Author: Mike P. Lewis

Duck Hunt

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I recently went hunting in Maryland to take down some quail and pheasants,2005_03_20_MPL3.jpg which is actually much more fun than it sounds. They give you a shotgun, a guide and a dog. The dog runs out in front of you and points out a bird. You mosey up and kick the bush, the bird flies up and then the 3 of us would fire away. You're about 10 feet away and with a huge frickin' shotgun. Sounds easy doesn't it – well it's embarrassing how many got away. We just flat out suck.

Although it's exactly the same, it's not as easy as the old Duck Hunt game.
DuckHuntWhich makes me wonder, as i always have, how the hell did that game work. How does the game know where you're pointing the gun at the screen? Is it a reflection from the screen? That doesn't seem to make sense. Honestly, that was almost 20 years ago and it was AMAZING technology.

Seriously if anyone knows how that works – let me know.

Netvibes Rolls On

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How do you read blogs? If you're like most, you use an RSS aggregator. My favorite aggregator is Netvibes – a browser based aggregator built in France. It was announced last week that they got an additional round of funding from the founders of FON and Ning.

I like Netvibes alot and use it regularly. Many people have posted that it's just an incremental technology and essentially the same as MyYahoo. In my opinion, it's the same in that all email clients (AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail) are the same, but are vastly different in functionality. Netvibes is easier to add feeds, configure modules, and overall use. If you get a chance, check it out..

Updated: for those of you who aren't up to speed on RSS aggregators, check out the definition at Wikipedia here. The first paragraph begins…

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper." An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.

Some of the blogs in my reader today are:

  1. Technology / News / Internet blogs
    1. News: O'Reilly, Yahoo Blog, Web 2.0 Show (podcast),
    2. People: Om Malik, Fred Wilson, danah boyd, Marc Canter, Graeme Thickens, Lawrence Lessig, Bradley Horwitz, Caterina, Marry Hodder, Charteuse, and Malcolm Gladwell
  2. Pop Culture Blogs
    1. Sports: The Sports Guy, Deadspin, Timberwolves Blog
    2. Movies: Aint It Cool News, IMDB StudioBrief, Cinematical, Ebert,
    3. Random: Moose's Blog, VH1 Best Week Ever! Blog, Drew Mowery's Subject to Blackout Blog

Skype is Great

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Ever since i started working with a development team outside of the US, i’ve been using skype to communicate. Back in 2005 when Ebay bought Skype for $3 billion, i did not appreciate the power of the application. But now that i’ve become a regular user, let me just say – it is GREAT! Here’s why:

  1. Ease of use. Installing is a snap. Getting a microphone and device working is easy to do and easy to verify wiht the “test call”
  2. Voice-specific features. There are many IM clients that do voice chat, but Skype really packs the features in. For instance, you can do conference calls, you can mute, hold, add more users, all the things you’d want to do when talking to people. AIM doesn’t have any of these.
  3. Skype In & Skype Out. You can get a regular phone number and either make calls from your PC out to other users or receive calls in. These calls are only 2 cents a minute. Fantastic!

An interesting trend i’m seeing is that apps are adding regular IM chat capabilities to other applications that are popular. Gmail added chat into their mail program as users will logged into mail all day. Skype has IM built in as people keep their voice program running all day. It just makes senes. I can see a day where you have many, many options of how you can instantly send a note to someone you’re talking to or working with.

Snubster

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There’s a great need new social network called Snubster. Unlike other social networks, you put people on snubster that you have beef with, people who are dead to you. It’s great. I have plenty of places to categorize my friends, not my enemies have a home too. Love it.

Best Juggling Ever

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I was forward this juggling act performed by Chris Bliss today. I must say its amazing. Check it out.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z965UUEmdB8&search=chris%20bliss]

Chris dropped out after his third year of college (dean’s list at Northwestern) to become a professional juggler. After becoming the best damn juggler ever, he became a standup comic – and is actually pretty funny.

Eye Popping Footage

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In college basketball last night, Villinova senion Allan Ray was giong for a loose ball and got poked by a player on the opposing team. When he did, his eye literally popped out of his head. This is some crazy footage,

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=L-xsUYEnFSc]Apparently Ray is going to be fine. It is being called a “soft tissue” injury and there was no damage to the cornea, required no stitches, and he can still see. No harm no fout.

Grizzly Man Comments

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grizzlyman.jpgI recently watched the documentary Grizzly Man, which was great. At first i wasn’t sure how pysched i’d be to watch an entire movie that’s all about a guy hanging out in a National Park with bears. But from the moment it began i was mesmerized. This guy is a total nut-job and the movie goes on trying to make him a hero. The bear scenes are amazing too. I have yet to see a National Geographic special that has as good footage as this does. The bear scenes are incredible. But lets focus on the guy being completely insane.

