I'm A Proud Home Owner

That's what I'm pretending tonight. (We're cat sitting.) There's furniture, a back yard, and even a bed. This gig rocks Natick.

Pam Anderson Wrote A Novel?

Star A Novel by Pam Anderson: "Star is a novelization of Pamela Anderson's life, and while it's debatable what's fact and what's fiction (you'll never look at the Hollywood sign the same way again), the point is that it all could have happened to her." The Amazon editorial review also says the novel ends with a romantic cliffhanger, but anxious readers shouldn't fret because Anderson is hard at work on a sequel. Oh yeah, and here's an obligatory picture of me with Pam anderson and the girls of VIP.

A New Blog

Flickr Fans: "A blog for bloggers who love Flickr with an evangelical fervor. A collection of Flickr pictures we dig."

The Househusband

The Househusband by Kim Malone is an entire novel published in one blog post. That's right folks, 50,000 words in one post. I hear good things.

Flickr? I Hardly Even Know Her!

Among the recent updates that Flickr has made to their super-fantastic photo sharing site is the Flickr Sitemap. This page pulls everything together so it's great for Flickr newbies who need to get more acquainted with all the features. Awesome.

Obama Book Fever

Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father is selling really well on Amazon today. His sales rank is 10. (Clinton's is 8.) But how does sales rank translate to sales?

"Books with steady sales ranks below 1,000 are selling very well, topping several dozen copies a day as you approach 100."

Read: Estimating How Many Books Sold by Amazon.

The Snowflake Process

The Snowflake Process for Writing a Novel: "How do you design a novel?  In my day job, I'm a software architect designing large software projects.  I write fiction the same way I write software, using the 'snowflake metaphor'."

Del.icio.us Cocoa

Laurence Andersen: "I’ve always wanted to do a web services-oriented Cocoa app, and I thought I could add some value to the del.icio.us experience, so I decided to use the API myself to create a nice desktop client for the del.icio.us service in Cocoa."

Flickr DNC

Flickr/tags/democraticconvention

Show Us Your Blogs!

Learn The Secrets of Blogging

Has all this DNC blogging buzz got you reeling? Are there people in your life that need to understand more about blogging? Dudes. Get Blogging by Biz Stone. It's highly recommended and I'm not just saying that. Here's what you get for the low low price of $20.39. Okay so it's not that low. Still, it comes fully loaded and there's pictures! Here's the table of contents.

Basic Blogging

1. The Blog Phenomenon
2. Quick Start to Creating Your First Blog
3. Overview of the Major Blog Providers
4. A Blogger's Guide to Simple HTML [That's Hot!]
5. Blog Design 101

So, You Already Know How to Blog?

6. Blogging with Style
7. Blogging for Dollars
8. Working with Blogger Archives
9. Group Blogging
10. Corporate Blogging
11. Adding Dynamic Features
12. Better Blogging
13. Increasing Traffic to Your Blog

Power Blogging

14. Syndicating Your Blog
15. Sideblogs, Email Blogging, and Alternative Interfaces
16. Beyond the Blog
17. Building a Blog-Related Application
18. Blog Goodies

Appendix
Web Links
Index

Dave Barry: Funny Guy

Dave Barry's Blog: "Here I am at a famous Boston tourist attraction, Cheers, moments before the entire Boston metropolitan area was wiped out by the giant freak earthquake that is being totally ignored by Big Media, although members of the blogging community are staying right on top of this story by offering their opinions, both pro and con."

Magster

Maggie's on Dogster!

Hello, Operator?

Mike Davidson: "One of the longest running rumors in the Apple community is the emergence of an Apple-branded cell phone. Apple has denied the existence of such a product for as long as the world can remember, and up until now, they’ve had legitimate reasons to stay away from the cell phone market." Mike has his idea of what the iPhone might look like but Genius Labs has already travelled to the future and brought back an iPhone. Rotary style baby. What's old is new.

Blogger Live

Blogger Live is an interactive post scroller—in this case the posts are those of convention bloggers. We were inspired by the Google Query Scroller a while ago and have had a version of this rolling in the office for a few months now. I love it.

