2006 January

Any guesses as to why I'm going? :) The Seattle event at the Triple Door will draw on the city's thriving indie music scene and core concentration of bloggers, podcasters and technologists who will discuss mobile culture, copyright issues and how art and commerce intersect in podcasting and video podcasts. We'll hear from music executives, getting their take on what podcasting means for the future of indie culture and mass media. We'll address podcast promotions, distribution opportunities and the methods for reaching people who are spread across a million different micro communities. We'll get the participants to create podcasts, setting up studio demonstrations to help people get started. At night, we will get together to record local music, which we will then promote as podcasts. Additionally, the Podcast Hotel operates an online network where any musician from around the world may submit their music, which we then play on KSSX, a podcast station, and sponsor of the Podcast Hotel. The goal is to show indie musicians and others how they can increase their reach by using a simple, democratic technology – podcasts.

Read more on Checking into the Podcast Hotel…

Okay, I'm generally not a fan of Google's software (largely because it's resource intensive and sports a poor UI). However, they've released a new beta of the Google toolbar (4.0), adding one feature that's a must-see. I wanted to add gada.be to the toolbar, and found it was amazingly simple to do!

Read more on The New Google Toolbar: Wow…

I received an email this evening from a friend who’s visiting Seattle in a few weeks. She wanted to know what I recommended for restaurants in the area. I started to scribble a couple of names, but the effort soon ballooned into a full-blown list. I’m sharing it here for your digestion (pun intended). This way, if anybody else ever asks me for good “local” food, I can just point ‘em here.

Read more on Seattle Restaurants…

I kid you not…

The LifeGem is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life. The LifeGem diamond provides a way to embrace your loved one's memory day by day. The LifeGem is the most unique and timeless memorial available for creating a testimony to their unique life. Your LifeGem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever.

Dude, this is the plan for me. It won't be cheap, but I'd just as soon be an heirloom than a rotting corpse six feet under. Creepy, but pretty. Pretty, but creepy. Seriously.

Read more on I'm Gonna be a LifeGem…

Hey all you would-be (or existing) Vonage customers out there: read your license agreements. No, seriously – this is a company that'll screw you just as hard as a traditional telephone (or any wireless) carrier will. We had a second line added to our account a couple of months back, and we're not really making use of it at this point. So, I called up to tell 'em we didn't want it any more – and they told me there'd be a $39 deactivation fee. Yes, Vonage wants to charge me $39 to disconnect a virtual line. Ya know, $39 for a single mouse-click or keystroke? I have to wait until February 8th until the fee can be waived (after a full year of Vonage service). Man, I wish I didn't have integrity – I'd be a billionare by now.

Read more on Vonage Warning…

Yeah, look at the title for this page: Download details: Podcasts: How Microsoft  IT Implements Encryption Using SQL Server 2005. Not exactly a subject that would interest most users, but it's certainly… proving that Microsoft isn't afraid to use the word in a sentence (or on a Web page, for that matter). And just in case they change their mind, here's the screen shot.

