Category: Geek

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So Say We All

Speaking of podcasts, it seems I’ve taken my first steps into a larger world. Thanks to the group blog post regarding Battlestar Galactica, myself, Jen Segrest and Dave Caolo got together after the BSG season premiere and did a quick audio commentary of the episode. We’re not sure if it will turn into a regular thing just yet, but it sure was fun! The podcasts lasts a mere 13 minutes (ha!) as Dave, Jen and I discuss subjects including our picks of the final cylon models, connections to the original Battlestar Galactica, and Dave’s apparent fear of boxing and deep emotional turmoil.

If you’ve not watched the season premier of Battlestar Galactica season 4 yet, you’ll want to hold off on this until you catch up. Spoilers do not a great podcast make. But if you’ve watched and are in the mood for three geek’s views on all things sci-fi, then give it a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Listen in a browser window here.

Download the podcast here.

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Podcast To Oblivion

Summary: The length of some audio podcasts are increasing at an alarming rate. Podcasters should learn to master the fine art of editing or risk losing large portions of their listening audience. I provide some helpful tips to help them avoid pitfalls and offer some anecdotal evidence on the subject.

Even if you read no further than the above summary, you’ll have a pretty good feel for what this post is about, where it’s going and what will be discussed. Unfortunately, this is more than I can say of many of today’s most popular audio podcasts. I’ve noticed a few alarming habits that podcasters are adopting that have put me, and others like myself, off from listening to their content. By writing about these trends, I hope podcast producers will look at the criticism objectively and perhaps find some room for improvement.

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ~ Thomas Jefferson


Rambling Ratholes

Almost a year ago, I started listening to the excellent Mac-based audio podcast by Leo Laporte and company called MacBreak Weekly. MBW is a “round table” discussion between Leo and a cast of regulars including Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko and others. I enjoyed MacBreak Weekly for a long time, until I noticed the length of the broadcast kept creeping up and up. The hosts would often wander off on tangents that often had nothing to do with the subject of the discussion. Leo proudly dubbed these tangents “ratholes” and they even came up with a little musical jingle for the things. They were cute at first, but soon grew annoying. When episode number 70 hit 112 minutes back in December, I had had enough.

The length of MacBreak Weekly episodes has been rising slowly for some time, and I don’t think they even realize it. I love a good 20 minute discussion about Apple IIc’s as much as the next fanboy, but there are limits. Laporte seems to have forgotten how to edit his podcasts and the result are bloated episodes. In addition, TWiT doesn’t even supply an episode summary until a week after its initial broadcast. Podcaster tip: if you can’t be bothered to listen to your own content and post a detailed summary of what you’ll be talking about for the next 1.5 hours, I can’t be bothered to listen.

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche


Can I Buy Shares of GRUBR?

Another one of my favorite podcasts is The Talk Show with Dan Benjamin and John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame. Like MacBreak Weekly, episodes of The Talk Show have been getting longer. Unlike MacBreak Weekly, the creators of The Talk Show are firm believers in editing, which results in more “cake” and less “frosting”. And although the running length is increasing faster than that of MacBreak Weekly, Benjamin & Gruber haven’t yet reached the dreaded average running length of 1.5 – 2 hours that Laporte and company regularly flirt with.

Dan Benjamin says that they typically record 1.5 to 2x as much material as they need and then edit out all the non-essential bits to arrive at their final running time. They don’t set a time limit for The Talk Show, but they do make a conscious effort to bring listeners the interesting bits and leave the rest on the cutting room floor. This being said, I still think set running times are a good idea. Podcaster tip: It’s much easier for someone to plan to listen to a podcast from week to week when its length is fixed. A great example of this is NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Each episode is 47 minutes long and so I know exactly where I’ll be when it starts, and when it ends. If you can’t say what you have to say in a set time, consider editing it down or breaking it up into parts.

“If you bring that sentence in for a fitting, I can have it shortened by Wednesday.” ~ Hawkeye Pierce, M*A*S*H


The Butter Zone

So how long should your average audio podcast be? Not surprisingly if you ask a podcast producer they’ll probably tell you “As long as it needs to be.” Unfortunately this attitude often reflects the desires of the creator and not those of the audience. People’s time is limited and in this modern age, attention spans wane. I took an informal survey on Twitter to ask people their thoughts about what was the right length for an audio podcast. Fifty people responded and took the poll. Although the tally can’t be considered scientific by any sense of the word, I believe the results are indicative of your average content consumer. Is it really any wonder that people’s preferred length for a podcast is the same as your average television show? Podcaster tip: When podcasts approach the length of feature films, people start to lose interest. It’s better to break long epics up into short, multiple features.

Another portion of the Twitter poll asked respondents where they listen to podcasts the most. A full 46% of them said “On the go” meaning in their cars, while jogging, riding the subway, etc. Sometimes I load up my iPhone with episodes of The Talk Show and listen to them on my morning drive of about 15 minutes. Until the recent spike in length, I was able to get through one episode of TTS in a single day’s commute, which was just perfect. Indeed, the 2005 U.S. census reported that the average American’s commute time to and from work was 25 minutes. Large cities like New York were a bit higher at 38 minutes, but all were under an hour. I think this fact helps explain the audience’s desire for 30-45 minute podcasts. By nature, people love closure and enjoying a podcast that can be completed in a single commute is a satisfying experience.

“Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up.” ~ Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride


To Sum Up

Despite what the creators of podcasts may think, their audience is looking for manageable chunks of auditory content that can be neatly parsed into a daily commute or a walk around the park. Thanks in part to the ever increasing HD sizes of iPods, podcast producers no longer feel restricted by file size, and have a tendency to let their hosts ramble. Unless content creators re-dedicate themselves to producing top-notch, edited podcasts, more and more people will undoubtedly lose interest. When I visit the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly and I spy a running time of 1 hour and 42 minutes, it turns me off. The length is too intimidating to even attempt and I just surf away. From one Mac fan to another, I urge Leo and others like him to take the words of Baltasar Gracian to heart – “Good things, when short, are twice as good.”




Hat tip to Craig for his help with the graphing portion of this post. Me bad with spreadsheets. Craig good.

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Betting On Baltar

If you’re a sci-fi fan then you probably know that this Friday, April 4th, marks the return of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel. After almost an entire year on hiatus, fans everywhere are finally getting ready to embark on the final season of what some have called the best science fiction show on TV. I’m not sure I would go quite that far, but BSG has been great and has successfully kept me wanting more thanks to the wonderful writing, gritty realism and unique characters that Ron Moore created more than four years ago. About the only downside to BSG starting up again is that the final episode won’t likely air until sometime in 2009. Yep, you heard that right, 2009.

Of course, the main puzzle on every geek’s mind is who will turn out to be the final 12th cylon model. My friend Jen Segrest IM’d me the other night to get my thoughts on the matter, which I was all too happy to volunteer. After about a 20 minute debate on the topic, we decided to make a geeky bet about our predictions. She picked Roslin (and you can make your choice in the online poll I created), but for me, there can only be one choice. Over the last four years I’ve wavered on who was and who wasn’t a Cylon, but one name keeps coming back to me – Gaius Baltar. I know you’re thinking that he’s too obvious a choice to be the 12th Cylon, but deep down it makes perfect sense, and here’s why:

• That pesky nuclear explosion – Waaay back at the start of the Galactica mini-series, Gaius Baltar somehow managed to survive an almost ground-zero nuclear blast that not only destroyed his home, but also killed the very first Six. The scene is in the opening credits of every episode and the series has never successfully explained how Gaius managed to come through this devastation with only a single scratch on his forehead.

• Religious symbolism – More than any other character, Baltar has wrestled with the existence of “God” in the BSG universe. At times he’s thought he was God’s instrument, at other times he’s abandoned God. Moore and the show’s directors love to depict him in religious poses even going so far as to make his appearance look like that of Jesus himself. It would be fitting if Baltar turned out to be the so-called “god” of the Cylons.

• The Razor Prophecy – Consider the words of the First Hybrid from the extended DVD version of Razor: “Soon there will be four glorious new awakenings, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of revelation bringing new clarity. And in the midst of confusion they will find that enemies are brought together by an awesome sense of belonging. Enemies now joined as one. The way forward, the once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth is still is in shadow, drawn toward the light, hungering for redemption, that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all – the seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves are of no sin, but in time it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into many. And then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.” Hat tip to Brad Templeton for this.

• He fills “the big shoes” – Some fans have speculated that the final model will be Dualla or Gaeta, or even Doc Cottle, but none of these characters have what it takes to make the final reveal dramatic enough for Ron Moore. No, the only characters that would fullfill those requirements are Adama, Roslin, Baltar and possibly either Starbuck or Cain.

At this point I don’t see it being Starbuck because we’ve already been there and done that. Moore also loves the Roslin character too much to make her a Cylon, and if Adama was a Cylon, then his children would be too and we’d have more than 12 models. We’re left with either Baltar or Cain. There are aspects to Cain’s character that makes her a good choice, but Baltar, IMHO trumps her dramatically.

You might have seen the infamous “Galactica Last Supper” put out last month. The image supposedly contains visual clues as to who the final Cylon is for those smart enough to decipher it. Entertainment Weekly says they’ve figured out that the final Cylon is the “missing figure” in between Tigh and Lee, and suspiciously Moore agrees with this assessment. The problem is I don’t believe a single word that comes out of Ron Moore’s mouth any more. As I learned with the “Starbuck is dead” meme that Moore spread in interviews and podcasts last year, his word counts for nothing, especially when his job is to keep us all guessing. Therefore I don’t believe EW when they say the final Cylon is not in the picture. They’re acting as a conduit for Ron Moore’s misdirection, pure and simple.

In the world of Battlestar Galactica, drama rules the day. Edwards James Olmos has said that the final season of BSG will be “hard to take”, a thought recently confirmed by Katee Sackoff. Will this lead to unpredictable plot twists and upset fans? Oh yes, and I think that’s what has made BSG such a popular show. You never know where it will take you next. Will Baltar be the final Cylon? My gut says yes, but even if he isn’t, I’m sure we’re all in for one hell of a ride. I just hope I don’t have to wait a year to find out if I’ve won this friendly blogger’s bet.

UPDATE: My friend and fellow blogger Dave Caolo chimes in with his thoughts about the final Cylon model. I won’t spoil it for you, you’ll have to go read it yourself. I love this line from his post: “…models like Number 6, Sharon, Lucy Lawless and the dude from Quantum Leap.” Man, he cracks me up!

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Bite Me!

News out of Hollywood today that Kate Beckinsale won’t be returning to star in the next Underworld film titled Underworld: Rise of the Lycans due next year. This one is an origins story centered on the centuries-old feud between the the race of aristocratic vampires known as Death Dealers, and their onetime slaves, the Lycans.

Beckinsale revealed today on a press junket for her new film Snow Angels, that she won’t be returning to don the leather and corset that helped make her famous. She did however say that one day she might pull a “Bruce Willis” and return to the character of Selene when she’s 50. I think I speak for all the geeks out there when I say, “Come on Kate, hit just one more for the team!”. I’m not ashamed to admit the only reason why I eventually watched Underworld: Evolution was because of you-know-who.

