Dierks Bentley On A World Stage

What a GREAT job Dierks Bentley did at the recent Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway:


A better quality video is HERE.

Updated version of "Did You Know"

Quite worth the 5 minute running time:

Turning the iPod Touch into a phone | Apple - CNET News

Turn the iPod Touch into a phone!

"WHAT DO PEOPLE SCREAM when they SEE YOU COMING...?!"

Ha - so clearly more than a little borrowed from Monsters, Inc. here, but it still looks funny:

Beatles video game is coming

How amazing is it that 40 + years after their first hit that The Beatles are still in the center of pop culture?

"Every member of the Apple team -- Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono Lennon have been part of the conversation, have seen demonstrations of the game, understand how it's going to roll out, what you're going to see on your screen, how the interactivity and the immersive experience will unfold and they will be involved along every step of the way creatively and musically, with Giles Martin [son of Beatles producer George Martin]," said Apple Corps' Jones. "They'll be involved in the design and the implementation of the design."

It's Mini-PC!

Okay, it's probably a bit clunky, and most Smart Phones do as much, but I'd love one, wouldn't you!?

Wimax comes to Baltimore

Now you can get wireless access anywhere in Baltimore (at least that's the spin). A promo video from Intel:



The word from USA Today is it's fast, but not free.

"Fence Off" your wireless access area

What if you could "wall off" an area of Wi-Fi, where anyone outside a set perimeter couldn't access your signal? Check out the video:



I first saw this on the Seattle PI's new Seattle Tech Report site.

Wario - Ha! This is clever

Watch carefully... (will open in a new window)

Attention! And then some $$ to go with it, please

We're drowning in choices - music, tv channels, web sites. Why does so little truly excite us? And why are so few people making any real money from all that's being put forth?

I think Kevin Kelly is really on top of it, with so many nuggets here:

Where ever attention flows, money will follow.

Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.

...the fact that something does work or is helpful is no longer sufficient for success. Good, useful stuff is now the minimum standard. I might even make the argument that great stuff is the minimum.

Now anything that lasts has to also maintain our attention.

Getting a quick blitz of attention is a no-brainer. The challenge is maintaining a flow of attention in an environment where you are surrounded by millions of similar things that are good and useful.

The problem for a band is not being "discovered" but remaining interesting.

Time (does) not equal attention. I spend a lot of time in my car but I don’t give it much attention..

- all from Kevin Kelly

and

The challenge for everyone is that we are getting better and better at creating “interesting stuff” but there is a finite supply of attention. Our dynamic range of “interesting” is lessening, as everything in the technium is more perfectly designed to grab attention.

- from Stan James (www.wanderingstan.com) in the comments

Again, here's the piece.

Where is Your Username registered?

Wanna use the same username over a large number of sites?
Check here first.
Note: I couldn't get it to search using IE7, but worked fine for me with Firefox.

100 sites that will make you brighter

So much to learn, so little time.

Quite a list here of 100 places online to get smarter.

A now some words from McCain

A word cloud from Wordle.net of John McCain's acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican Convention (see Barack Obama's a few entries before). "Country" was the word of the night.

God bless the Guitar Man, the great Jerry Reed, who passed away today at age 71.

"Amos Moses" was one of my FAVORITE songs on Top 40 radio growing up. "...knocked him in the head with a stone." BOMP. Classic.

A nice short piece on Jerry from Rolling Stone from 1999 here.

And I've always loved Jerry's take on "Patches," hear it here.

Online storage for those big files to send or share

Using one of these types of sites - list from smashingapps.com - is so much better than sending someone a massive audio or video file by e-mail.

I've used mediafire.com with no problems, and yousendit.com many times, but you have to register.

Here's another list of file storage sites.

And another.

How to do more with your pictures at Flickr

Lots of tips on how you can get more out of Flickr, or get started, with this from ReadWriteWeb.

Word clouds - easy to make at wordle.net

I've seen word clouds around for awhile, but wordle.net sure makes them easy to create. To get a grasp of what Barack Obama said in his Democratic Convention acceptance speech, I made one of his prepared text. "Promise" looms large, but it looks like if "America" and "American" were combined, that would have been the most used word. Click on the image to see it better (wordle.net lets you use their images in about any way as long as you give their site attribution).

Stanley Kubrick, box by box

Boxes. Lots and lots of boxes. A fascinating video look inside the mind of director Stanley Kubrick.

Side note: I smiled that in the film one of the fan letters to Kubrick was noted to have been from Sequim, WA (one of my favorite places in the Pacific NW).

