It’s a blog!

I have before said how cool I think this service is, and I found yet another feature I like.

You can set GC to screen callers that have private numbers. You think you’re better than me? BLOCKED!

Of course, I assume, callers can give their name, so when the call rings through to my phone, I can either chose to answer, or send the call to voicemail. There’s also mad powerful spam protection, which is good, since telemarketers seem to ignore the National Do Not Call Registry.

I noticed a new feature on LinkedIn today:

What am I working on?
I appreciate the attempt to mimic Twitter, and Facebook, and probably every other social networking site by now, but I can’t tell you what I’m working on. Sorry.

Old episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, whole episodes live, streaming on NBC.com. WOW!

Click Here

Countdown with Keith Olbermann is definitely my favorite news show. I studied journalism through high school and college, and he’s the only prime-time news anchor that does things right. He’s described as progressive, though some say that’s a smoke screen for the word liberal (I don’t agree that they are one in the same). Basically, he’s the anti-Bill O’Reilly. He’s dedicated to making sure the facts are correct, and he apologizes when he or anyone on his program makes a mistake.

Anyway, his show is online here. Countdown is broken up into segments, the 5 top stories of the day, and a few interstitials. If you click on a segment, it will play the selected one, and then cycle through the other stories. You pretty much get the whole show. I highly suggest you check it out. It’s a great news show, and it’s a good way to distribute the content using Flash.

Good night, and good luck.

Some of you may be aware that my drive in interactive design was sparked by disgust for Myspace.com. I finally deleted my account a while ago, incase anyone didn’t notice. This article was on Digg. International Delete Your Myspace Account Day is 30 January 2008.

I hesitated posting this until I saw this quote from this article on a follow-up to the post //

One blogger has declared January 30th “International Delete Your MySpace Account Day”.
But MySpace doubts that this will have a great impact on their network.
“This Delete-Your-MySpace day is just about being controversial,” Ms Horne said.
“MySpace is still the biggest social networking site in the world.”
In the words of BBC comedian Catherine Tate, MySpace does not look bothered.

My sister recently called me asking how to delete her Myspace account after it apparently sent something inappropriate to my brother. My baby sister never got one, though I tried to get her to initially. I’m glad she has more sense than me, though she’s probably having less fun.

Please, consider it.

It’s official. There is life on Mars. This inconclusive visual evidence absolutely proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt //

There’s a lot of wild theories out there. Some say it’s Sasquatch (a.k.a. Big Foot), some say it’s the virgin (cough) Mary, but I think it’s obvious what it is: Elvis came back from the dead as a reverse vampire and has allied with the saucer people to destroy the meal of dinner from a secret base on an uninhabitable planet.

Update // It’s a rock.



There’s a lot of adjusting to work life. I’ve already had to get used to using two computers, but now, I’ve got a new cell phone, so I will be getting rid of my old one, and thus stop paying $70 a month for service I barely use.

Anyway, I found a service called Grand Central. It was recently purchased by Google. It’s a free service in beta, for the time being. What it does is it gives you a phone number that you can forward to up to 6 phones (i.e. home, office, cell). It also gives you a voicemail that you can check over the phone or online, and it allows you to keep your contacts online, which you can click to call, and it will show up on the recipient’s caller ID as your GC number (in theory, I’ve never tried that particular feature). There’s even a mobile access site for your internet enabled phone.

One potential drawback I’ve noticed is that I seem to get occasional spam calls. I’ve registered the number with do not call, but they still seem to go through. I can set certain numbers to spam, and they won’t ring you, but still allows the caller to leave a message.

I am going to attempt to distribute a new number to everyone in my address book. If you need my new number(s), feel free to email me.

I’ve been getting used to using two computers recently, one at home, with all my photos, music, blah… and one at work, a temporary machine loaded with stuff I’m working on. So, the question was, how to keep all my bookmarks and rss feeds syncd across computers, so I don’t come home and have to look at how many unread posts I’ve already read.

And, surprised, the inexpensive alternatives come from the free platform, Firefox, and the mammoth, Google.

First is Google Bookmarks, enhanced by Google Browser Sync. What it does is automatically sync the bookmarks from your computer in your Firefox browser, and updates when you add or delete bookmarks on Google account, then when you open Firefox on another computer, it updates the bookmarks there. So your bookmarks are right there on the bookmark menu wherever you may be.

The other is Google Reader, enhanced by Google Reader Notifier. Google Reader is a nifty way to keep all your blog/news feeds in one, convenient place on the web, that you can access from anywhere. Google Reader Notifier sits at the bottom of your Firefox browser with a clean, simple display of how many unread posts you have.

As far as Google Reader goes, I’m not too thrilled that there seems to be no way to separate feeds by friend’s and industry blogs, however, I’m thrilled that it displays Flash Video from YouTube, and the like.

Ther requirements for all this fun are a Gmail account, and the Firefox browser, two things most of you should have by now.

The other cool thing I found was imap mail, which is an alternative to pop3, which is what you’ve probably used if you use Apple mail, or some other mail program. Gmail doesn’t support imap, which is why I’ve fully switched to using one of those paid email accounts I get with my domain name.

But, if you’re so inclined, you could get a dotMac account and get all of this stuff a little more seamlessly.

I’ve never been good at fantasy sports. I always pick the people that fly under the radar, hoping they will turn out to be the next rookie Ben Roethlisberger, but that rarely ever happens.