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Did The Tow Guy Get Towed?

Posted on January 8, 2009 ·

This is real, I am not making it up. Excerpt from a Skype conversation:

[4:26:50 PM] K says: BTW, remember the towing?
[4:27:13 PM] Z says: yeah
[4:27:18 PM] K says: He was supposed to take two blocks to the repair guy. It has been 3 hours and the car hasn’t reached him. The towing company is now trying to trace the employee 🙂
[4:27:33 PM] Z says: c’mon?????
[4:27:52 PM] Z says: do you have a rolls royce or austin martin that’s worth stealing?
[4:27:53 PM] K says: Yeah. I am coordinating with Geico (who sent that towing company) and the towing company 🙂
[4:28:00 PM] Z says: hilarious
[4:28:02 PM] K says: Nope. Hyundai Accent :))
[4:28:11 PM] Z says: sorry, not making fun of it
[4:28:15 PM] Z says: but sill hilarious
[4:28:18 PM] K says: Actually, it is
[4:28:32 PM] K says: I was laughing with the Geico guy when I was complaining 🙂
[4:28:33 PM] Z says: oh, it had to be a misunderstanding.. because of the Accent 🙂
[4:28:47 PM] K says: Ha Ha

Filed Under: Humor · Tagged: ,
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Late Christmas Gift from Norway: Download All the Beatles Songs Free and Legally

Posted on January 5, 2009 ·

See update at bottom!

From Norwegian site NRKBeta:

Some weeks ago, NRK – Norwegian Braodcasting – signed a deal with music rights holder organisation TONO in Norway. The new deal gives NRK right to publish podcasts of all previously broadcasted radio- and tv-programs that contains less then 70% music.

Podcast containing music may be up for four weeks, while our podcast without music stay up on our server forever.

One result of this deal, is that we now can publish “VĂĄr daglige Beatles” – “Our Daily Beatles” in English – as a podcast.

In this series from 2001, journalists Finn Tokvam og BĂĄrd Ose tells the story of every single Beatles tracks ever made, chronologically. Each episode contains a 3 minute story about each track (sadly for our international visitors – in Norwegian) and the actual Beatles tune.

This is – as far as we know – the first time you can download the Beatles’ music legally. Neither iTunes nor Amazon have The Beatles in their music stores.

So now Norway’s contribution to Beatles music is a lot more than just Norwegian Wood.  This is an incredible deal: grab the 128kbps mp3 format podcasts here.

(hat tip: Espen Antonsen)

Update: Well, this was too good to last.  NRK pulled the podcast due to legal issues.

Related post:

Filed Under: Misc · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Popcorn Leads Police to Burglary Suspect

Posted on January 4, 2009 ·

This just in  from the “You can’t make this up” department:  Police found the suspect of a convenience store burglary by following the trail of popcorn the suspect left from the crime scene all the way to his apartment. 

The popcorn brand “trail’s end” just got a new meaning…

Source: Sacramento Bee.

Filed Under: Humor, Misc · Tagged: , , ,
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The Bogus Vista vs. Windows 7 Debate

Posted on January 2, 2009 ·

If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 – says Ed Bott on ZDnet.  Windows 7: Mojave My Ass –complains Jason Perlow. Dwight Silverman confirms: Sorry, but Windows 7 isn’t a return to Windows XP, while others don’t refrain from some name-calling.

Sorry guys, you’re all wrong. 

You’re debating the merits of an operating system based on it’s UI.  Sure, if you migrate from XP to Win7, some of the changes can be confusing – but it’s an initial change, the learning curve is not that steep.  I actually side with Ed Bott here, the search box to launch programs is a more user-friendly approach than having to remember the names of all *.exe files a’la XP. 

But it does not really matter.  Mojave my ass?  Mojave was a bogus experiment (in fact a PR blitz dressed up as an experiment) showing happy “users” who liked the Vista UI – but hey had no chance to assess what fails in a short demo, and that’s what doomed Vista, not appearances.

Windows in all flavors, be it XP, Vista or 7 is not an application.  It’s a friggin’ operating system whose job is to get us into applications and get out of the way.  In today’s flurry of blog posts Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has the right approach, presenting performance tests – yes, performance is key to judging how good an operating system is.

The other key criteria is how invisible it stays. Think about it: any time you have to get down to OS level typically means something does not work right.  It’s the stupid unexplainable little things like:

  • Vista and XP computers not finding each other on a home network until you apply an undocumented patch to the XP machines
  • Simple copy or delete operations taking forever
  • Not being authorized to move / delete files on my own computer even after elevating to Admin mode, killing UAC and a number of weird cryptic options that take an IT deapartment to deal with, not a home user
  • Windows upgrade failing if more than 3GB memory is installed
  • The latest Windows upgrade causing printer and camera drivers from several vendors reinstall themselves (some take 30 minutes or more, kinda big deal)
  • …

The list could go on, but I think you get my drift:  Windows 7 (and any other OS) will be judged on how well computers will run, let users interact with real application without having to touch the OS itself.

