Ghosts of Electricity Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Molly Ivins, Populist Texas Columnist, Dies at 62
  Sad news. Molly was one of the good ‘uns.
• Miss USA Cops to Coke Use
  Joke #1: Talk about the real thing! Joke #2: See, and people say that beauty pageant winners aren’t role models. Joke #3: Well, somebody’s gotta show the new Miss America how to roll. Joke #4: We don’t have a problem with that, just as long as she didn’t snort it off of Donald Trump’s ass.
• TV network ad campaign sparks Boston security scare
  Jumpy? Hell no, we ain’t jumpy.

Read the entire entry …

As a public service, Medialoper offers the latest installment of I Hate The Cable Company, our monthly(ish) roundup of some recent stories where ordinary citizens have had issues with the service and/or pricing of their local cable company.

• In Worcester MA, a man was told by Comcast that they would have no problem hooking him up . . . as long as he paid them $14,995.35.

Read the entire entry …

A Lethal Dose of Salvation Edition

Todays links of interest:

• TV shows get a second chance on DVD
  Good news (despite the tone of the article): the brilliant "Buffalo Bill" is coming to a DVD player near you.
• F–ck Da Eagles Heather Photos on Maxim
  This story is officially over. Although we do wonder why Maxim uses two dashes after the ‘F’.
• Pam Anderson goes postal over stamp
  It’s nice to see that celebrities can be activists, too. Poor Colonel Sanders, he might not get his stamp after all.

Read the entire entry …

I am mildly fascinated by the recent revenue sharing (for lack of a better term) announcement from YouTube. Now that the site is strong and part of the Google family, content owners will get a bit of the advertising dollars that will inevitably flow into the site’s coffers. It will also require a lot more of the diligence that copyright owners desire — demand — from the Internet.

This might appease some of the major players who are reluctant to “share” their videos with the YouTube nation. Once their eyes grow glassy with visions of millions of passive dollars flowing into their company coffers, surely they’ll open the vaults o’content, eager to offer more, more, more to make more, more, more.
Read the entire entry …

And Now It Goes Like That Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Battlestar Struggles in Sunday Debut
  Sigh. Perhaps if it wasn’t so dark. Or complicated. Or morally ambiguous. Or so fracking great.
• My Name Is Meta
  Behind the scenes of the TWoP shout-out on "My Name is Earl" a couple of weeks ago. And it’s all for charity!!
• China launches 4G before 3G off the ground
  The Fourth G is, of course, Time.

Read the entire entry …

To say that I spend every waking moment online would be inaccurate. Sure, I’m online whether at work or at home, with the same screen configuration at both: Gmail window in the upper left corner of the screen, minimized but visible enough to see if there’s a new email or chat request, SecureCRT in the bottom left, just enough showing to see if there’s a new message. That’s also how my laptop looks when I’m at a wifi cafe writing, which is how I spend most of my quote-free-unquote time these days. But it isn’t just the waking moments, because even when I’m asleep, I’m still downloading stuff. Someone was kind enough to post the Bob Dylan Hybrid SACD box set in .flac format to alt.binaries.sounds.lossless, and it’s taking a while to get ‘em all, as you can well imagine. Thank goodness for DVD-R.

So I’m online in one form or another at any given moment, and when actually in front of a computer usually have a chat or three happening. Oh, right—my cellphone is usually somewhere within my field of vision, lest I get a call or (even more importantly) a text message and miss it. For all of that, I don’t interact much with strangers, and I classify a stranger as someone I’ve never met in meatspace. I don’t participate in online forums or message boards even what few mailing lists still exist, and unless it’s a means to a specific end (like an offer of a gig, which usually comes via email), I almost never correspond or chat with anyone I don’t know in real life. What I do online is all about supplementing my offline life. (And, of course, piracy. Arrrr!)

Read the entire entry …

While you were looking outside and realizing that the winter hadn’t gone anywhere, but had just been stuck in traffic, here’s what we were looking at:

• The High-Definition Problem - Is essentially the 21st Century version of the same problem that happened with certain stars when the talking pictures were invented: some actors don’t translate, er, very well to the newer version of the medium that made them a star. Now playing across the nation: the horror of your local newscast in HD.
• Second Life and the Stupid White Man’s Burden, Part One: Anshe’s Ascension - Remember those jokes about selling you the Brooklyn Bridge? Or Swampland in Florida? At least those people didn’t have to worry about server crashes . . .
• Will Labels Join Party A Decade Late? - Just this once, we’re gonna be optimistic and say “yes.” (And don’t worry, the optimism will pass.)
• Washington Tries Its Best To Kill Internet Radio - Sigh. Those of us from California are embarassed to have a senior Senator who has been hating on the internets as long as DiFi has.
• Major League Baseball Hates Me - If I go over to Kirk or Tim’s place to watch games because they have DirectTV and I don’t, aren’t I, in effect, stealing that content from Major League Baseball? After all, they are in essence sharing those games with me.
• My Life As An RSS Junkie - Y’all will be glad to know that we had an intervention for Kirk this weekend, sending him off to the same rehab that is going to cure Isaiah W’s homophobia; Mel G’s anti-semitism and Michael R’s racism. Because that’s, you know, what rehab is for. Just ask Kirk’s new best friend: Lindsay L.

I Ain’t Searching For My Mainline Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Warning: This TV Set is Obsolete
  A good idea because some people just don’t keep up with these things. I imagine that February 18, 2009 will be a very interesting day as millions of Americans suddenly discover their TV sets no longer work.
• New & Improved eMusic + Pandora Mashup
  This amazingly cool project seamlessly integrates Pandora and eMusic. If you’ve got an eMusic subscription you’ll definitely want to check this out - before PERFORM passes and requires Pandora to encrypt their audio stream, which would be ironic since eMusic sells unencrypted music.
• ‘King of the Hill’ starting season 11
  Yay! Long toiling in the considerable shadow of "The Simpsons," and unlike "Family Guy," actually funny, Mike Judge’s low-key cartoon just might be the most underrated sitcom ever. It’s never been a cultural phenomenon, it’s never been a cult show. And while it has its dud episodes (Cotton Hill, please stay home), it’s just good, year in and year out. In the end, it might be Mike Judge’s greatest work.

Read the entire entry …

My name is Kirk Biglione and I have a problem. I’m addicted to RSS.

Like most addictions my problem started as innocent experimentation. I began dabbling in RSS years ago when it was still a relatively new technology. I told myself that it was a better way to keep up with the news. I rationalized that I’d save hours every day by using RSS to take a more focused approach to online reading and research. A few minutes with my feed reader was supposed to be like an hour or more of surfing the hundreds of the websites that I try to keep up with on a regular basis.

Well, that’s the way it was supposed to be. How was I to know that RSS would turn into the pervasive and addictive social menace that it’s become today?

Read the entire entry …

Wide Wide World of Web Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Sony Plans PlayStation 3 Release in Europe
  Cue the rioters!!
• Fox subpoenas YouTube after "24" clips posted
  Right, because gods forbid that people who may have missed one of those four debut episodes have a chance to catch up with the show so that they decide to watch the other 20. Fox should be paying this person for their trouble in creating free advertising for the rest of the season.
• Federline Super Bowl Ad an "Insult"?
  The only insult is that people are taking anything that this joker does seriously.

Read the entire entry …