I am so late doing this I’m practically ashamed.  E.G,   The house only holds about 40 people and , well you think hell 40 people that’s easy Probably so easy that telling everyone would lead to a lot of disappointed folks which I’m still aiming for:)

Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell & Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz & Erin McKeown. Call’s sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types — computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide. Marian is currently touring all 50 states and hopes to play for you soon — find more information at http://mariancall.com.

If you like what you hear  then how about hearing it live, like two days from now?

When we originally requested a house concert it seemed plausible. laughably in hindsight, that we could accommodate this at our house.  Thankfully friend and  fellow fan Mandi stepped in to save the day and for this Phoenix and surrounding areas  all you have to do is leave your house on a Wednesday night and come out for live music. 

RSVP to

mandi  AT neuroticbynature.com

For details on where to go, what to bring and how much fun you are going to have.

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I’ve fallen in the Atlantic,in large rivers and streams in the past and have to say that one is certainly not manageable without assistance.Sure you get the life jacket that keeps your head above water as it flows around you but you can’t actually do much but sit back till someone pulls you out. 

To help pull me out from my info addiction the nice people at  lifeio.com streamy and threadsy.com have offerings which seek to provide a nice paddle with which to beat back the creek of crap we’re exposed to daily.

The one that apparently does the least, on the surface,is my current favorite.
Threadsy is in the lead with it being a constant presence on one monitor while I just dip into the other two. It’s interesting as Threadsy started out doing less than the other two offering but it does it so well.It also solves a very real problem that the mainstream users haven’t encountered yet, they probably won’t encounter it till more of them actually use FB and Twitter in their daily lives.   

Threadsy , pardon the sewing puns, seamlessly brings together the contents of tweets, Facebook updates and your mail account. I don’t have to chase many windows around to see, reply to tweets, post status updates, see incoming mail.   Nothing revolutionary that alt – tab or the amazing Firefox extension Foxtab couldn’t do for you but it’s the thread part  of the name that makes this so useful.

Most of the interesting stuff in twitter are links to images, videos or pages that obviously make no sense to a human when a URL shortener is used, no mind , i get a preview of each item, can play video in place,see the image, reply to or make a comment on the tweet/ update and go about my day without closing out a pile of windows each time curiosity gets the better of me,about 10-12 seconds.

When I open up a mail, tweet or update the author panel to the side shows me the services they use, their latest posts, tweets, images. Single click. Yum!

Plus it has Meebo chat built in accounting for just about any messenger service you’d care to use.  Aggregating the streams is one of those  emergent/ obvious things ( has to be I thought of the same damn thing way back) but execution is everything and so far these software tailors have provided this Emperor* with an impressive suit of  new clothes

*Much in the same way Joshua Norton was

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Owle, not a Pixar sequel, is an acronym for Optical Widgets for Life Enhancement  housing that allows you to add additional lenses, an inbuilt mic,add lighting and stability to your iPhone 3gs which markedly improves real time video gathering  while remaining hand held portable. Why write what you can see

It’s pretty obvious  how much the viewer stands to benefit from this platform ,YEP  that’s the viewer. Local company too   : )

I’ve often thought of the iPhone as being a glorified controller that just happens to make phone calls.

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I’m not a fan of clouds , other than flying through them, when it’s the sole method of storage. User’s of the Sidekick have found out that the distance between back up and fuck up is a little more then inconvenient. 

How would you like this mail from a service you PAY for ( It would be easy to bitch at 2.0 companies that have lost my data but realistically I got what I paid for) 

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

Inconvenience in the street lawyers thesaurus  sounds a little more like negligence:)

Own your own data or lose it and three years later win a class action suit, with 100k of your “friends” that gives you a month’s free service but only when renewing your contract for two years.

http://mashable.com/2009/10/10/t-mobile-sidekick-data/

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The differences between UK and US grammar are apparently slight enough to not catch the same break that people learning English as a second language are allowed.I’m realistic enough to know that  it will have a nominal effect on the reason that I began which neatly segues into my next point.

Is anyone still naive enough to believe that the powers that be just need a well crafted note pointing out were they are deficient and how they are hurting people will change their way?  Hardly.  In short they are not your audience.

Unfortunately that leaves the public.

Oh wait Is anyone still naive enough to believe that the public  just need a well crafted sitcom showing  were they are deficient and how they are hurting people  by refusing to take ownership of their lives?   Hardly.

In short they are not your audience.

Much easier to remain quiet.

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ 1972 A. C. Clarke Lost Worlds

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve found that walk up magic and showing people how to get the most out of a cell phone leads to the same reaction. ( the latter is far less likely to get you  burned as a witch in some of our undeveloped  3g areas)

 Shazam is one of those apps that is cooler than a cold man’s  cold bits  during an Alaskan  Mr Ice Pants festival.   For the last  few months  I’ve been trying to find out the names of a couple of songs that are played  at the  good old hockey game. Both tracks  have no music ,  have really short hooks and one could safely classify them as being graduates from the " bleep bleep thump"  school.

I’d sat with an iPhone in my pocket  game after game while forgetting I had the means to do so with me. Loaded the shazam app from the stadium wifi,  awaited the song to come on and set it to capture.  This is not an easy capture.  That’s a PA  with  cheering and pervasive  clapping   but Shazam was  able to determine most of the songs under these conditions.    Just load, lift and listen and it does the rest on your iPhone or Android device and you can save it for later, or buy it  now.   My god a  business model on the mobile web what a wondrous age we live in!

That’s still not the interesting part.  Why did it take so long to put this 2+2  together?   Turns out it was an ambiguity that I could live with but my  wife always  kept asking about.. "what song’s that"   is a problem that’s harder to live with.

Locating the good apps quickly then  finding out what is, and isn’t useful , could be a second career,  a really badly remunerated  second career.   So best make it a hobbyto find out what your friends regularly overlook  when relating to the net  and   with your  best Carnac the magnificient impression  hold the phone  to your head and proceed to  amaze.

Why spend the time?  Most of the coolest apps  work when   you have an audience,  heck  in that  stadium of 11,000 people only  2 were logged in on the  two presence services I use. In general  I feel like a "boy and his iPod dog" wandering the  desert , Phoenix  looks pretty much looks like  distopic sci fi anyway so it’s not too hard to play along.

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At the moment these are things that interest me.

Mobile web,     the kind of world that emerges when  resources are too costly to move people to and from places of work,education  as a matter of course,  educating our toddler, thinking of alternate ways to make a scrapyard profitable and dare I say green?     Locating items which are truly innovative and not just this year’s restatement of the past with  a couple of features , aka  the marketing departments mega pixel effect were more is better, cough bullshit.

Go Daddy Christmas party.

Last night  saw Joan Jett at  the companies  Christmas Party, aka Go Daddy.   We got home around 1am and bought her last CD,   Sinner by Joan Jett  which made up for  the other two acts Sinbad  ,  the last syllable is devastatingly accurate,   and 38 Special ( I was ignorant of their oeuvre ) and  I had to leave my own   38 special at home  this being a work event and there being drink and all:) 

We also had to forgo hearing Patrick Lauder    sing the national anthem at the Coyotes vs Redwings game , for which is were we would have been  barring the party, but instead  had  Lillian Garcia   sing which , no offence to Patrick,  is physically prettier but   he wins out on overall delivery    Still Lilian was really good  and way better than the  usual  histrionic warbling  and  3 or four notes when one would do  from singers that may have  the impression that singing the song’s more about their performance.   Yep I’m glad nowadays when the longest held note contest is a separate event:D.  

That’s  all very cool  but what’s even  better is the message  given by our CEO, Founder and lover of things two wheeled and  European  , Bob Parsons who,  after riding  up to the podium on a Ducati let us know that we  had our best year ever,  are  not an example of the kind of company, institution that  promoted dud loans, built too many car or houses.  The company gives a lot of time  , via staff, and money   to charities and this is the annoying part coming up. Since when do you have to justify success in the USA?    Understand I am not getting at those justifying but the people asking the question in the first place. 

 Many companies curtailed their  parties because of the   business climate and  to them , I say  hum bloody bollocks bug to you.   The number of staff to  cater, provide entertainment, services etc   that’s money going to real businesses, same with the shoes,    clothing and other accessories.   The money that the staff won    guess were most of that is going too?       I don’t often post on work related items because  it’s a difficult balance  to not come across as a gushing fan boy  which as anyone that knows me  would find hard to reconcile with my  cynical daily demeanor.  The latter is a relative scale   , seriously in the UK  I was pretty much on the optimistic side:)     So celebrating two thousand people, their families  and the charities, venders and stores  that benefit from Go Daddy’s existence  is something that should NEVER be apologized for at any time  and certainly cheered my holiday up.The laser and fireworks finale would have been  perfect toddler material but it pleased my inner toddler greatly will post some pics as they come in.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

Oh I nearly forgot..   moobies!

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"Definitely they were trained,” said a masked officer of the force.

”Not everybody can fire AK-series weapons.

”Using such weapons and explosives, it is obvious they were trained somewhere.

Do you have a spare 10 minutes?   Ak’s are famous for their robustness when used by  irregulars, nades, baseball!  as for the explosives I  have no idea but they always kept me away from that safe  Oddly enough the  reporting in realtime that provided this alleged  edge is not considered to be an inappropriate use of technology.. weird that.
Mumbai terrorists’ most powerful weapon: VoIP phones | Computerworld Blogs

The Times reports that the handlers were communicting with the attackers using VoIP phones that made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Indian authorities to intercept the calls, or even know they were taking place.
Here’s how the Times explains it:…

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Hospital suspends worker who failed to report NFL star’s gunshot – CNN.com

Bloomberg, who has long fought against illegal gun ownership, said public figures “make their living because of their visibility. They are the role models for our kids, and if we don’t prosecute them, to the fullest extent of the law, I don’t know who on Earth we would. It makes a sham, a mockery of the law.”

One word answer…..

Spitzer.

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I posted on the phrase on my other blog that I would like to extirpate this phrase  from the English language or at least the workplace. Rather than do an original one I’m running a semi ok off  post.  I’d prefer people would say ” it’s this way because”  which gives an indication that they’ve looked at the issue rather than just accepted it on a prima facie interest.

“it is what is is” 

Today I heard it several more times and  it didn’t have a calming effect , quel surprise? I needed to look further into what irks me so much about this new catch all.

It is what it is” means what it means. Depending on context, it can be a statement of resignation or of defiance, but in neither case does it connote the optimistic good humor of “It’s all good.” If anything, it expresses the absence of emotion, the abdication of feeling. Although it seems to imply value-neutrality, that misses the point; it’s not so much that something is neither good nor bad, but rather that its quality simply isn’t relevant, that it’s not worth the energy to make a value judgment.

To put it another way — it doesn’t matter what you think about it because you can’t do anything about it anyway. It was in this spirit that Al Gore invoked the phrase after winning the popular vote and possibly the electoral tally as well: “I strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision and the way in which they interpreted and applied the law. But I respect the rule of law, so it is what it is.”

Flak Magazine: It’s All Good vs. It Is What It Is, 06.11.03

and

Radar, Oh really ? It is what it is… Welcome to tautology Thursday.

One of the colloquial phrases, ok  maybe it’s not just AZ but I hear it more here, that’s been annoying me is the Popeye school of    “it is  what it is” as a cover all for  ill conceived, poorly implemented or ineffable solutions that have wandered onto the radar.This verbal chaff that’s tossed up in the air , rather than  fixing a location onto the problem , obscures the problem and by the time all the flakes have landed , or given up and go home,  there’s still the small matter of a  missile  bearing down on you. As a bonus there’s now less time and fewer options to react with.  

tautology – Definitions from Dictionary.com
1. (logic) a statement that is necessarily true; “the statement ‘he is brave or he is not brave’ is a tautology”

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I have been  pretty good  in my  reduction of TV over the past two years but then again I always was more in love with the radio. That’s were I first came across David Lawrence, whom I’ve previously said some very nice things about. There’s no need to change that here. What  I am happy about is that  I get to be some kinda human,  how so?   Well there’s always these nagging doubts that schadenfreude was  an inescapable part of my make up since I really do find other people’s  misfortune, specially when it’s   heading towards  Greek tragedy , amusing.   If there’s a church bus and cliff involved  I’m set for the day,  the driver swerved to avoid a tortilla   with the Image of Mary and you may have to medicate me down:)  So it’s  gratifying to see that  three people that I know well enough to have  lunch with, occasionally see working ,are doing so well for themselves based on 

 working  at what they love, yeah that  old cliché:) . More important though I think about the only sane  advice that I regularly hear within new media  is nicely laid out here.  The source ,  someone else I admire,  seems to have the same qualities  which kinda hit me between the  “what the hell am I doing and when will I wake up” eyes:)   Anyway  writing more won’t help,  just  watch. 

From Tim Street

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Ouch:) 

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So just shut up and enjoy this animated appetizer  ink his way into the history books.

Via Found on the web

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news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7621013.stm

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You must pay the $200+ a year to the BBC  even if you never use their service. Yet for free I can  access this programming over the net. ( odd that but I’m grateful anyway)

I listened to a short series about the placebo effect ,BBC – Radio 4 – Placebo, which  goes  into depths on just how much ” it’s all in the mind”   goes towards   reducing the perception of pain,  recovery time and  general mental well being.  Yep  sugar pills work , their analogs work  ( reiki, reflexology or anything that has a  believable story that your culture buys into )

In short

We feel what we expect to find  as long as we’re committed to that belief.
Reality can be changed by symbols , yep symbols really are for the symbol minded.
 
And advertising.. well that’s another story.

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In short  it’s  a set of  rules  for the relationship between creators, promoters and fans  around  Sci Fi / Fantasy conventions which can be extrapolated to  most commercial  interactions. E.G   Are we customers, consumers, data points  or people that  want to get things done?

When you have a “voice” for a corporation engaged in social media  maybe it’s a good idea to think about the above because the mode of address you choose in 3/4 cases is going to be wrong

Can a corporation really be your friend?   Does this  construct sound real?   X is out buying yummy things  his  company make  ,  Y is out  watching their Movie  etc  Does this sound remotely like a relationship your engaged in?    If it doesn’t it’s for the obvious reason that it ISN’T. 

I love dealing with people from companies,  hate dealing with  company names that have a rotating cast of interchangeable  responses that would make Turing dance with glee. I can’t tell them apart from a machine or human either. 

Wer in ur boahdroomz wutchin yu wit intrst

*invisible pink unicorn  peace be unto her hooves.

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The James Randi educational foundation   are  in their own words

The James Randi Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1996. Its aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today.

I’ve been to a TAM , the conference tied to JREF and loved it. I  was really shocked by just how many religious skeptics there were though , really amazed.  Toss that in with the statists that believe that thinking and research are a government sport  and I was a little  unsettled that the critical thought movement would  align on the democracy YAY! side of things I mean these people are smart Gell Mann smart.   Just have to face it  classically liberal ( aka libertarian)  ideals just don’t fly in this land of the lobbyist.  ( I don’t blame them  they would not exist if the politicians weren’t corruptible)

Here’s the question as I thought I was going to ask it to Penn  after seeing the show in Vegas.

I think  Joe Rogan  pwned Phil Plait  on Penn’s show  on more than one occasion how does that bode for his new position as the president of the JREF  and how about a rematch moderated by Penn

Here’s what came out:    

Not that question.   In other words I failed to reach a credible level  of  intelligibility  ( well they had just let off some pythons:) )  in three sentences  which is party  the awe reflex. (   Doug Adams, P and T and  a few others do this.    Weird that Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters don’t , nor politicians yet Kari  from the aforementioned show does.

So in retrospect it’s really hard to think of any appropriate way to ask this   in a meet and greet situation. I shouldn’t have tried.  I really  do want Plait to do well but  was pretty shaken by how  Rogan took him down to his level on two occasions and would really like to know what a leading light, and long time supporter of the same organization thought given his  ringside seat to the two “debate that occurred  on Penn’s  radio show whether the moon landings were real. Without foreknowledge to know that I wouldn’t twist his words into something  embarrassing and   in the end I have to agree that Penn’s  words re  he’ll do a great job  are  the likely route his presidency will take and about the only obvious answer  I would ever get.  Same kind of question I’d ask any  libertarian , claimed, about their  thoughts on Bob Barr  but  who am I kidding that’s  a few minutes in not a   30 second in a line question. So  as annoyed as I am at my asinine  question I’m glad  I at least learned something from it.

Let there be no doubt. I have a very very high confidence that we went to the moon, Rogan is as heroically wrong here as he is funny ( yep I like his comedy to the point that I pay  to hear it)

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Or read Galt’s speech ?

The latter. Seems quicker

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I’m going to start posting items from my work blog onto this one since I get more exposure here.

A couple of items appeared on my  reader in close proximity that  suggested that iPhone isn’t just a neat phone but it’s also the future of handheld gaming and the death of terrestrial radio.

It’s also the death of common sense least for  the current incarnation of the iPhone. Which network is going to have the ability to support that many real times streams?  If you don’t have immediacy it’s not radio.  Sure you can  DL the playlist  1st over night then just add in the  hosts  locally  may work, but  why bother  what are we trying to achieve here?   Replication of radio? Why if it’s so bad, would we want to?

Apples  target… 10 million  phones.

Yep that kills radio’s    more than 1 unit per person.   > 300 million.
that kills  Nintendo’s ( just one  companies) 20 million  DS base.

It doesn’t even kill XM/ Sirius  merge  with  17.3 million paying users.  It’s a bit late to walk by the  bleeding corpse of radio  and get your friend to take a picture of you standing with your foot on its chest.  That’s the perception of radio anyway.   Sadly it doesn’t jibe with these results.

Radio reaches more than 235 million listeners over the course of the week according to the RADAR 97 June 2008 Radio Listening Estimates. (link)

20 times more people than  Apple expect to sell phones to. Radio  Two controls,  no computer needed to keep it in sync  and oh battery life can be in weeks/ month range.

As to handheld gaming?  Would you  pay  $70 a month for your kid to play games on it?  Beggars belief really that it’s being seriously considered as a question. 

Can we start using the iPhone to do excellent iPhone  related things rather than trying to recreate the old world?

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