The producers have chosen actress Rhona Mitra to replace Beckinsale, but is there really a point? I mean, Mitra may be pretty, and maybe, just maybe she can act, but she’s no Kate Beckinsale. I might be beating a dead vamp, but given the way the box office returns have been sinking for the franchise, I’d think they’d pay Beckinsale whatever she wanted to squeeze into her Death Dealer garb and kick some fuzzy werewolf ass just one more time. Oh well. As they say, all good fangs must come to an end.

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Non Sequitur

It always makes me chuckle to look over my Mint logs from time to time and see how people are finding my blog. I threw up a tweet earlier today with some of the more off-beat search terms people used to find me, and Sebastiaan de With suggested it might make a good community post. Who am I to argue with logic like that? If you were making “teh google” for any of the search terms below, evidently gedblog was the place to be! Who knew?

giada having a baby

airport signal strength is crap

obama issues

sexy penny robinson

airport extreme drops signal 5 feet away

brad & britt’s blog

notable behaviors of leopards

sub sandwiches

bed sheets blowing

sinead o’connor

And the most popular search term (naturally):

big boobs

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Solving Airport’s Mystery Dropouts

Ever since Christmas of 2007, I’ve had a problem. Sudden, seemingly random Airport signal dropouts. These frustrating gaps can last anywhere from a few seconds to minutes or even hours. When this happens, the internet connection in our second story bonus room is lost completely. Sometimes it comes back on its own but lately we’ve had to turn Airport off and then on again to re-acquire the wi-fi signal. The problem has been so bad that I’ve even considered calling an electrician to hard wire the bonus room for CAT-5 cable. A costly and extreme solution to be sure. After two solid months of vexing investigation, I think I’ve solved the mystery. If you’ve been experiencing sudden wi-fi dropouts on your airport enabled Mac, read on.

The Usual Suspects

I’ve been reading about Leopard wi-fi problems for weeks but since our Macbook Pro is still running Tiger, these reports didn’t make sense. Perhaps it was one of the three Airport base stations we have in our home. The Airport Extreme in our home office acts as the router, and there is a second Extreme in the upstairs bonus room itself. When we first moved into the house four years ago, I set up an Airport network with an original UFO base station and an Airport Express in the hallway of the second floor. This served well for years, and when the new Airport Extremes were released, we upgraded but left the Express to boost signal.

All seemed fine until around Christmas when the dropouts started. At first I thought it was a hardware failure and tried swapping the Extremes, changing their location in our home, altering the configuration of the network from b/g compatible to just g, then to n. I tried closing the network, removing the Express completely, etc, etc. Despite all of this, the network dropouts persisted.

Next I tried removing the other Wi-Fi enabled devices in our home. Through a process of elimination I removed our Nintendo Wii, my wi-fi enabled iPhone and even my TiVO from the Airport network. I had suspected the TiVO for a long time since the dropouts seemed to come at set 5 or 6 hour intervals (when the TiVO was downloading program info?) and was disheartened to discover that after dissconnecting the TiVO for a full 2 days, drop outs were still the rule and not the exception.

A Break In the Case

The clue to the solution came when I made the connection between when the problems started and the time of year. I said earlier that the dropouts began shortly after Christmas of 2007, just when other families in the neighborhood would be getting wireless routers and hooking them up. Further clues were provided by my friend Craig Hockenberry that told me he has had similar problems due to interference from his neighbors. From Craig’s home, some 12-18 wireless networks are available. Being at the end of a dead-end street, I always assumed we were pretty isolated from interference from other networks. When we first moved in, my Airport network was alone in the neighborhood. But sure enough, a quick check with AP Grapher this week revealed between 6-8 other wi-fi networks. After a walk around the development, and chatting with neighbors, I was able to create a rough map of the wireless networks that surround our home.

Advances in 802.11 technology have dramatically increased the strength and range of home wi-fi networks. Unfortunately this also increases the potential for interference from one source to the next. You can see in the map to the right that although the house in pink is hundreds of feet away from mine, I still get a 42% signal from their wi-fi router. Craig turned me onto a few articles that talk about potential interference from sources like cordless 2.4 GHz phones, microwaves and especially other 802.11 devices. Suspecting one of these was the culprit, I watched AP Grapher like a hawk and noticed that our Airport channel would sometimes overlap those of our neighbors. When this happened, sure enough, a dropout occurred. In Mac OS X, I have Airport set to select channels automatically, and this turned out to be the root of the problem.

Book ’em Dano!

When Airport is set to automatic, it quickly “scans” across the entire channel range and selects the one with the least interference to use. At the time of the scan, channel 11 may be relatively clear and so all is well. If however, a competing wi-fi network on the same channel turns on, or increases signal strength due to atmospheric conditions, that channel becomes cluttered with radio noise. The protocol for 802.11 is designed in such a way that when this happens, base stations can hold off broadcasting until the interfering signal goes completely away, which could be minutes, hours, or even days. This also accounts for the apparent randomness of the original problem.

Thanks to AP Grapher/Scanner, I can easily see the channels that all my neighbors are using for their networks. Since most wireless routers are set to channel 6 out of the box, avoiding this channel as well as two channels to either side is best. I’ve now set our Airport network to broadcast on channel 9 and I’m very pleased to report that so far, the dropouts that have plagued us low these many weeks, have ended. If you are able to manually set your wireless network channel to something that avoids the channels of those around you, this should do the trick. I foresee a time in the very near future however when the 11 channels currently used by wi-fi in the United States just won’t be enough. Hopefully, refinements in 802.11 technology (or something completely new) will stay one step ahead of the problem and keep us all up and running. Case closed baby!