Read more on It's Official: Microsoft Podcasts…

The ala carte iPod Video store is getting worse, not better. If you watch only one TV show per week (and you don't already have a cable subscription), I'm sure their efforts are a godsend. However, if you're like me, and already have three DVRs in your house to record all the shows you want to watch, this lack-of-subscription thing is an absolute nightmare.
Someone at Apple is telling me that I have to re-pay for shows I'm already paying for and (possibly) recording elsewhere, legally? Bullshit. Why should I pay $2 for a single episiode of a show? Why?! Why can't I just have a subscription like I do for all my other programming – including my Netflix account, which often goes unused (while money still funnels into their pockets). Just so I can watch it on an iPod. The Apple iTunes Video page lies to everybody… “Looks like fun.” No, it looks like you're going to nickel and dime us to death for low-quality (bitrate) content.
Imagine what'll happen when you have 20 shows you want to watch at $2 apiece. No, seriously. I could rattle off 20 shows right NOW that I enjoy watching on a regular basis. Let's do the math: 20 x $2 = $40. That's not $40 a month, mind you – it's $40 a week, knowing that most seasons have 10+ shows (so, I could spend >$20 to consume a season in low-quality with nothing physical to show for it – and each program having a very low replay factor). Will I pay $40 a month to gain access to *ALL* the stuff I normally get on my digital cable subscription (in a portable, subscribable format)? Yes. Will I pay $40 a week to watch *SOME* of the stuff I normally get on my cable subscription? Hell no, bozo.
They *HAVE* to make it affordable for those of us who enjoy more than one piece of produced content. BitTorrent has it all over the iPod, man – higher quality media, no DRM, etc. Talk about a mashup that needs to happen?! Someone needs to take uTorrent and build a video encoding layer to it that'll automatically take the downloaded videos and transcode them into MP4 (though not H.264 yet, as the PSP doesn't support it) suitable for our selected portable devices.
I'm thoroughly disappointed that I can't take my Napster subscription with me on my PSP or iPod. Instead, companies want me to spend even MORE money for LESS freedom – and to complicate my life even more than it was before. The sad thing is, many folks walk into it blindly thinking it… “looks like fun.” Bullshit. It's all Bullshit, and Apple's leading the bullshit charge (albeit with style).

Read more on It's Time for Subscriptions!…

The Windows desktop experience we live with daily is a source of many sleepless nights for Chris Pirillo. He’s a sort of consumer experience ombudsman, advocating something more consistent than the Luna theme from Windows XP. At CES 2006 Jenny Lam, part of the core experience team for Windows Vista, talked with Chris about the AERO desktop experience, the design of the latest fonts and interface in Windows Vista. This isn’t your typical rah-rah Microsoft message, with Jenny admitting she was once a Mac user and joined the design team at Microsoft in hopes of making an impact. I couldn’t find the AERO team blog at the time of this posting, but there’s good stuff that spans the gap between Microsoft Office and the Windows Experience in Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog.

Read more on OOBE, Calibri and AERO: A Conversation with Jenny Lam…

• Icon Chassis Modified For Water Cooling
• Silverstone 600Watt Modular Power Supply
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Asus A8N-SLI Premium
• AMD Athlon64 4800+ Dual Core
• Icon Watercooling Kit (AMD)
• Corsair Twin X 2048MB 3500LL Pro 2X1024

Read more on My New Computer?…

Okay, general registration is now open to the public. I announced it to past Gnomedexers a week ago and have since sold 1/3 of the main hall. We'll have overflow rooms open again, but the conference officially sells out in about 200 more seats. See you soon!

Read more on Gnomedex is Already 1/3 Sold Out…

I hate Qwest – they screwed me over one too many times. Months ago, I looked at all the possible options out there and opted to go for Vonage (after all, name recognition goes a long way). I'm beginning to think I need to start looking for another “local” line provider.
My Linksys RT31P2 router went haywire the other day, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't reset it. I got online immediately with Linksys live tech support, and we walked through it together – just to be sure. He told me that I'd have to go to Vonage and request a replacement. So I did:

Read more on Vonage Alternatives?…

I'm stirring up a hornet's nest. My question: which community of commenters is worse?

When Ponzi asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I wasn't sure what to tell her. I've got just about everything I could possibly want for my PC. Still, I started to browse peripherals – even though I was hard pressed to find anything I really needed or wanted. That's when I remembered the CardScan machine – a microscanner that was designed to streamline the indexing of business card information. You place a card on the tray, the scanner sucks it in, and a second later you've got their information OCR'ed on your screen (almost perfect for people with OCD). By and large, this has proven to be an amazing gift – and one that'd I'd heartily recommend to anybody who has a million business cards sitting in a drawer somewhere. I only wish the software would allow me to select what information I need to interpret, otherwise I have to edit the recognized text; the solution is about 80% perfect, but compared to what I was doing before – this is a godsend. Seriously, my guess is that you want a CardScan unit (whether you know it or not). I got the CardScan Executive 700 Business Card Scanner – which includes the CardScan.net service (yet another amazing product). Dude. Seriously. Check it out.

Read more on CardScan – Scanning Business Cards…