The Walmart Approach?

Will cheap LEGAL dvds that more accurately reflect the cost of distribution win out over similarly priced illegal DVDs? In China? Time Warner is trying to sell The Aviator in cardboard packaging for the equivalent of USD 1.50.

SOURCE: Gizmodo

Robert Jordan Get Well Project

Matalina over at Dragonmount is organizing a Get Well Talent Display campaign to keep Robert Jordan's spirits high as he undergoes his treatment for amyloidosis. The gist of it is to get as many people to contribute what they can to a website in the form of poetry, art, design, or anything creative and well-intentioned. Here's the project info. The deadline for submissions is May 11th. To find out more about Jordan's condition, read up on his personal blog.

I'm trying to figure out what I can contribute, but the best I can think of right now is an animated gif or a get well badge of some sort that includes a rel tag of some sort that can be traced by Technorati.

SOURCE: Dragonmount

Apple's outgrown its headquarters

Why does this news make me so happy? Not that this in and of itself would make them more likely to hire me, but according to Reuters, Steve Jobs announced to the city council of Cupertino that that Apple is building a new headquarters a mile away from the old one. Due to the company's tremendous growth in recent years, they've "rented every scrap of building [they] could find in Cupertino".

SOURCE: Reuters [via Google Finance]

Apple's earnings for Q2 beat expectations modestly. I don't have any apple stock in real life anymore, btw. Bonus, via TUAW, video of the initial iPod launch.

Keynote delivery tool

I came across this combined vibrating timer/slide advancer/laser pointer on Buy.com last week and I figured I would share it here because it's remotely Apple related. Its wireless adapter dongle slides out and is conveniently stored in the top of the device.

 

One thing essential to giving presentations like Steve is having a magical presentation tool like Steve's blue box.


Source: alt1040.com

One share one vote?

Today I received a proxy statement for Google's Annual Shareholder Meeting. The only thing I stumbled upon was this question:

STOCKHOLDER PROPOSAL TO REQUEST THAT THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS TAKE THE STEPS THAT MAY BE NECESSARY TO ADOPT A RECAPITALIZATION PLAN THAT WOULD PROVIDE FOR ALL OF THE COMPANY'S OUTSTANDING STOCK TO HAVE ONE VOTE PER SHARE.

According to Google's proxy statement, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt (founders and CEO) own only 25.5% of Google, Inc. (as of 3/17/06). Together with the rest of their Board of Directors, they own just under 30%. You won't see those percentages anywhere else, and even if you do, they'd carry as little weight as they do here because the triumvirate holds 84.8% of the special privately traded Class B stock. They are convertible into Class A stock for sale, but if held, they count 10 times as much as the Class A shares that you and I can buy on NASDAQ. I did some more arithmetic and figured that the combined vote of Larry, Sergey and Eric's Class A and B shares is equal to more than two thirds of any corporate vote. Since we know that the directors are recommending against the above proposal, barring Larry and Sergey (themselves directors) both voting for it, the probability of the above motion passing is zero.

Whether I say yes or no to the above question is clearly not going to make a difference and even if it did, it'd be 1 out of 1098435728. I'd like to put this in a bit of perspective, though. You know those people who paid 85 dollars for a share of Class A stock back in 2004? They all knew what they were getting themselves into because they were required to read the prospectus that made it all very clear in the first or second page.

First of all, unless I think the company's doing a terrible job, I don't see how people would change their minds about increasing their power to decide who serves on the board of directors. Second, their supply of Class B stock (which is can only be publicly traded as Class A) is disappearing with every conversion and subsequent sale as Class A stock. Larry and Sergey are unlikely to eternally hold this stock, and over the past 2 years, Larry and Sergey sold about 18% of their Class B stock. Thirdly, any fair recapitalization would probably involve either a conversion of the super shares into a greater number of regular shares thereby increasing the number of shares and potentially decreasing the price.

There were a number of other things that crossed my mind as I considered my choice. One of which was that if we can't trust people make decisions about who would best run a search company, how can we trust them to make decisions about who to run our countries? Didn't Google recently kowtow to China and give in to the Communist government (I happen to think that exposing more of our information economy to more people is good, btw)? These issues aren't exactly analagous due to the distinctions between a corporation and a polity. Corporations are at the mercy of consumers. The shareholders control the corporation by virtue of property rights, because they either started the company (Larry and Sergey) or the chose to pay for a part of it (Class A shareholders). We can choose who we give our patronage. We don't have to use Google. In contrast, we are all citizens of our respective countries, in my case, the United States. No one can buy and I can't (and won't) sell my citizenship. But, I sure as hell (well, sure as heck) can sell my share in Google.

Essentially, Google is not a completely publicly owned company and I'm assuming few are. I don't presume to know a lot about finance, but having read what Google's asked its shareholder to read, I agree with their recommendation.

Google's serious about Calendar

Finally, after the initial speculation over a year ago, Google's Calendar application is live. Considering that it's been in development for over a year, this is certainly something that wasn't made using someone's 20% time (it's definitely not in Google Labs) and is a core feature. I'm waiting to try the Gmail integration where it detects events in emails and lets you add them to your calendar. I just wish this was out earlier.

Let's just say my next PC will be a Mac

Great, now Apple will be even harder to resist with Bootcamp. It even lets you burn all the Windows drivers for presumable every Intel Mac.

SOURCE: Forbes [via Google Finance]

Naked Day and the word persons

If my site looks weird, it's because it's Naked Day. I hope it's not too much of an eyesore. Naked Day is to web standards as fasting is to food. Now if only this site's compliance with web standards actually validated, right?

The other topic of this post, is the word persons. I finally appreciate the use of the word (or so I thin me if I'm wrong) to refer to several distinct individuals as opposed to the use of the word people to refer to a group of people or several groups of people.

SOURCE: CSS Insider

Three birthdays

So, this weekend marked several things. I'll mention them not in order of priority, but of occurrence. I went to Swarthmore with my debate partner Marielle for our last collegiate debate tournament. We had a pretty good time and were even able to come back the same day. It's no longer ambiguous whether I'm to be classified (by virtue of tournaments attended) as a novice or varsity debater. I really will miss the tournaments.

Next, I noticed that Gmail had put up a birthday logo with confetti and a candle. I originally thought it was in honor of Apple's 30th, but it it just occurred to me that it's Gmail's birthday as well, since the product was announced on 4/1/04.

Now, the most significant celebration, one that's been deferred by our part of his circle for almost a month, is my friend Jehangir's birthday. We had hibachi at Benihana, and watched our food being cooked in front of us along with a good amount of culinary-implement flourishes and rhythms, vegetarian offenses and a bottle of sake.

I think it may have been the first group organizing efforts I've undertaken and it was largely successful due to help in regards to transportation, ideas, and implementation. I might update this post later.

less

more

Thanks, Greg, btw for the birthday cake picture link.

Not so lucky this time

So, um... despite getting warned by JP about gambling, I went to Atlantic City again (last last Tuesday 3/14) with a friend from high school. I'm not sure how this trip ended up being planned, but it started way back at the beginning of the semester when we reminisced about old times, particularly my birthday party during 1st grade at which he was one of two guests. Well, I don't remember whether I blogged about my first riskafilic experiences in Atlantic City, but I was lucky enough to leave up 20 bucks. This was helped by the fact that none of the other people with me were interested in gambling and I was able to stop after only 3 hands of blackjack.

