December 31, 2005
Musick: Laughing Interview
George has been laughing over this video for nearly a month now, so it's about time he posted it. Go have yourself a merry little chuckle...I sent it to Michael OCC because it had his name written all over it.
And if you know WTF they're talking about, that would really wrap up 2005 nicely for my husband. Who's still laughing. A month later.
You Oughta Be In Pixels...
George on pixel smarts -> may our daughter follow in this young man's footsteps.
Holy New Years Eve Around the World, Batman!
Where in the world do you want to be tonight? is the beginning of their list of links likely to be worth checking out, beginning at 1000 UTC (5:00 a.m. EST) with Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific. After a dazzling brain dump about reception options, Lou confesses, "I have never heard anything from Wallis Island."
Firefox and IE - room for both?
AKMA, Margaret & Family, Have a Great Day Off
December 30, 2005
12 Hours of 2005 Recap
It's almost new year's eve and I don't even know how that happened because I've been working so fast and furious that I feel like I have to visit the bathroom every 24 minutes.
Other moments of my odd day have had me deep in thought: (read, playing polly pockets with jenna) and thinking, thinking, thinking while overdosing on this killer chicken soup i made last night which I can't get enough of--remind me to give you the short cut recipe at the end of this post, okay, and if you're going to CESCamp, could you bring a pot for the geekfest unconference taking shape--I've told Mary Lu I'd shove her a bowl through IM because it smelled so good, but we tried it and all it did was make my laptop smell like a bus.
[[Update--I forgot to include 'Jeneane's short-cut, not-thrifty, for people IMing with albert all the time' chicken soup recipe! Okay, ready? This is for a BIG batch in a stock pot. First, you get four cans of chicken broth, cut up carrots, parsnips that you dice kind of like the carrots, and chopped celery, or if you don't work with albert, cut it up yourself. You buy two of those roasted chickens that they have on sale at Target (one of the Targets with food) for like $4.00 each sometimes), and either 1 big package of egg noodles or 2 packages of cheese tortollini. You take it all home. Chop what needs chopping. Put the broth, plus the same amount again of hot water into a stock pot, add the veggies and start it to boiling. I add salt at this point. I like salt. I make no appology. Next, debone all that roasted chicken, and after about a half hour of a slow-rolling boil, throw it in the pot too, except save a couple wings here and a couple of legs there for another whole chicken dinner (that's what your used coolwhip containers are for). Let it simmer for an hour or so, til vegetables are tender. Toward the end, boil your noodles or tortollini in a separate pot, drain, and throw in for the last 10 - 15 minutes. Turn it off, put some in a bowl, and eat it until you are completely sick of it. Don't give any away. Just keep eating it. Freeze what you can't eat.]]
Stealing My Google AdCents
December 29, 2005
Supply and Demand and $500/night.
Delegates who haven't yet arranged for lodging should expect to spend more than $350 for a hotel room, as a simple search on one of the major travel websites show (Eg: Travelocity or Expedia I boycott Orbitz because they are inaccurate, consistently showing low rates that upon booking turn out to be sold out).The 3.5-star Hilton, conveniently located next to the Las Vegas Convention Centre where CES will be headquartered, charges a hefty $499 for a Thursday night stay. The 2-star Howard Johnson outbids them with $534. Most other hotels are simply sold out.
December 28, 2005
CES room shortage - viva las vegas.
Dave points to Doc, who points to Mary's new place, and here's Albert too: All have been having trouble finding rooms in Vegas for CES (warning: loud annoying Flash into) January 4-8.
Vitaliy is working on a WIKI for folks to coordinate around--and in the mean time Albert says GoldStrike is about 20 minutes outside of Vegas and has reasonably priced rooms.
Glad I'm watching from the cheap seats!
UPDATE: Vitaliy has the unofficial CES wiki for hotel info, roommate matches, meetups, side gatherings, etc... Have at it.
Technorati Tag: CES
I got to wondering...