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The New Face of Barbarella?

In the “could be interesting” category this week, comes news that Rose McGowan has landed the lead role of the infamous space babe Barbarella in a remake due out next year. It seems that director Robert Rodriguez fell head over heels for Rose during the filming of Planet Terror and has asked her to don the space fur, translucent bodices and mile-high hair that Jane Fonda wore back in 1968.

With remakes all the rage these days, it was probably inevitable that someone would eventually get to do Barbarella (no pun intended I swear), but is there really a place for this sensual siren in today’s movie theaters? I can’t remember the last time a mainstream movie was released that built its plot around sex. In the original Barbarella, Fonda got her groove on with just about every inhabitant from here to Orion. Although the Fonda version really teased more than shocked, I have a hard time believing that today’s audiences are looking for anything wilder than what Roger Vadim originally delivered.

Given the fact that Rodriguez as made one of favorite movies of all time, Desperado, I’ll reserve judgement until we get to see the trailer. Then again, he also made Spy Kids, uugh. I just hope he gets Duran Duran to do the soundtrack. That would be strangely prophetic.

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Name That Show!

Growing up, one of the things my friends and I did to keep ourselves amused was hold mock game shows. Our favorite was a play on Name that Tune called Name that Show. Each week, a different kid in the neighborhood was in charge of taping theme music from anywhere from 10-30 TV shows. We’d then get together on Saturday afternoon and see if we could stump each other with our selections. We even gave bonus points out for quick answers.

So now I’m pleased to present Name that Show, in blog format! Were you a TV junkie growing up? Grab a pencil and paper and get ready for a romp down memory lane. For extra fun, grab your significant other and see who scores best!

How to score: For each one of these TV theme shows you guess correctly, give yourself 10 points. Some shows are more difficult than others and have 5 additional bonus points if you guess before the time indicated (or just at all). When you’ve finished all ten shows, check the inviso-text answer key at the end and tally your points. Then post your total in the comment thread (unless it’s too embarrassing to share) for the rest of the world to see. Have fun and let me know what you think (too hard? too easy?).

• • •

Action/Adventure
1974-1978

Of course you knew this one, right? But did you guess within the first 35 seconds? If so, give yourself +5 bonus points for being a major geek of the 70’s. But before you vacuum the shag carpet, invite the friends over, bust out the fondue and get all cocky, you better think again. They only get harder from here.

• • •

Comedy
1968-1970

I’ll admit I didn’t watch this show in first run since I wasn’t alive then, but I came to know and love it in re-run heaven. Anyone from New England might have a slight advantage here, but I suspect the humor from this beloved show based on a hit film of the same name is universal. Give yourself +5 points if you guessed it at all. Yeah, it’s that hard.

• • •

Documentary
1976-1982

One of my favorite TV shows of all time, and if you know me, then that’s enough of a hint already. Even if you never watched this show first hand as a kid, I’m willing to bet you still know what it is thanks to the distinctive theme music. The track includes a bit of narration at the end that might help those in the dark.

• • •

Action/Crime
1975-1976

This short-lived TV show of the 70’s spawned a bunch of siblings and its music might initially be confusing to the uninitiated. However, if you’re quick on the draw and guess this one before the main theme starts at the 20 second mark, you’ve well earned those +5 bonus points.

• • •

Adventure
1978-1979

I just love the funk that oozes from this groovy 70’s theme song. This one will probably be either instantly recognizable or you won’t guess it at all. For those who manage to snag the solution, there’s an extra 5 points in it for you if you guessed correctly within the first 10 seconds. A tall order perhaps, but not for fans of this classic show.

• • •

Mystery
1977-1979

This childhood favorite aired on ABC and had a memorable opening credits sequence. Chances are the name of this one is right on the tip of your tongue, so give yourself an extra 5 bonus points if you managed to uncover the clues and identified this riddle correctly.

• • •

Adventure/Sci-Fi
1983-1984

Quite possibly the hardest show on the list, it aired for only one season on ABC. You know those shows that TV executives decide rip-off from popular movies? Yeah, this is one of those. If you know what movies were blowing away audiences in 1982, then it might not be game over (no Googling!). Five bonus points await you for guessing this one correctly.

• • •

Mystery/Thriller
1970-1973

This spooky show aired for three seasons in the 70’s and managed to walk away with two prime-time Emmy awards in the process. It was so scary, I wasn’t even allowed to watch it as a kid, which was just fine with me. The bit of narration at the end might help you identify it, but perhaps not.

• • •

Sci-Fi
1970-1971

I told you these would be difficult didn’t I? And you thought this was gonna be a cake walk. A full 5 extra points await you if you correctly name the British import with the swinging theme music heard here.

• • •

Drama/Crime
1977-1983

I shouldn’t even award bonus points for this one it’s so easy. If you don’t know the name of this show, then chances are you’re too young to remember a time before remote controls, CDs and cheesy cop shows. You’ll need to be quick to get these 5 bonus points though, keep an eye on the second hand!

• • •

The Amazing Inviso-Answer Key

Got all your guesses written down and bonus points ready to tally? Then roll your cursor over the block of text below for the answers to this edition of Name That Show. It’s like magic!

• Show 1 – The Six Million Dollar Man
• Show 2 – The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
• Show 3 – In Search Of…
• Show 4 – S.W.A.T.
• Show 5 – The Amazing Spiderman
• Show 6 – The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
• Show 7 – Automan
• Show 8 – Rod Serling’s Night Gallery
• Show 9 – UFO
• Show 10 – CHiP’s

How Did You Score?