But, while the goal of the last trip had been more to enjoy the increasingly rare company of friends, this trip was driven by aspirations of debauchery. No, that wasn't serious, but for example, instead of spending an hour and a half arguing about where to eat dinner last time, Pat and I spend 20 minutes looking for video blackjack. Instead of going to Wawa's to get some refreshments, we were served beverages at the table. The drink of the night was Vodka 7-up, however, recognize that I only had one of these. We did meet up with KK who lives in AC and persisted the tradition of always eating at Sharon Zheng II's buffet, however. Traditions are nice.

On the way back, we did spend a significant amount of time looking for Dunkin' Donuts and we saw no less than 5 Wawas on the same road. All in all, I learned some rules about blackjack, had a great time, and got to know my old friend a little better. I also found out that I'd prefer to lose 100 dollars on gambling for hours over losing it on CREAF (true story) over a couple of weeks. Of course, in the long term, it's a different story. GOOG is doing ok right now.

In the vein of casino outings.

Whoops

And I tried so hard during lunch :/

The Stanford Conspiracy

There seems to be a rumor that Google is going to buy Sun. [Some think it's a conspiracy to boost Sun's stock price, but that could be illegal and it wouldn't be so high profile]. This speculation isn't totally ungrounded or new, because rumors of Sun and Google being in cahoots go back (perhaps further) to a highly anticipated press conference back in October that disappointed a lot of people (including me) who were expecting something like Google selling Sun workstations to access the Google OS. What they did end up agreeing to do is cooperate in driving up adoption of Google Toolbar and Sun's Java Runtime Environment over the course of a multi-year partnership. Now, you can read up on what signs point to a merger or aquisition or more tight cooperation, or read up on why it's just hype. What I want to do is to explore how their cultures are aligned.

Google's had some experience in acquiring companies (see a surprisingly long list here). It's usually more like them acquiring smart people who produced fantastic stuff. The big names I can remember are Blogger (way back in 2003), Dodgeball, Picasa, KeyHole, and now @Last. Many times, it didn't seem like the products really aligned with Google's typical web-based ones, especially Picasa and KeyHole's Google Earth precursor. The one thing that remained extremely important, however, was the cultural fit. Google's culture is that of competence/intelligence/innovation (see what they're doing to make sure this doesn't change). They also like to think of themselves as having a small company feel where employees are highly resourceful and independent (20% of the time they manage themselves and work on their own projects). This matches the qualities of many of their acquisitions, which had one or two products each. That also makes for an easy transition to the GooglePlex.

I can't imagine Google [just taking Sun] and just merging them into the GooglePlex, despite having many times the market capitalization of Sun. Sun is in 100 countries and it really would be a headache. However, their cultures are not all that different. From a financial analysis report quoted in the pro-merger post, Sun and Google have a lot more in common and posit that Google's existence can be traced back to Sun, which is in turn traced back to the Stanford University Network or S.U.N. Company. Google's founders are Ph.D. students of Stanford University who have been "on leave". Stanford, which has a great reputation of putting out strong technology innovators owns a sizeable chunk of Google because the technology is technically being licensed from them, having been originally conceived by its students. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, who at one point, ran Sun's Java development as CTO (btw, Sun's CEO recently announced his resignation, seemingly satisfied at completing a milestone in Sun's history). According to vault.com, Sun's culture is that of individualism where employees are expected to "take initiative, make decisions, and be creative in solving problems." This sounds like the typical Stanford graduate.

The standard intuition regarding mergers is that the buying company's stock price falls and the company being picked up sees a rise. It seems the case based on very rough estimates. Google's price has dropped around 15% since a February 23 article sparked interest. Sun is worth about 16 billion to Google's now 100 billion. Of course, there is all that click fraud controversy, with the settlement and worries of more trouble down the line, the slowing of Google's growth statement by Google's CFO. It's fun to think about a Stanford conspiracy, though, and it's not hard to understand where the rumors come from.

Other Stanford people (not surprising): Vint Cerf graduated from Stanford and is now Google's Chief Internet Evangelist. Half the members of Google's Management Team have a very obvious relationship to Stanford and Eric (through SUN) and Vint (undergrad) don't even have Stanford in their descriptions so maybe there's even more. Of course, Yahoo's founders Jerry Yang and David Filo are Stanford alumni along with Steve Balmer, but that doesn't mean much.

UPDATED 12:43 PM, 11:57 PM

You, too, can be a hacker

If you're using Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) and haven't upgraded packages since Sunday, do it as soon as you can. Digg reported the fix for a flaw that allows any user to read the root password from an installation log file found here: /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat

SOURCES: Digg and Digg

Time Machine: Rough times ahead for GOOG?

Institutional shareholders losing faith in Google?

Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Jennison Associates have each dumped roughly 35 percent of their entire holdings of Google stock. Alliance Capital Management has sold 13 percent of their stake, and Wellington Management has unloaded 18 percent of their shares.

It's not like they liquidated the majority of their holdings, but I thought I should pass this along. FYI, I'm still holding on to my one share of Google stock (but for how long?)

SOURCE: FuckedGoogle [via Xooglers [via Digg]]

drafted @ 4:23 AM 3/12

Gluttony tempered with courtesy

I don't like finishing good food. If there's a piece left, I'll slice it in half. This can naturally be repeated many times. My sister played a trick on me she convinced me that I eaten the last piece of brownie when in fact I'd left a very small piece she caused to disappear. It's good to know there are many like us out there with at least good intentions.

SOURCE: Slashfood

I dreamed a dream

So I had a dream today that my friend and I met Steve Jobs somewhere (blasted details leaking out of my skull) and he talked to us about a new Apple product. Conscious of the fact that it seemed like I had become privy to insider information that might be just what Apple needed to boost it's lagging stock price, I conquered the temptation to deal in insider trading. He then asked us to help him do the product demo/announcment! Steve seemed like a nice guy and I just wish I remembered what product it was... I think it was something to do with wireless.

Not that it would matter what I dreamt up, but I thought it was a pretty exciting concept.

Everyone sin a

Every once in a while, I have something interesting to say. This isn't one of them.

Everyone sin a wildeye halve sum thingie enter ass tint oh say. The cistern ton oft hem.

iTunes offers shows in bulk

Would you pay 63 cents an episode to stock up your fifth generation iPod? Betanews calls it a subscription, but this is essentially the same as buying albums of songs at 9.99[.] except you get to choose which 16 shows to buy and the pass presumably doesn't expire (certainly not at the end of the month). It's a natural extension of Apple's business model of letting you buy content in contrast to renting it.

SOURCE: BetaNews

UPDATE 4:38 PM EST: I am so dense. Betanews is right. Apple doesn't call it one, but what they're offering is a subscription in it's time-tested sense and is not a subscription service like Vongo or Napster.

UPDATE 10:33 PM EST: They're also offering seasonal subscriptions. [via Digg]

Strange resemblances

It's a pretty strange coincedence that my background picture looks strikingly familiar to elements in this Penny Arcade comic from 1999 (one is a little harder to notice). I found it via a comment here for the most recent switch-related comic in which Gabe tastes the forbidden fruit. The corresponding news post promises a very tangible analysis to come on Monday as to why the Mac platform is so appealing.

It is extremely good at what it does, which is to say, exposing functionality.

Now, that's a much better was of saying "Macs are easy to use" and more. Let's see what Tycho has to say on Monday.

SOURCE: TUAW

This was going to be big

Last night I read a digg headline stating that ABC's Shows Will Be Free on iTunes. Then I read that Apple will be launching a movie subscription service so it hit home even more. But, alas, it was all a misunderstanding.

