2005 December

Our Tuesday update was a big one, if you didn't already notice. Do your talents lie in crafting crafty CSS? Do you want to have thousands of people see your work? Gada.be is breaking down the design door and letting the greater community in. We are now letting you… anybody design Gada.be with CSS. Submissions will be added to a site-wide, dynamic style-switcher that will let Gada.be users see Gada.be their way – literally! Here's what to do:

Read more on Calling All CSS Designers – Free Copy of TopStyle…

We are happy to a announce a new tool “Digital Inspiration All-in-One Preview” that will help you compare the relevance of Contextual Advertising services offered by Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and Chitika eMiniMalls. The All-In-One tool will assist website owners and bloggers in evaluation of the Google Adsense, Chitika eMiniMalls and Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) Program to determine which Contextual Advertising service is more suited for their website or weblog. Enter any keywords or a website address, choose a geographic location (for Google), customize ad colors or choose an existing color set and click “Udate Ads Display”.

Read more on Yahoo YPN, Chitika, Adsense Preview Tool…

“Get into the holiday spirit with a Holiday Lights Tour. If your group, family, or office needs a new time-honored Christmas tradition, then come aboard our famous Holiday Lights Tour for a display of the lights. Sing along with carols and snuggle in close to your loved ones, while we do the driving.” That's from just one of the sources you can uncover through a unique Windows Live Local application at the Holiday Lights Map. In my neck of the woods: “Redmond celebrates the diverse traditions of the holiday season with festivities, food, and entertainment from around the world. The entire community is invited to join as friends and neighbors celebrate seasonal customs.” We also caught a glimpse of the Christmas Ship Festival the other night accidentally: “The festival is a ship-to-shore holiday celebration that has become a local Northwest tradition for 56 years. The Spirit of Seattle, the Official Christmas Ship, is decorated with hundred of shimmering white lights and festive holiday garland. On the water, other decorated boats join in the festivities by following the Christmas Ship, forming the largest holiday flotilla in the world, cruising to over 45 waterfront communities.”

Read more on Holiday Lights Map…

I don't know who came up with the formula for Lays potato chips, but the marketing hype is valid: you can't eat just one. Before heading off to dinner last night, I thought I'd grab myself a quick snack. I saw the bag of Lays wide open on Ponzi's desk – it was half full. I moved the aluminum snack receptacle closer to my desk and started responding to emails. Before I knew it, the bag of Lays potato chips was far less than half full. Oops!? What the hell just happened here? Does Lays contain some top secret chemical that forces people to consume way more than they should in a short time span? Lays is evil… evil, I tells ya. Damn you, Frito-lay.

Read more on Lays Potato Chips are Evil…

Liz Lawley joins us on this week’s show for the pre-holiday party at the Pirillo house. Liz is probably best known in online circles for mamamusings, her blog about technology, academia, family and tangential topics. Liz also happens to be one of the people pushing to make MSN Search work better as part of the Microsoft Reasearch Social Computing Group while on sabbatical from her regular gig as Director of RIT’s Lab for Social Computing.

Read more on Thursday 22 December 2005…

In this third hour of the Xbox 360 Xmas Xtravaganza, Chris leads off with a question for Major Nelson about how to increase his star rating in Xbox Live. Someone inside the Xbox team is seeking the rights to Lode Runner to add an HD version of the game to the arcade. We still don’t have the answer to when Best Buy will get more consoles. Some hacking tricks for the Xbox 360 are discussed. A caller mentions some concern about the Microsoft re-org and how it will impact his gaming experience. Chris talks with Aaron Coldiron about The Hive community project and Brandon Paddock about gaming and desktop search.

Read more on Xbox 360 Xmas Xtravaganza Hour 3…

It's official; we're broadcasting live from the CES show floor! From 1pm to 3pm on Thursay and Friday (January 5th and 6th, 2006), we'll be somewhere within the Microsoft pavilion with our headsets firmly planted atop our melons. If you're going to be there, be sure to stop by and we'll bring you onto the program if you have any perspectives to share with the crowd. It's going to be a good year for gadgets. Stay tuned for more details (although the live stream link is the same as it always has been).

Read more on Broadcasting Live from CES…

Jake told me about it the other day at Andru's White Elephant party. There's a new service called GotVoice that enables you to receive hosted voice mail messages via email. You sign up for an account, tell it how to access your voice mail, and it'll email you the messages when they come in. Awesome! Genius! Long overdue! My cell phone's voice mail recording has always been: “Hi, don't leave a message here.” Seriously, I *NEVER* check my cell phone's voicemail. I've been spoiled by Webley and Vonage, receiving my voice mail via email for the past few years. Anything else is simply uncivilized. I'm waiting to get my GotVoice account activated now…

Read more on Got Voice? GotVoice….

I only saw one commercial for it, but the series teaser looked interesting enough. Sleeper Cell is a Showtime original (and they're well on their way to becoming my favorite cable channel, especially if they pick up Arrested Development). I recorded a couple of episodes on my PVR, but found them infinitely easier to watch while I was working out in the other room. If you haven't caught Sleeper Cell yet, I'd strongly recommend doing so. Sadly, Sleeper Cell was only a miniseries – although I would implore Showtime to push this show into a second season. Showtime has even posted behind-the-scenes interviews with the principal actors, although I'm still recovering from last night's season finale. It's not too late to get into Sleeper Cell, by the way; there are only ten one-hour episodes to watch. This isn't a Sleeper – it's a Keeper. NPR agrees.

Read more on Sleeper Cell…

Kicking off hour two of the Xbox 360 Xtravaganza, Chris talks with Pete Grondal of Microsoft Studios about his recording of a “behind The Chris Pirillo Show” documentary for The Hive. Pete gives his take on what it was like to document the Xbox 360 launch event in the middle of the desert and how married life shifts priorities away from things like gaming. Pete’s also the guy who did the encoding for all the Gnomedex videos hosted at The Hive. Later in the hour, Major Nelson fields more Xbox 360 specific questions as Chris enlists a series of house guests to boost his gamer score while simultaneously hosting the show.

Read more on Xbox 360 Xmas Xtravaganza Hour 2…

In this first hour of the Xbox Xtravaganza, Chris talks to Andru Edwards of GearLive.com about his experiences with Xbox 360, the addiction of gamer score, the Hardwood card games and some of the frustrations of playing your friends online. Major Nelson joins the coversation after battling Seattle traffic on I-90 (which unfortunately does not boost gamer score) and immediately jumps into the phone calls. There’s also a clue on how to beat the water boss in Kameo.

Read more on Xbox 360 Xmas Xtravaganza Part 1…