145 TV Junkie / You know all the words to The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
120 – 140 Couch Potato / You can name all six Charlie’s Angels
80 – 115 Armchair Warrior / You probably remember who shot J.R.
30 – 70 Average Joe / “Porkchops & applesauce” is just what’s for dinner
0 – 20 Bookworm / You don’t even know how many castaways there were

‘The Ultimate Computer’ Remastered

Being the huge Trek geek that I am, I’ve been eagerly awaiting two Original Series episodes in the newly remastered HD format. The first one, The Enterprise Incident has yet to air and should be impressive when it finally does. The second episode is a fan favorite through and through and it makes its debut this weekend.

The Ultimate Computer is noteworthy for its many action sequences and edge-of-your-seat drama centered around a computer that is put in control of the Enterprise during war game exercises. Some Trek Remastered episodes have been more successful than others. I have high hopes for The Ultimate Computer, and judging from these images released from Ain’t It Cool News, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.







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Real Life Wait Cursor

This funky watch has to be the coolest thing to come out of Korea since Kalbi. A company named Funshop has released this wonderful, retro accessory much to the delight of pixel geeks everywhere. I especially love how the face is true to form and forgoes any numbers which would only detract from the pixelish illusion. Not sure if you can order it yet, but even if you could, you’d have to be a huge nerd to actually wear it in public. Something tells me this would be better off on a shelf as a great conversation piece, at least until they come out with the inevitable Marble of Doom inspired pocket watch.

Hat tip to: NOTCOT.

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That Shit Won’t Fly at Macworld

So Editor Brian Lam and the crew at Gizmodo.com apparently pulled a slew of pranks at the C.E.S. expo in Las Vegas this week. They got their hands on a gadget called the TV-B-Gone that lets you turn off virtually any TV remotely and went around the show switching off all manor of flat panel displays right in the middle of presentations. As one might imagine, show organizers, sponsors and naturally presenters were furious and have called for firings as well as banning Gizmodo from future admission at C.E.S. We know how much Brian likes to have fun, but after viewing the video that they themselves made, I find myself pretty upset.

The people who attended C.E.S. went to see the very stuff that Gizmodo screwed with. If I had been in the audience and monitors started blacking out every time I sat down, I’d be raising bloody hell to the organizers too. This group of bloggers saw fit to waste people’s time and money on a puerile joke that that isn’t even that funny. David Pogue wrote this week that Gizmodo crossed the line and I happen to agree with him.

“Why do the exhausted, hard-working booth reps deserve to have their demonstrations ruined? Why did the audience deserve to have its time wasted? Besides: if Gizmodo’s beef is with the C.E.S. organizers, why punish the presenters and their companies?”

Imagine if they had tried to pull this at Macworld instead of C.E.S. What do you think would have happened then? Unlike some wishy-washy people in charge of C.E.S., I would bet my right arm that Steve Jobs wouldn’t let them set foot in another Macworld expo for at least 3 years. In addition, Mac users would probably hoist Lam and company to the top of the highest yard arm and have their way with them seven ways to Sunday online. However, the Gizmodo crew isn’t stupid, and so the chances of them attempting a repeat performance next week in San Francisco are slim to none. After all, I don’t think even Brian Lam is crazy enough to come between the faithful and their Macs. For his sake, let’s hope so.

UPDATE: The more I think about what Gizmodo did, the more upset I get. Apparently some people think we should all just “lighten up” and have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Hardly. The folks at Gizmodo want to have access to people like Bill Gates, the most successful CEO in history, so they can post video interviews of him and lure eyeballs. At the same time, they run around C.E.S. pulling vandalism worthy of 5th graders. You can’t have it both ways boys. Thankfully an opposing view point at ZDNet seems to get it right. As anyone who’s watched The Amazing Race knows, karma’s a bitch.

Update II: A reader points out, not only are they jerks, but they’re hypocrites too. Check out Gizmodo’s original review of the TV-B-Gone. Irony much?

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The Best of 2007

I’ve been into writing “list” posts recently, so I thought a year-ending ‘Best of 2007’ post seemed appropriate. The following list are simply things that for no other reason, brought me joy over the past twelve months. You may be familiar with some of the items on the list, and others you may never even heard of. Either way, I promise you they are all worth checking out. If this post lets people know there is a better way to clean their toilet or helps you find new friends, then I can die a happy man. Well, that’s not really true, but at least it gave you a legitimate excuse to put off paying those online bills or jumping on the treadmill for another few minutes. I do what I can.

• • •

Kaboom

Consumer Product

When my wife handed me a brush and a bottle of Kaboom Bowl Blaster a few months back and told me to get scrubbing, I did so begrudgingly. See, our toilets were dirty. I mean really dirty. Now before you go getting that look on your face, I don’t mean dirty like that, I mean dirty from hard water stains. Living in the country means that we’re on well water out here and don’t have the luxury of being hooked up to city water supplies. Our water is full of compounds and minerals like sulfur dioxide, zinc and calcium and it plays endless havoc on all of our plumbing fixtures.

I’ve scrubbed our toilets before with everything from Soft Soap and Comet to CLR and huge amounts of elbow grease and nothing, nothing has ever gotten the hard water stains 100% gone. That is until Kaboom came along. I’m not exaggerating or earning kickbacks when I say that, with only a minimal amount of scrubbing, Kaboom banished these unsightly stains to the infomercial netherworld from which they came. I’m not one who falls for late night commercial pitches, but I swear that this stuff works. If you have not tried it, next time you head to the grocery store, check it out. Your significant other will thank you.

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Kid Nation

Television

Even before a single minute of the first episode aired on CBS, TV critics, child welfare workers and over-protective parents were all doing everything in their power to make sure Kid Nation failed. The audience disagreed however and this unassuming little show about 40 kids unleashed on a New Mexico ghost town became an instant family hit and gave kids and parents everywhere a reason to cheer.