Finally, to address the speculation about Windows 7 upgrade paths, let me just reiterate this:

  • Win7  should be released as  Vista Final (meaning it works)
  • It should be provided it as a free upgrade to Vista
  • It should come with a letter of apology to all Vista victims

OK, I know we have fat chances for the apology – but I really mean the free upgrade part.

(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Blago to US: Scr*w You

Posted on December 30, 2008 ·

Pardon my French, but that’s his message.  Loud and clear.

This is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat," the statement read. "Anyone appointed by Gov. Blagojevich cannot be an effective representative of the people of Illinois and, as we have said, will not be seated by the Democratic Caucus.

Photo credit: Chicago Breaking News.

Filed Under: Politics · Tagged: , ,
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Farting Our Way Through the Recession?

Posted on December 30, 2008 ·

Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. And what are the best and the brightest working on?

–asked Tim O’Reilly, Father-of-all-things-Web-2.0 at the  Web 2.0 Expo in September.

Do you see a problem here?  You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?

Some of the negative examples he cited were the Facebook application Superpoke and the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint of beer. Has anything changed since O’Reilly’s alert?  Let’s see:

The most popular of 50+ (!) fart applications, iFart Mobile generated $10,000 a day at 99c per download until it got written up just before Christmas, then it exploded, bringing in $27,249 on Christmas Day.  Dou think it’s jus a crazy name for a useful program?  Nope: all it does is to make farting noises.smile_speedy

Tapping into the Apple phone craze, accidental entrepreneurs rake in millions by creating popular applications.

-says the Washington Post in an aptly named article: The iPhone’s Golden Touch.   At least Smule, the showcased company does not make fart noises: they have applications like virtual lighter, a virtual firecracker, a voice changer, a virtual  wind instrument. They are on track to make $1 million this year, a buck a piece.

If this is not crazy, I don’t know what is… Brian Greenstone, who has been writing (real) games for Apple computers for 21 years agrees:

It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years — combined.

Spending 99c a time does not feel like a big decision – yet it all feels like a gigantic waste. An it will get written up as showcases of entrepreneurship. 

I would like to amend the definition of entrepreneurship to include the creation of something useful (yes, I know, I’ve just opened a Pandora’s box, but …). Let’s differentiate opportunity seekers (nothing wrong with that) from Entrepreneurs.  I’d like to stand on a soap box and yell: People, wake up!  Don’t you have anything better to do?

But my voice isn’t loud enough.  I thought Tim O’Reilly’s was … shall we heed his call to do something worthy?  Make it a New Year’s Resolution for 2009?

(Cross-posted from CloudAve)

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Filed Under: Misc, Software · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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Bragging on YouTube Results in Criminal Charges

Posted on December 28, 2008 ·

18-old Marko Petrovic probably regrets recklessly driving trough Sozina, Montenegro’s longest vehicular  tunnel at the breakneck speed of 260 km/h ( 161 m/h) –or at least sharing the experience on YouTube for the whole world to see.

While the entire world has not seen it  yet (only 13k views for now), Montenegro police certainly has: they should up at his parents’ home, filing criminal charges of reckless endangering and impounding his dad’s  Audi A8.

(A commenter to the video thinks the car is a BMW, not an A8, since he sees the iDrive – I have no clue, car experts feel free to jump in.)

Anyway, I think this is a great initiative: I would strongly encourage reckless drivers, muggers, robbers, all sorts of criminals to follow suit: document your act, earn your well-deserved fame on Youtube.  At least in countries where you can get prosecuted based on a video. smile_wink

Source: index.hu (in Hungarian)

Update:  This kid’s timing was really, really bad.  Barely a month after he posted his video, Montenegro banned Facebook and Youtube access if all public sector offices:

“With the aim of optimising traffic and lessening the network loads of governmental agencies during work, access was disabled to potentially dangerous sites and sites that generate large capacities,” the government told AFP.

Filed Under: Misc · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Credit Crunch Has Reached Bloggers

Posted on December 26, 2008 ·

The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a WordPress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.

I have not found a "Recession" WordPress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.smile_omg

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor · Tagged: , , , ,
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New Yorker Wins Megasztar, Hungary’s “American Idol”

Posted on December 22, 2008 ·

Hungary’s version of American Idol, Megasztar ended this weekend, and the winner is Viktor Kiraly, who was born an raised till age 16 in New York.  Music runs in the family; both parents were musicians, sister Linda published CD’s in the US and the UK, and Viktor started his band with identical twin brother, Ben.

Here’s You Are So Beautiful by the new “Megastar”

From an earlier round, Where Do I Begin (Love Story):

And it wouldn’t be Christmas-time without Santa Claus is Coming to Town:

Filed Under: Misc · Tagged: , , , , ,
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Corporate Logos Reflect Recession

Posted on December 22, 2008 ·

From Flickr, originally published by Business Pundit, and re-discovered by Jeff Nolan.  (Oh, yeah, I did my not-so-artistic-but-realistic rendering of the Apple logo a year ago.)

Update:  Will some of these Web 2.0 logos change in 2009?

Filed Under: Business, Humor · Tagged: , , , , ,
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