Do you have more kids than you do blogs and struggle with finding that oh-so-special quiet time to write (I mean think staight)? Or are you overwhelmed with 20 blog mouths to feed while your realworld kid eats oreos in front of the TV?
I'll go first. In comments.
One Question for Microsoft
Now that you hijacked me away from firefox with a single click of the mouse that has me regretting my spasm, how do I unmake IE my default browser?
Blogging at 100 Bloggers
Hey, I saw some friends there. So I said me too. And I'll make new ones. That's how it's supposed to work.
December 27, 2005
P-P-P-Polly!
Albert on Web 2.0
Using Firefox's new on-the-fly blog commenting feature -- where I saw Albert joined the Web 2.0 discussion with some good thoughts.
On a sort of the same topic, every time I make a mistake and open a program that has IE associated with it (i think it was one of my photo preview thingys), it asks me so FAST if I want IE to be my default browser (No I don't but I click too FAST and then it is again even though i thought I uninstalled it), that BOOM, there's IE always opening again. That shit should be illegal. Don't hijack me with a dialog box like that.Anyway, this is what I was meaning about being free from menus. This little Firefox "Add Comment" box stealthly opens when you visit a page and you can see who's commented on it.How sweet is that?
Remembering
Lisa Williams remembers her Dad.
“And we’re off! Like a herd of dirty turtles!” is what he used to say when starting out on a car trip. Even if it was a short car trip.
He looks and sounds like a wonderful person, Lisa. I know you miss him.
Lisa Stone on Mommyblogging
Lisa points to a great interview she did with the mommybloggers, as well as a wonderful guest column. It's not always easy blogging-as-a-mom, but I'm sure cat owners feel the same way.
"...Mommybloggers are weaving some of the Web's best stories by and about women -- women who, let's not forget, control 80 percent of household spending. That's right, from the family car to the computer (you geeks, you) to the Legos (sigh) to the Pampers.
"Let's look at another medium as an example: Right now, the top revenue-generating news and entertainment shows on television are by moms for moms. Look at NBC's The Today Show starring Katie Couric: By a mom for moms, and the top-rated morning news show for ten straight years. How about Oprah, a daily conversation by the-mother-of-us-all for moms. There's ABC's The View, which is a coffee klatch of moms, mugs included. Don't forget ABC's Desperate Housewives, the made-up moms (take that any way you like). Hell, ABC's World News Tonight just put an anchormom, Elizabeth Vargas, in Peter Jennings' old chair, for heaven's sake!
"This is great news for mommybloggers because all these famous shows are in a money-making medium (television) where the numbers are dropping. Their problem is that us viewers now use the Internet more than we watch TV or read magazines. Instead of watching other people talk, we're getting our own word out. That used to mean message boards, the best place to hold online conversations. But now that we have our own personal printing presses -- blogs! -- better watch out. And the world is watching. This is why I've often thought that Dooce is more than a brilliant blogger. She's a metaphor for what's happening to the media and the value of what mommybloggers are writing--to advertisers as well as to readers. She's the
Saturday keynote speaker at the SXSW conference. That says a great deal." (Read
the rest of the interview.
Lisa is right about about the growing clout of the mommyblogger brigade. So, if mommybloggers are cool with being called mommybloggers (i would say i am one sometimes, just like I'm a PR blogger sometimes, a tech blogger sometimes, a poetry blogger sometimes, and whatever else you want to call me save late for pizza), why does it piss so many women and men off?
First, the very subject matter of children can ignite a firestorm among the bloggers--the SAHMs vs. the Working Moms vs. the Childless By Choice, vs. the Queen Mother. Everyone gets into the action and I've seen it escalate until someone takes down their blog or makes another kind of dramatic statement that says, you all suck!
That's why blogher is important, and what Lisa's doing is important. It brings these issues into a forum where people get together in the same room(s) and come to know our many dimensions, to know one another as people first with rich life experiences, including motherhood.
In reality, most moms blogging blog about more than being a mom; but their perspective -- where they blog FROM -- is the heart of a mom.