Each week kids like Sophia, Anjay, Greg and yes, even Taylor, gave us new insight into how children think, their resourcefulness and how much respect they deserve. I’ve written about Kid Nation before and with good reason. The show single-handedly reaffirmed my faith in television. Kid Nation proved that a reality show could succeed without all the back-stabbing, elimination voting that made shows like Survivor and Big Brother household names. Producers smartly structured the series around rewards rather than punishments and the result was a breath of fresh air for all of us watching at home. I sincerely hope there is a second season of Kid Nation, but if you missed it the first time, you can wait for the DVDs or check out the free downloadable episodes available from the Kid Nation website.

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Super Mario Galaxy

Video Game

I’ve only been playing Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii for a short time. I can already say that it’s become my favorite video game of 2007, and that’s coming from a certifiable Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess freak.

It never ceases to amaze me how Nintendo can continually make video games feel original and fresh as Super Mario Galaxy does. The story is the usual “Save Peach from Bowser!” narrative that we’ve come to know and expect. Just about everything else feels new. Game mechanics, play style and some of the best music ever written for a video game, all combine into another fun and surprisingly addictive winner from Shigeru Miyamoto. SMG is another feather in the cap of the Wii platform that some incorrectly predicted would be trounced by both the PS3 and XBOX 360. A year after launch, the Wii platform is still in high demand, and Super Mario Galaxy has helped me rediscover my love of video games. To top it all off, Mario is set to mark his 30th anniversary in just a few years. Not bad for a plumber who couldn’t tell a monkey from a donkey.

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No Country for Old Men

Movie

No Country for Old Men is an odd tale that centers around a case of $2 million dollars that goes missing after a drug deal gone bad. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who, on the eve of his retirement, has the task of tracking down not only the money, but one of the scariest villains ever to hit the big screen. As is the case in most of the Coen brother’s films, location becomes an integral part of the story, so much so it’s almost like another character. The brother’s attention to detail and skill in building suspense, weaves a story that completely pulls us in and never lets go. The writing is sharp, the dialog is poetic and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Take all of this, add mesmerizing performances from Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh and Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss and you have yourself the best picture of 2007.

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AmeriCone Dream

Consumer Product

You really have to hand it to Steven Colbert. One minute your one of Jon Stewart’s flunkies reporting from the green screen version of Iraq, and the next you’ve got Captain America’s shield hanging on your wall and an ice cream flavor named after you. Colbert’s meteoric rise hasn’t really come as a surprise to those of us who admired his hilarious nightly performances on The Daily Show, but I never would have guessed he had such a fantastic sweet tooth.

Ben & Jerry’s AmeriCone Dream ice cream features bits of waffle cone dipped in fudge, surrounded by a creamy, but conservative vanilla ice cream and swirls of all-American caramel. To top it all off, proceeds from Steven’s product go to The Stephen Colbert AmeriCone Dream Fund, which supports causes like aid to disadvantaged children, veterans, and the environment. About the only way it could get better would be if they managed to get the carton to make that shrieking bald eagle sound every time you opened it.

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Apple iPhone

Hardware

I bet you thought the iPhone was going to be number one on my list didn’t you? Well guess again all-knowing swami! While it may not be my very favorite thing of 2007, it only lost out by a few ill-timed Mobile Safari crashes and a badly needed clipboard app. To say that my iPhone has improved my life might sound like the meaningless drivel of an Apple fanboy, but as someone famous once said “I cannot tell a lie.”

Before my iPhone, I never wanted to check my email on the go, or was able to effortlessly look up a destination in Google Maps after getting lost in some obscure corner of Greensboro. I can instantly add people and businesses to my phone’s address book with the press of a single button and browse my favorite websites just as they appear on my desktop computer. Before, I never could figure out how to use custom ring tones or have wallpapers I didn’t have to pay a monthly fee for. The iPhone opened the door to all of these small, but fun things for me.

Perhaps most important of all, it makes me feel good about carrying my phone all over the place. Before, my cell was just something I had to have in case I needed to call my wife or had an emergency. Now, I’m connected and able to look for information, tweet thoughts at random and have my iPod with me all the time. Anyone who tells you the iPhone is “just another cell phone” doesn’t have the first clue about what it represents or what its potential is. It changed the face of the cell phone industry for the better, forced cell carriers to “think different” about their business models and captured a big slice of the U.S. smartphone market in the process. Pretty good for a company that never made a cell phone before.

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Twitter.com

Social Networking Service

When it comes to Twitter, people invariably seem to be divided into two groups. The first group, let’s call them the “Eloi”, embraces the free and fascinating microblogging service. They make friends, send tweets about what they are eating, make interesting observations and find people with similar online interests as themselves. They live in the daylight and take Twitter for what it is, a place to feel connected with those around them, enjoy the fruits of the digital age and generally co-exist with others in virtual harmony.

Then there are the Twitter “Morlocks” who shun the technology, lash out against it and write blog posts saying things like “what’s the point?”, and “who in their right mind would use this stupid thing?”. They have Twitter friend lists of anywhere between 2 and 5 people, never venture out of their cave and prefer to dine on the recycled entrails of Blogger.com or Facebook. Poor, lost souls.

