In other new, huge jellyfish, weighing up to 200 kilograms, are wreaking havoc to the fishing business in the waters between Japan and China. Some blame global warming.
Year: 2005
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Thanksgivings
This year we decided to stay close to home for the holidays. Partially out of necessity as we’re going to be shelling out big bucks for a kitchen remodeling in the next month or so and need to keep our costs down but also out of a need just to relax a little and catch a breather before the Christmas Holidays hit us with full force.
We weren’t even going to have a Thanksgiving dinner but Tyler insisted so Izumi went out and got a small turkey and gave it a whirl to great success. The bird was excellent and with sides of stuffing, brussell sprouts, and cranberry sauce, it was a real treat. We popped a bottle of this year’s Beaujolais (warning: tacky flash site) and had a feast.
On Friday, just because we had never seen it in person, we decided to join the hoards at the mall for the annual running of the
bullsbargin hunters. While we didn’t make it by the 5 AM openings of some of the stores (we didn’t wake up until 6:30 and there was a mix-up when Izumi navigated us to Pleasant Hill instead of Pleasanton) we did get a sense of the madness at a local toystore. We saw a mad dash for the last box of 100 piece Lego sets for $9.99 – little chipped, “That’s ok, I’ll take it!” says the crazed lady.The line to pay snaked around to the back of the store but we were there just for a Transformer which we had promised to pick up for him the day before. He had lent it to a “friend” of his that is also in the middle of moving away. His “friend” then “misplaced it” and it looks like the Razorclaw is in a box somewhere on the way to Ohio. Tyler was devastated and there was a valuable lesson in there somewhere about giving up your material goods to the great karma God in the sky but there we were, back at KB Toys for another fix. Anyway, because our Christmas shopping is out of the way (thank you Amazon!) we could afford to be laid back about the hunt and just enjoyed the conversation.
There was a running narrative from the lady behind us who was giving us the lowdown on all the toys we passed in the aisle. Did you know that Mattel has updated the classic card game Uno with a new variant called Uno Attack that shoots out cards at you from a machine? Seems like a thinly veiled way of getting a toy shooter into households that don’t approve of toy guns for their kids, “Look mom, can I have this? It’s just a card game.” Kid later mods it to shoot out poker chips or something and has some real fun. Lesson to teach basic math skills through card game, out the window.
Also overheard was the conversation from the stock room. Inside piece of market data. The Darth Vader Voice-Changer Helmets are not selling well. Maybe for the kids they aren’t. I just read a review on Amazon and it looks like this might be a runaway hit for insecure middle managers:
The mask arrived at the perfect time. Morale was low, and my employees were starting to undermine everything I told them. I found their lack of faith disturbing, so I scheduled an emergency meeting for my team. Showing up five minutes late — waiting until the tension was thick — I made my dramatic entrance into the room. Wearing all black and my Darth Vader Voice Changer Helmet, I could literally see beads of sweat instantly form on their foreheads. My imposing visage made my statement clear — I was the boss.
Sounds like a scene out of The Office.
We finished up our morning with some well-deserved caffeinated drinks and headed home. A couple more stops where we picked up an industrial-sized dustpan (don’t ask), some handmade soap, and some other knick-knacks and we were done for the day.
Later I’ll post about the rest of the weekend which included a trip to the Mystery Spot and Santa Cruz.
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Richard Scarry’s Cultural Commentary
Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever Flickr user Alan Taylor finds some interesting differences between his 1963 edition of Richard Scarry’s book and the more recent version he got for his kids. Annotated photos show point out the details. The “brave hero” rescues the “beautiful screaming lady” in 1963 but in 1991 its the “fire fighter” rescues the “cat in danger.”
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Original Content from Yahoo
Last week I met one of the editors of Yahoo Sports and he gently reminded me that Kevin Sites and Richard Bangs are not the first instances of original reporting coming from Yahoo. Yahoo Sports has had it’s own exclusive analysts providing original coverage for several years and have blazed many of the trails faced by new media companies such as securing credentials for events and getting access for interviews.
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Remix as a Business Model
My friend Alex has the coolest job. His company, Rock River Music (throw on the ‘phones, cool streaming music on their site), puts together compilations of music for retail stores. You know that CD you saw by the register at The Gap? That’s a collection of tracks selected, licensed, and packaged by Rock River.
The LA Times has a piece on them which gave you a peek
at their business. Rock River charges the store about $4 per CD and the store sell the CD for about $15. They can also use the CDs as a promotional giveaway to their best customers. Talk about cheap advertising, this stuff not only pays for itself, it turns a profit.I loved making mix tapes when I was in college, everything from the song selection & sequence to the tape covers. In the digital age when it only takes a few minutes to rip a disk, it’s a lost art. Alex has found a way to do this for a living. Nice work if you can get it.
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RSS for Data Synchronization
Exciting news out of Redmond. Ray Ozzie is bringing his experience and approach to synchronization that he applied to his earlier products Lotus Notes and Groove to Microsoft’s implementation of RSS. We can look for future products such as their hosted Live products suite to include these synchronization features and Ray has published a post which points to an FAQ of these new extensions that Microsoft is proposing. Simple Sharing Extensions will add to the RSS specification to use it to do multi-directional synchronization of data sources. From the FAQ:
What kinds of scenarios does SSE enable?
Just as RSS enables the aggregation of information from a variety of data sources, SSE enables the replication of information across a variety of data sources. Data sources that implement SSE will be able to exchange data with any other data source that also implements SSE.
From the user’s perspective, this means that you will be able to share your data (such as calendar appointments, contact lists, and favorites) across all of your devices and with anyone else that you choose, regardless of infrastructure or organization.
SSE is particularly useful for scenarios in which there are multiple masters and/or asynchronous updates. For example, SSE could be used to share your work calendar with your spouse—either of you could enter new appointments, even if not currently connected. Similarly, SSE could be used to replicate a set of calendar entries among a group of people, each working in a different company and using different infrastructure.
To do this SSE, “introduces concepts such as per-item change history (to manage item versions and update conflicts) and tombstones (to propagate deletions, and un-deletions).” Microsoft is clearly taking the lead of embracing and extending the functionality of RSS. I saw a little of this back in June when they demonstrated a hacked version of an RSS reader that added sorting widgets to an RSS feed. I believe Microsoft is actively looking to RSS as the proxy for Exchange in the open and standards-based world of Web 2.0.
But the best part is that these extensions are going to be released under a Creative Commons license so that their initial work can be expanded by third parties and avoid vendor lock-in.
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Are we there yet?
So if Microsoft and Yahoo are cross-linking their two IM networks and now AOL and Microsoft are set to announce a link up on Monday, does that mean that someone with Microsoft Messenger may be able to see both the AOL and Yahoo IM networks?
We’ll have to wait for the conference call on Monday.
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The $100 laptop
The MIT Media Lab has released photos of its $100 laptop designed for children in developing nations. It features a handcrank for back up power in rural areas, wireless access via a peer-to-peer mesh technology, and (much to the disappointment of Appple & Microsoft) runs Linux.
From the FAQs:
Why do children in developing nations need laptops?
Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to “learn learning” through independent interaction and exploration.Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What’s wrong with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencils—kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to “own” something—like a football, doll, or book—not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.Initial orders are being negotiatiated with Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria with each government purchasing at least 1 million units each. They are expected to start production early next year.