Techno-not-i

Pete just leaned over and pointed out that the liberal and conservative columns at Technorati Politics are exactly the same posts. We are all in agreement then! Here Here! Bing! Nice!

Um, Ev?

A House in The Village as compared to Ev's childhood home. Um, Ev? Is there something that you are not telling us?

DNC Report: Blogger Section Funk-tastic

Ninja Stu: "It's a bit warm up here in the blogger section on the 7th floor. There are people here who've been sitting for probably the entire day. I'm not sure who it's coming off of, but I know which sections I'm going to avoid tomorrow." Can we get those bloggers some air freshener? Deodorant? Something?

Which Is The Better Aggregator Site?

Convention Bloggers is superior to Technorati Politics for the kids following along at home. At CB, you can easily read the posts, including pics. TP is tough to read and there's not enough text.

Watching Them Watch Us

I left work early today and I'm working from home watching CNN. It's really wild to hear CNN heavies Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield talking about blogs and the blogosphere. Here's a snippet of what I just heard:

Wolf Blitzer: Another feature we're doing this year, we're taking a look at the weblogs out there ... We didn't have these blogs about four years ago. If we did, it was very, very tiny. Now, it's not.

Jeff Greenfield: This is the buzz of this convention that the Internet revolution has brought us an entire new form of journalism or pamphleteering. They are web sites in which individuals ... create a page on the web and link it to other pages and open it up to conversation. And we have, up in the Bob Uecker seats, the blogosphere of this convention and with us is David Sifry...

Sifry basically said, "Oh yeah, people are saying some stuff." What are they saying Dave? Name names! Don't just tell us that buzz exists, tell us what that buzz is. "The bloggers think this convention is really boring but blogging veteran Dave Winer described Gore's speech as 'kickass.'" Something along those lines.

Is Internet Explorer Losing Ground?

Percent of Blogger Users vs. Browser Preference

71% IE6/Windows
6% Mozilla Firefox
3% Safari
2% AOL

Source: Blogger Browser Matrix.

Journalists vs. Bloggers

BBC News: "The traditional media and bloggers have a mutual distrust. Bloggers think the traditional media are tapped out, and the traditional media think bloggers are amateur pundits." Danah Boyd: "By framing bloggers as diarists, the NYTimes is demanding that the reader see blogs as petty, childish and self-absorbed."

Blogging from Boston

Blogging from Boston is an article I put together for anyone interested in following the blog coverage of the Democratic National Convention. There are lots of bloggers at the convention and there a few different sites that are aggregating posts to make it easier to follow the post-by-post action.

Technorati Redesigns and Mutates

Adaptive Path + Tantek = the newly redesigned technorati and it's sister site, Technorati Politics. Nice looking site and a good thing too since a whole mess of new blood will be checking it out because of the CNN partnership.

My Tombstone

Courtesy of: The Tombstone Generator. Update: Jay Fienberg just sent in my alternate tombstone. It's a tough call between the two but I'm glad to have people thinking about my early demise. You gotta get on these things in advance people. Chop chop.

How Not to Talk

"What you inferred is not what you implied." And many more conversational cheap shots. Funny stuff. And good timing what with all the politics going around these days.

The Whaling Ban Update

Jordon Cooper followed up on this whaling ban story. It looks like the whaling ban is still in place for now. Albeit, unenforceable and therefore almost meaningless except in spirit.

BlogOn (Not BloggerCon)

It was UC Berkeley, not Harvard. I get confused. In fact, I took the wrong BART train but somehow ended up in the right place. Using the latest in digital photographic technologies, I was able to image some of the goings-on. Amazing.

U.S. Backs Return to Whaling (WTF!)

U.S. Backs Return to Whaling: "The U.S. has inexplicably endorsed an expedited proposal to finalize the management scheme for the resumption of commercial whaling by 2005." What? This is especially disconcerting since I have just finished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything in which he details the careless extinction of numerous majestic animals by humans. Humans are a nasty species and certainly not a good choice for stewards of all life on Earth. Nevertheless, that's what we are. Can we get a team huddle on this first?

