Blog-Canned!

Holy Shitcanned Batman. She was fired from Friendster because of her blog. Something about PHP and Java? Effing PHP! Was her boss aware of her blog in the first place? That's always key. There are certain things that require preliminary disclosure. Read: How Not To Get Fired Because of Your Blog. It's too late for Troutgirl but not too late for you! (Via Dash's Links.)

Sunday Fun

I took a break from doing some work-from-home type of business today to sweep up a little and bus some garbage. During this said bussing, the apartment door closed behind me. It's a very good thing that I had decided to put some pants on to do the cleaning because the door was locked and my keys were inside. Locked out in my flip-flops, my pants, and not much else, I realized that the superintendent was on vacation—no spare key! Thanks to some very nice neighbors, I was able to track down Livy and even got a free beer out of the deal. Whew.

Gremlins and Glasses

I had a dream that I was trying to track down a little gremlin in someone's house so it wouldn't cause too much mischief. When I woke up, I discovered that someone had chewed my eyeglasses beyond recognition. So now I need a new pair of glasses. I found some online but I don't know what color "Havana" is and eye size? Am I a 50 or a 52?

Peter Scott's Anti-Bush CDs

Peter Scott has compiled a wacky collection of Anti-Bush CDs and they're all real. George Mann and Julius Margolin: Hail to the Thief! Heh.

I Am A Dork

The New York Times: "'I have kids coming into school upset daily because of what happened on the Internet the night before,' Ms. Yuratovac said. ' 'We were online last night and somebody said I was fat,' or 'They asked me why I wear the same pair of jeans every day,' or 'They say I have Wal-Mart clothes.' '"

Okay, I have gained some weight since starting at Google, I wear the same jeans (and other things) every day, and I was just thinking yesterday that maybe I should find a Wal-Mart because I hear they have clothes. If I were to go back to high school right now, I would be an even bigger dork than I was to begin with. Nice! (via CW from an email)

Tagged

Caterina, Daytime, Martini, Cocktail, San Francisco.

Better Than Letterman

Tom Green blogs about Audioblogger: "Wow! This audio blogging thing is hilarious. I just went and bought a pair of pants ten minutes ago. I get back to my hotel and already I can go on the computer and listen to myself buying pants. I never thought I would have so much fun listening to myself buying pants. I really am lame." He's obsessed with audioblogging. I love it. Mini interviews all day long. Got some Brooke Shields on there too. Audioblogger: Better than Letterman.

Grow Your Audience

New Blogger feature alert! I just added the new Email This Post feature to my blog. That means people (just like you!) can forward a post to a friend via email (so long as said post does not suck). Here's how to do it up for you blog.

Navbar Side Effect

It turns out the navbar we replaced blogspot ads with last week has a side effect: it increases traffic to your blog. I'm seeing all these new referrals and thinking, "What did I say?" When I check them out, I see that they have the navbar installed. Cool, the navbar is bringing in new visitors.

Eric In India

Nice photos of India from Eric already.

A Flickr of Hope

Holy gefilte fish Batman, an iPhoto plugin for Flickr?! Would I use that? Fahgetaboutit. You're damn right I would.

It's 9AM in Hyderabad

I'm instant messaging with Eric Case right now. After 20 hours of flying he's online and checking in from Hyderabad. Which means, of course, that his plush pad is empty. I hope he remembered to put that fire out.

BlogSense

So, you know how we took all the ads off blogspot blogs last week? Well, now you can put them back on yourself because we just rolled out AdSense for Bloggers. In other words: earn money while you blog. Nice! For more information, hints, and an overview of what not to do (plus a little candy industry history) read There's AdSense in My Blog! Should be a good time for all.

Happy 5th Birthday Blogger

Evhead: "We just launched a cool new tool at Pyra. It's called Blogger. It's an automated weblog publishing tool. Unlike Pitas, which, don't get me wrong, is cool, Blogger FTP's your updated weblog page to your own server after each post." Wow, five years already.

The 'Scream' Was Stolen

In 1994, thieves barged into a museum in Oslo and stole a painting. Yesterday, they did it again! This time, two thieves walked into the museum, yelled in Norwegian (kinda funny) for everyone to lay down, and used wire cutters to free the The Scream and Madonna from the walls. Then they took off in a black Audi station wagon. Nobody was hurt. Nice. Now what? They'll have to ask a ransom for the paintings to be returned, or sell them to a lunatic "Dr. Evil" type. I'm sure this is not appreciated by the local authorities or people in the fine art industry but still, art heists are cool.

Starbucks RSS

I was getting a coffee this morning in San Francisco and I heard this guy explaining something to his friend about his cell phone. "All you have to do is download the RSS feed..." I didn't think it was such a big deal until I realized that I was not at work but among real-life people. Cool!

MacGyver Crow

Check out this video of a crow very quickly figuring out a way to modify the tool he's given to get some food out of a tricky spot. That's faster than some people would take to come up with the same solution.