Now as per Apple's existing record, they don't release bad products [the mac mini and macbook are only recent incarnations of older products so let's not talk about them right away...]. If they do something, it's with flare. Take the video downloads. They don't just offer a video-capable iPod, they get Disney and Pixar on the boat to provide content in a way that's never been done before and sell the most popular show on TV. The FM tuner accessory? They release something that's thin, light, and has RDS. So when is Apple going to sell movies? When they can do it the best. That data center in Newark won't hurt.

BTW, doesn't the origami look like an OQO with higher resolution? Who bought an OQO? Unfortunately, I'm not the first to say it.

Sometimes I think all I can do is repost stuff from elsewhere. It's because when I'm on the computer, I can post stuff before forgetting :-/ <-updated to be compatible with Google Talk/Gmail Chat.

UPDATE 9:32 PM EST 3/4/06: I've got some following up to do regarding these topics. The origami might be a software platform running on Intel's Ultra Mobile PC since it looks right and will be announced the day after the UMPC debut. Makes sense. So it's a Intel-based OQO instead of a transmeta-based OQO. But, there's this 2.2 lb Centrino-based tablet from Motion Computing. More hints that iTunes will sell movie subscriptions: a market analysis survey (not something they do a lot of it seems, if it was them).

iPod Hifi gets B grade in a review at iLounge, but a 4.5/5 from PC Mag, and Creative is launching a video store a day before Apple's birthday? Darn, can't find the source of this, but probably digg. And finally, one last mac link before the next post: Anandtech thinks imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (regarding the mac mini). I disagree with the concept. When you imitate, someone may get the impression that you admire them, but your well-being is certainly not the motivation.

Hectic weekends

The past two weekends have been hectic and have been rather troublesome, but here's a part of it. As well as this, this, part of this, and this.

In case you missed it in the links above, I tried sake! I also got confirmation that everything they say here is true!

Thanks, Dave for the link.

Smaller is now more expensive

Mac mini with Intel Core now $100 more with 64 MB integrated graphics (that does support Core Graphics) and front row. Google announces slower growth. Apple also releases a nice big iPod accessory called iPod Hifi equipped with the universal dock, integrated power supply and battery operation for $349.

SOURCE: Macrumors.com

Thanks, number 14

I lost a bunch of stuff today. Here's what I didn't lose that wouldn't have been nice: iPod, key generator, phone, bluetooth headset, napsack with laptop, pocket pc, um... paycheck. Yes, I couldn't resist an opportunity to do that pretty weird enumeration. Think of it as crude materialistic thanksgiving.

Someone found it near a class building and had a friend call me up letting me know where I could pick it up. Since I heard our past realtor getting mugged and forced to divulge pin numbers, etc, I asked my roommate to come along and he generously did. When we did arrive, I gave a holler as instructed (no doorbell) and a girl opened the door. I got to meet the person who found the wallet as well as the guy who called me up. They refused the 20 my roommate offered them as finders compensation and asked that I do the same for someone else. I gladly accepted the condition and went back home. I treated my roommate to a milkshake for his time and patience, ate my favorite turkey and pepperoni sub and have been procrastinating ever since!

Here's what I still lost: souvenir from Bloomberg interview visit (my keychain/lanyard), computer case key, two sets of keys = 4, a totally unimportant slashcard, and um... 60 bucks for replacing one set. No, that would not be the first time in the past 4 months I've lost my keys.

BTW, the #14 refers to the good samaritan's house number on unnamed street. The actual number was changed to preserve the anonymity of its residents.

SOURCE: I could've made this up but it'd just be sad.

Google, China, and Censorship

The Google side of the Google.cn story has more than you think. Plus, older Communist party members take the moral high ground when speaking out against censorship, namely against the shutdown of a news magazine for an article criticizing the way textbooks portray the government as infallible:

History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance

I learned a lot of things I didn't know from Google's testimony before Congress. For example, the Chinese government[, through individual ISPs, ]has been filtering Google.com for years, making the site slow and unusable and driving users to search engines that are self-censoring, or redirecting it to these sites which doubtlessly had indexed less information.

Also, I saw proof of what my Students for a Free Tibet friend first told me--that in the least, Google.cn (which complements the sporadically available Google.com) makes an effort to inform its users that what they're getting isn't the complete picture--that results have been filtered. The following is displayed at the bottom of every page of censored results:

据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示

It translates into, "In accordance with local laws, regulations, and policies, portions of these search results have not been shown." This is not trivial, as it's not displayed for normal queries like "cats". They still With Google, as opposed to other major search engines, people might at least be heartened to see at least a shadow of the truth with hope that at least it is out there. That, in addition to all the other content available in the internet.

SOURCE: Googleblog and digg

A funny thing happened on the way to the dining hall

I'll admit that I don't always use my bluetooth headset as makes me somewhat self-conscious. However, due to it's 3-meter range, it's very convenient to use when roaming about the apartment doing things. Asides from it's intended purpose, the bluetooth connect also acts as an invisible tether or homing device if you will.

On the way to the dining hall [yesterday], in an attempt to slip it into my coat pocket, I dropped it straight through and apparently into the snow. When I turned on my headset and got no response, however, I realized that I no longer had my phone on me. I retraced my steps and when I was back in range, was able to voice dial my dad and ask him to call back and make my phone ring so I could locate it.

Now, I didn't actually hear it ring, but after a few more steps, I saw it peaking out of the snow. Now, it would've worked if I'd shut off the headset and avoid the ring from being bypassed to my headset, but that's a lesson learned for another day.

Revised and formerly titled: "On the virtues of..." bluetooth headsets

Lets step on a few more toes

Now, even Google has beat Microsoft to the release of widgets.
Here's a similar heap of Yahoo! Widgets:

No point in trying to do anything

My Gmail server sucks. I tried both tips (only one was possibly helpful).

UPDATE 11:42 PM EST 2/15/06: This situation has been resolved. I still have no invitations, though.

"That volume can't be good for your ears"

That's exactly what I said to one of the guys on the bus unknowingly sharing his music with the everyone else. From personal experience, listening to music using the out of the box headphones just doesn't work when you're competing with the noise from the bus's engine. And, what did the guy say in response after maintaining eye contact for the entire length of my statement? Nothing.

Although that certainly wasn't the first time someone's ignored me, it was the first time I witnessed the "I know you're talking to me but I can't hear you so I'll just ignore you" phenomenon.

SOURCE: Commuting between campuses

Now we're talking

So, wondering how Google was going to make money on Google Talk? They can now put Google Ads unobtrusively next to your chat history as they've added a Chats view in Gmail so you can search and revisit your old conversations from anywhere (except China?). What easier way to capitalize on IM than this. Now, if they just recorded the voice chats as well...

What if you don't want to save your conversation? Go off the record. Don't want to (or can't) download Google Talk? Chat right in Gmail! Ok... that was all very excessive, especially for something that would become immediately apparent to anyone who uses Gmail. Just to reiterate, the point of this blog post was to point out how Google was going to finally make money from Google Talk. Also, here's a new logo with talk tucked in right under Gmail.

SOURCE: Gmail

UPDATED 2:08 AM EST

The beauty of Akamai

Students at my school are limited to a small number of GBs of external bandwidth. Luckily, we have an Akamai cache server on our network that stores, among countless other data, Vongo video content. That means, I can download any number of videos via my subscription service at very high speeds and not worry about blowing my limit. Moral of the story? Not sure... maybe I'm just bragging.

I'm in

Ok, so since Google missed expectations by about 12%, I bought a single share at about 12 percent less of Wednesday's starting price, about 300 dollars above it's initial price... Here's to growth! I'll sell at 361.