Michael Moore Using Blogger

Nice, I just checked out Michael Moore's Blog and saw the "I Power Blogger" button. Good timing, I'll have to keep tabs on that. If you use a newsreader, here's the atom feed. Cool stuff.

First Major Movie BlogAd

Henry Copland: "Astute blogad observers today will have noticed blogads just about everywhere for Paramount's Manchurian Candidate movie. Linking to a movie trailer, this is the first major blogad buy by a movie." Nice! Henry is kicking some ass in the blog advertising space.

Flickr Photos

I posted 170 photos to my Flickr last night and tagged all of them so they're searchable. Yes, there's a mac upload client but because of my weird connection at home I can only email. I got a digital camera for my birthday last March and I've taken tons of photos. Recently I've slowed down a bit with taking photos but Flickr has just reinvigorated me because now I can share with all my friends and family without emailing them directly.

Olympics: The Greek Tragedy

Greeks to poison up to 15,000 stray dogs before the Olympics: Thousands of stray dogs will be poisoned to give the streets of Greece a canine-cleansed outdoor mall type of feel. "The mass slaughter of strays had already begun." There is a petition on this web site set up in an effort to "Give the strays of Greece a sporting chance." More coverage.

Cruciferous Rex

Have you ever used the word cruciferous in normal chit-chat? It sounds so serious and official. "Does that dish come with anything of a cruciferous nature? Perhaps some candytuft?" I do love broccoli.

Finding Bobby Fischer

They Found elusive chess genius Bobby Fischer and it turns out he's a wack job. According to this article he "makes repeated phone calls to radio stations in the Philippines, making anti-American and anti-Semitic statements." It also says he thinks the 9/11 attacks were good stuff. (Via Goldtoe's Furl)

What's My Problem?

What's up with my home internet connection. I have airport and everything works fine except I can't upload stuff. I can email but I can't upload photos unless I plug the ethernet cable directly into the PowerBook. Anyone else ever have this problem? Is it some setting?

wiPod

Bay Area Free Wi-Fi Wireless Hotspots: "BayAreaFreeFi.com announces wiPod, an iPod-based guide to free wi-fi in the San Francisco Bay Area!" This is really cool. Indie publishing for iPods: bring it on.

iPod Etiquette

I love this little side-bar of infotainment Apple placed on the new iPod product page.

Remove both earbuds:

• During a job interview
• Taking your driver’s test
• When your sweetie calls

Remove one earbud:

• Listening for your flight
• Buying groceries
• When a coworker calls

Leave ’em in:

• Visiting the inlaws
• At the laundromat
• When your boss calls

I'm still carrying around my 5GB original iPod. I'm old-skool.

Update: Stanford University has iPod Etiquette: "There’s even iPod etiquette: when friends run into each other on campus, each removes one earbud so they can converse and listen to music simultaneously."

The Wisdom of Jelly Beans

Take the Jelly Bean Challenge: "The person whose entry comes the closest to the actual total number of jelly beans will win a $100 American Express Gift Certificate."

Google Acquires Self

"A Web Page" is Exonmeo's first-ever pictorial work. It's a giant landscape painting of the Google home page. Why is Google a landscape? Because: "After all, we see it through a 'window'!" They installed the painting in a museum and then pointed a web cam at it. When the installation was over, Google bought the painting. Nice! That means I'll be able to see them set it up at work. (Via)

It Will Be More Than Just Music

MSNBC - iPod Nation: "To 3 million-plus owners, iPods not only give constant access to their entire collection of songs and CDs, but membership into an implicit society that's transforming the way music will be consumed in the future."

Good Web Service

"Dropload is a place for you to drop your files off and have them picked up by someone else at a later time. Recipients you specify are sent an email with instructions on how to download the file. Files are removed from the system after 4 days, regardless if they have been picked up or not. You can upload any type of file, mp3, movies, docs, pdfs, up to 100MB each! Recipients can be anyone with an email address."