And - quite a lot on Kubrick in his imdb.com bio.

Voice to Text on your mobile phone

Lifehacker has some ideas about alternatives to Jott, now that it's out of beta and most functions are no longer free.

In particular, vlingo works on BlackBerry.

PC Mag's Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites

The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites - Info, Search, and Reference - Reviews by PC Magazine

A WOW cool 360 view of the Olympic Pool

What it looks like high up on the diving platform . Move your mouse to take a look around.


Some nice exterior shots of the Water Cube here.

Plus Inside the Olympics Stadium in 360 degrees

and View of the Opening Ceremonies - Interactive Feature - from NYTimes.com

Make your own iPhone Ringtones with iTunes for Windows

It's for tracks you already own in iTunes.

In-car Wi-Fi. It's here.

Well that didn't take long.

Information Week says: "will deliver download speeds from 400 to 800 Kbps and average upload speeds of 400 Kbps."

Combining this with the voice recognition features of Microsoft's Sync is when I think it's all going to get very interesting.

Thoughts about how this competes with satellite radio here from Motley Fool.

A PORTABLE Wii Screen?

Score another completely gotta have one gadget from ThinkGeek.com! So awesome.

Feist is adorable on Sesame Street

Do you LOVE the video of Feist "counting to 4" on Sesame Street?! Sweet. She's a sport.

Do not trust your ears - you must hear this

Listen (and then listen again) to the amazing Shepard scale.

And check out the Shepard-Risset glisssando (towards the bottom of the linked page).

The "Twilight" books and Stephenie Meyer

My daughter just started in on the "Twilight" teen-vampire books. To get in the loop I found this overview of who's who in the "Twilight" novels from Entertainment Weekly to be handy.

No doubt a road trip to Forks, WA will be in in our future.

Bwa Ha Ha... Chris Brown hit song is a commercial!

Wow, clever these marketers are.

We will no doubt see a lot more of this.

The audio cassette slips further away

I still remember my first mono cassette recorder/player from the early 70s. It was amazing to be able to record my voice or the radio and play it back right away. And then came stereo, and Dolby, and all those blank TDK, Maxell, Memorex, and BASF tapes I bought over the years.

I still have a few hundred cassettes - mostly spoken word stuff and radio airchecks - that really, I'm going to convert to MP3s... someday. Here another publisher says goodbye to the once cool cassette.

How cool will Cuil be?

Maybe really cool, since it's a new search engine built by ex-Google engineers.

8/13/08 - or, maybe not so cool at all...

An update on the Long Tail

A Wall St. Journal look at how the Long Tail is holding up.

The man with the sound

Neat piece from Rotten Tomatoes about Ben Burtt, the former Lucasfilm and now Pixar sound genius (and voice of Wall-E).

Wicked Pissah in Boston

When I arrived in Boston for college I learned right away that something wicked was good, and that something "wicked pissah" was THE stuff. A fun listen in on the world of Boston-area accents.

A whole lotta productivity going on

The List to Beat All Lists: Top 20 Productivity Lists to Rock Your Tasks | Zen Habits

Yet another way to discover music

I tried StumbleAudio, and after a few clicks found myself liking this album from pianist Mike Longo.

Building your online brand

Some solid sounding advice from Chris Brogan.

Writing guest blog posts is sure one way, because the above-linked post made me want to subscribe to Chris's newsletter.

How to Be Interesting

Good ideas on how to engage people from Copyblogger.

For example, I like "metaphors are the paths we create to lead our readers to our ideas. Create one strong enough, and it will become a highway of attention, leading readers to your blog more quickly than any other technique..."

Online Alarm Clock

Nice and simple Online Alarm Clock.

Will work even if you're not connected to the Internet, or so they say.

Video games sales continue to climb

What recession? Video game sales keep on flying higher

Excited for Clone Wars, I am

Can't wait to see the new Star Wars Clone Wars movie.

A look at TV's original Batman from one of its creators

Requiem for a cheeky 'Batman' - Entertainment News, Michael Caine: Profile in Excellence, Media - Variety

TV - it's getting old

Did you see this about the median age of TV viewers

now being outside the 18-49 demo?

Nintendo has another HUGE month

The May sales numbers are out for the video game industry, and no surprise that GTA IV was the #1 software title. But Mario seemed to clean up everywhere else.

Nintendo on the hardware side:

"...the company has once again destroyed the competition. This is the fourth consecutive month that the Wii and DS have captured the top two hardware sales spots, and they have an iron grip on their locations. The Nintendo Wii sold 675,100 units in May, while the Nintendo DS has sold 452,600. To put that in perspective, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360 sold 577,600 units combined."

