• June 16, |
I'm blogging from , where the Radisson Hotel could be a little more on top of things when it comes to Wi-Fi in the (my) rooms so I wouldn't have to do this from the lobby. [Later: don't blog angry... don't blog angry... Around midnight, even the lobby connection conked out. Plus, during the time I was able to connect, half the sites I use to find video were blocked by the network because of their rating (???). I'm having a challenging user experience here, but Ft. Worth is a nice town with nice people.]
This is what I clicked while the clickin' was good:
Remember the story earlier this week about MSN blocking words like democracy in their Chinese software? Remember that blogger Robert Scoble works for Microsoft? Remember, Rebecca MacKinnon writes the Global Voices blog, which we've clicked a few times in relation to international events, most recently for blog coverage of anti-Japan protests in China? Well mix those together and you get .
. Alternate headline: "No, there is another..."
Many bloggers are linking to the recent . This is going to be my Commuter Click to read later. I got through the first story about him dropping out of college after 6 months, which was interesting enough to print up to read the whole thing.
In the latest installment in what seems like an almost daily lottery of what little project site will be awarded with new, monied ownership, . I'll keep an eye out for a blog entry that guesses what kind of unified product we'll see from Yahoo given their new 360 blogware, the purchase of bloglines and Flickr and now this.
Speaking of site-gobbling search engines, the Kuro5hin folks are speculating who will be the .
-- Someone who feels guilty about driving an SUV buys a really expensive bumper sticker from a for-profit company which goes on to invest that money in clean air industry investments. I don't quite understand how they figure the exact pollution offset, but I guess it's better than buying another ribbon magnet.
Speaking of "green machine" matters, looks like the is coming to the U.S.
? Tracking this link to find out where it came from, points to which has interesting discussion, but doesn't say how it came to light. If I had to guess, I'd say that someone was looking at something like for what Congressman Sensenbrenner has been up to...
...The reason that would be my guess is that in other Congressional news that wasn't covered, Mr. Sensenbrenner somewhat abruptly shut down discussion of the Patriot Act, thus outraging a lot of the act's opponents. I clicked the video of the episode . It's pretty dramatic for C-Span. In short, he says that the people who are there just want to complain about Bush and not talk about the Patriot Act, so discussion is over and he leaves. The last half of the video is other congressmen being angry about setting a poor example for democracy.
"On June 7th, Two Secret Service agents showed up at my place of employment and asked to speak with me. One agent said they wanted to talk about something I posted online. I asked what, he one responded, 'You post a lot of stuff online, don’t you?'" -- A blogger posts some photo collages of Bush and guns and earns himself . As a side note, I think it would be neat to be a Secret Service agent who has to travel the country investigating every little thing every time someone says something bad about the president. Seems like they could make a TV series out of that, sort of like X-Files but different.
-- This is one to print up and tape to the side of your monitor next time you can't get the results you're looking for.
": A challenge set by a friend to see the effects of one week living off just guinness, milk and vitamin c supplements." Like an Irish "Supersize Me" but without the social commentary.
-- By reviewing a recently filed patent from Google, this guy gets an interesting look under the hood at how page results are ranked and how they try to avoid spam.
-- Next stop, Jurassic Park. Hopefully someone will remember to water it when the botanist goes on vacation.
-- This blogger wonders if he's weird for keeping all of his online postings archived in Word docs. For what it's worth, I start every day with a blank Notepad doc. I usually use Firefox because I prefer the tabbed browsing, although some pages don't work well in Firefox. At the end of the day I've got all my notes. I paste them into the publishing tool, pretty up the text and organize them a little thematically.
Speaking of not working in Firefox, is complaining about a "page takover" car ad that doesn't work in Firefox. If he ever saw the complaints we get when we have one of those pop-ups on our site, he wouldn't see it as a bad thing.
" is the world's first & only professional blogger recruiting agency. We match qualified, highly-skilled bloggers with companies needing such services." P.S. I don't actually know anything about this service, I'm just pointing it out.
-- Safe for work, but likely to make you uncomfortable reading it at work nonetheless. Found by way of this . (The slow summer news season seems to be highlighting more business/marketing blogs.)
I love clicking something that makes me say, "Well, at least my day isn't ."
-- I understand the history of the QWERTY keyboard and I understand that it can be made more efficient, but I don't relish the idea of having to re-learn how to type.
on the lessons learned in the Contagious Media Showdown competition.
-- For when "I know what I like" isn't good enough -- or else, to give you a better understanding of why you like what you like.