LBS

Nice. I just weighed myself and I'm down a few pounds. Gotta keep on that. I guess all those light beers are working out for me after all. Good stuff. See also: Dr Fatkins Resolutionary Diet.

Have A Digital Camera and a PC?

You could buy Picasa at Amazon but that costs money and you'd have to wait for UPS to deliver it to you. How about you do this instead: download Picasa for free. That works, right?

Wizzy!

Blogger now has a WYSIWYG post editor. (Word processor style.) Here's the help doc. And Chris has a nice writeup about it on his blog. Note: Safari users will need to use Firefox (for now).

Name the @ Symbol

What is the @ symbol called in e-mail addresses?: "We've checked with several sources, including the Dictionary for Writers and Editors and the Oxford English Dictionary. There is actually no correct designation for this symbol, @." That's unacceptable. First of all, the @ symbol deserves it's own key on a keyboard (I use it way more than the 2 key). And my sources tell me it has a name in other languages besides English so let's do this thing. Name the @!

Photo Feeds

FeedBurner and Flickr Announce Partnership to Drive Next-Generation Photo Sharing Services: "Flickr, the online photo sharing service, and FeedBurner, a provider of syndication services, will today begin offering 'splicing', a unique way to combine photos into existing weblog RSS feeds. Combining weblog and photo feeds into one chronological feed simplifies the sharing process for both publishers and viewers." (Thanks, Eric!)

Need A Web Site?

The Amazing Web Site Machine: "What is it about the letters B-L-O-G-G-E-R that beckon some unseen force to scoop out the perfectly healthy brain of a coworker or friend and replace it with a quivering sack of botox fluid whenever they are uttered?" Google offers "various tools to help you get more done online" (click the "more" link on the front page) and the site building tool called Blogger is one of them.

Does This Look Like Me?

I just used this cool portrait illustration maker: "The part of a face or the body is choose and a portrait icon is made on-line." Not great english but a very cool site. Good for your profile pic if you don't have a camera.

Sell It

Kerry Edwards: I was offered $150K for my Web site The guy registered kerryedwards.com a couple years ago. Sell, man. Sell!

The O'Franken Factor

The guests on tomorrow's The O'Franken Factor will include the kids Bush flipped off: "Then we’ll get a report from three politically active recent high school grads from Pennsylvania. Ian Long, Adam Stanley and Brendan McNamara claim they got the bird from the president while holding a protest banner during his recent visit." Nice.

The "Posture" Photos

Collegiate/ivy league nude photos: "Nora Ephron (Wellesley '62) recalled when I spoke with her. 'But don't forget the famous rumored stolen Wellesley posture photos.'

'Wellesley too?'

'Oh, yes,' she said. 'It's one of those urban legends.'

She can laugh about it now, she said, but in retrospect the whole idea that she and all her smart classmates went along with being photographed in this way dismays her. 'We were idiots,' she said. 'Idiots!'"

New! Audio Clips in Your Blogger Profile

I put my very first audio post ever in there. (Gimmie a break, we just launched the damn thing.) Here's how to put an audio clip in your profile.

Funfurde!

Funfurde is a cool design and furniture blog. Nice.

The Perfect Beast

Some popular brands and the feedback internal naming committees would use to shoot down the names from "Building the Perfect Beast: Everything you've always wanted to know about naming companies, products and services. Compiled from the Igor website into one handy guide."

Virgin Airlines

- Says "we're new at this"

- Religious people will be offended



Banana Republic

- Derogatory cultural slur

- You'll be picketed by people from small, hot countries



Oracle

- Only foretold death and destruction

- Sounds like "orifice"

There's more in the PDF file. Funny stuff. (via)

Gmail Wiki

The Gmail Wiki by Sri Kat. "You are encouraged to add new material and links." It's powered by MediaWiki just like everyone's favorite free encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Nice!

Don't Mess!

