slamboard

I have not expressed my opinion about auto racing very often. This very stupid story about the Greenest-ever International race car has pushed me over the edge. I think automotive racing should be made illegal. It is a pointless waste of fossil fuels. Trying to green-wash auto racing is just beyond the pale.

I think that fans would continue to watch the racing if they switched to pedal cars. They might have to add some drama in much the same way as professional wrestling.

I have two personality traits that are often at odds with each other. I am very curious. I am also very frugal. This means, for instance, that while I may have been dying to know how fast various objects were moving around in my life experience, I haven’t been spending hundreds of dollars on radar guns in order to find out how fast these things were moving.

I hadn’t noticed until now that they are marketing affordable radar guns. They are also easy to use and quite versatile. RadarGunSales.com has US made guns and ships them free in the US. On top of that, they have warranties. If you are doing unusual experiments with your radar gun, I would suggest you read the warranty carefully first.

Typical stuff that people like to clock include balls, pucks, boats, bikes and cars. I can imagine that some people like to find out how fast their dog can go. This is easy to find out if your dog chases cars because cars generally have a meter that measures speed (they are not very accurate).

It might be fun to gear up a radar gun to an unpopular politician and then throw pies at his face. Pies are not very aerodynamic, so I don’t think the numbers will be very impressive.

Aviary is an incredible web based suite of tools for creative people. I have to confess that I don’t even have a basic understanding of Photoshop, but I jumped on the beta bandwagon for this shiny new thing anyway.

One very interesting thing that I saw on my as yet unedited Aviary profile is that there is a default setting that states that EVERYONE can edit my uploaded images. That could get interesting.

I just got my beta invite and I am going to try not to let this really cool new thing become a major time suck for me.

I identified a deterioration in my eyesight about a year ago and I have been wearing glasses to read and while using the computer. I was told that it would get worse. So far, my prescription is holding up. My biggest annoyance is that I often forget my glasses in the car.

Some people are much worse off than me, to the point where glasses can’t do the job alone. There are several types of software available that serve to magnify computer displays for the visually impaired. A recent development involves putting this software on a USB drive so users can take the software with them to public computers. Even if you are just using this for installing on multiple computers among family and friends, the convenience of not having to key in license codes and serial numbers will please a lot of people.

When we moved a few years ago, we found ourselves without internet with no end in sight for weeks. My wife had to retrieve files related to her work and upload finished work. We had a USB drive with a Gig or two and we found out that there is a wide variation with regard to access to USB ports at internet cafes. God bless the people who could and would accommodate us. I don’t think Accessibility Software on a USB Drive is going to be the answer for people who are traveling.

Livescribe has an amazing new product. It is a smart pen. It is so powerful that I can barely understand what exactly it is supposed to do. It records audio and when you take notes on special dot position system paper, you end up with synced files. When you review notes, you can tap the pen on your paper and review the audio that was recorded when you were writing. I can see how this gadget might look useful to a university student. Other targeted niches include your CSI types.

Google is too big and too powerful. That is the opinion of various netizens and some of them feel strongly enough about the situation to try to boycott Google. I am not one of them. Google is indispensable to me for a number of reasons. I am frustrated enough with the Google attitude that I get a little giddy when I see them miss out on an opportunity to extend their domination.

Today I am happy because T-Mobile chose Yahoo over Google for its mobile search. This is a European story and one quote has more enough quirky UK figures of speech to fill the boot of your lorry (did I say that right?).

Comments have been enabled on ‘Papers of Record’ since long before the birth of the Internet. A letter to the editor is in many ways the same exercise as making a comment on the website of a newspaper.

The difference is immediacy. I have never in my life written a letter to the editor. My wife has written at least one that I know of, by email.

One of my best friends was very upset about a journalist referring to the smoke that came out of a local industrial complex as steam. By the time he had handwritten a letter, he had lost his head of steam and he didn’t bother actually mailing it.

These days, the major newspapers are adding comments to their online content, with varying levels of moderation. Some appear to be completely unmoderated. Some are reviewed almost as stringently as letters to the editor. I strongly suspect that some are moderated with bias. When you get hundreds or thousands of comments, the opportunity to bolster your agenda by selective approval and rejection is tremendous.

A story in the LA Times about the Obama and Clinton campaigns has almost ten thousand published comments. I only read one page and it contained several comments that were eviscerating a previous comment that had been one of the many comments arguing that Obama lacks substance. It seemed a bit excessive and redundant. Maybe these are unmoderated comments. The TOS for user contributions are very exhaustive.

I was just checking out a global internship placement agency. I was surprised to see that they have an office on Second Life. Students and companies can sit down for a free consultation in that virtual environment during their regular business hours. I personally wouldn’t feel like I was really doing business in that kind of environment. When I did some research, I found that it really does seem like more of a gimmick than a real business tool. One business even had some over the top stereotypical receptionists.

Second Life has opened an office (IRL) in China. I can’t see Second Life being very successful in that totalitarian state.

Hi, thank you for coming here to read my blog. I appreciate every reader. I enjoy your feedback and I like to think that I am writing something that you will enjoy. I do not, at this time (January 15th, 2008), make any money as a direct consequence to your welcomed visit.

If I had Net Audio Ads on my blog, you would hear a 5 second audio advertisement from someone who had bid for placement in the network in much the same way that advertisers bid for Google ads. NetAudioAds™ Pay-Per-Play advertising has been up and running for a while and the HUGE difference with these ads is that a webmaster or blogger gets paid for everyone who visits.

I listened to the sales pitch for the affiliate program. This program is FREE, but they are only accepting signups until February 1st.

I am tempted… and I am going to think long and hard about the concept. I suggest that anyone reading this who has a blog or website check it out as well. If you start a discussion about it, I predict that someone will suggest that the ads will reduce your return readership. I remember a lot of complaining about Adsense ads in the beginning, too. There were lots of webmasters who rode their high horses around for years about it. I think the VAST majority of internet users accept them as a normal and ubiquitous part of the landscape now. Just like with TV and radio ads, some people take notice of them and some people ignore them. It is kind of sad that so many of us bloggers include contextual ads on our sites when they only generate pennies for most of us. I like the idea of being paid when an audio ad is played on my site regardless of whether or not the reader is listening. I am still apprehensive about the possibility of offending my readers. I know that I don’t like it when I accidentally run the cursor across those stupid smileys that scream Oh My GOD, No WAY?!?!?

If you have the same sort of opinions on this, you should go in as far as the long sales letter because there is a link to some actual ad clips there. They are actually pretty easy on the ears. Obviously, I was expecting to hear them, but I think they are carefully designed to be a moderate intrusion.

SEO tends to focus extensively on Google for the most part. MSN and Yahoo each have a piece of the search engine pie and everyone else gets crumbs. I was very surprised to see how many small players are on this decidedly unlevel playing field. One particular search engine appeared up on my radar today. It is called StrategicBoard and it is based in Israel. It is focused on blogs and has a human editorial element that is designed to exclude spam. If any of you readers are attempting to operate Google-free for ethical and/or spiteful reasons, you should check it out.