I count myself firmly in the Eloi camp and my life is far better for it. Twitter has allowed me to stay in touch with dear friends from college that have long since moved away. Twitter gives me a sounding board to bounce ideas off peers, is a reliable source for general knowledge, and lets me stay on top of the latest breaking news from around the world. But perhaps more than anything, it allows me to connect with like-mined individuals. For example, watching the World Series in 2007 was an amazing experience thanks to Twitter. Fellow Red Sox fans were able to joke and share thoughts and feelings with each other like we were in the same room. I’ve also expanded my network of designer and developer friends significantly. I feel like I know many of these people first hand and I look forward to meeting them at MacWorld at some point in the future.

Twitter has given us a way of interacting that is new, unique and intimate. It provides a glimpse into the lives of people that, for one reason or another, you find interesting. In a world where we are all becoming more and more like those isolated, underground dwellers the Morlocks, Twitter lets in just a touch of the much-needed sunlight.

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My Christmas Card to You

When I was a child, one of my very favorite Christmas albums was A Partridge Family Christmas Card. My mom bought it for me when I was five and I just loved it to death. Even now, I can remember lying on the floor of my room and listening to that LP over and over. I always imagined that the Partridge kids were singing their jazzy carols to me and my family.

Every year at Christmas I load up the iPod with my copy of this album and listen to it when I’m out and about Christmas shopping, or just commuting to and from work. Mindy looks at me like I’m crazy whenever these songs come on our car stereo, and in a small way I don’t really blame her. By today’s standards, the tracks are somewhat cheesy and overly sentimental. She grins and bears the dulcet tones of David Cassidy crooning “Frosty the Snowman” because she knows how much it means to me.

When we’re kids, we never know what kinds of memories are going to stick with us throughout our lives. For me, A Partridge Family Christmas Card is an album that instantly takes me back to the home, and Christmases of my youth. I don’t think there could ever be a better present than one that helps keep you young at heart, and for that, I am grateful. So taking a cue from the Partridge clan, here is my Christmas wish to you:

“To you and all your family, your neighbors and your friends, may all your days be happy with a joy that never ends. May peace and love surround you at Christmas time and all the whole year through.”

I wish you and all of yours a joyous and peaceful holiday season. Merry Christmas!

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Confess Your Crushes

Did David Cassidy get you twitter-pated? Was Phoebe Cates your first boyhood love? Did you write Mrs. Corey Haim over and over in your spiral bound notebook? If so, here’s your guilt-free chance to tell it to the world! That’s right, it’s Childhood Crush Confession 101 where Internet bloggers of all generations can give a shout out to all those people you thought you were in love with as a kid. The rules are simple. Select at least five of your favorite celebrities that you went ga-ga over when you were growing up, and post them this coming Thursday, December 6th on your blog. Tell us why they lit that special fire deep inside your soul and provide pictures to the crushes in question if you can. Send me a permalink to your post (or your blog in the interim) and I’ll provide a running list here of all the bloggers that are participating. Feel free to cross-link to your fellow confessors if the mood should strike you. Thanks to Twitter, we already have David Miller and Dave Caolo joining in, so don’t just stand there! Dig out those notes you passed around in class, and dust off those old VHS tapes of Family Ties and get writing people!

List of Participating Blogs:

• gedblog
• Living In the now
• Kaylow
• Cocoia Blog
• nergalicious
• Momisodes
• Russian Mafia Babe

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You Know, for Spite!

This is the true story of how MarbleofDoom.com was born. Those of you with weak constitutions should look away now because it’s not going to be pretty. As any artist knows, the creative process can often be sparked by a number of things; a bit of music, a friend’s comment, a favorite photograph or even just the desire to fill an empty niche. However, in the case of the MOD, no such nobel pursuits came into play. Nope, what we have here is a good ‘ol fashion case of spite. Yes, spite.

Before I get into all that however, I should back up just a little bit. If you don’t know what MarbleofDoom.com is, go check it out. It’s basically a fun, website where Mac users can enter how much time they’ve collectively wasted waiting for the spinning beach ball of death cursor. Users enter time and the site reports on the total number of hours wasted. What’s the point? I’m glad you asked.

The spinning beach ball has been something that Mac users have been dealing with in one form or another since the platform was launched. Back in the early days, Mac users knew it as the dreaded wrist watch cursor that would spin until a process had finished loading. When Mac OS X came along, Apple decided to spruce it up. I guess they figured if you had to wait, why not wait in style? With the advent of the Adobe CS suite of apps, Mac users saw the frequency and duration of the beach ball increase dramatically. I know what you’re thinking. MOD was created to spite Adobe, right? Nope, not by a long shot cupcake. Now sit back down and let me finish the story.

Back in June, two of my long-time friends, Bob & Jiffy Burke, told me via Twitter that at Jiffy’s office, they referred to the beach ball as the “Marble of Doom”. The name really struck a chord with all of us at the Iconfactory and we started referring to it by its new name all the time. We loved the name so much that in September, I decided to add the lexicon to the official Wikipedia entry for the spinning beach ball of death. This is the part where the spite comes in. I was so proud of contributing to the mythos of the beach ball, that when my addition was removed a little over an hour later by a user named Sdfisher, I could hardly believe it. I mean, it was just another name for the cursor, what harm could there possibly be in adding it? According to Sdfisher:

“marble of doom” has 10 google hits, only one of which is Mac related. Removed.

Ask any one of my friends and they’ll tell you I’m not a vindictive person. I don’t fly into fits of anger or wish ill-will on anyone. But when I read that Wikipedia edit from Sdfisher, something inside me snapped. I immediately formed a geeky plan to leverage Mac users everywhere and get “Marble of Doom” back up on Wikipedia. After all, I owed Jiffy no less. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

Months earlier, I had decided to actually record marble spin time using the excellent time tracking utility, On the Job. Every time I’d see the Marble of Doom, I’d immediately add the time to the fake MOD project. After one month of tracking the cursor, I was shocked to find that I was kept waiting a grand total of almost 1 hour. This experience gave me the brainchild for what would eventually become MarbleofDoom.com. All of the guys at work got excited about the project and I even enlisted the help of the talented Wolfgang Ante, our Frenzic and xScope partner, along with our own Craig Hockenberry, to help code the back end. The MOD website became a fun side project that we worked on in the down time between client work. We launched it on 10/19/07 and its popularity soared as Mac users everywhere could finally vent their frustrations with their glassy overlord.