More TV coming to a Blog Near You

CBS has announced that their video player will soon let you embed a show in to your blog, like this:



More and more TV will be seen on something that's not a TV...

"Why does embedding matter? Because it reflects the increasingly distributed nature of network television."

So MUCH has changed in the last 10 years

Good stats from the Harvard Business Review on what the last 10, even the last few, years have brought.

Have you seen the new Micheal Jordan commercial?

Wow, so compelling. We'll pay attention when something is done this well:

The Nintendo Channel launches on the Wii

Poof! Out of nowhere it's the Nintendo Channel. I downloaded it this morning. The menus are slick and the videos load fast.

GTA 4 scores $ Half-BILLION (!) first week sales

Just flat-out HUGE numbers. Even Captain Jack's 3rd movie got whacked by Niko Bellic:

"Grand Theft Auto IV" has surged past "Halo 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" to set the record for the biggest opening week of any entertainment product. - Variety

But Mario Kart Wii rules at our house, waiting for Nintendo's big numbers to shine too.

More is not better when it comes to text on a web page

Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen says you better not have much text on a web page if you want to communicate with your readers.

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely."

Video Game Sales again up BIG, Nintendo upping Wii production

"Nintendo announced late last week that it would increase its monthly production of Wii video game consoles to 2.4 million, from 1.8 million."

Lots of strong video game industry numbers on the eve of GTA IV:

Software sales were up 63 percent in March compared with March 2007, according to NPD Group, which tracks sales. Equipment sales were up 46 percent over the same period.

Digital Sales now 23% of US Music Sales

So it's good news on the digital side, more tough numbers on the CD-sales side.

Charlie Rose tries to connect with...

Ha - well done, funny, and a bit haunting... You get that Charlie really wants to connect with...Charlie

How People Are Getting Their Music

The slice of dark blue (CDs) in the chart is shrinking fast. A good overview of what's up in the fast-changing music market. In this survey paid downloads are growing, but here's the tough nugget for record companies:

"... the biggest source of music for people is their friends — either burning CDs or ripping files ..."

Online Video Viewing Way Up

No surprise - online video viewing is way up, 66% more videos watched in February than a year ago. YouTube had almost a third of the traffic. No one else was even close.

No doubt demonstrations of mad skills on the mike from folks like Chris from the Valory Music Company (below) have been driving traffic... :o

US Video Game Software Sales over a $$ BILLION $$ in March

Recession? What recession?

YouTube videos now playing on Google Maps

Here's a neat bit of news for small business owners from Google Maps.

Change a single note in a recorded CHORD (!) - and much more

Wow, the creative musical possibilities shown here in Melodyne's new software are limitless. Maybe even a little scary.

Note: I first thought the narrator in the video was saying "meaty," but it's how he pronounces "Midi."

And much like how digital image editing has challenged us in how we look at any kind of visual, this shows that going forward you'll never really be able to know what the original source of an audio recording was.

All Disney Animation will also open in 3D

And perhaps the best news in the statement about 3D and Disney's upcoming slate of animated movies is that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are confirmed for Toy Story 3. All is right with the world.

Microsoft coming with its own Wii-mote?

Seems Xbox might get a motion controller by year's end. Will that be a threat to Nintendo, or a sign that the Wii has knocked Xbox off its game?

iTunes claims to be the #1 US Music Seller

It only took about 4 years for Apple to become the biggest music seller in the US.

The news came on the same day as the announcement of 3 of the 4 big music companies making a deal with MySpace.

Jay-Z goes with Live Nation for Mega $$

Will Live Nation's signing of Jay-Z give the "partner with the promoter, not the label" idea a whole lot more traction? Besides the big up-front money (about $80 Mill!), it takes the pressure off of Jay-Z for a radio hit:

“In a way I want to operate like an indie band,” he said. “Play the music on tour instead of relying on radio. Hopefully we’ll get some hits out of there and radio will pick it up, but we won’t make it with that in mind.”

The path to small success with 1,000 "True Fans"

What if you could find and bond with 1,000 "true fans" who would spend $100 a year on your works? Interesting look at how an artist or content creator might not have to become a mass-appeal star to make a living. From Kevin Kelly's blog (thanks to the9513.com for bringing it to my attention).

Taylor Swift - online and clued in

Nice piece in Billboard with Taylor Swift.