Bush Wants to Postpone Elections

This article is coming out in the next Newsweek: "Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election..." If we're gonna have a dictator, then I want a benevolent dictator. (via)

Bush Gives Bloggers "The Finger"

Blogger: I got flipped off by George W. Bush

Adam, Brendan, and I rose our banner and he turned to wave to our side of the road. His smile faded, and he raised his left arm in our direction. And then, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, extended his middle finger. A ponytailed man standing next to us confirmed the event, saying, "I do believe the President of the U.S. just gave you boys the finger."

Dubya's father was left handed, but is he? It is entirely possible, and this story sounds like it will be another "It Came from The Blogosphere" spectacular starting on Monday morning.

Mai Favorite

Because of the new addition of Mai, FlickNut (group blog about movies) is officially good stuff. Not that elcaseo, goldtoe, suttero, graham, and stevej aren't the men, but Mai knows her shait.

Biz.com

They want $950,000 for BIZ.COM. I should have registered biz.com back in the day. That would be a great url for my blog. I kind of like the logo they already have too. It'd be cool if you could buy domain names at Amazon.com. Then I could put biz.com in my wishlist and if one of my readers has an extra million bucks in their debit account they can hook me up. How effortless.

RSS to IM

It would be cool if I could get posts via instant messenger when certain blogs updated. Not all the blogs I read mind you, just certain ones at certain times. Like if three bloggers were at a keynote and I wanted the skinny to stream in, that sort of thing. That'd be neat.

Del.icio.us G

I was browsing the shared bookmarks of Eric Case and came across gCount, a tiny free application that displays the amount of unread gmail you have in your Mac's menu bar. Nice! (Not affiliated with Google.)

The Wisdom of Fools

A few weeks ago I was listening to NPR's Motley Fool radio program with guest James Surowiecki talking about his book The Wisdom of Crowds and it struck me that the blogosphere is a wise crowd so I spun that idea into a Blogger Knowledge article: The Wisdom of Blogs. Fun stuff, that.

Xanga Is Front Page News

The front page of today's San Jose Mercury News is all about Xanga: "The term Xanga has even become part of school lingo — students refer to their blogs as ``my Xanga.''" Maybe I should have posted this to my Xanga instead of my Blogger? Whatevah.

We Adopted Maggie

We officially adopted Maggie, a one-year-old shaggy little mutt today. We adopted her from Rocket Dog Rescue. Happy 4th of July, Maggie McMagster.

How-To Tuesday (4 Days Later)

Here's an article at Engadget that teaches you how to make a pirate radio station with an iPod: "Ever get stuck at a stop light for like 10 minutes and the dude in the next car is blasting the radio? With the super easy iPod interface you can quickly get to the station he’s on and send over whatever you want, a couple gentle ocean waves or birds usually works out great." Oh man, they should make that standard on the iPod. I love it.

Neat Trick

Sometimes I visit a blog that I can't read because of various layout reasons. For example, gahro.blogspot.com does not render correctly in Safari -- the sidebar is covering part of the posts. However, if it is a blogspot hosted blog, then all I have to do is type "atom.xml" after the blog in the URL field to get a stripped-down simplified version of the site that I can read. See: gahro.blogspot.com/atom.xml. Cool.

Oops

Honolulu Advertiser: "Mimi Campanella, who has a learner's permit and is enrolled in driver's education, was crossing the intersection at Kamilo Street and Niumalu Loop and overcompensated for an oncoming car, her husband said." (via)

Unofficial

John Kerry News Syndication Service: "Start spreading the news by putting John Kerry's news headlines on your own blog." Powered by Feedroll Pro - an easy way to put self-updating news links on your blog. Nice!

Cheney Booed at Yankess Game

The person who publishes AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth received a call from his friend during a Yankees game reporting that Dick Cheney was getting booed-at during a Yankees game in the Bronx. This was his report:

During the 7th inning stretch at Yankees Stadium, they play God Bless America and show on the big screen pictures of anyone famous who's in the audience that night. Dick Cheney is apparently in the audience, and as soon as his face went up, the entire crowd started booing! As my friend Michael tells it, this is the blue-collar Bronx we're talking about, and Cheney is still getting booed - not a good sign for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

I agree, that's not a good sign. He also said that once the tv crews realized he was being booed-at, they took him off the big screen.