The Sports Guy has some good comments too:

It’s the first documentary since “American Movie” that ranks a perfect 100 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. First of all, it’s directed by Werner Herzog, who (incredibly) decided to narrate the movie even though he sounds like he’s auditioning for a Hans & Frans sketch. Second, the Grizzly Man guy is an absolute maniac and can’t be described even remotely. You just have to see him in action. He’s surpassed Mark Byars (from “Paradise Lost”) and Mark Borchardt for me, and I never thought I would say that. Third, there are so many ridiculously funny moments (likegrizzlyman2.jpg when Grizzly Man claims that he lost out to Woody Harrelson as Coach’s replacement on “Cheers,” or when he’s playing with the bear poop) that you can’t even believe it’s happening as it’s happening. I kept thinking that this was like the “Blair Witch Project,” some sort of elaborate hoax by the creators of “Mr. Show.” But it’s not. And fourth, this is the first movie that I can remember that glorifies someone who’s completely insane. I mean, COMPLETELY. Utterly and totally.

Soccer Madness

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There is some great soccer news out today (found both of them on deadspin). Check this out:

  1. A Romanian soccer team traded a player to competitor Regal Horia for 33 pounds of meat. Turned out to be a good deal for them too, because the guy they traded — perhaps sensing the inevitable after being swapped for meat — promptly retired. Check out this quote from the team:
    • “We are upset because we lost twice — firstly because we lost a good player and secondly because we lost our team’s food for a whole week,” said a Regal Horia official.
  2. Ron Artest move over. At a FA Cup match between Manchester and Liverpool Alan Smith (a ManU midfielder) broke his leg during the game. As the ambulance was leaving the stadium, a group of Liverpool fans attacked the ambulance – which is just ridiculous. Check out the news from London. The reports say the ambulance was surrounded by people who “threw stones and bottles” at it, and even tried to rock it from side to side. Nothing like a good riot – sheesh.

My Love of MyWare

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Let me just say this. I love MyWare and use it all the time.

What is MyWare? MyWare is software you install on your computer, knowingly, that tracks what you do. It’s usually confined to a niche area like music, video, or web browsing. I am a sucker for it. I use MyWare for my music (last.fm), my searches (a9), my desktop (Google Desktop), my chats (Google Chat) and I even my credit card as MyWare as i only use it pay for stuff so i can track every penny.

Even offline there are services that do this are great and i love them. The Garmin workout tracker is great. Whenever you run outside, it plots your actual course, speed and heartrate (among a bunch of other very useful stats). When i first heard about Wayfaring.com, i thought it was a cell phone geographic tracker and i was pretty pumped (it’s not).

At Ruckus, we were building a MyWare product to help college kids find new music by populating a user’s profile with their actual listens. Last.fm similarly aggregates the data and they do the aggregation better, but at Ruckus, we did a better job of allowing users to find music using the data.

I think the trends of MyWare reflects the online social networking of society. More and more people are confortable putting their persona online. In the case of MyWare, it goes one step farther by placing actual, real usage online, not just what you want people to see. This lends some authenticity to the data and can show a more accurate dipiction of a person. There are obvious privacy concerns when you get to location and all desktop applications, but there are some low hanging fruits that i’d love to see put online.

WMA / Janus – the Muppet?

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Everybody knows itunes and how it works. But, the 2nd most popular format forjanice_trans.jpg music is Windows Media Audio, aka WMA. Why? Because with WMA you can protect it in very sophisticated ways. You can rent the music by the month (like Napster and Rhapsody) or you can purchase it outright to be played back on 5 computers (like on Buy.com). Any way a distributor wants to protect an audio file, you can do it with WMA. The industry term for this protected format is Janus.

10-12playsforsure_lg.jpgThis is a neat technology for business (although quite clunky for users) and it is being used all around the internet. The codename “Janus” however was never meant to be mainstream, so, starting early in late 2004 Microsoft started branding all protected WMA devices and files as being “Plays for Sure” – all devices were Plays-For-Sure compliant, all files, all everything had this attached. For Sure

janice.jpgI always thought the “For Sure” part of this was strange. I stared thinking about it more and eventually realized that it reminded me of the muppet that always ended phrases with “For Sure!” For the longest time i couldn’t remember the muppets name, then it came to me – her name was Janice! Even better, Janice was the musician Muppet. On TV, she regularly jammed with Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, and Linda Lavin.

You see: Janus -> Plays “For Sure” -> Janice. All having to do with music. Am i reading too much into this? Maybe, but i think it’s a terrific coincidence.