How's this for an artist being in touch with fans:

"I spend so much time on MySpace. It's the best way to figure out what your fans and what your friends and these people that helped you get where you are, what they're going through and what they want to hear from you, what they're liking, what they're not. My MySpace is something that I made. The background that you see on there, I went to a Web site and copied the code and copy-and-pasted my "about me" section. I upload all the pictures, I check the comments, I am in charge of everything on that page."

Taylor knows who she is and LOVES her fans. They feel it, and big things continue to happen for her.

Are you experienced? If so, does that mean you're good?

This story from Time magazine is as inspirational as anything I've seen on why we can never coast. The piece talks about how experience alone doesn't make someone good at something:

"...rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving."

Guess that means I should fire up Brain Age on the DS again (the activity in the the first edition of the game where you quickly count people running in and out of a house makes my head hurt just thinking about it).

So there it is - the "secret" to success. Work on the hard stuff.

A new appreciation of Left-Brain / Right-Brain

Thanks to my wife Linda Thomas for alerting me to Jill Bolte Taylor's truly unique presentation from the TED conference. A tour of our gray matter from brain researcher who survived a stroke. Profound.

Now a portable version of Guitar Hero for DS

Clearly, it's a Guitar Hero world and we just live in it. I think the interesting tidbit here is that 80% of the songs on the portable version will be master recordings...

Yes, what about a Country version of Guitar Hero?

I'm in sync with this comment on a CMT blog about how a country version of Guitar Hero would uh, rock. Providing that the franchise can get past the legal challenges that have come up.

Will Apple share Hardware $$ with the music labels?

Here's a good overview from CNET about Apple's possible "all you can eat" music deal.

Beatles coming to Guitar Hero?

Yet again it's Guitar Hero bringing buzz to the music biz. Won't the media will go crazy if a Beatles version of "Guitar Hero" really happens?

Google says a "watershed moment" for mobile Internet use

Google knows a whole lot of stuff from all the data it sees daily, and is revealing "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating."

Google says their new phone search app has increased mobile searches by 20%.

Google's Android platform for mobile phones is coming later this year, and perhaps mobile phones are just the beginning...

Super Smash Brothers debuts with a big punch

Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii has broken Nintendo sales records and pulled in over over $50 Million in first-week sales: "The Puget Sound Business Journal reported that the game has had an overall sales record if 1.4 million units, with 874,000 sold on March 9."

A computer virus from your digital picture frame? Yep

Watch out for viruses if you buy a digital picture frame that can talk to your PC, or pretty much any other gizmo. Yikes.

Beatles music coming to iTunes soon?

Will The Beatles songs finally be coming to iTunes? Sure sounds like things are moving along for an announcement this year. UPDATE 3/11/08: Or... maybe NOT.

Digital camera coming with High-Speed Video, HD, and a lot more

Whoa! A digital camera that can shoot VIDEO at 1,200 frames a SECOND (check out the card shuffle video comparisons)! And 12x Zoom too.

And HD video. Plus a 60 frames a second photo burst mode.

The Exilim site says under a thousand bucks. Wow.

Disney to post classic TV shows online

Add Disney to the list that includes NBC and CBS in streaming classic shows online (though I just checked and didn't see aren't any there yet). Disney already has current Disney Channel episodes online.

Business push e-mail coming in the next iPhone update

On my recent business trip to Nashville I ran in to plenty of iPhone users, and every one of them LOVED their iPhone. The only real complaint I heard was the inability to use push e-mail from their company, like BlackBerry users can. Sounds like the upcoming June iPhone 2.0 update will fix that.

Live video coming to YouTube in 2008?

Sure sounds like it from this scoop from Sarah Meyers as reported by CNET's tech news blog. Don't you think live video will explode then?

There are sites where you can do live streaming video now, but none with the reach and brand name of YouTube.

Seems like a real game changer. And will the Internet be able to take the surge in bandwidth demand?

Guitar Hero 3 comes to AT&T Phones

First it was Verizon, and now CNET reports that AT&T phone customers will be able to play Guitar Hero 3 on their phones. Let's just not hear of someone trying to drive while trying to keep up with the insanely fast GH3 version of "Devil Went To Georgia," 'keh!?

Are digital music sales already 40% of revenue at some majors?

Digital Music News reports that at the recent Digital Music Forum in New York, some surprisingly high digital sales numbers were revealed.

