Dictionary.com Word of the Day

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Hells Angels in Sweden

I had no idea that the most notorious biker gang ever thrives in Sweden. Nice little scam they have going there.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

TechEBlog » Top 10 Strangest MP3 Players

Who needs/wants an iPod when you could have one of these?

TechEBlog » Top 10 Strangest MP3 Players

Or not.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Must See?

I know I will probably be disappointed by Night Watch because of the story problems it supposedly has, but it really appeals to me visually. Any takers, should it hit Little Rock?

Thursday, February 16, 2006

My Flickr Sets

The title states it all; if you don't know what Flickr is, just click the link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/twd3lr/

Laughing Squid » Pillow Fight! New York

All I can really say is "why?"

Laughing Squid » Pillow Fight! New York

Monday, February 13, 2006

IPod on the Tracks - New York Times

This column scared the heck out of me. The $399 spent for my iPod wasn't exactly disposable income, and Beller's column is a solemn reminder of why I spent the extra dough on the extended warranty and a nicely padded leather case with a belt clip. Oh, and it is also why I don't wear coats with holes in the pockets. ;) Thank god I also don't have the opportunity to have to decide whether or not to jump down onto the subway tracks!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

In the Words of Napoleon Dynamite, "Idiot!"

This is a sure sign that some telecom execs are complete morons. Boo-freakin' hoo, someone else is generating revenue from utilizing Verizon's network. When are these guys going to learn that the cable/satellite TV paradigm does not work for the internet? It is pretty apparent that people are willing to pay what they do for internet access because of the sheer volume and diversity of choices available on it, otherwise AOL would be the model everyone else would have followed. Verizon should be more concerned with providing a stable, high-speed network; if they want more of the pie, they should become a content and/or ad provider themselves.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Web 2.0

Over the last few months I have become increasingly obsessed with web 2.0 sites. If you aren't familiar with web 2.0, it is time you get on the bus; you probably are actually already climbing aboard, but may not know it. Do you blog? Do you use RSS? Do you use Ajax pages, such as Google Personalized Home, Microsoft's Start.com, or my favorite, Netvibes.com? Wiki addict? Like Pandora? Are you a Firefox user? Do you know what a tag is? If you answered yes to any of these you are already familiar with some of the advancements that web 2.0 brings. For most of us, web 2.0 is the next step of web-as-platform, giving us wonderful applications that run off the web, usually for little to no cost for us. Oh, and you can thank Google's advancements in web ads for that.

Here are some of my favorite (or need-to-check-out-now) web 2.0 sites, in addition to Netvibes, which totally rocks, by the way.

BillMonk is a site I have not really gotten into yet, but it is sure to appeal to the tightwad in all of us. BillMonk is billed as "making social money painless." Just go look at it.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site (the link is to my part of del.icio.us); it is just a site to compile all of your bookmarks, tag them, and access them from wherever you want. Tagging is just a way of grouping bookmarks using single-word tags to describe what the site is about, e.g. foxsoccer.com is tagged with soccer and sports; click the tag within my del.icio.us and you can see what other sites are tagged similarly--think of it as Six Degrees of Separation for the web. The social aspect of it is that your bookmarks are, by default, shared with the rest of the delicious community. Bookmarks also include links for other users who have saved the same bookmark, allowing people to discover the web in this manner. Where delicious really takes off is on the front page of the entire site, which lists the most recent posts, which aren't necessarily standard run-of-the-mill bookmarks, but links to hot topics and sites. Sites similar to del.icio.us include digg.com, which is very tech oriented and not as straight-forward as del.icio.us.

Airset.com is an awesome calendar site. I have my personal calendar, as well as a calendar for an organization I belong to, set up on this site. The flexibility offered by it is mind-boggling, and the folks running it are always working to improve it.

My favorite and the most useful 2.0 site, though, has to be Gmail. Let me know if you need an invite, I've got 100! ;)

Thursday, February 02, 2006

iLounge Blog: Your senator needs an iPod

From a post on one of my favorite iPod-related sites, this is an absolutely brilliant idea. For the sake of all of us who are techheads we need to support ideas like this, not so that lawmakers get a bunch of free swag, but so that we know an effort is being made to educate these people about how tech-related legislation affects us all. It's all about innovation, baby, not protecting outmoded businesses.