A few weeks ago, I got a note from a guy. At first, I thought it was junk - turned out to be a barenaked goldmine. Barenaked Ladies man, Stephen Page, has completed “The Vanity Project” and they’ve got the first single available on the site: That’s All, That’s All. Don’t ask me why they went with RealMedia (RAM, not MP3 or WMA).

The first release on FLAGSHIP will be the self-titled album from The Vanity Project, which features Barenaked Ladies’ lead singer Steven Page. The Vanity Project is a collaboration between Page and his frequent co-writing partner, Stephen Duffy, and is tentatively set for a late-June release. The album includes 12 songs, 11 of which are Page-Duffy compositions.

It’s worth a listen, and based on it - the album is a must-have for any dedicated BNL fan.

The official Garbage Pail Kids Web site is horrible when it comes to updates / freshness, but it's more than we had before (growing up). Their GPK News hasn't been updated for at least two series releases. We're up to ANS (A New Series) #4 now, and it's just as great as it always has been for we garbage pail geeks. However, I'm started to get frustrated with Topps. Per Barren Aaron's GPK site:

For the first print run, each foil pack (with a suggested retail price of $.99) contains 5 sticker cards on 14 card stock (with a great glossy finish), with 1 Game card on 12 cards stock, and a chance to come across a Scratch 'n' Stink sticker or Tattoo card inserted one in every 6 packs, and an artist autographed Sketch card which will come one per hobby box. The set also contains 4 bonus cards that can be found in special 'bonus boxes' located at different retail chains.

Dude!? I love GPKs, but enough with the extras, man. Regular stickers… Scratch 'n' Stinks… temporary tatoos… autographed Sketch cards… collectable game cards… bonus cards? It wasn't that difficult to be a fan back in the day, and that's when packs were .25c / .35c apiece. I love Garbage Pail Kids, and I'm not going to stop collecting them now. However, I'm also not going to spend $100 on a single card - which some of the Sketch cards are going for on eBay.

Dude, Family Guy is back with a vengeance! I'm not sure who was responsible for crafting the Family Guy's official Internet presence, but they did it the RIGHT way - the page is updated regularly, and it has its own feed! This Sunday, tune into Fox to watch the first new Family Guy episode - it's going to be an amazing half hour. Peter, Lois, Meg, Chris, Brian, and Stewie (not to mention Quagmire and Cleveland)… I missed you all.
Fox UNcanceled the Family Guy. As such, we've proven (with our attention and our wallets) that the traditional television ratings system is BEYOND BROKEN. Family Guy should have never left the air, and the executives responsible for that action are likely eating crow now. It was depressing to get Ponzi hooked on the Family Guy only to tell her that it was no longer in production. Now, we can enjoy new episodes together. Stewie, she loves. I'm more of a Peter fan, myself.
Now, we've got to get to work on Arrested Development.

Mac Os X Steps Ahead of Windows, written by MATTHEW FORDAHL, begins with:

Tired of waiting while your PC slowly scours its hard drive for a document you stashed somewhere six months ago? Sick of having to change how you work to conform with the computer's rigid way of organizing files? Bored with the flat look of the desktop's graphics?

Uh, I can work around all three of these shortcomings… Copernic Desktop Search takes care of the first two issues, and the third is easily fixed with either Konfabulator (which sucks CPU cycles and memory like they're going out of style) or DesktopX (which suffers from an utter lack of worthwhile, well-designed widgets).

No argument: Tiger made it out the door a lot sooner than Longhorn - and with a lot more polish than Windows XP. Should Tiger be free? No more than XP should have been free for everybody who suffered through Windows Millenium Edition! The article continues:

It's less prone to malicious attacks.

That's because it's not the tallest nail. That's like saying FireFox is more secure than IE, when (in fact) it's just not getting attacked as much because the installed user base is nowhere near that of IE. Trust me, if the market share tables were turned, folks would be saying “IE is more secure than FireFox.” Ah, but we finally get to the reason why the article has an extreme bias in the Mac direction:

I've been trying out Tiger on a borrowed an iMac G5 and my own dual-processor Power Mac G4.