“Marble of Doom” now has over 40,000 Google hits and has given more than a few people a good laugh while they wait for their Macs to return from la-la land. The best part however, was that on 10/30/07, a user named Rory O’Kane re-entered “marble of doom” as one of the names for the spinning beach ball cursor on Wikipedia. Take that Sdfisher! I told you this wasn’t going to be pretty, and now you know. God, I love the Internet 🙂

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Lean On Me

My long-time friend from college, David Miller, has written a wonderful post about Twitter, the internet and blogging in general. His post goes to the heart of why so many people enjoy sharing their thoughts and experiences online. I’ve often read that some people don’t “get” why individuals blog or why someone would express themselves on Twitter in 140 characters or less. Dave hits the nail on the head with this bit:

“I think that it helps us not feel alone in the situations whether they are good times or not so good. That there are others out there who have had these experiences that make us human. It’s also cathartic for me to help express whatever feelings I’m having at the time.”

In a world when people can sometimes go days or weeks without talking or interacting with friends and family face to face, it’s comforting to know that you can reach out via the “tubes” and feel connected instantly. Blogging allows people to express themselves to those who might never have ever met in real life. Twitter goes one step further and distills these expressions down to ultra-concise nuggets of internet gold. It parses whole conversations into manageable chunks that we can either pay attention to or completely ignore.

I liken it to when I was in college, hanging out in the dormitory lounge for hours on end. People would come and go, things were happening all around me. I could either choose to participate in the discussion by throwing out my own occasional 2 cents, or I could sit back, watch TV, and eavesdrop on those over my shoulder. I knew friends like Dave were only an arm’s length away and would be there for me if I needed them. In a very small, and important way, Twitter is a lot like that. Think of it as a social, technical and professional support system for the digital generation. What’s not to “get”?

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Webb > Congdon

Yesterday marked the launch of Internet maven and G4 host, Morgan Webb’s new video blog, aptly named WebbAlert. Webb intends the show to be a short 5 minute breakdown of the Internet’s top stories of the day, parceled in bite size chunks that are both informative and geek-worthy. The format was popularized a few years back by Amanda Congdon on one of the web’s original video blogs, Rocketboom. Congdon recently left Rocketboom in a minor broo-ha-ha with her producer. After a short stint of dancing across the country, she settled into a new video blogging job with ABC. The difference between these two ladies of the net however, is quite striking. Webb has talent, street cred and a genuine interest in geek culture. Congdon on the other hand has smugness, a penchant for seeming annoyed while reporting, and of course, her boobs.

Ask anyone who watched Rocketboom in the early days and they’ll tell you the only reason why the show became successful, and Congdon gained mild Internet popularity, was because of her seemingly endless wardrobe of tight t-shirts, blouses and sweaters that she paraded in front of the camera on almost every single episode. Now, I’m all for using one’s God given talents, but thanks in part to these blatant attempts at sex appeal, IMHO Congdon jumped her shark years ago. I thought that when she moved to ABC she might actually pay her audience some respect and let us watch the news instead of her chest, but it didn’t happen.

Of course I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention that Webb has done her share of, shall we say, “self promotion”. She’s starred in spreads for Maxim magazine and has spawned thousands of geek-based crushes all across the Internet with nothing more than a wink and a few PSP cheat codes. The difference between Webb and Congdon however, is that when Webb is doing her job of video blogging, or hosting G4’s X-Play, she’s actually reporting without pandering. She knows her shit and could take down a hard core gamer any day of the week. Congdon can barely string two sentences together without batting her eyes at the camera like some lost puppy pleading for attention. Webb also knows that smart and informative ultimately wins the day. Her video blog is short on cleavage and long on personality, immediacy and wit.

Webb may stroll into the red light district late at night, but she’s figured out that it’s her day job that pays the bills and gives her credibility. Very rarely do the two worlds meet. So while Morgan Webb walks a fine line to win the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere, Amanda Congdon gets ready to board her rocket powered sled and make the weekly jump over Buxom Canyon. I just wonder when she’ll stop crashing and burning.

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Freaky-deeky

Mindy turned me onto this cool page of mutant, animal Photoshop mash-ups. Sometimes these things can be overblown and just plain cheeky, but I have to say the folks behind these elaborate and fictional beasts did a pretty good job. My favorite has to be the Griffindog with the Batguincat coming in a close second. He kind of reminds me of Batboy, may he rest in peace. Forget lame attempts at merging Yoda and Mr. T, and give me more of this kind of stuff. God, I love the Internet.

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Rebuild of Evangelion Trailer Hits Web

Back in March I wrote about Gainax’s upcoming retelling of the cult hit anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. This 4 film series will be hitting theaters in Japan this September, and someone has caught the official trailer YouTubed it. Look beyond the the covert, camcorder quality and Eva fans will see some all-new shots that are sure to shock and awe. I especially love the apparent new CGI-ish fifth Angel, Ramiel. Check it out here.

Update: Being the good friend that he is, Talos has cued me into where you can pre-order some of the toys from the new Eva movies. Eva Unit Zero’s new paint scheme is neat, as is the all new Eva 01 Type-F. It feels like 1996 all over again!