Video of the Day: or Why you have to wear a helmet if you're going to ride that thing (Few people realize how difficult it is for the neck to keep the head from bouncing on the ground in a fall. Some of these slow-mo shots illustrate it well.) ()
The winners of have been announced.
Mailbag! Mailbag!
The "Where the white women at?" guy may be right! .
-Bob Fair
Dear Bob,
I smell a backlash. Maybe the news should go back to shark attacks this summer?
Cheers,
Will
Will,
That guy teaching Japanese to middle-schoolers is pretty funny. But his story is a dime a dozen over here. Now has a different approach. If we don’t stop him soon he might destroy all of Japan.
Brendan
Dear Brendan,
Thanks for the link. And for the record, that dear reader who sent me the mail about that item a million years ago was . You rock!
Thanks,
Will
And from the internal mailbox, MSNBC.com Tech and Science editor writes, "We here in space news love APOD. Want a really freaky space pic? Check out the “Death Star” image that’s #3 in .
• June 15, |
According to , public confidence in the news media has hit a new low. However, I'm not confident in the accuracy of this report, so .
NBC, CNN merge to form the "?" network. I was particularly interested to click upon this parody because I had just been workshopping the idea at the water cooler that not only are these missing/murdered white women stories frivolous and exploitive, they could also be seen as misogynistic. Men, keep your women on a short leash because you never know when they're going to go and get themselves lost or killed. Anyway, it was just an idea, but apparently I wasn't the only one to have it.
with a room fan and some ice water and other stuff.
-- or more correctly, why you don't want to. For Pete's sake, if you actually do this one, anything that happens is your own fault.
Commuting to Silicon Valley...by Gyroplane -- Ladies and gentlemen, as promised, your flying car is here.
Of the announced by the L.A. Times, the online community seems most intrigued by this one: "Watch next week for the introduction of 'wikitorials' — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials."
Since today is Flag Day, did you know there's a ? Kinda hard to draw.
Speaking of holidays, today was also . Looks like it's mostly big in Malaysia.
New term:
since it appears to be a NASA site. Are those Lucky Charms falling from the sky? (Chopping down the URL I learn that stands for Astronomy Picture of the Day which is where this comes from.)
What it looks like to into water. (Dumpfile looks like a new media upload site. Nothing overtly unsafe for work in this click, or the homepage, but the top 10 list has some non-nude Pam Anderson pin-up thumbnails.)
Speaking of being unsafe for work, Grand Theft Auto has been hacked in such a way as to allow sex games to be part of the game play. has a link round-up that is totally work safe, BUT click on any of those and you could be in troubled waters. This is the site I found in terms of what we're talking about and it is barely safe for work unless your boss is cool or you have my job, or both. The reason I'm including this item at all, however, is that you're going to hear about this once the morality police find out about it, and I can't see how they won't. You might as well know what they're talking about. One other note: The video has distinctly unsafe audio.
This is the second piece of I've clicked in a few days. I'm not sure what the seeming increase in interest is about. Although I also noticed that a lot of people are talking about the new season of , the show about alien abductees.
Delicious introduces . Serious potential time-black-hole here.
-- Ten best marketing blogs that is.
Commuter Click: (A quick scroll through shows is glaringly absent from his examples. I'll send him a mail later.)
"What would you say, given of anonymous, uncensored speech?" Of course, you already have that and more, but they're talking about recording it and blasting it from a portable loudspeaker.
-- This is actually not as hard as I thought it would be. Usually as soon as I see "server-side" instructions I give up, but in this case, if you have a PC and a laptop, this looks do-able.
-- Holy moly this is long.
-- Using technology to map roller blading terrain for fellow skaters.
-- This goes a long way toward understanding the appeal of soccer.
Video of the Day: . (In case you had a hard time reading it, the source of this video is .)
• June 13, |
In case it wasn't enough to keep track of the explanations and spin with regard to the Downing Street Memo, the memo leakage leaders at the London Times have come up with . As I understand , this one says that the whole "violation of UN resolutions" argument for war was an act to justify the legality of the war.
But that line of discussion is running thin as journalists and news junkies point out that everyone knew the war was coming before we officially knew it was coming. makes the point in the Sunday L.A. Times that newspapers didn't need secret memos, they were already reporting on pre-planning for war. points to the second memo and then a third, but then echoes Kinsley's sentiment that it's the lack of surprise that's inhibiting more extensive memo coverage.