No wonder. MATTHEW FORDAHL is writing like a biased zealot because MATTHEW FORDAHL is a biased zealot.

Topping the list of 200 or so improvements in Tiger is a built-in search tool that goes a long way toward relieving one of the biggest headaches that's plagued computers.

1. 200 improvements - our 14 real improvements and 186 bug fixes?

2. There are plenty of Desktop Search Tools that Windows users have been enjoying for many months now… Google has one, MSN has one, Yahoo! is using X1's code, and I've already mentioned my favorite (Copernic).

Spotlight's speed, even on my older Power Mac, is impressive. Results were on target, too.

Copernic's speed, even on my fiancee's slightly older system, is impressive. Results are on target, too.

Indexing with Windows add-ons is a more computer-intensive process. Most are smart enough to do their work only when you're not working on something, but that means new information isn't always available. I have also found their range of files to be limited.

WTF?!

Well, at least he's giving props to the Windows platform. But what does it mean when he writes “computer-intensive process.” Aren't all computations on a computer “computer-intensive?” You probably don't use a Desktop Search app to look for something you just did - it's when you're trying to find something you did days, weeks, months ago! He may have also found their range of files to be limited because he didn't look far enough into the Options panel (at least, with Copernic - which wasn't even mentioned in this friggin' POS AP release).

Spotlight only searches for files on the local computer, not networked hard drives or remote shared folders.

Awwwwww… MSN does. Oddly enough, when I searched MSN for “desktop search,” the #1 hit was Google's. At least you know MSN is not skewing results o'er there.

But Tiger is about a lot more than look and feel. It's also about looking at more people than ever on your video screen live.

Nobody's saying that OS X isn't slicker looking than Windows - I'll be the first to admit that. But… there's been plenty of software on the Windows platform that will let you do the same thing. PalTalk (with PalPlus6), for one.
Of course, it's impossible to judge how Tiger will compare with the next-generation of Windows since Longhorn isn't available.

Well, Microsoft gets in trouble with the law if they bundle too much with their OS. I'm not against it, mind you, but… you can't have it both ways.

As more details come out, additional complaints of Microsoft copying Mac OS X will surely be heard.

ROTFLMAO! Sounds to me like a classic case of “vice versa.” Methinks Apple's been copying stuff that's already available for (not necessarily with) Windows.

The onus is now on Bill Gates & Co. to see if it can one-up Steve Jobs' shop.

If anybody one-upped anyone here, it was Jobs. And ya know what? He made it look 100x better. I cry foul - Matthew may have been paid to write this article.

Brandon Paddock is a geek in the best sense of the term. He likes to experiment with new technology and figure out what makes it tick. Brandon is willing to put up with a few shortcomings on the bleeding edge but seems to view advancements with the critical eye necessary to thrive in a world where everything is constantly changing. At the recent Search Champs event, Brandon brought his critical eye to MSN Search finding things they do both right and wrong. You can read Brandon’s take on technology at GeeksWithBlogs.net and meet him virtually through the recent conversation he had with Chris while they were traveling to MSN Search Champs via shuttle.

By day, Marc Orchant is the Storyteller for Van Dyke Software, which is a creative way of saying he knows more about marketing secure shell products than virtually anyone else in the computer software biz. In his spare time, Marc blogs prolifically on topics like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office and Tablet PC. When he’s not blogging, chances are Marc will make a good case for why a Tablet PC might just change your life; that is unless you are Chris Pirillo. Marc has given up trying to convince Chris that Tablet computing offers fundamental advantages over traditional keyboard and mouse interfacing. Chris talked to Marc at a mall food court in Bellevue, following the recent Search Champs, where they discussed Tablet PC, secure shell applications and Microsoft Office.

You can’t meet Buzz Bruggeman and not learn about ActiveWords. Buzz is perfect product evangelist, mixing a healthy dose of enthusiasm for the product with an ability to identify specific features helpful to whatever your computing experience may be. Buzz blogs regularly in a variety of places, including Buzznovation and Buzzmodo. During the recent Search Champs gather, Chris caught up with Buzz to talk about search innovations.