Disney Games coming with "Ultimate Band" for Wii, DS

Another entry is coming in the video game music space, currently dominated by Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Disney Interactive Studios is coming with "Ultimate Band" for the Nintendo Wii and DS. No add-on controllers. "Songs already confirmed for "Ultimate Band" include "Steady as She Goes" by the Raconteurs, the Who's "My Generation" and "Fell in Love With a Girl" by the White Stripes, all of which will be covers."

HTML Code Tutorial

That's the name of the site: HTML Code Tutorial. Looks like a handy reference (I needed to check how to strike out text). Do you have another favorite HTML reference site?

Chris Anderson on "Free" - Wired article, video, links

Lots of info and links from Wired on the idea of "Free" driving digital business success. This quote ends Chris Anderson's video: "Every industry that becomes digital, eventually becomes free."

Google launches wiki-ish "Google Sites"

Here's a critical look from CNET, here's the main Google Sites page from Google. Looks like a simple way to get an intranet up and running.

Gizmodo: Patience advised on going Blu Ray

A nice look here from Gizmodo at where things stand on Blu Ray DVD. "Sony's more affordable new Blu-ray player will hit the market this summer for $400. Nothing built by Sony or anyone else should be considered before then, the one exception being the PS3."

Amazing - over 1 BILLION cell phones sold in 2007

It's staggering, isn't it? "More than 1.15 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide in 2007, a 16 percent increase from the 990.9 million phones sold in 2006."

A hit drama online doesn't guarantee TV success

“Quarterlife” has been a hit on MySpace. On network TV, not so much. "...the worst performance in the 10 p.m. time slot that NBC has seen in nearly 17 years." Ouch.

Music exec: "Music 1.0 is dead"

From Ars Technica. News from the "Digital Music Forum East" meeting. Point worth pondering: "the next big thing is a dozen things."

Irving Azoff on the Eagles / Wal-Mart relationship

And the power of touring in this NY Post article.

Quote from Eagles manager Irving Azoff: "I recently looked to see how much The Eagles have been paid in royalties from all their downloads at iTunes. The Eagles are one of the two or three best selling catalogs in the business. And we figured out that [total iTunes royalties] equaled about 45 minutes of one concert at any city in the world." (Saw this in the Lefsetz letter)

iTunes now #2 in Music Sales

iTunes now trails only Wal-Mart in music sales. The line from that jumped out at me was "...48 percent of U.S. teenagers didn't buy any CDs during the year, up from 38 percent in the year before."

Another look at the above story from the LA Times here, that notes: "The number of people buying music legally from online music stores jumped 21% to 29 million last year from 24 million in 2006..." but that "The increase in legal online sales was driven by people 36 to 50."

Excuse me, one of my 17 types of media is beeping...

Wow, the people who've agreed to take part in this all-day media use study must be confident that they don't have anything to hide, hmm? And check this: the researchers will monitor "the use of 17 different media as the people use them alone and in multiple combinations." (!)

Do you even come close to that? I gather that's counting multiple media on one device, don't you think? On your PC alone you could do e-mail, chat, browse the web, download songs and videos, etc... so that be five right there? Would a DVR and live TV count as 2 different media?

A wary view of the project here.

I've set up a news alert to monitor what happens as results get reported later this year.

HBO putting some full episodes on YouTube

I like seeing HBO join this trend (CBS had an episodes online announcement last week).

I've been wanting to see some of "In Treatment," and HBO's posted (as of this writing) 4 full episodes online.

Thanks for the hits, Phil Gernhard

I've met record execs and artists who worked with him, but I never got to meet Phil Gernhard. I've sure loved some of the songs he helped bring to the world, though. In particular "Spiders & Snakes," one of my favorite 70's hits ever.

What a parade of hits: "Gernhard's legacy included producing Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs hit "Stay," Dion's "Abraham Martin and John," Lobo's "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo," Jim Stafford's "Spiders And Snakes" and the Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow." He also produced and composed "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" by the Royal Guardsmen."

He was also involved in the careers of many contemporary country artists.

Thanks for the music, Phil.

Michael Wolff on Hollywood in a YouTube world

From Vanity Fair. "Hollywood, which has been the center of the culture, the coolest place, the ruler of the Zeitgeist, is out of it." (Thanks KVD).

Timing is everything - the article came out right before the 2008 Academy Awards show had the lowest Oscar ratings ever.

Speaking Tips from an M.I.T. Professor

Looks like a lot of great speaking info in these online videos. Check out Prof. Patrick Winston's "Big 4" if you want a quick handy lesson on how present your ideas more effectively. I like his references to probability and psychology in explaining the need for cycling, repeating your point three times to insure that your audience has the chance to "get it." (I found this from Boing Boing, but the video referenced there was gone when I checked it).

