myopiclunacy.com

• Great tribute to Sean Taylor - the Redskins initially line up in a “Missing Man” formation on D: http://tinyurl.com/ywcdn4 #
• Send a personalized message to your friends from Borat! http://tinyurl.com/2ehbb2 #
• The Wizard of Odds: Michigan and Miles: What Happened? http://tinyurl.com/ytyy3z Lloyd Carr is part of the hiring process?!? #
• OpenSocket http://tinyurl.com/2qp7aj Interesting project linking Google Open Social apps with the Facebook API. I should try Plaxo Pulse. #
• Posts tagged Gdrive at Engadget http://tinyurl.com/2btdp5 Google’s set to officially add FREE online storage to their product offering. YAY! #
• Iraqi Contractors Frozen Out of U.S. http://tinyurl.com/2am9qg Why do I get the feeling that Iraq will be the next Telemarketer haven? #
• Kworld Kworld External Tv Tuner Spkr Turn Your LCD Monitor Into A Tv Set prices - dealnews.com http://tinyurl.com/2zxcmv RU listening Santa? #
• FlyTV Box EZ http://tinyurl.com/28va5t I’ll even take this. I’m not paying $800 for a 22″ LCD TV when the same sized LCD Monitor costs $300. #
• Converse Men’s Chuck Taylor Shoes - dealnews.com http://tinyurl.com/2dl2vg $9 Chuck Taylors? Duuuuude … #
• Secret Omaha Steaks Deal Deal - Techbargains.com http://tinyurl.com/25wywd The gift of food is the best gift of all. #
• Barnes and Noble 20% Cash Back w/ PayPal (Nintendo DS Lite $103.99, MORE) Deal - Techbargains.com http://tinyurl.com/2husv9 hmm DS Lite, eh? #
• POLL: Afghans’ Criticism of U.S. Efforts Rises as Taliban Support Grows http://tinyurl.com/2gnvzr Not greeted as liberators in Tha Stan now? #
• Imus is Back in ‘New Incarnation’ http://tinyurl.com/2ezrz6 Why didn’t they just suspend him? Seems like radio’s version of Elian Gonzalez. #
• UCLA searching for Dorrell’s successor - Los Angeles Times http://tinyurl.com/2dwvjk Karl Dorrell to be fired? Big shock at UCLA. #
• BCS Madness:Whatever Choice Was Made, It Was Going To Be Wrong http://tinyurl.com/ypfho3 BCS does it again. Let’s just go back to bowl games #
• Mac Gs World: BCS Sucks http://tinyurl.com/yqofsn Money grubbin’ bitches. How LSU is still in it I have no idea. Something needs to change. #
• Larry Brown Sports: Joe Gibbs Studied Under Chris Webber http://tinyurl.com/ynw9so Gibbs is getting blamed for a timeout gaffe. Tough week. #
• MLS Announced New Pan-Pacific Tournament: 90 Minutes Soccer Magazine http://tinyurl.com/yrndxl MLS tournament in Hawaii? with Becks? Hmmm.. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Popularity: 10% [?]

• Zamzar - Free online file conversion http://tinyurl.com/y9tfce Sweet!!! #
• My Oregon Alum Colleague’s Cube - http://tinyurl.com/29vpyy College football brings out the best in us! #
• http://tinyurl.com/2zzq23 “El beso significa cualquier cosa, menos que somos maricas” - nothing like a good “faggot” blast - in Spanish! #
• Indiana Coeds Pose For Playboy - Photos - KPHO Phoenix http://tinyurl.com/ywq9o9 Mmmmm #
• Oh Happy Day - Nick “The Dick” Saban and Alabama lost at home to superpower Louisiana Monroe http://tinyurl.com/yt6py7 Karma, bitches! #
• Unfortunately he could lose every game and beat Auburn next week and those rouges would still worship the ground he walks on. For now … #
• http://tinyurl.com/ytowrk “Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr has scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m. ET Monday” -you know what’s coming #
• Lis Francs injury…what is it? (Cobra Brigade) http://tinyurl.com/ysttmo Interesting! #
• Juan Roman Riquelme Wants A Divorce From Villareal | Machochip | Puro Sports http://tinyurl.com/yug4oq Riquelme to NY Red Bulls? Why not? #
• 100% Injury Rate: Nick Saban’s sleaziness can help you win elections http://tinyurl.com/yqqhgf AWESOME #
• Revs up 1-0 in MLS Cup - continuing Boston Sports dominance. Bob Kraft in attendance - apparently responsible for the Pats game being flexed #
• He’s on the NFL Television Committee and wanted to make both games. He even paid for a bus to bring fans down from Boston. 60:00 left. #
• Mort reporting that Wade Phillips is making his Cowboys players sign “penalty pledge cards” because of too many flags. Gimme a break! #
• Ted Ginn - first return for a TD … that wasn’t called back by penalty. The John Beck spark! And The Dynamo tie the Revs at the 61:00 mark #
• 2-1 Houston. DeRo on a header from a cross with 15 mins to go. Looks like the Revs might become the Buffalo Bills of the MLS. #
• Boston professional sports winning streak is over. Revs lose in MLS Cup Final for 4th time in 6 years. DeRo is MVP. Now’s the Pats turn! #
• Rumors and Rants: Start The Kelli Croyle Watch http://tinyurl.com/2zbm79 The ONLY good Chiefs news! #
• OMG - Cam Cameron is the worst coach ever. His playcalling is atrocious and he does not trust his players at all. 0-16 is VERY possible #
• Soccer Closer: Cherundolo’s Goal Is the Difference In Johannesburg http://tinyurl.com/28osrc Bob Bradley has won 2 straight away matches! #
• We Suck at Sports: Death of a Super-Agent http://tinyurl.com/2ytogt First A-Rod shoves Scott Boras aside now Kenny Rogers fires him! WOW! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Yet another story proving how Tivo is the biggest scam in consumer electronics. When Tivo and Replay TV came out I thought it was the coolest thing around with one exception - the forced you to buy a service plan to be able to record stuff. Service plans are the way that companies turn one time sales into recurring profits - which is something that their investors love. But me? I hate it. Why can’t i just program in the times manually like I did with the VCR. ReplayTV went away but Tivo got in bed with the now leery TV networks and slowly but surely added in more restrictions like preventing you from fast forwarding through certain commercials and deleting certain shows after a network-set expiration date.

Now comes word from The Consumerist (an awesome web site for all this stuff, by the way) that now they’re testing sharing demographic data with their advertisers. I assume a change to the user agreement will soon follow once they figure out how to monetize that information. The author makes an excellent point about consumers taking back their rights from these type of companies:

The next big revolution in marketing needs to come from consumers realizing that demographic data has real value, and that they should be compensated fairly for it. Or actually, since most of us do realize that, what we need is a way to formally announce “ownership” of it so that it can be protected, aggregated, and sold directly.

It’s for this reason that I continue to enjoy my choice of DVR, SnapStream’s BeyondTV. It’s software for your Windows computer and works with a TV capture card (analog and HDTV) and, if necessary, an IR blaster. The program guide data is FREE and you can manually enter dates and times for recurring shows as well. You can watch the recordings on your computer, on your iPod, on your cell phone, or streaming from another computer (or cell phone) anywhere on the internet - live and/or previously recorded! That’s like a Tivo and a Slingbox all together. And for hackers like me, BeyondTV has much more options. In fact you can record multiple shows AT THE SAME TIME if you’re adventurous.

And I paid a grand total of $50 back in 2002. That’s it. Compare this to the hidden costs of Tivo or the DVR boxes taht cable companies are selling nowadays. I’ve upgraded versions for free over the years and still rely on BeyondTV to catch The Daily Show or The Office if for some reason (like last night) I miss it. I’ll also be using it to catch a couple of soccer games this weekend when I’ll be away from my digital cable goodness. It’s easy to roll your own DVR. And when you do, you won’t be subject to a Tivo hijacking - with certainly more hijacking on the horizon.

Popularity: 7% [?]

• David Beckham and Snoop Dogg making a movie http://tinyurl.com/2lnvp3 Becks has even gone to Snoop’s 187 Mansion to teach his kids soccer! #
• Whoa - someone almost pipe bombed a nuclear plant in Arizona http://tinyurl.com/2mrkx2 The perp’s from S. Carolina. Wonder where Colbert is? #
• MythTV + Ubuntu = Mythbuntu http://mythbuntu.org Free Linux DVR software. Just add a capture card or USB. #
• “Hate the new reflective Dock in Leopard, or the little blue dots that indicate open programs?” http://tinyurl.com/3xxhf6 Tigerize it! #
• Need a template for your business plan, a tutorial on Python programming, or a copy of the Gettysburg address? Free? http://www.docstoc.com #
• Check out Lifehacker’s list of Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters
  http://tinyurl.com/2bj2sb #
• Reading: Top 10 Twitter Apps http://tinyurl.com/2cap9x for the mini blog #
• On Engadget: RIP, Classic Mac OS: 1984 - 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2yaq2w MacOS Classic won’t work in Leopard. How am I going to play Risk? #
• Does Mac OS X need a disk defragmenter/optimizer? http://tinyurl.com/yor8do MacFixIt says no. Routine Maintenance: http://tinyurl.com/8sn9w #
• Tuxicity shows how to switch from Ubuntu to Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Edubuntu or vice versa http://tinyurl.com/3dy5h5 #
• Trying to find a stream of Arsenal v Man U here: UK and Irish Radio Stations broadcasting on the Internet http://tinyurl.com/paod3 AWESOME! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Getting caught up on all my Tech reading:

This I can’t wait to see. Apple has really been innovating in the past decade and have influenced so much in consumer electronics as well as personal computers. This slim notebook rumor is virtually guaranteed to come true (as Apple can’t hide it’s stuff anymore) but what I really want is a new Apple Newton!

Sure, you’ve had the space of a few minutes without Apple rumors, but be honest with us: it felt lonely, didn’t it? Well don’t worry, because the rumors are back… with a vengeance. According to 9to5mac (who recently nailed news on the iPod nano), Apple is readying a new line of black and silver aluminum laptops, which might be the slimmer MacBook Pros mentioned previously. Details are, of course, totally speculative and entirely unconfirmed, but it sounds like the systems will be considerably thinner and lighter than current models, will have screens that reach further to the edges (which apparently suggests a smaller footprint), have keyboards in the vein of the new Apple Bluetooth models, and are set to be priced “extremely aggressively.” In addition, the report says that there is “something strange about the touchpad,” which could mean we’ll be seeing some sort of multi-touch functionality, or it could mean nothing at all. We’ll keep you posted on what the mill has to say.

Check out the new form factor of UMPC coming out now. It looks like a souped up PSP!

We caught a peek of Asus‘ R3 UMPC / MID yesterday, but it got shown off in a little more detail today during a presentation on Adobe’s AIR platform. No word on which variation of Intel’s Menlow platform it’ll be sporting, but it looks like the device will have a 4.8-inch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, a fingerprint reader, webcam, and built-in GPS.

Online web apps are getting smarter. This one lets you convert audio and video file formats online.

YouconvertIt is a new web-based file conversion service. Like Zamzar, YouconvertIt lets you upload audio, video, image, or document files and convert from one format to another. Just select the file from your computer to upload, select your target format, and the web service will send you an e-mail when your new file is ready to download. Unlike Zamzar, YouconvertIt doesn’t appear to have a file size limit (although that may change), and currently has no advertising (which will definitely change). Oh yeah, and you can convert units like miles, kilometers, inches, and feet.

Learn a new language with the new Mango Beta.

The first Free enterprise language learning course available on the Internet. Eleven of our courses are now available in our beta release. Each course has 100 lessons available.

Free iTunes downloads at Starbucks? Time to get a coffee.

Beginning October 2, when you order your double latte, you can get a free “song of the day” iTunes download card at Starbucks. The coffee giant is giving away 50 million downloads to promote its new “Now Playing” service which displays the name of the song playing in the Starbucks store at that moment, and allows customers to buy and download songs or albums directly to their device.

More free iTunes goodness - this time from Fox.

Apparently it’s free internet TV week. First NBC announced it would be launching a free video download service. Then ABC announced it would stream free episodes through AOL. And now Fox is offering free downloads of series/season premieres of 7 shows. You’ll be able to download the episodes from Apple’s iTunes store. The episodes are commercial free, and the goal is to build buzz for the Fox programs.

Uh oh. Here comes the beginning of the end of something big - like consumer choice. That’s why I roll my own PVR.

EchoStar Communications, the company behind the Dish Network satellite service has agreed to buy Sling Media for $380 million. Sling Media is the maker of the popular Slingbox place-shifting device.

UPDATE: See what I mean? The monopoly returns - and it only means that the cool innovative native slingbox innovation will no doubt be eroded into a one-size-fits-all offering that limits choice.

And finally the ultimate birthday gift - a toy tank. Adult tank!

If you are ready to reenact Rommel’s campaign in North Africa, vandalize any wall in sight or look like Atom Ant, here’s the Paintball Panzer. At 3.4 x 4 x 6-foot it’s not comparable with the 17-tonne FV432 paintball tank after the jump, but I would love to have this mini-me version anyway.

Popularity: 11% [?]