UPDATE 2/13/06 12:40 PM EST: So my foresight to just sell wasn't enough. I was tempted to buy it back afterwards, but forgot that since I only had one share, the eventual 33 in commissions didn't justify selling at 361 and buying back at even a slightly lower price, much less selling again : / So I'm holding one share with no profits in sight.

Count your deductions

Ever wonder why you never got that Tax Statement for donating through the Amazon Honor System? Well, if you said yes, you won't get get it because it's not really meant for charitable giving. Not that there isn't a reason to donate, even if there are other avenues. First, it's easy. Just log in and boom. Second, you can unpay within 7 days. You just might want that tax credit is all. Just FYI.

Typical pragmatism

I wouldn't have waited for a Firefox version to announce the new Google Toolbar which has tons of new features, but just so you don't get prematurely excited like me, it's only for Internet Explorer (Windows 2000/XP).

SOURCE: Google Blog (first reported in the Wall Street Journal).

Trends among college students

Facebook, a social networking website for college and separately for high school students, is the 51st most visited site based on a weekly average (Alexa says it's currently the 38th most popular English-language site). Although less relevant to the meat of this post, it also gets about 1.5 billion pageviews a dayit gets .15% of all web traffic, or about twice that of nytimes.com.


They've been doing something interesting, along with captivating the attention of millions of college students and garnering funding from CIA-linked sources, which is to track trends among student preferences for movies, music, books, affiliations, etc. Now take a look at this:


The left side is the Top 10 for my east coast public school and the right side is for the all students on facebook. If you're confused, look at #2 and #10. I'm not shocked, but am slightly disappointed that the "most students are conservative" meme is probably true or at least that most politically active partisan youths are. It also makes me want to say that I'm non-partisan, but progressive (in other words, not Republican). Of course, it could be the CIA trying to convince people that conservativism is mainstream. You know, sometimes I think it's easier for me to rationally agree with Republicans, but there's always an unexplainable reason in my mind as to why Democrats have to be on the right side of the aisle.

SOURCE: Facebook | Pulse

This one's for the logo

I doubt anyone really comes here for Apple news, but some happenings:

Apple's holiday quarter earnings were higher than ever with 14M iPods sold and over 1.25M Macs sold. Unfortunately, they saw a drop in Mac orders before their announcements at MacWorld so they're lowering their forecast. We saw this type of language after they announced their transition to Intel, but it was to little surprise that it made no dent in sales. If anything, shouldn't sales increase because Intel-based computers represent a really large jump in performance for the average consumer? Their forecast is a little below what it was for the holiday quarter, which they of course blew out of the water.

Even though the iTunes mini store (recommendations based on the currently playing song) could be turned off, Apple now has turned it off by default to appease those with privacy concerns, even after Apple claimed that it didn't store what songs users were playing.

Speaking of privacy, Google was actually the only major search engine not to open its search data to the federal government. It refused to do so since October and now the administration is asking a federal court to force it to comply with a law concerning access to pornography by minors. As if we needed another reason to like Google. By the way, if anyone missed it, Google, Inc. now has a lobbying presence at the Capitol. See 'Google Goes to Washington'. I knew there was a reason why Mr. Smith Goes to Washington caught my eye.

Back to Apple, the mini-controversy over Apple's Intel commercial went from Intel distancing itself from Apple's claim in it that PCs were boring to the video's obvious resemblance to a music video produced for Postal Service. Their[The band's] publisher later revealed that the producers were the same for both videos. [+]

[-]

Leeched straight from Apple because, hey, it's a commercial. Requires Quicktime.



SOURCE: Mac Rumors

1. Intel: Our other customers aren't boring [via Digg]
2. Another Apple Ad Ripoff? See Such Great Heights [use IE, via TUAW]
3. False Alarm: Same Directors Behind Apple Intel Ad/Music Video

Vicariously be at Macworld for the Jobs Keynote

Automatic updating: MacRumors.com - Macworld San Francisco 2006 Live Updates

Non-automatic updating:

• Engadget
• MacWorld Keynote Live
• TUAW Macworld 06 Keynote Chatcast Extravaganza
• CNET: Live from Macworld

SOURCE: Digg (for first link)

CES Trends

There seem to be a lot in common among products announced around CES time. Here are some I've noticed:

• Using E-ink for things that don't refresh often. No backlight, flickering, and super realistic, low battery consumption
  • Sony's Reader
  • SD cards with e-ink
  • USB keys with e-ink: Lexar JumpDrive Mercury
• Players that look like the nano but may or may not play video along with audio.
  • Sandisk Sansa that plays videos! Too bad they won't play Vongo. Neither will the Zen Vision:M nor obviously the newest iPod.
  • Samsung's YP-Z5
• Portable satellite radio + MP3 players. Apple's got to compete with these when they release whatever they're releasing at Macworld later this month. Killer feature: discover and bookmark new music while listening to your favorite satellite radio station and then download it from Napster (unlimited subscription).
  • Pioneer's Inno XM2go
  • Samsung's Helix XM2go
  • XM Passport "sim card" that lets you take around your XM credentials
• Wireless webcams
  • Linksys WVC54GC-UK
  • Creative's Live! Wireless Web Camera
• Skype phones
  • Creative's Skype Internet PhonePLUS
  • Netgear's Wifi Phone
  • More...

Um... I give up. Others I'd include are video download services (Urge, Vongo, Google, and others). All of a sudden, the CE space seems awfully crowded. As I've said before, the Apple brand will only triumph as other devices compete each other to death using features. This would be bad, of course, as I no longer own Apple stock, and, instead, have shares of Creative. Speaking of Apple, Apple doesn't seem like it wants to restock the 1 GB shuffle. Are they replacing it?

That took 45 minutes... :/

UPDATE 5:17 PM EST: April Fools Jokes? Google releasing Norton Antivirus and RealPlayer in a bundle with Picasa, etc? Quantum Memory?

UPDATE 6:08 PM EST: Ok... maybe it's not so surprising that Google would do something like this. At least the apps in the screenshot are stuff that everyone would install on Windows, not to mention that you have a choice in what you install. Think mainstream people. Let's not forget that Google is not only progressive, but realistic. And super corny.

UPDATE 7:28 PM EST: Full list of Google Pack software...

Movies to download from Vongo

Update 10/14/2007: I cancelled my subscription because I have Blockbuster OnlineTotal Access (like Netflix).

I went for Vongo, a video subscription service where you can watch what the Starz Network is licensed to distribute (up to a couple of years). 10 bucks a month for the Starz channel and unlimited downloads of a limited selection of movies. Nevertheless, here are some non-pay-per-view movies I plan on downloading out of those 1000+ movies that are available. It's partly for my own records so it might be updated.

1. The Sixth Sense - exp. 6/30/08
2. The Greatest Game Ever Played - exp. 12/25/07
3. Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - exp. 1/08/08
4. Memoirs of a Geisha - exp. 12/27/07
5. Monster House
6. Cars
7. The Hunchback From Notre Dame
8. The Professional
9. Clerks
10. The Cider House Rules
11. Thumbsucker
12. Amazing Stories: The Movie III - exp. 5/31/07
13. Why We Fight - exp. 5/31/07
14. Alice in Wonderland - exp. 12/31/06
15. Tim Burton's: The Nightmare Before Christmas - exp. 12/31/06
16. Shopgirl - exp. 3/21/07
17. 3-Iron - exp. 5/09/07
18. Shakespeare in Love - exp. 4/30/07
19. Underworld: Evolution - exp. 3/31/07
20. The Matador - exp. 6/03/08
21. Pulp Fiction - exp. 4/29/07
22. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - exp. 5/31/07
23. Mallrats - exp. 8/01/07
24. Revenge of the Nerds - exp. 6/30/07
25. Bloodrayne - exp. 12/31/07
26. Enemy of the State - exp. 2/03/07
27. Steamboy - exp. 4/25/07

28. Sin City

    A huge cast of A-list actors star in a graphic novel about a decadent city and its colorful inhabitants brought to life. Focuses on a cop who pays for doing the right thing, a tough man in a love-wrought quest for vengeance, and a man on the run who unknowingly gets involved with a conspiracy against Old Town, an independent burough free in a utopia (compared to Sin City) of prostitution and justice. - 1/29/06

29. Hitch

    Will Smith by profession, helps men win the hearts of the women they love. It might be more exciting for someone with less experience, but it's a great story of someone who helps people genuinely build relationships, and at the same time realistically illustrates why it is so hard: you're either rational (composed) or emotional (in love), but it's hard to be both at the same time. So when the extraordinary Hitch (Alex Hitchens) falls in love for the first time since he resolved not to do so, he could use some of his own advice.
    
    This movie moves along like magic with everything happening spectacularly building up to a spectacular climax where everyone had to re-evaluate their motives and feelings. When the pace slows, it seems like it'll turn into a regular romance (don't read chick flick) but it doesn't. If you even remotely enjoyed wedding crashers, this will be less hilarious but more poignant. Some product placements:
    Starbucks, Google Search, Benadryl, MSN Explorer, Mini Cooper. hide
    show
30. Sleepless in Seattle - exp. 3/31/07
31. Lost in Translation - exp. 3/31/07
32. Dangerous Minds - exp. 1/21/07 (drama)
33. Session 9 - exp. 12/31/06 (horror)
34. Much Ado About Nothing - exp. 3/30/07 (comedy)
35. The Terminator - exp. 12/06/06 (scifi)
36. Dune - exp. 12/30/06 (scifi)
37. Liar Liar - exp. 9/19/06 (comedy)
38. Alien Resurrection - exp. 4/28/07 (scifi)
39. How to Succeed in Business Without Typing - exp. 12/30/06
40. Rent - exp. 2/19/08
41. Derailed - exp. 2/21/08
42. The Birds - exp. 8/23/06
43. Spartacus - exp. 5/30/07
44. Dark Man - exp. 12/30/06
45. Highlander: The Final Dimension - exp. 12/23/06
46. The Greatest Game Ever Played - exp. 4/19/07
47. Layer Cake - exp. 5/01/07

48. Howl's Moving Castle

    An animated movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki (Laputa, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) colored with many familiar themes including an female heroine, nature in peril, a world ravaged by war, and wonderous steam-driven technology in a Victorian setting. This time, however, the original story was written by a British author, Diana Wynne Jones.
    
    A girl mature beyond her years, a young wizard burdened with great responsibility, a demon bonded to a walking castle, an orphan, and a cursed scarecrow are brought together in a time of war and life-threatening conflict. The causes of these conflicts, however innocent, reflect the realistic results of human weaknesses out of control. - 8/18/06

49. 2046

    ? - 8/1/06
50. Oliver Twist - exp. 11/30/06
51. Walk on Water - exp. 9/14/06

52. Crimes and Misdemeanors

    A film by Woody Allen with an existential theme that examines two men engaging in extramarital relationships and what becomes of them. One is a successful doctor who has had a successful career and a happy marriage yet wants to end a relationship with a younger flight attendant. The other is an unacclaimed documentary film-maker (played by Allen himself) whose marriage is deteriorating but seeks a happier life with a newly divorced producer with whom he has much in common. It seemed like Woody Allen wanted to explore our perceptions of morality and the pursuit of happiness through the experiences of the characters and our shared flaws. I'm still left with many questions, but I definitely enjoyed the movie. - 7/30/06
53. Finding Neverland - exp. 12/04/06

54. Rounders

    Wow, I'm still clueless about poker, but Rounder gives you a very good picture of the experience of all levels of poker playing. The art is almost like the highest level of humanity. Rounders educates, relegates, and inspires. - 7/23/06

55. Junebug

    Falls under the category of Art Cinema. Madaleine, a museum curator/owner, marries George, a man from the South, and meets his family for the first time in an attempt to sign a local artist. Madeleine ends up spending more time than she expected with her husband's family than cementing a deal with the eccentric artist, but her husband, returned to a mixed reception. His family is obviously glad to see the prodigal son return, but his brother still thinks he's an asshole. Seemingly dragged down by baggage from his history, he mostly absent or sleeping--I never caught onto what his job was.
    
    The film reaches a climax when their sister-in-law goes into labor just as Madeleine's deal is put in jepordy. A great movie with great character development. - 7/25/06
56. Rise: The Story of Rave Outlaw Disco Donnie - exp. 12/30/07
57. Tae Guk Gi - exp. 10/31/06

58. Van Helsing

    This was a pretty interesting vampire action movie about a man indentured in the service of a secret society in Rome dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural evil.- 5/22/06
59. Philadelphia - exp. 6/30/06
60. Last Dance - exp. 8/31/06
61. The Verdict - exp. 3/31/07

62. Stealth

    The navy sends an AI driven fighter plane to learn from a group of human pilots. Interesting take on what happens when you try to make AI-soldiers that are smarter and more efficient yet still expect them to follow instructions.- 5/17/06
63. Mad Max - exp. 12/05/06
64. Blade - exp. 5/31/06
65. The Kitchen Toto - exp. 6/30/06
66. Basquiat - exp. 1/15/07
67. Nixon - exp. 1/31/07

68. Zatoichi

    This 2003 movie about a blind swordsman, two geishas with a vendetta, lots of yakuza, and more combines several plots, rhythm sequences, and comic relief to make for one hell of a bloodbath. It seems like a mix of Kill Bill, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. Didn't know what to make of it. - 4/14/06
    BTW, it was dubbed with English by Japanese voice actors.

69. The Winter Guest

    A Scottish movie show four generations of interpersonal relationships: a window and her mother, an adolescent son and the girl next door, two school boys, and two elderly women. Their stories cross and they each learn about when to hold on and when to let go of each other. I liked this but didn't quite understand it all. - 4/14/06
70. Vera Drake - exp. 12/20/06

71. Monty Python and the Meaning of Life

    A smörgåsbord of skits wittily making light of catholics, americans, accountants, french, naked people, and more. Definitely Rated R and more inline with And, now for Something Complete Different and less like Life of Brian. - 3/7/06

72. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

    Bill Murray stars as a oceanographic documentary maker who has a very interesting team of honest and quirky people. - 5/06

73. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

    Sympathetic premise (everybody believes you're making things up but you're not), but the lack of 3d on Vongo and kinda the whole premise of the movie is kinda confusing. Is it a dream, a figment of Max's imagination, or is it reality? We're led to believe that Max is just dreaming. Then, we're led to believe he's not. But then, he, along with his two heros both say it's his dream. Before they leave Planet Drool, however, Max learns that some dreams can come true and how to make them happen. Unfortunately, the same dream then persists into the dream world not entirely consistent with the lesson he learned. Anyway, may be good enough for kids. - 3/3/06

74. All the King's Men

    The movie is adapted from a book based on the story of Huey Long. Willie Stark, a self-made politician who tried time and time again to run for office on a platform of exposing corruption and setting things right. Election after election, he gains support but each time he loses, until he realizes what he needs to do to win.
    
    He starts taking money and 'making deals' with big businesses all over the state of Louisiana and through patronage, blackmail, and bribery.- 3/3/06
75. Groundhog Day - exp. 8/30/06
76. A Man for All Seasons - exp. 4/30/06

77. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    A lot of imagining went into this, and I think the only thing I didn't like was Zaphod's second head. Don't know too much about whether this stayed true to the book(s) and I only read the first in the series, but it's definitely more fun if you read it first I think. Gives you a head start. - 2/06

78. Psycho

    The classic Hitchcock thriller. Favorite quote: "You eat like a bird" - uttered in a room full of stuffed birds. - 2/10/06
79. A Day Without a Mexican - exp. 6/30/07
80. Dead Poet's Society - exp. 3/14/06
81. The Bourne Supremacy (For some reason I think I saw this) - exp. 3/31/06
82. America's Heart & Soul - exp. 3/31/06
83. The Fog of War - exp(ired)
84. Brave New World - exp(ired)
85. Bride and Prejudice - exp. 5/04/07
86. What the Bleep Do We Know?
87. American History X - exp. <1/05/07/li>
88. West Side Story - exp(ired)

89. The Notebook

    The Notebook tells two remarkable love stories in two different time periods, the present and another told from the pages of ... The Notebook, both of which become connected as the story unfolds. - 1/06
90. The Village - exp. 9/29/06
91. The Station Agent - exp. 3/14/06
92. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring - exp(ired)
93. Slaughterhouse-Five - exp(ired)

94. Shall We Dance?

    A remake of a Japanese movie about life and being happy starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, and Susan Sarandon. Makes you want to take dance lessons. - 1/06
95. Samourais - exp(ired)
96. Quiz Show - exp. 1/05/07

97. Phil Collins: A Life Less Ordinary

    I finally understand what getting that Oscar for the soundtrack of Tarzan meant for him. He was a phenomenally acclaimed musician but people just got tired of his success. - 1/06
98. Peter Pan - exp(ired)
99. The Pacifier
100. Once Upon a Time in China I, II, and II (Wang Fei Hong) - exp(ired)
101. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - exp(ired)
102. My Girl - exp. 2/28/07
103. Return of the King - exp. 3/26/06
104. The Last of the Mohicans
105. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
106. Jonah: A Veggietales Movie
107. Jane Eyre
108. The Incredibles - exp. 1/07/07
109. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
110. Hidalgo - exp. 3/31/06
111. Hellsing
112. Good Will Hunting - exp. 3/31/06
113. Ghost Busters

114. National Treasure

     Benjamin Franklin Gates is pursuing a treasure that can only be found with the help of the Declaration of Independence. Watched/listened as I practiced calligraphy, so I didn't pay complete attention, but it was enjoyable. Something of a misnomer. - 2/6/06

115. Harry and Kumar Go to White Castle

     A comedy about the lengths two recent college grads would go to have fun and satisfy cravings that are common to all people. Several cameos, pokes fun at lots of racist stereotypes that are funny because their true (the craziness, racism, and I wouldn't say all the stereotypes as they are always based on something). I think all Asians have to watch this because of this line after a guy dumps his work on Harold, "I'm telling you, those Asian guys love crunching numbers... you probably just made his weekend. Hah...haha.." - 1/06

116. The Aviator

     Interesting history of American aviation and war politics from the perspective of an brilliant but troubled moviemaking/aviation pioneer - 1/06
117. The Joy Luck Club - exp. 4/23/06
118. Shaolin Soccer - exp. 3/31/06

119. After the Sunset

     Don Cheadle, who plays Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, is in this movie along with Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek, the latter of which are genuinely retired thieves tempted with an impossible-to-steal diamond but they have to do it right under the nose of an FBI agent who's career they've ruined. An action movie with interesting plot elements. I originally really watched this because it happened to be on Starz's live channel stream. - 1/06

SOURCE: Engadget CES Coverage and too much scrolling.

If you put it that way (on China)

Interesting [imperfect] quote of Dan Blumenthal during US / China relations segment of Washington Journal on C-SPAN:

Here is a regime that has no legitimacy besides the economic growth it can sustain.

SOURCE: C-Span: Washington Journal

Recent history

I really feel badly about not posting in a while, so this will be the first of a couple of posts. I'll start with the easy stuff.

Old news [to some/but hopefully not all] that I thought was interesting:

• AOL committed to continue using Google Search in return for one billion dollars from Google. The biggest bonus is the committment by AOL to interoperate with Google Talk. With Yahoo and MSN Messenger agreeing to compound their user bases, I couldn't be happier that the two protocols I don't use are going together into their own corner (what arrogance!). [probably first saw this on BetaNews | DAMN Ars Technica I started this post early afternoon]
  
• Yahoo introduced something approaching the concept of using the search bar as a command line. You can enter commands by starting with the !. For example, !compose terry.semel@yahoo.com would bring up Yahoo! Mail and start a message addressed to Terry Semel. [probably first saw this on the Unofficial Yahoo Weblog]
• Microsoft releases something very similar to the Web Developer Extension for IE called the Internet Explorer Developer Bar. It's not as nice or customizable as IE simply doesn't lend itself to be customized. [probably first saw this via BetaNews]
• I love Yahoo! Widgets . I liked Konfabulator, but Yahoo has integrated the widget concept [small eye-candyish applications that you can access with a configurable hot-key] very nicely with its own services like Yahoo! Notepad, Yahoo! Calendar, Y! Contacts, Y! Maps, Y! Search, etc. So much potential.
• Kathae told me about Pandora. It's like last.FM, but free and download free. You also have to seed the station by typing in artists instead of playing 100+ tracks.
  

Paralysis

Upon reading the post on Slashdot about Microsoft's IE7 RSS team settling on using the orange RSS icon used by Firefox, I considered how awkward the situation must be for them. Here they are years behind Mozilla on features like RSS, tabs, security, standards implementations/compliance, usability/extensibility, etc. Do they look at the source or not? If they do, then would they feel guilty of cheating? What level of innovation would they be satisfied at attaining to be able to say, we peeked, but now ours is better. If they don't look, are they wasting their time reinventing the wheel?

I would be quite stuck deciding on whether or not to look at the source. Now, if you've heard the story about MS studying the Macintosh source to "make Word better" before releasing Windows, you'll know that some at Microsoft have absolutely no problem with standing on the shoulders of giants. Isn't progress what the open source community is all about? Let's see if they release the source of IE7.

That was all just a really long introduction to the big question that today paralyzed me with indecision: how do you dispose of those pesky envelopes with see-through windows? Everybody likes to use them! Everytime I go home, I find my credit card statements and donation solicitations in a corrogated cardboard box, but I look through them and procrastinate against their disposal. I'm not sure what regular people do, but I find it hard to just throw them away in either the trash or the recycling bin. If you throw them away, they'll just be piled into some landfill. If you recycle them as is, would they be rejected because of the little window?

Now, ripping out the window is surprisingly difficult as the plastic tears like tissue paper. The only alternative I have is to carefully remove the window along with parts of the envelope the glued to the plastic. This results in UNRECYCLED PAPER that gets added to the landfill. On one hand, I can leave the junk mail to pile up in our personal landfill, their fate undecided. On the other hand, I can guarantee that some of them get recycled, but consign the others (at the cost of my tedium) to the same fate as the plastic.

If you can help me, please go to Yahoo! Answers and answer my question!
less

more

SOURCE: Digg

Instant bliss

I basically stuck a sticker that came with my iPod nano over the very nice and reflective recessed Dell logo. Matches pretty well, wouldn't you say?

At least I'm not a hippie this time

Vercingetorix You scored 68 Wisdom, 54 Tactics, 55 Guts, and 55 Ruthlessness!

Leader of the Gauls, a chieftain of the Arverni. He was the leader of the great revolt against the Romans in 52 BC. Julius Caesar, upon hearing of the trouble, rushed to put it down. Vercingetorix was, however, an able leader and adopted the policy of retreating to heavy, natural fortifications and burning the Gallic towns to keep the Roman soldiers from living off the land. Caesar and his chief lieutenant Labienus lost in minor engagements, but when Vercingetorix shut himself up in Alesia and summoned all his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans, the true brilliance of Caesar appeared. He defeated the Gallic relieving force and took the fortress. Vercingetorix was captured and, after gracing Caesar's triumphal return to Rome, was put to death.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 71% on Unorthodox You scored higher than 16% on Tactics You scored higher than 50% on Guts You scored higher than 75% on Ruthlessness

Link: The Which Historic General Are You Test written by dasnyds on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

SOURCE: Skyplate

Christmas

Since the days here are getting shorter and air, colder, I figured it'd be a good time to start thinking about Christmas. It always creeps up on us faster than we can prepare for it and I, at least, need a head start getting into the holiday spirit of giving and receiving. Yes, it's giving and receiving. It could mean other things, but that's why I need a head start.

Another obligatory post

If there's one thing I'll say about today's iPod announcement, it's that I'm glad I got a nano when it came out and not a regular one. Also, I don't know if anyone else thought it was abnormally proportioned, but suprisingly, the iPod today is just as tall and just as wide as the iPod of yesterday. It's just thinner. That widescreen really throws me off.

You, too, can be a sellout

http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/50936 (expired, check techbargains.com for new deals)

I used that 25% off coupon and got the Dell Inspiron 6000 configured as follows for 897.07 (shipped and taxed). Make sure you get the free PC recycling kit!

• Intel Pentium M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
• 15.4 inch WXGA LCD, 1280x800
• 512MB Shared DDR2,400MHz 2 Dimms
• Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 900 Graphics, OpenGL 1.4, barely DirectX 9 compatible
• 60GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 5400 RPM
• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, No media
• 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
• Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11b/g,54Mbps)
• Internal Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth 2.0
• 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, Up to 4 hours
• 1 Year Limited Warranty, 1 Year 24x7 Technical Support, Mail-in Service
• Free Recycling Kit
• At least 6.65 lbs

Last updated: 10/16/2005

Asian restaurant etiquette?

Slashfood thinks that rubbing your chopsticks together to get rid of splinters is a faux pas and an insult to the restaurant. What if there really are splinters on the chopsticks?

My recommendation is to stay away from that restaurant, duh.

From now on, I won't assume that there are splinters on the chopsticks. But if there are, I intend to sand away. Click through to see their comic cell on the topic.

SEE: Slashfood

Random updates

• New phone that's all locked down by Verizon, using mom's bluetooth headset.
• Went on a visit to the new (1-yr-old) Bloomberg building, very cool. (BTW, it's a LLP, or some other kind of partnership).
• Didn't get a McKinsey Interview after their cocktail party.
• You can visit this site through willmonwah.com
• Got new headphones for the nano, volume deficient, but maybe that's a good thing.
• Actually played 3 matches at table tennis practice.
• Completed the easiest sample problem at TopCoder. On second thought, maybe I should have deferred mentioning that.
• I'm down a donut and a ticket to NY Penn Station. Realized too late that the "I just need some money to get home" "non-bum" was probably not interested in going home. How come my late night escapades in New Brunswick don't have happy endings like this.
• Attempting a switch to Google Reader.
• Believing the hype about the upgraded Airport Express. Airport express is a wireless router, range extender, usb-print server and an audio bridge between iTunes and your stereo system. Apple has already adopted an newer video codec called H.264 that would make it more feasible for them to sell you videos through iTunes and send them to your home theater. If it's that simple, they would've had to address the problem of controlling your movies from your computer remotely (!?), or maybe it's something else other than the video iPod.

SOURCES: Check links.

About this blog and me

I've often visited blogs and wondered what they were about. Who is the person blogging and why are they blogging? Here's the answer to those questions concerning me.

Who am I?

I'm a recent graduate of Rutgers University and work as a programmer in the greater NYC area.

About this blog

On one level, as you can see from the title, this blog is frequently about Apple Computer, Inc. I have beenwas a small shareholder of the company since October, 2001. The title used to be Bits and pieces. When I realized that Bits and pieces is a terribly unoriginal blog title, I adopted one less cliched, but still implicative of no one topic in particular, reflecting my refusal to acknowledge any specific focus.

On another level, this blog is a my contribution to the web. I try to elevate and promote certain ideas and some times share some of my own. I also try to keep people I know and who care about me updated.

LAST UPDATE: 10/20/2006

Mid-day update

I saw Corzine (came within a couple of feet of him) at the end of a rally at the Rutgers Student Center surrounded by a small crowd of people and soon before he was rushed off. I couldn't really think of any questions on the fly, in awe over the celebrity of the affair. Here was one of just 100 senators representing 280 million people in the largest, most powerful modern liberal democracies in the world and I didn't have any questions to ask or interests to press. A student stopped to ask him one more question on abortion and his answer impressed me in framing it on the context of people who are actually affected by the issue. It wasn't clear what his response was, but the person who asked it recorded it on his 4G iPod with the Griffin iTalk accessory so hopefully it will appear in the media.

UPDATE 12:000 PM EST 10/06/05: And indeed it did appear in the Targum (I recognized the guy with the iTalk). And upon reading what he actually said about abortion, I guesss it's not that insightful but satisfactory, I guess.

Not sure what to blog about

I'm not sure what to blog about, so I'm going to ramble. This isn't necessarily out of the ordinary, right? First of all, I've been thinking about some positive qualities I'd like to develop related to a quote in that Maryknoll magazine I mentioned for Independence Day about different ways of looking at people. Basically, the story was about a missionary priest of a village feeling obligated to do something to punish a parish member who had divorced or otherwise cheated on his wife for another woman. The rest of the community, although in no way approving of the unfaithfulness of the man, felt little inclination to ostracizing or otherwise punish "the adulterer". The priest learned that his parish members took a holistic view of the man, weighing his contributions to society over his personal shortcomings and spiritual crimes, while he himself was fixated on the negative. WWJD? Obviously, it depends on circumstances and consequences.

My take on this is more general. While pessimism is a terrible philosophy in general, optimism isn't necessarily the cure. The priests parish members didn't necessarily try to just look for the good in a person, so much as looking at the whole picture. To do that, one should merely control their emotions. If something about someone really bothers me, I tend to get fixated on it and allow it to irrationally dominate my impressions of him/her, masking positive qualities. And, having heard the Dalai Lama talk last Sunday, emotion, be it love or hatred (yes, strong word) cripples reason. My original hope for myself, however, was indeed to look for the best in people--to see their potential and help them realize it, even if they don't see it themselves.

SOURCE: Procrastination : /

I was fooled

iTunes for Windows Mobile 5. Well, at least I would have to replace my PocketPC before being able to listen to my m4p files and who knows when that'll be.

SOURCE: TUAW

FAKENESS 00:07 EST 9/29/05: A lot of people are saying this, but I trust PocketPC owners the most.

KTamas: 1. His phone is in Vibrate mode, so there is no sound, lol. Even then, he does listens to the music.

AND

brianchris: Perhaps another piece of evidence that it is a fake is the fact that the device is a T-Mobile MDA II ( http://www.pdagold.com/hardware/det...sp?DeviceID=154 ), YET is obviously running the Windows Mobile 5 OS (by the softkeys at the bottom of the screen). Very few devices are getting an upgrade to WM5, and certainly NOT the MDA II

AND FINALLY

Raphael143: Don't shoot the messenger, but the editor at msmobiles.com states that he knows a guy who knows the guy who did this and it's 100% fake. http://www.msmobiles.com/f/viewtopic.php?t=9816

SOURCE: PPCT

Weekly

Just a couple things I wanted to share from this week.

First off, as my meal plan got reduced from 285 to 210 to 50, as if there wasn't enough incentive to attend company infosessions, I'm scoping 'em out on MonsterTrak and going to as many as I can. Preferably late so I have an excuse to eat and not be dressed up. I did attend the third infosession in business casual because I had a meeting later in the day. That's a savings of like 30 meal-plan dollars a week. Heck, I'm earning my iPod nano back by eating dinner at infosessions.

Next, iPod news! Duke has apparently revamped their iPods in education pilot program to be less of a waste of money. While giving iPods to every freshman (which I heard only put them back $100,000) makes it possible for instructors to integrate iPods into their classes, not every class is going to need one. So, Duke is only giving an iPod to you if you a) don't already have one and b) you actually need it for a class.

More iPod news! My iPod arrived in a little cardboard box the next morning after I posted about the shipment. I didn't get to see it until I got home yesterday for Mid-Autumn Festival, however. I do report that it is delightful and cool, and everything. The first complaint is that to undock it from the computer, you have to take out the headphones as you won't be able to unlock-via-squeeze the connector through the adjacent headphones. My mom gave me a small zip-lock bag for the iPod as a temporary case and it's no less aesthetically pleasing. It feels small and compact, yet dense and substantial. I'm truly beginning to appreciate the interface and design--especially the play/pause button.

What else? I found a friend from high school taking a semester off from Cornell and he's taking classes at Rutgers.

Spin in place in style

Yesterday, I got a chance to ride the 1st generation of Segways. There was someone running around posting party cards (whatever you call them) at the bus stop riding a Segway. I had seen him before while tabling at the involvement fair and later regretted not asking for a ride. Upon seeing him again, I immediately asked and he agreed to let me take it for a spin.

By and all, it was an interesting experience. He told me to stand up straight and lean forwards to speed up or backwards to reverse. I wobbled a bit, but was able to stay still. There's a little wheel (?) around the left handle that controls turning and AFAIK, there's a zero degree turning radius. I didn't get to ride for too long, because I didn't want to keep him from doing his job, but it was fun.

This was another missed opportunity to photoblog due to my lack of having a digital camera.

SOURCE: Second chances

My (unpopular) nano has shipped

Just thought it was interesting that my iPod nano shipped direct from China. The service type says IP Direct Distribution, so maybe FedEx handles the entire distribution process.

On an entirely different note, Apple stock dropped around the same time this article was published. The bad news is that retail stores have sold only a fraction of the iPods they had in stock. It's suggested that Apple may have anticipated demand and simply shipped an excess of iPods to the stores, but they point fingers at the perceived contradiction of paying more for less capacity. Well, that certainly didn't matter for mini sales, which likely greatly surpassed Apple's original estimates. ANYHOW, I own Apple shares as I'll occasionally mention so that you can tell that my favorite parts of the article are not objective.

Oh, and my color choice is 7 times less popular than black.

SOURCE: TheStreet.com

UPDATE 5:41 AM EST 9/15/05: Whoa. SAME information, totally different analysis. Forbes reports that Piper Jaffray raised the price target to $60.

SOURCE: The Inquirer

(Why) is Google Talk better?

I looked at the 'About' information for Google Talk, and it seems that Google's using licensed voice technology from Global IP Sound. It gets better, because Skype, MSN, Net2Phone and tons of other companies use the technology in their products. I was at first naively disappointed, but it'd be quite absurd for Google to reinvent the wheel when it comes to VoIP. This makes interoperability seem more real and tangible (at least between Skype, MSN, and Net2Phone) if they're based on the same technology.

But, why did someone say that Google Talk's simply better? The difference might be due to the vast networks Google is supposed be superimposing over the internet that drives Web Accelerator. I haven't tried the voice features (!) but I think this is why Google still has a competitive advantage as more bandwidth + expansive network = better quality.

Lastly, here's some interesting insight from Jeff Maurone about who developed Google Talk at Google.

(UPDATE 11:22 PM EST 9/12/05: : / I forgot to factor in the fact that not that many people are using Google Talk, while Skype has tens of millions of users. I also forgot that Skype was started by the Kazaa people, and that it uses Skype users' computers to route calls over their p2p network. So much for that. So, while Google might be able to devote resources to Talk, Skype is efficiently handling much more traffic. Realized that after reading this interview with the SIPphone CEO. They also use the same underlying VoIP technology.)

Idle thoughts...

a) I don't cut in line because, well, I never really did it and it's really annoying when you're about to be late for work trying to get dinner and people cut in line.

b) The pepsi machines that have the bill slot, coin drop, and coin return in the middle are more fun than our old coke machines. Why? They don't just spit your money back when you press the coin return. They give you entirely different ones. Think of the potential!!!!!

No one should buy the shuffle (anymore)

Just marking this "breath-taking" moment. Keep in mind that it syncs calendar and contacts from Outlook.

SOURCE: Engadget.com

UPDATE 7:00 PM: Before you go rush in and get the 4 GB, just remember that the 20 GB is only $50 more ($40 with education pricing)...

UPDATE 11:39 PM 9/8/05: Win a free nano. All it takes is picking your 10 favorite posts at TUAW and blogging about it. I wonder how many I've linked to.

Economic insight of the day

My business chinese professor said that oil prices are high, not because of any change in the supply or production of oil. Instead, prices are being driven higher and higher by speculation. In other words, people think the price of oil will be higher tomorrow, so they're buying it up. This makes what my roommate Mike said make more sense, that there will be a burst of the oil price bubble, just as Greenspan warned about an eventual burst in the housing market.

SOURCE: Prof. Qi Yun Fang

UPDATE 9/3/05 9:05 PM EST: So, apparently, this insight isn't the be-all and end-all when considering the effects of an actual refined oil supply drop of 1.8 million barrels due to Katrina. See the linked Washington Post article about the oil situation.

Typing on a G5...

So, several things happened today. I went back to work and had a decently quiet shift and a good conversation with my co-worker. The buses weren't running when I left, so instead of calling the knight mover, I just walked/jogged home. That's the most exercise I'll get besides table tennis. Being that it was like after 5 AM when I got back to the dorm, I figured I'd get some breakfast at the 24-hour dunkin' donuts. Planning on getting as much sleep as possible until my second period class, I forwent coffee...

Unfortunately, I was deprived of my first lecture of the semester (Democratic Political Philosophy) because our professor couldn't make it to class. I was really looking forward to it because I liked the topics on the reading list. Partly because of the resulting free time, I exceeded the bandwidth limit and lost my access for a week. Learning how to bump locks was not worth it. NO LINKS ON THAT.

My second class Computer Graphics involves learning about the core concepts of 3D graphics, including modelling, rendering, and animation. Despite falling drifting off to sleep a couple of times during the lecture (which I always do, for some sinister reasons), I'm excited about the class. Programming assignments are worth 65% of our grade, and are to be completed individually, but I don't mind as long as I hand things in ON TIME.

What else... more work tonight, brother's windows died :/ Katrina hit hard... That's what I should be posting about...

SOURCE: The swirling void