A 12-min version of Prof. Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture"

This version of Prof. Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" (from Oprah) is short enough to watch for quick inspiration any time. One of my favorite lines of his (from the longer version of his speech): "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." Info on Dr. Pausch and links to the full-length original lecture video here.

Cool ways to make RSS Feeds work harder for you

You can really get some ideas here. I like Bloglines for a feed reader, but I can see SendMeRSS as being handy for feeds you want to stay on top of in your e-mail box. Please comment below if you use any services like these.

See yourself in Ascii text

Got a web cam? See yourself in dots with the Amazing Instant Ascii Cam. I haven't tried it yet but it looks fun. See the author's text pic here.

A FREE copy of Wired's March '08 "Free" Issue

If you're one of the first 10,000 people to request one. (update 2/28/08: Well, you weren't. But see my item on Chris Anderson above)

Gmail Cheat Sheet you can print out

A nicely formatted for printing Gmail cheat sheet.

An Addictive Slide show of Images Being Uploaded to Blogger Right NOW

A nice overview of Blogger Play, where you can see photos that are being uploaded to Blogger. This comment about it struck me. Check it out here. Note: if there's a shot you like, pause the stream and click on the photo - you'll go to the blog it was uploaded to. You can back up, too, if an image goes by too fast.

Journey's new lead singer shines in Chile debut

Wow, there are some thrilling moments in these clips of the "new" Journey from a big music festival in Chile. New lead singer (and Steve Perry sound-alike) Arnel Pineda just nails "Open Arms" and "Faithfully" in particular (about a minute in).

magicJack lets you make unlimited calls for $40 a year thru your PC

magicJack sure looks like a bargain. And you can plug any regular phone in to it.

Yahoo Feature: Can Video Games Save The Music Industry?

Yahoo feature on how Guitar Hero and music in games points to a new horizon for the music biz.

Star Trek, HAWAII FIVE-O, + more on demand!

TV Classics online NOW from CBS! MacGyver and The Twilight Zone online too.

& a shoutout of respect to the great late Kam Fong as Chin Ho (once a real Hawaii cop) from Hawaii Five-O.

Apple files a patent for Customized Podcasts

So what if you could grab the parts of different Podcasts you like and have them mashed in to one Podcast? Intriguing.

25 online info sources that aren't Wikipedia

Wikipedia rocks, but when you need more info or sources you can cite - here's a list of 25 more online sources to check out.

Blu-Ray won, but you might want to grab an HD-DVD on the cheap...

So here's a reason to buy an HD-DVD player at a firesale price: "HD DVD players also make great upscaling DVD players" for your old non-HD disks. Might be worth grabbing one if you have an HD set and are going to wait for the new Blu-Ray players (and the story is a good overview of what 's up now that Blu-Ray has won the HD disk format battle).

Are you on LinkedIn?

This book looks interesting, no? I read about it here, where there's also an interesting tip to use LinkedIn Answers as a resource. I haven't signed up yet for LinkedIn. Not sure I could keep up with it enough for it to be beneficial.

Podcast - Brad Paisley's Guitar Amp setup

Wow, listening to Brad here you get to know that he's a real student of guitar amps and technology. And if you don't have Brad's 5th Gear album, get it NOW and play it loud.

Video game animation is getting VERY life-like

This is pretty wild, especially the 2nd video down.

Hannah Montana Movie in 2009

Miley movie will open May 1, 2009. Info on other Disney movies too.

Leaked RIAA training Video

Whoa, it's getting intense out there.

Slashdot - Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought

You ARE a big galaxy, aren't you?

Piano on iPhone

You have to mess with your phone to run this - which I do not endorse doing - but wow.

Print Your Own Newspaper w/ Feed Journal

From RSS feeds, or publish your blog.
Looks like a neat way to "print the Internet and go."

The story on WA's new "Enhanced Driver's License"

Handy if you need to go to BC from Washington State

Wii Fit coming May 19th - Wii Ware May 12th

Wii fit sounds fun. 'Til you see your BMI... "Come on, kids - let's check our body fat!"

Music and Web Video: (From TV Week)

Music videos make up a large percentage of the most popular viral videos." More than 25%

Look for 'Kojak,' 'Vice,' others online

AP story

10 e-mail addresses to remember

10 e-mail addresses to remember (to send photos directly to Flickr, text straight to a blog, etc).

Indiana Jones Trailer

The Trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie is at Yahoo Movies: