Not sure what hooning is but apparently it’s something people do on either snowboards or in 300hp 4wd rally cars…

Gartner puts out some great reports. They do, I have a bunch that are kind of old and still refer to them. That said, the report today that pronounces Blu-Ray as the format winner is a bit of a face-palm…

Perhaps I read the news on this stuff more than most so I knew as soon as WB broke up with HD-DVD there was another disk in their life. I’d like to see a WB – HD-DVD facebook defriending parody of that…

I guess some people didn’t get the memo. Those people probably don’t get most memos…

How about this from the obvious desk, Study: eBay Buyers Save Billions. Well, blow me over with a can of compressed air! Seriously? You mean buying things for cents on the dollar ends up saving people money? Wow, I thought it was just fun, now it’s economical? Next you’ll tell me that medicine actually cures people, and Tom Cruise really IS a weirdo.

One thing they do talk about which is interesting is the price people are willing to pay for items. I’m a little confused since I’m not exactly sure if they’re assuming retailers are charging too little or too much. They kept flipping around in the article, or I may have had too much coffee.

What I find interesting is how the “value” of more mainstream products follows an interesting logic (this is not in the article). If I want a Nikon D40 camera with the 18-55 lens, a standard kit, I find that $275 is the hot spot. People setting the starting bid at $300 often get no bids at all. With hundreds of these on eBay and many many people bidding, the “value” is truly dictated by what people are willing to pay. If I wanted to buy one and didnt mind paying an extra $25 because I think this is a good seller, it’s in perfect condition, local, whatever, I can have one at $300 and pretty much guarantee that I’ll have no competition for it since I’m paying a “premium”.

I also find that some sellers are blind to this market pricing and try to sell items for multiples of their market value. It’s like trying to sell a penny stock for a quarter, no one is going to buy it. For example, a hard-top for a Porsche 911. The dealer sells them for about $2500. You can go to a dismantler and get one for about $1000. You see them all day long on eBay buy-it-now for a wide range of prices but the only ones that sell are the ones with no reserve and go for about $400. Rarely if ever more than that. If you have one to sell, the market value is $400, like it or not.

People are often adamant that they paid X for an item and will take no less than Y where Y is Z dollars over market. The item never sells. This is not specific to eBay, it happens all over the place. I sell quite a lot on eBay and rarely, if ever, an item goes unsold. I do my research. By searching for the item I am selling in closed auctions I get an immediate feel for the market price. If I put it a few points under average, it’s gone in a day. If it’s a few points over, it languishes and I get to deal with stupid questions from people wanting to see why this might be more than others.

While some things I sell are much less than I paid for them, I’m happy to get something back from it. That or it sits unused in my house until it’s completely lacking in value. This is the case for computer parts. As soon as I decommission an item like a drive, RAM, etc, it’s on eBay before it’s value goes to zero. My old Cell phone? Sold it for $18 (and a handy $3 handling fee). Or it could sit there until it’s as worthless as a StarTac or Cellular Bag Phone.

I think the thing about eBay is, anyone can pretty easily generate a good lump of extra cash by combing their house for all the stuff that just sits and list it on ebay for a few points under market price. A good digital camera that does closeups, movable light, purloined packing materials (wow that stuff is expensive!) and a USPS & UPS account and you’re on your way. Then, when your PayPal account is all settles up, fees are paid and you have a nice pile of dough, go ahead and buy that laptop. It’s almost free. That’s what I call savings.

As a band that seems to be a fav of the Greatful Dead set, Phish, well, sucks. As did the Dead. Only stoned people could stand that stuff.

On the other hand, Phishing also sucks. It’s been too long that we’ve all been sitting at our mail clients wondering if that email from Wells Fargo is real. I’ve been asking (read: deaf ears) for a complete overhaul of the Internet mail system. I think people complain far more than they should about painful changes around it. In the interim, we’re seeing spam take up 99% of the mail flow and somehow that’s just not enough. The tipping point will be major server crashes at head-ends. So, I’ll wait until that happens, board members get irate, customers flip out and CNN launches an Anderson Cooper special Keeping The Honest about how everyone knew this was coming and no one wanted to pay for it.

In the mean time, companies are setting up businesses to make sure real mails do come through. Iconix has a great start by tagging emails from legit sources where phishing attempts are the most emulated (paypal, ebay, citibank etc). It’s only a web-client capable plug-in right now but I expect an Outlook 2007 / client-side add-in soon.

In fact, I’d like to see the client version as well as the web version as a hot-fix that everyone gets from Apple / MS / Ubuntu, et-al. No reason not to, right? Who is out there saying “no, I like guessing at which email might be the one that leads me to a site that steals my identity”.

Until “the great email meltdown” happens in the next 18 months, we’ll have these innovative tools to help us get a little sanity.

Another cool thing I signed up for is the SecureID fob for PayPal and eBay. Now I have to enter a special, always changing, 6 digit code to log in. Even if someone got my username and password, the extra 6 digits change every 30 seconds. I don’t mind using the fob and would prefer if all passwords required it. If it’s good enough for the highest level of security at major financial institutions, I’m thrilled to use it to keep my PayPal account secure.

So I did something about it. I used to respond to each one, trying to tell my n00b friend that Bill Gates is not sending her $1000 to forward an email. But I’m tired. People get on the Internet every day for the first time and I get stuff from 1999 sent to me as if it’s the funniest thing evar!

So, I drafted a form letter. It tries to cover all the bases when you get a forward from someone that makes your eyes roll. Instead of getting mad, sent this:

Hello [friend / co-worker / family member / person who had my address from a CC]

I am responding to your recent email because I *care* and
I don’t want you to get kicked off the Internet for forwarding (one or more of the following)
- Bad Jokes
- Chain letters
- Wild claims / Amazing News – Facts
- Political propaganda

Please understand that I get enough of these kinds of emails that I found it more economical
To simply create a single catch-all that addresses the majority of cases.

The email you forwarded to me is / are:
- Urban legend presented as truth
- Unfounded claims about a political / public figure
- Old jokes from before the ENIAC

I, in no way, am trying to embarrass you or make you feel silly.
I am sending this response in an effort to help you not get fooled by
the myriad of silliness that goes on on-line.

Before forwarding any more emails, I suggest doing some research. You will learn new things, and help stem the spreading of misinformation.

http://www.snopes.com – This is the repository for nearly all urban / internet legends. What you sent to me may be listed in there. You’ll be amazed at what you may have thought to be true.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/ – This is the repository for nearly every question asked. Try there too.

http://www.google.com – Of course, a Google search will also likely help clear up any questions you have about the validity of what you just received and are about to send to a hundred or so unsuspecting people.

A few things to note:

- Not all “news” sites are real. Some are fake and just look real.
- Most “amazing facts” emails are full of things that are simply not true. I promise you Washington was the first president.
- Be suspect of anything forwarded to you that makes wild claims Like “Obama was sworn in on the Koran”
- Be suspect of anything that is “something for nothing” Like “Bill Gates giving you $1000 to forward an email”
- eBay, Citibank and PayPal don’t need to “verify” your account. If you are contacted by any institution asking you to “verify” information, call their corporate #.
- Never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever give out your personal information unless you KNOW the site is what you think it is

The Internet is a great place but it requires a bit of a cynical eye. Don’t take things at face value, so some research and you’ll have a better, safer and more enjoyable experience.

–

Or some version of that. That way, you just cut and paste, even better, make a special Sig with that and you can just add that sig to any forwards you respond to.

If only all my predictions would come true so quickly. Ginger, a new version of Netvibes is picking up where Plaxo was going before they decided it was time to put their company up for sale. They might have to take the sign out of the window since I think Ginger might beat them senseless right out of the gate.

With Plaxo and now Ginger, we’re seeing the first of what will be called “the great aggregation” and all of my far-flung social apps will come carpet-bagging to one central hub.

Will the existing, super-sites get right into a street fight to buy these new focal points? Only time will tell. One thing is certain, the universe of social sites is still expanding but the opposing forces are in play and we’ll soon see needed contraction. Now all I need is a private-beta password for Ginger

I’ve been hearing about Dell losing marketshare to HP for a while but I’ve always been a Dell guy. But when I started to play with the new HP dv6000 series laptops, I had a change of heart. It also coincided with a new Dell laptop that was too hot to use on my lap and had serious performance issues for a Core 2 Duo.

I was changing sides. I went on-line just before the holidays and started to look at the DV6000 HPs and was able to build a serious system for about 1400. Alas, the wait would be 3 weeks and I wanted something sooner, like that day. I went over to Fry’s and experienced their abysmal customer service which sent me back to Best Buy where they had a fresh-off-the-boat Special Edition, the DV6780se. The case is a cool bronze metallic which makes this much more interesting looking than your everyday thick black shingle.

The se comes with 3GB of RAM, a good video card, Altec Lansing speakers, 12 cell battery for about 4 hours of solid use, webcam, 220GB HD, gold tone keyboard, HDMI out, firewire, B/G/N networking, lightscribe and a 1.67 Socket P Intel Dual Core CPU.

First, it’s fast in spite of what seems like a small CPU. I’ve had no issues and I demand a lot from these systems. The 3GB of ram and 220GB hard drive are a nice departure from the standard 1GB and 80GB you see in so many systems. The touch sensitive bar below the speakers is great if I only use it for volume control. Before I continue to gush, I have a few small issues:

- The gold tone keyboard is impossible to use in low light. I use this in bed witha small night stand light. The keyboard made it very hard to type.
- No Bluetooth. This is a silly thing not to include but this in NOT HP’s fault, Best Buy does not like to sell laptops with Bluetooth when they can sell you Bluetooth as a nice $40 extra. Adding factory bluetooth after the fact is very complex.
- The touchpad management allows you to do everything except change acceleration. Very weird. I have to move my finger across the pad 3 times to get across the screen.

Other than the gold keyboard, this is a DV6000 / Best Buy complaint in general.

Since I don’t use Bluetooth very much it’s not a deal breaker but I would have paid more for one with that included, just in case I ever wanted to use it. The keyboard is another thing. I bought a factory black keyboard for $20 on ebay and replaced the gold one. I use this in low-light all the time, the black one is a HUGE difference.

If I could change one thing, backlit keyboards. We take these things everywhere, it’s time this was standard on most systems or at least an option that’s easy to replace.

All things considered, I think I paid about $1100 for it and that’s a screaming deal. It’s pretty, fast, reliable and an all-around all-star. It’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

Update: Someone else reviewed it too

Ok, I think this is an SNL clip and while I thought SNL quit funny 20 years ago, this is laugh-out-loud funny.

I had read this article in this months issue and while this is not my area of expertise, the idea that trends are truly random and come from anywhere is shockingly oversimplified in a way only a PHD could conjure up.

Trends are not total anarchy, the fact is there are people who can see patterns in places where most see noise and they can also get ahead of it sometimes. Perhaps this guy never went to high school where trends come from the “trendy kids”. And he never watched TV where things people wear / use etc in a video (do they even play videos anymore?), TV show etc tend to be pushed up to the top of likely hot things.

I think he’s way too focused on these “mystery” trends that come out of left field but the likelihood there is he’s so far intellectually and culturally removed from those trend epicenters, he can’t even conceptualize that there was a purposeful activity behind it before it became cool. That there are groups of people who are highly likely to be close to it and those that are not. Take for example New York City. Sample Forest Hills and the East Village. I will guarantee that more trends will come out of the East Village. That’s not random, it’s the fact that Forest Hills is not a place where things come from, the East Village is. That alone ruins the forest fire theory unless he also included some formula for particularly sappy trees that tend to hang out in the same place, wear skinny jeans and listen to indie-rock.

What I don’t find surprising is that this silly notion comes from a PHD in academia, which is where you find the people most removed from any semblance of real-world rules as opposed to their favored vacuum-based testing. I find this hypothesis to be somewhat typical of people who live in ivory towers of education. The real-world is too messy and unpredictable; it’s far less stressful to just apply a formula to everything, run some tests and file that problem away as a simple equation where it ends up being a general density of randomness and rules it as a permutation of chaos-theory. Plus, he gets his publishing credit which is their type of currency.

I won’t argue that there are some out-of-left-field trends that start like a SoCal brushfire but in most cases, it’s a weird kind of social-object meritocracy mixed with those ingredients of timing, right exposure, political climate and in some cases a champion / promoter (stylist). And even then, the person / people involved, call them “Trendy Patient 0” are, very likely, part of a segment of the population where likelihood of a trend starting with or around them is higher than most.

This quote almost sounds like people are completely hapless and clumsily bump into things:

“To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

It completely dismisses the idea that there are people who are more likely to be in a position to spread or start, or spot the early signs of a trend. And that these hapless bumblers are the ones who generate these trends, advertisers have no option to just market their products everywhere in hopes that they’ll get the attention of these unwitting trendsetters. Since it could be anyone, anywhere. Like Publishers Clearinghouse, YOU COULD BE A WINNER.

It’s almost the notion that you, me, anyone could start something, and not even know it! It’s the new American Dream, instant popularity, fame, money, all without thought behind it. All without effort. Some simple thing I do today could be the next plastic bit of nonsense that plugs into the already heinous Crocks. Or I could be the next king of Pogs or Beanie Babies. I could be the next American Idol! Well, no. It’s not that simple. Sure, Pogs were random, but if the pimply fat kid was the one in the schoolyard playing with milk bottle caps (as I am sure there have been for a long time), we’d not know of Pogs. I would bet that an influential was the one who played with them and that’s where it started to take off.

This all reinforces the concept of influentials but it makes me think of what makes these people special. I suspect that these people are born marketing folk. They have an eye for what could be hot and have a knack for showing off what they like and what they don’t.

I guess this touches a nerve for me around my particular distaste for pontificating academics that live in cloistered communities where they never have to practice their theories in real life or suffer real repercussions when they don’t work. Theories are nice and all but on earth, we use methods that professors hate, like gut, experience, feel.

We might get one or two cool things from Forest Hills but it will never be the East Village. If you want to know who the influentials are, you have to look at where rich cultures live, where concepts are thrown around, where creativity thrives, you’ll find hot-spots. The same thing goes on on-line, in forums. 4chan is where so many of those funny photos we all pass around come from. It’s a disproportionate number, that and PhotoshopPhriday.

While it’s hard, if not impossible to predict if a singular item itself will end up as a trend, you don’t have to go too high up to get a perspective of where to look for them starting. That’s not random. That’s the point of marketing, and understanding the culture, the public, the markets, the existing trends and everything else that makes up our wonderfully interesting marketplace. It’s also not something that can be or should be explained with a damn formula.

AP: Istanbul, Turkey 03:20 GMT

Matt Corey, Commissioner of local TAR nerd conclave has refused to take any interviews since a Washing Reporter uncovered documents linking him with a number of off-shore TAR accounts, some with balances topping $11.79USD.

Travis County Assistant District Attorney, Dan Stenchmeister has issued a statement that Matt is only “a person of interest” in a seemingly unrelated open investigation relating to the disappearance of 3 Buggaboo strollers from a Cedar Park shopping center.

ADA Stenchmeister would not confirm if he believed that Matt was / is involved with an international organized TAR crime syndicate but did admit that Matt “might talk a little too much shit for his own damn good”.

Although Corey has left the country, his office has faxed in his official resignation to the home TAR Nerd offices, which will take effect immediately. His office refused several requests for an interview.

Matt’s wife Sandy was quoted as saying “Don’t expect me to pick up his slack, he’s just too lazy to do it and I hate Excel”. It would seem that the fate of future TAR events are up in the air until a new Commish is named.

According to the rules, a new Commish is named through a Rube-Goldberg-esque selection process that involves ping-pong balls, darts, 2 gallons of cottage cheese and 9 ferrets.

PETA is still reeling from the last election.

I can’t stop talking about how many invitations I’m getting from people on new social networks here and there. It’s just insane and I know I’m part of the majority of internet users who are experiencing the same thing.

The problem is, most of these sites are useful, have innovative features and add value to some degree. The frustration is, they’re all still disconnected and just managing them is a nightmare.

I found yet another one today, Dopplr.com which lets you publish your travel dates and locations so you and your friends / contacts can meet up on the road. Well, dammit, I like that. I think it’s useful. Crap. Now I have ANOTHER social networking site that I need to:
1. Make a whole new account
2. Populate a profile
3. Upload my address book
4. Invite a few hundred people
5. Manage ad infinitum…

But, it’s cool! Ugh. I’m reaching critical mass here. I didn’t sign up yet due to my ongoing social-network-participation-agony.

In 2007 we saw some very cool evolutions in social networking. That was the trickle, 2008 is the flood. I predict we’ll have about 16 months of merging, launching, crashing, hacking, mass-opt-ins, mass-opt-outs and general mayhem as some new kids come out of the blocks with Facebook-killers, new all-tie-in platforms (where it connects all networks together) and some old-timers either evolve or die.

Summer 2009, the landscape of social networks will be completely different than it is now. We’ll have seen more of the underbelly (bad people doing bad things to good people and it gets on the news), the mergers, the acquisitions, the IPOs, the busts and what is left standing will be likely about 3 major players that have sucked in all of the cool widgets, add-ons, functions and combined into social megaliths (Imagine Linked-In, Evite, ofoto, Dopplr, twitter, youtube, facebook and blogger in one. Then add some other junk in there and swirl it around).

The question was, how will they monetize? Funny thing is, these sites and where they will ultimately end up are the reverse evolutions of the ancient gated communities that made up the ‘net back in the early days. It’s just that the content is going to be more user generated. But the money, where does that come from? I know that having all these eyeballs in one place is important but I fail to see the revenue model beyond ad sales. If Facebook is worth $1B, I’d like to see the plan that shows how it’s going to support that value.

Comcast simply cut off a number of big bandwidth users a while back without notice. While I expect that sort of behavior from companies that don’t care about this things called “customer service” it does come back to bite them. The issue was a small number of people were hogging up all the pipes. I know a bit about networks and know that a few chatty systems can make the network suck for everyone else. So what they did might not have been all that bad had they simply had a policy in place that people would actually read, charge for tiers of service, and give notice if someone is maxing out their pipe thereby degrading the experience for everyone else. But, they marketed their service as unlimited and therefore, in effect, lied.

Time Warner seems to have learned a lesson from Comcast in that they are aware that certain people are jamming the pipes and that small group should have to pay for their usage. They may actually go about it in a smart way by changing their service to a tiered system where if you’re downloading 40GB a month, you pay for it. I see that as reasonable, hosting providers have done that since day one, you use X amount, you pay per GB at a certain level. It’s simple and I don’t see an issue there, you just have to be above board about it.

We all know exactly what traffic type is clogging up the pipes, its Torrents. People are downloading movies which is another thing altogether. When Comcast tried to play it down as “traffic shaping” they essentially used QoS to put Torrents at the bottom of the IP priority list which is effective but deceptive.

I believe that there should be QoS with voice and network services (ICMP, DHCP, DNS etc) at the top, then HTTP, chat, and everything else at the bottom. But picking one particular protocol or packet type is not the solution because Torrents will evolve and possibly pretend to be HTTP or even voice traffic and we’ll be in a world of hurt.

I’m willing to pay for specific services from my ISP like a dedicated IP, guaranteed bandwidth and more than anything else, consistent connectivity. If I’m subjected to rational QoS, fine. But playing with the network and lying about it is not ok.

I expect to see TW use this as a marketing tool to sell more bandwidth. If the demand goes up, someone has to pay for it and if a few hundred / thousand torrent pigs make my service suck, they need to pay more to subsidize infrastructure upgrades.

This article on how Borders is about to embark on their own website now that their agreement with Amazon is over, bums me out. I honestly believe that our bookstores are in real peril and may perish is something is not done. What that something is is beyond me. But I like going to book stores, I’ts always relaxing to go in there, flip through the titles, discover things. It’s a human experience that I would be very sad to see go away.

That said, people who work in books stores are not the same folks that worked there 20 years ago. I went to Borders a few weeks ago and had a hard time finding an employee who had been there long enough to even know where all the sections were let alone if they carried a certain book. And, they were all surly too.

This does not bode well.

The Internets were a twitter today with Jobs going to the top of the mountain and coming back to the herds with news of shiny new goodies. You head the swooning, here’s some reality.

Apple TV. While Apple has the best UI around in all their offerings, it’s locked down tighter than a frogs ass. And for some reason, people are happy with that. I have a serious issue with no support for xvid and divx. You see, these new video cameras that don’t use tape, they often encode to Divx or Xvid. Why must I convert my video yet again when you could very simply use a codec that I already installed? Why, pray tell?

Sure my xobx has a bad UI and it’s not great at the internets, but I can watch movies from other computers in the house in most formats. At least all the formats I use. And I use a lot of them.

This is where Apple went the wrong way and they could have fixed it with 3 simple things. If they did these 3 simple things, they would own the living room.
1. The form factor just intimidates people. People want to see something that looks like a DVD player. Humor them.
2. Include a DVD player. In fact, include a BluRay / HD-DVD writer / reader. Even better, offer a standardized slot so you can put in a selection of players / recorders to suit the buyer. Someone just wants to play DVDs? Great, it’s cheap and ads little cost to the device. They want to upgrade? Pull out the old one, put in a new one.
3. Include codecs people use like DivX and XviD. It’s not just for pirates anymore.

This device would rule the world and it’s so simple to make that jump…

Ok, now the Air. Oh, it’s so wafer thin. I like the sveltness of it. I was a bit cross about it being completely sealed like an ipod but I’ll admit, I get that they did have to do a lot to get all that to fit in there. Still, once again, it’s a case of Apple wanting you to buy a whole new device if you want to upgrade anything. So, when the battery dies, you dont buy a battery, it goes in the shop, you pay for service and I guarantee that the battery is not cheap. You want more RAM? Buy a new computer. New hard drive? Buy a new computer. See how that might get kind of expensive?

Time capsule is nifty (again not user serviceable) and I think it’s a good way to get people to back up their data. I’m fanatical about backups but most people, not so much. But lets be frank here, it’s a NAS with a backup / restore client. No new technology here. Just a common product with awesome ID and UI. This is why they can charge you 2 to 3 times PC prices for machines with the same specs. Pretty things are expensive. That said, my DV6780se is one sexy laptop and cheap to boot.

The iPhone update was hysterical to witness. It’s like people were waiting for Santa to deliver them goodies through their phones. The mapping tool is nifty and would be useful. I’ll also applaud the access to web apps but there was no way the platform would be viable without letting people add programs to it.

After using an iPhone I felt like an ass whipping out my stylus to input text.

You rarely see him in front of the camera but in those rare moments you get a little bit of wisdom. Or, just straight up angry old dude rage. Which is good for a Sunday night.

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I happen to disagree…

(Warning, nerdy content. If you don’t care about hawt Cisco action, move along)
I give up. I’ve gone through 4 wireless routers in 4 years all for the same reason. I have to reboot them constantly. I don’t get it, how can a few laptops jumping on and off the WLAN cause a router to lock up so quick? It’s not the computers, I’ve changed laptops a number of times and even bought a 10/100/1000 Netgear blue metal “prosumer” model to run the LAN traffic. Still, I get on, do work, put the computer to sleep and when it wakes up, poof, no WLAN. It’s not just my network, I see this everywhere. People are used to having to reboot their wireless access points. How is this acceptable? We’ve had WLAN for years and we’re still kicking out routers once a day?

Since my home network is a critical part of my work and play, I have to nip this in the bud. Since consumer grade hardware seems to be garbage at any price, it’s time to go pro. Cisco so the rescue.

I’m looking at the Cisco 851W and 871W SOHO wifi routers. They are kind of a one-stop-shop for remote offices when you actually care if the office stays on-line and don’t want to rouse the noght security guy to reboot your router…grrr…

These are not rebranded Linksys units, these are full-on IOS executing routers with stateful firewalls. Hot geek manna. I have a call in to my fav Cisco dealer, Mandy, to see if she can hook me up with a unit. I hear that Cisco will even remote-configure it for you. I can’t ask for much more. Well, a quick refresher on IOS might help…

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I spent the last few days at CES talking to people about our product but made a fair amount of time to see some great stuff. There was so much to see it truly blew my mind and I cant remember 90% of it but I had a few highlights.

First, Windows Home Server looks very cool and might make Vista tolerable for me. Or at least give it company. The features are great and I like the idea of backups for all the systems.

Sony seems to have given up on fighting with Apple over players and now makes a ton of iPod playing equipment. I guess that’s the way of the world. Since Sony managed to win the HD DVD wars with BluRay, they must be feeling like they can let go of their ATRAC players.

The 150″ plasma was very disconcerting. Great, but so huge it freaked me out.

Pioneer’s new receivers are pretty and do even more neat stuff. Might have to look at it for replacing the Rotel I’m not loving. The not dealing with HDMI in spite of having the ports is a big no-no for me.

I think Dice Electronics came up with a great fix for integrating ipods by using an FM intercept that also sends the titles to the radio over RDS. It’s completely slick and going in the A3.

I was blow away by the number of GPS players. I think Garmin is sweating.

Cobra has some new radar detectors that are making me regret buying the Escort X50 that seems to be grumpy in the morning and false Ka band for no reason… Then it settles down. Annoying. The Cobra people were very cool, I like their use of LCD displays, it’s also very slick.

I spotted some amazing GPS tracking gadgets that let you track anything you put it in, even without line-of-sight. Could be used for evil, thats the only downside. It works nationwide wherever there’s cell signal. The demo the guy gave me was stunning. It’s CHEAP too. $250 for the unit and $10 a month. How about never losing your bag again. How about knowing where your car is, always. It’s the future, people.

But, a real highlight was the BMW Pit Lane Park exhibit.

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My video is not as good as some that other people took but I do my part to add to the video universe. The setup there is great. Not cheesy at all. The F1 was there on site and the sound it made starting up sent me into ecstasy. The smoking of tires was kind of ok, the sound was the sexy bit. And there was a lot of sound.

CES is sensory overload. I was so blown away the whole time I had no concept of anything outside of the event. I went in to the CES zone. I’m just now getting a clear head.

I will not that I had no desire to smoke at all. I was that tuned in. Or out.

I’ve always like the Wired and Tired lists in Wired magazine. I quit reading wired a few years back when they got way too full of themselves and were writing about things so far off in the sci-future it was more like a slick version of Popular Science for democrats and a useful magazine on things that I care about. Like real technology that could exist in the not too terribly far off future. Nanobots making skyscrapers might happen but I’m more concerned with solid state hard drives and Vista being a POS OS. I’m still not buying a Mac (My new HP DV6000se is wicked cool).

So, I just caught the Washington Post’s In and Out list for 08 which I found to be very cool since it’s actually hip and interesting. First, I had no idea they actually made those springy stilts called Powerizers… If you look for them on YouTube you’ll see why they’re going to make skateboarders look like welcome guests in parks and malls around the country. We’ll also see a lot of injuries associated with it, much like the kite tube.

As cool, hip and in-the-know as you think you are, you’ll not get through the list without having to hit up Wikepedia more than a few times to figure out what they’re talking about. Along the way I managed to learn quite a bit about what is about to be a huge miserable fad, and what cities will be under water in 20 years. You’ll not be surprised by that one.

There were some stinkers in there too. Staycation? You mean not going anywhere on a holiday break? Yeah, thats what people involuntarily do when they’re broke. Don’t give it a name. Oh, and Sex is out while naps are in? Naps? Seriously? Well, the majority of the list is cool.

Sure, 7 days being smoke free has it’s immediate advantages. First, I can SMELL. That’s kind of neat. For you non-smokers, you take for granted being able to smell. It’s actually a useful sense. Smokers lose a lot of it. You’re pretty much relegated to garlic, BO and dog farts. Beyond that you’re huffing through your nose to see if the milk is high. It’s still a gamble. I also taste things again. It’s a sense you don’t lose as much as smell but things taste right again which is cool.

The downside is, of course, the terrible withdrawals. We’re using the patches but with the patch you go right down to about 1/2 the junk you’re used to and it’s brutal for a week. Then, you get used to it and can taper down again in a few weeks. It’s nasty business, the lot of it. The worst part is how easy the temper goes. Good things my filing cabinet is steel from the 50′s or it would have some marks that need explaining.

Last night we decided to chill out and watch movies. Movie 1 was No Country of Old Men, which is a soul crusher. The Cohen brothers don’t give you a damn thing. It’s just pain, more pain, and, yeah. Pain again. I hope it gets the award. Is there one for spirit destroying cinema?

Movie 2 in out double feature was Atonement. Again, no redemption at all. It’s just a long bummer. You think it can’t get worse, you are then told “oh, yeah, that nice stuff we just showed you, we take that back, it’s actually all death and horror”. Still, a good film. Not as good at No Country but worth the watch.

We once submitted ourselves to a nasty duo of films that nearly sent us to the valium bottles. We sat down for The House of Sand and Fog followed by 21 Grams. I don’t think we spoke a word until the next morning.

Yeesh.

Some days you get pelted with NO. For example, I had to quickly get on the stick to get to CES. Tomorrow. My Wells Fargo Rewards points are completely useless (they’re losing me next month, terrible rewards program) and AA, well, they seem to have issues letting people use rewards for useful flights. So I had to pay cash and use Expedia.

Yes, yes, I know, it’s the day before CES and it’s the biggest show in Vegas and it’s impossible… Still, my status on AA should give me some access. Obviously not. Hertz is completely sold out so my points were useless there too. Even on their super-premium hotness cars. No love, so I got a “full size” from some ultra-discount car rental place that I think might be the one they make fun of in those Avis ads… We’ll see. I have low hopes.

I managed to get on with Continental where I get no points and fly in the wrong direction to get to LV. Silly but it’s the cheapest flight. SWA wanted $700 for a RT to LV. WTF? Southwest is a discount carrier and it’s more expensive than everyone else.

I’ll be taking the new HP laptop on it’s first trip, it’s quite excited and promised not to pee in my bag. If I can get my ipod to keep a charge I might have a decent flight.

Oh man, I remember icy roads. I spun my mom’s brand new Audi Quatro V8 on a wicked iced over road in Santa Fe back in the early 90s. I don’t know how I didn’t hit anything other than soft snow… They show the top speed as 250KM (155MPH) but I know for a fact it goes faster than that.

You have to feel for the driver here. You they have no idea how to stop. Actually, I dont think they could DO anything at all to stop it. What I find sad is that this ended up more like a big pinball game and no one left unscathed. It was 73 degrees a few days ago here in Austin. 73. Yeah.

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CES is coming and I am crying cause I won’t be there. Boooo!

But, I will get to enjoy a whole new world of neat stuff while CES will not bring us the Great Convergence Technology That Fixes Everything, so I’ll inevitably be disappointed.

Still, a 32GB flash drive is very nice.

Then, you just have to love a few of the “cute” design items that come out.

My lovely wife is into cars. She knows more about cars than most guys who think they know about cars do. So, we’re watching Top Gear last night and we’re admiring Jeremy Clarkson tearing up a new Gallardo Cabrio and he’s talking about it having 510 horsepower. So, she asks me “what exactly is horsepower”.

I know quite a bit about cars and could out-nerd most people on some pretty technical aspects of the automotive world. But being able to articulate in a layman sort of way what horsepower IS, is hard for anyone. Particularly someone who isn’t a physicist. But I gave it a shot talking about torque and how horsepower is a function of torq and time, power and work, RPM, gearing etc. And I ended up confusing myself in the process because HP is actually quite murky and isn’t a great measure of power anyway. So I Googled it to see if there was a way someone could grok it without having to visualize a shaft rotating and a time scale.

What ensued was, I was damn close on describing HP and I managed to help her understand it and why a 500 HP Mustang is teh sux0r and a 200 HP Elise is hawt.

We did not make any resolutions this year. Ok, that’s a lie. We did, but its co cliche to make a resolution I hate to call it that. I decided to pick a memorable date to change some things.

First, my wife and I are two of many many people to coincidentally stop smoking on the same day. As it happens, many people quit each day simply because they dropped dead of tobacco related diseases. (motivation).

Each day more people from that list will weaken and pick up a box with great anticipation and guilt. Then pleasure. Then guilt. Then heart disease. You see where this goes.

On the non-corny side, we’re also giving up on plastic shopping bags. At the same time we still buy a palette of water bottles at a time… It’s hard to be green. But we’re giving up part of the evil plastic equation. So that’s good, right?

I just can’t watch the news. I’ve been off it for a while in protest of Daily Show being off air. So i cant balance anything against the faux-news that has seemingly invaded the once decent CNN. Every time I get the TV near the news blocks it’s all Iowa and the morons trying to market those rubes into their votes. Yokels, all of em. Who cares about Iowa? How does Iowa matter in any measure of things in this country? It does not. yet it does. Stupid.

An interesting development did come up around my fav topic, Social Networking. Plaxo is now on sale. I think they should use eBay so it’s all webby and gooey. People like that stuff. I happen to like Plaxo a lot and hope it goes to a nice home where they’ll be good to it and make it do even better tricks than it does now.

CES is also in the air and I’m just so mad that I’m not going to be there. I LOVE CES. Next year I’ll go, it’s just such a nerdy dream show I can’t bear not being there.

I’m happy the holidays are now over and I can get some work done without some mad shopping holiday mess making it hard to travel or get thing done. Now, back to work.