Steve Jenson On This Day in 2002

Do you ever just ask yourself, "I wonder what Steve Jenson was thinking on this day in 2002?" Dude, so do I. That's really weird. Anway, there's no reason we should be left in the dark. Here's what Jenson was thinking (and blogging): Sometimes when you wander aimlessly around town, you just end up bored and tired or maybe a bird shits on your head. That is so true. Jenson knows things.

New Flickr Stuff

Flickr has a new front page design to go with their new Flash-based image organizing application that works in your browser (Organizr) and their newly released Flickr Services (API Documentation) which means developers can make fun applications that work with Flickr. Good stuff.

Visits, Reads & Reacts

There is some great reaction to Jen's article about punctuation, grammer, and blogging at Technorati. And there's a few people officially apologizing in Jen's comments. That's funny. Good stuff. Update: Oh no! I just got an email from the Grammar Bitch! "Stone, shouldn't the header on your most recent entry read 'Visits'? Or is 'Vists' a new word you're making up?" Damn woman, you are tough. (In a good way.)

BloggerCon III

Cool, BloggerCon III is going to be held in my new neck of the woods (Palo Alto, CA) this fall. I'm there! Incidentally, this is the 2,000^th post to Biz Stone, Genius. W00t and Nice.

Rock The Navbar

New Blogger feature alert! You know how we put ads on blogspot.com sites? Yeah, we took those off and replaced them with a new feature called the navbar. It will show up when you republish. If you're an FTP user (like me) you can activate your navbar in the template section. I chose blue for now.

Jennifer Garrett Will Mess You Up

If you don't use proper punctuation, Garrett is going to take you out back and beat you with the grammar stick. You probably didn't even know such a thing existed. Well it does, and it's got sharp little semicolons sticking out all over it. It's a nasty business I tell you and she's not messing around: Eats, Blogs & Leaves.

The Best Controller Ever

USB NES Controller: "The only difference from the classic Nintendo controller is the long 5 foot USB cable. No modifications are made to the internal plastics of the controller, so the RetroPad is just as sturdy as the original. It can easily survive the throw across the room you know is coming. Even small details like the black cable make the RetroPad look and feel like the best rectangular controller ever." Awesome! (Via Waxy)

Nevertheless

I'm sure Santa Cruz is great if you know where to go. I don't like roller coasters, boardwalks, or "people" so I'm kind of at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, we set out for Santa Cruz this morning. Maggie puked in the car. When we got there it was cloudy and people were living in their RV's. I had to pee. No fun was had. I took a couple pictures and then we drove to the office. Maggie loves Google. Now we're at home and it's time for dinner. Nice!

eBay Acquires 'Interest' in Craigslist

Here's the press release: Aug. 13, 2004--eBay, The World's Online Marketplace (Nasdaq:EBAY) (www.ebay.com), and craigslist, an online community featuring classifieds and forums (www.craigslist.org), announced today that eBay has acquired a preexisting minority ownership interest in craigslist of approximately 25%. The resulting relationship will allow eBay and craigslist to share expertise, resources, and creativity on behalf of online communities everywhere."

Wanted: Programmer to Work for Total Ass

This guy published a 2,500 word job posting on the Macromedia web forums site complete with all caps shouting. He's a total ass. There are twelve items alone just for the "Please do not respond if" part.

Taking Care of Business

Here are two things I did today.

1. Scored two runs in a Blogger kickball game
2. Threw a water balloon near Steve Jenson

Not bad for a days work.

Martha Stewart Gets A New Body & Soul

I just posted this over at Fast Company Now: Mandy Stone Omnimedia. The little magazine in Watertown that my sister has been working at for over five years, Body & Soul, just got acquired by Martha Stewart Omnimedia for six million bucks. Nice!

RSS: TV Edition

RSS feeds for TV listings, that's good stuff. Now if somebody could figure out a way for me to get RSS feeds from Flickr to show up on my TiVo, then that would be super cool. Then I can tour the world by photo tags from the comfort of my own um, beanbag. Nice!

Blogging from Prison

Prison Pete is currently an inmate in a Federal Prison in West Virginia. He was a computer programmer before his "career change." Now he lives in what he calls a federally funded gated community. What's it like to be in jail? Read his blog kids.

Mr. Holzschlag

"Molly has added you as his contact on Multiply so he can better stay in touch with you, and he told us that he is your Online Buddy." Hello computer. Hellooo computer. Oh, a keyboard. How quaint.

'Banned' Olympic Blogs Update

Scott Goldblatt of the USA Olympic swimming team did a little research into this alleged blogging ban. Each country holds the right to choose how they want to treat blogs. Canada, it seems, as decided not to allow them at all. Scott spoke to USA officials:

I talked with the media officials from USA Swimming and they assured me that I was able to go ahead with these blogs, as long as, I do not move into the territory of journalism but where does that line get drawn?

It looks like this Blogging vs. Journalism debate isn't going cold any time soon. Scott also told me he's not allowed to scoop the traditional media but he can give personal accounts of what he does and sees. Seems like there could be an overlap somewhere. We'll see!

Moved Some Stuff

I was sick of looking at myself so I ditched my profile photo. (Yes, I read my own blog. It's how I stay so well informed.) I also moved some of the stuff that was in my sidebar to the bottom of this page. I mean really, how often are you browsing my archives people? Now I have more room "above the fold." Should I put back my blogroll? Blogads? The covers of my books? So many choices!

Canadian Olympians Barred from Blogging?

Boing Boing has a post about Olympians being barred from blogging but my man on the scene, Scott Goldblatt, says it's just Canadian athletes being banned from blogging. He's looking into it now. Nice!

All Hail Brainiac

From the Brainiac page of the Superman Encyclopaedia: "Because he is a master of super-scientific forces as well as the most terrible of all space villains, Brainiac possesses an awesome arsenal of super-scientific weapons and devices to aid him in his never-ending war against Superman.  Even Lex Luthor, the world's most dangerous criminal scientist, has been moved to adopt some of Brainiac's more ingenious devices."

First Dogster, Now Catster!

Now Brewster and Pip each have a Catster page in addition to Maggie's Dogster page. And it's cool because even though they are different sites, they show up in each other's sidebars as being in the same family. Nice.

The Story Begins

Flickr: electricinca: "I decided to utilise the comment feature and create an illustrated version of the Sherlock Holmes tale The Speckled Band. I broke the text up into 58 sections, picked a keyword from each bit of the text then searched for a photo that was tagged with that word. I then wrote the text into the coment box for each photo linking to the next photo and bit of the text."

I am a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes tales and I was psyched to discover that one of my photos had made Electricinca's anthology. This is genius!

Job Opening at Blogger

Google Job Opportunities: User Interface Engineer, Blogger. Come work with us, it will be good times.

Olympic Blogger Scott Goldblatt

Scott Goldblatt is on the USA Olympic Swimming Team and he's keeping an Athens 2004 Olympic Journal. Good luck Scott!

New at Corante

Suw Charman of Chocolate and Vodka is writing a new blog column over at Corante called Strange Attractor. Follow the ebb and flow of her thoughts on the disruptive power of blogging.

Meet Dashy Kowax

Nice. Charles of Surfarama used Rollup to create Kottke/Waxy/Dash in response to this post. All we need to do now is make up a fake person named Dashy Kowax and we're all set.

Three Men in A Blog

Waxy, Kottke, and Dash should just join forces and be the Boing Boing of link blogs. Not just because it would make my browsing easier and less repetitive but because it would be good for all humanity. And then sum.

Are You An Olympic Blogger?

There's gotta be a bunch of bloggers who are going to the olympics in Athens this year. Photobloggers, audiobloggers, mobloggers, old-school bloggers, whatevah. If you happen to come across this post, could you leave your url in the comments? That'd be cool. I wanna "watch" the olympics from your perspective. Also, that might make a good Blogger Knowledge article.

Princess Bride and Google Blog

Dude. Google Blog has quotes from The Princess Bride (my favorite movie!). Nice. I just have one thing to say: "Wrong! Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why."

SIGGRAPH 2004

The Special Interest Group on Graphical Display is a big, fancy, and well established group of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and other professionals who share an interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. This year marks their 31st annual conference and you can tune in to the Los Angeles action via blogspot here: Siggraph 2004. Nice.

MacUser UK

Setting up a community notice board with Blogger: "Forget expensive team management tools. A free account with Blogger is all you need for working together. We show you how."

Dan Bricklin at Blogger Knowledge

Dan Bricklin explains the importance of event-blogging at Blogger Knowledge: "Political conventions today are about transmitting a feeling and the press tries to filter that out, leaving something strange and unnatural. You wonder how the traditional press would cover the Grand Canyon." Good stuff.

The Onion Is Good

CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog: "Members of Bush's re-election team have urged the president to exercise caution with his blog, perhaps because of posts like the one dated July 8, 2004: 'Another long day of speeches and fundraisers. Met with all these phony media company execs. Had to promise them some bill next term and shake a lot of stupid hands, but they did bring in two or three million or so. Whatever. Karl keeps a list. I got big laughs during my speech, so I'm happy.'"

Starbucks XM Channel

Starbucks to serve satellite radio: "Under the partnership, XM Satellite Radio will add a 'Starbucks Hear Music' channel playing the kinds of music Starbucks customers are used to hearing. In exchange, Starbucks will play the channel at more than 4,000 of its coffee emporiums nationwide." This article also says Starbucks is planning on offering a CD burning service at some of its locations this fall.

Bestselling Promises

How Full Is Your Bucket? and fifteen other bestselling books that aren't books yet. Amazon.com > Books > Bestsellers > Not-Yet-Published.

Good Advice

How To Be Creative: "Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, 'I’d like my crayons back, please.'"