scarring image known to mankind. More foul than even the most advanced science could match. So NOTE: In this story, after some warning from the author, are the words, " See what I replaced the Grim Reaper with." You should not click these words under any circumstances. If you understand that it's a terrible image, that's enough to understand the rest of the story. I'm not winkingly telling you to click it. Take my words at face value. If you're worried you might get these instructions wrong, just skip this one. OK, here's the link to the story.
Alan hits another one out of the park with his coverage of Blue Origin. That's the name of the space tourism venture undertaken by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Speaking of turning our eyes toward space, on the heel's of yesterday's focus on the Chicago UFO sightings comes this story of an unidentified piece of space lump falling through someone's roof.
And speaking of stuff from space crashing to Earth, a UFO reportedly crashed in South Africa on Saturday.
And before we stop speaking about strangeness from space, how about the mystery of Planet X? (Should I have "speaking of" segued these to the religion links above?)
Wow, here's one for the water cooler or a long car ride: Parents defend decision to keep girl a child - The crux of the matter:
The reason for the controversy is this: three years ago, when Ashley began to display early signs of puberty, her parents instructed doctors to remove her uterus, appendix and still-forming breasts, then treat her with high doses of oestrogen to stunt her growth.
In other words, Ashley was sterilised and frozen in time, for ever to remain a child. She was only 6.
The reason is that Ashley has a severe brain impairment and her parents didn't want to have to deal with her condition in an adult. Obviously I'm simplifying something much more complicated. Here's the blog of her parents if you're interested.
My colleagues in the health section ran this story back in November before the Ashley's identity was known. Note that there's a message board on that story if there's no one hanging around your water cooler. UPDATE: Oops, looks like they picked it up again. Here's the new story and some medical ethicist commentary. They're calling it "Peter Pan" surgery.
Plastic Logic raises $100 million to enable the first “take anywhere, read anywhere” electronic reader products - This is a press release, not a news story, but the exciting part is that they're ready to begin manufacturing on a commercial scale. I'm not sure what that means in terms of when it'll be in your local Best Buy, but at least it's that much closer to being a real product and not some futuristic tech show prototype.
How to beat the claw game - Can this really be true? I'm skeptical that there'd be an actual knob that says how often to allow a winning grab. Isn't that fraud?
The first 12 issues of Thrasher Magazine - that's 1981.
I don't know if you've seen one of those new Tickle Me Elmos, but they're really freaky to see on fire.
Petri Dish art
Nielsen BuzzMetrics' Top Blog Posts of the Year - Remarkably lacking in diversity.
Speaking of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, I'm going put up these links so far and then read through this one before chasing down some of today's other hot links: Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media
Dun Dun Dun!! Just when you thought it was safe to ululate, Saddam is not dead. As you might guess, it points out that we haven't seen the actual neck snapping. The reasoning is similar to the kind we've seen with the 9/11 Truth movement. Lots of rhetorical questions.
Speaking of the execution, Iraqi blogger Riverbend's reaction to Saddam's execution is what Richard Engel predicted. Her correction of CNN's translation is also very interesting. (Not every Iraqi blogger shares her feelings.)
The 2007 Bloggies are taking nominations. Yeah, doesn't it seem like there were Weblog awards a few weeks ago? This is the one they give out at SXSW.
Can it really be that this movie made only 30 bucks?
Speaking of stories I didn't quite believe when I saw it, reportedly someone burned up half an island with a gas cooker. Looking at the photo I thought this was surely a photoshop job. Could people really be living so densely on such a small island? Sure enough, it's a place. Unfortunately I couldn't find a map program with satellite view of any worthwhile resolution.
Panoramas.dk has shots up from this weekend. I love these and often argue that we should have them on this site too. I actually prefer them to video. Check out all those camera phones in the Sydney scene. Will the future look back on that and believe it? How many people watched the new year arrive on a two inch screen? It's also interesting to note the different degrees of security in each scene, though I don't know enough about each location to know if it's really a fair comparison.
Speaking of foreign and borderline irrational technology, imagine if you were owning a TV for the first time in 32 years. I often joke that asking, "What's the buzz online" is like asking, "What's on TV" but with many more channels so it was fun to read this guy try to describe what's on TV.
The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006
Every now and then blog activity flares up around a ridiculous statement by a public official. Generally, when these are especially absurd I don't bother linking. But sometimes they persist. Such is the case with Congressman Virgil Goode who seems to view the election of a Musilm congressman as a sign of some kind of enemy infiltration.
Speaking of Ahmadinejad, I also clicked this: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suggested that 'Jesus would return to the world along with the emergence of the descendant of the Islam's holy prophet, Imam Mahdi'." The entry is about an Islamic vision of the Apocalypse.
And speaking of Imam Mahdi, understanding his significance puts news about the Golden Dome mosque in better perspective. The Golden Dome mosque "is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice."
French marchers say 'non' to 2007 - If we all rally together we can stop the madness. Call it a global War on Time.
I've clicked this Amazon warehouse photo in a variety of formats in the past view days. Remember the end of Indiana Jones? We've got a diner in my neighborhood that sells everything from goulash to lobster and I imagine this is what their refrigerator looks like.
Speaking of viral photos, best haircut ever?
Listening so far this morning: Liberation from Talib Kweli & Madlib - Running the link through Technorati it looks like everyone in the world is imploring you to listen to this rap release. It took forever to download, I think because it's got a Mac version and a PC version. (To be honest, this morning I also listened to a review copy of "L Tunes: Music from and inspired by The L Word" that came in the mail yesterday. You can skip that one.)
This year's Edge annual question from the World Question Center: What are you optimistic about? Why? Looking at last year's Clicked I found the link to the previous question, What is your dangerous idea?
It looks like most people are adopting a "we'll see" attitude about a proposed virtual reality network. I don't intend to contribute to any hype but for the sake of recognizing it when it comes up in conversation, here's a quick primer.
Speaking of technical themes to be aware of, this BBC clip on Bluesnarfing is from last Spring, but I don't find the term in an MSNBC.com search so let's get it on the record, particularly for those of you who got Bluetooth headsets for Christmas. (Bluesnarfing is when hackers hijack your phone by connecting through your Bluetooth signal without your knowledge.)
Speaking of Engadget links, is your office cold or maybe you sit under the AC vent? How about a hand warming mouse?
Growing tea at home
There's some debate in the comments about whether pin-up girls rendered in typography (NSFW even though they're just letters) is creative and clever. One critic recommended Bembo's Zoo and Words At Play instead. (Both SFW)
The State of Jihad: A look at the state of the major theaters, and some under the radar, in the Long War
Play old video games in your browser - It works, but it's a small screen. Probably best if you have some emotional connection to the game you choose.
Speaking of throwbacks, when was the last time you saw this as the headline on a blog entry: What Is The Definition Of A Blog? The real point of the post is that there's renewed debate about whether have comments enabled is definitional to blogs. While I agree that using a blog to interact with readers is definitional to blogging, I don't agree that it necessarily has to be done through comments.
Alan has all you could care about with regard to the Chicago UFO story that had stratospheric traffic yesterday on MSNBC.com, but I did also click the Chicago Tribune blog entry on it (mostly attracted by the video link, which turned out to be a Q&A with the Tribune transportation writer).