Plus we almost always have extra Kleenex with us, so we're handy to have around.
...
No, I Invented Podcasting
Gary Turner's relating early podcasting underground activites, but in his reminiscing, he forgot that he really was one of the first podcasters. Gary, remember in 2002 when we bloggers would call into your work voicemail and you'd broadcast us back on your blog? Helloooo. Sans enclosure tags, but so? This was before Blogger's Audblog too.
And the wayback machine gives us your compilation page from late 2002/early o3 with messages from the following
Jeneane Sessum
Kalilily
Marek J
Marti Roell
Sharo O'Neill
Shelley (Burningbird) Powers
RageBoy
Frank Paynter
Halley
AMKA
Ryan Irelan
Anita Bora - Poor quality
Chris Locke - Losing it
Michael O'Connor Clarke
And since I was the first to leave you a blog message, that means "I invented podcasting."
Yah, we were casting alright.
Wikipedia That.
;-)
And a little something because Doc is usually right. Okay always.
Doc encouraged me to get my "To Blog or Not To Blog" white paper out of PDF and into HTML - well, so, i sort of blogged it here.
Now, what should I do with the rest of the site?
Hmmm, have some ideas for adding stuff. You?
Qumana's Sweet Design
Posting this from Qumana, a nicely designed blog writing tool that lets you write in one place and publish to the plethora of blogging tools. One great new-to-me feature is the Tag field under Title and Categories that REMINDS you, and makes it easy, to put your tags in--something I have been forgetting to do as long as David Weinberger's been tagging. Cool!
Am I supposed to put a comma between tagged terms/words? I never know.
Plethora? Qumana? Blogging? Tagging? Yes, golly, it is web 2.0!
Now, when's the "Export From Blog" widget coming? ;-)
Okay, pushing Post Blog now...
Oh, just noticed, they have a blog too.
December 26, 2005
Free Me from the Desktop Too.
Thanks to Om Malik for giving us a stocking full of goodies tonight, including a link to Zoho Writer, YUMMY! I've used Writely, and I have to say, web-based word processors (antiquated term but smart positioning against MS from Zoho) are more in line with what I was asking for in my plea to be free from menus. Free me from menus, free me from the desktop. These fastcos will get to dynamic language-based features before MicroSoft will. It's a given.
With Zoho Writer joining Writely, easily accessible through Firefox, MicroSoft is losing another important foothold on the desktop--especially considering MS Word hasn't done anything new of note in--oh, a couple of years now?
As a writer, I'm like a kid on summer vacation using these tools with my colleagues on the outside. Inside the enterpise, barriers to change are always higher. For how long though?
Don't miss Om's "Best of GigaOm" [PDF], a free e-book (awesome design) of the most widely read, most commented 0n posts of GigaOm. Read the whole entry and hit the Donation button.
...
And I can use every minute of it.
Thanks Doc for telling us about the extra second we get this year!
Web 2.0 Roundabout
Dion Hinchcliffe has a pretty thorough wrapup of who's saying what about Web 2.0 - and lookie me among the boyz, in good company with Marc and Stowe:
If you take the temperature of the status quo, the inestimable Dave Winer currently has the mike with his Busted, Explained article, but numerous others have chimed in recently including quite famously Richard MacManus, who was then called out by Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, then Joshua Porter went on to explained why he still uses the term, ad infinitum. It was Russell Shaw however that was the one who really stirred the pot to considerable effect, but even he was then answered in kind by his very own Joe McKendrick. Folks like Stowe Boyd have come out about this latest Web 2.0 brouhaha very level headed, as have a number of others who seem to have some perspective including Marc Cantor, Jeneane Sessum, and Frederico Oliveira. Now Shaw has come back swinging and shows no sign of flagging in his attempt to assert that Web 2.0 has no clothes. An attempt almost certain to fail, I might add, though we'll probably make yet another trip around the blogosphere mulberry bush.
If Web 2.0's your bag, check out the post and related posts.
See also the 05 "Best of List" - and of course I'd add BubbleShare. ;-)