But with that, the discussion takes another twist. Some bloggers feel there are two separate dialogues going on, one among the D.C. political media, and one among Americans in general. makes the point with some passion that while 2002 planning for war may have been general knowledge inside the Beltway, that was not conveyed to the rest of the country. And further illustrates that information gap by comparing the political media to 16th century palace culture.
All of this reminds me of a heavily linked "gotcha" by Glenn a couple months ago. No one seemed to be able to recall "spreading freedom" as one of the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and the accusations flew that President Bush was offering that as after-the-fact cover for not finding WMDs. With a bit of googling, Glenn effectively pointed out that of the president's rhetoric of the lead up to the war. Whether the media failed to adequately relay that to Americans or Americans failed to hear it is a matter for debate among bloggers.
Speaking of why people go to war: -- A short animated film with a Buggs Bunny-esque arms race.
If you enjoy the cardio pulmonary benefits of a good fit of rage, will fill your cheeks with angry heat as it nearly brought our water cooler to a boil. In short, a mother, fearing her pitbull's ferocity, shut her son in the basement rather than tie up the dog. Her son got out and the dog killed him, and if you ask me, the mother has a pretty infuriating attitude about the whole thing.
Speaking of child cruelty, do you think this is ?
Speaking of children, let's end this mini-thread on a happy note. : Nowhere near as creepy as the Ally McBeal dancing baby, but still pretty bizarre that a baby that can barely walk is able to wiggle-dance.
The interesting thing about Sean Penn's similarity to a young is that the actor is in Iran right now (and had his for a while).
Speaking of Iran, gives us a look at the women's rights activism taking place there. (Protest babes included.)
Speaking of oppressive regimes, it would appear that my corporate cousins have made a deal with the devil. There'll be on Chinese MSN Spaces blogs. It apparently doesn't suit their "regulatory environment." What if Chinese bloggers use the word "Microsoft" in place of "human rights?" of the story has the error message they receive if they try to use the blocked words: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item."
YourTube.com is a repository for home video clips. The best one I found was this guy doing a . I didn't see anything unsafe for work.
If you've not seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite, I regret to inform you that you are officially uncool and out of the loop. Otherwise you'd understand and laugh out loud at . Don't look at me, I had to google it just to find out it's a Napoleon Dynamite quote. In the process I also found , so you can hear how he says it.
Video of the Day: ... maybe Detroit Motel 6? It's about as safe for work as a burly guy in a women's bathing suit washing a car and eating a burger can be.
A close second for the Video of the Day is , for the sheer unexpectedness of the ending.
And remember the fainting goats video? How about a ?
Those last two links come from whose name I can't even pronounce. It looked safe for work when I played with it this afternoon, but for all I know it's full of curses. There's something exciting about clicking a foreign language mystery link. Most of the ones under "Topp 10" were good.
Speaking of being gay, told his parents he was gay so they sent him off to Christian re-programming camp. Now the blogger has shared with the blogosphere and sympathetic voices are expressing their rage in his comments section.
? The question of how much content to offer through an RSS feed has been going on long enough for this blogger to refer to further discussion as beating a dead horse (not that that stops him), but if you haven't been following the subject, this horse-beating turns out to be a handy summary of issues and perspectives from both sides.
-- It's the fermentation kind, not a tea with sugar and carbonated water. Although, that said, the flavor is from root beer extract, which seems like cheating to me. (Also , which makes more sense as a brew.) (Oh, and . This guy Frankhauser has it all!)
Send an e-mail to . You can also read some submissions by other people.
Questions of a 7-year-old seeing Star Wars IV (having been raised on the prequels). (The Wookie question can be answered by the (six minutes of it), which I also happen to have clicked today.)
One more Star Wars link:
Remember last week's vintage radio mp3? Here's a whole blog.
-- "I'll do it, but only if you'll help me do it." Listen to the audio explanation, but the basic idea is that if you feel self conscious about doing something alone, or if just yourself isn't enough to get the job done, you present the idea for others to join in. Presumably it also works in reverse, if you're looking for something to do, join someone in their pledge.
. The stories of an American teaching English to Japanese middle-schoolers. (A Clicked reader mailed this link to me a billion years ago and I didn't post the link. My apologies, dear reader, for my lack of faith in your foresight.)
"You've told me how the press is biased, and you've also told me that a completely unbiased press is not possible in this world. In your view, what sort of bias should the American press have, given where it finds itself today?" --Commuter Click: The new .
