News & Commentary Archives

LaLa.com started out as a trading site, enabling its users to trade their used CDs for a fee - and its done fairly well, creating a pretty nice community of music listeners along the way. Last week, the company launched its "Upload your iPod" feature: a free service that scans all our digital music and makes it available to you online, available anywhere. The service will scan not just those MP3s you've ripped from CDs, but all those AAC files you've purchased from iTunes, too. Apparently, you're even able to download MP3s of the same music back down to your iPod when you're on the road.

How does it work? Well, LaLa only uploads from you what it doesn't already have stored on its servers. Naturally, for most people, their library has overlap with other folks so they're able to build up the common stuff pretty quickly including the stuff notoriously difficult to find online. Bless their pea picking hearts, the good folks at LaLa are counting on the Fair Use doctrine here: the assumption being that if you own it, you have the right to it. Its an application of fair-use that appears rock solid to me: LaLa doesn't allow you to distribute music but merely access what you already own. I'm sure the RIAA will do their best to make LaLa's life a living hell, and they're probably expecting that. So, kudos to LaLa!

And, this is capitalism at work kiddies, not some cause at the behest of the likes of the EFF. Its smart business for LaLa. They build very detailed profiles of their customers' music preferences and usage patterns. THAT is enormously valuable marekting data and will enable quite a good retail business for LaLa. I can't wait to see what they do with it.

The RIAA - the group that is so reviled by owners and consumers of intellectual property alike, is accused in court of extortion, conspiracy, computer fraud, trespass, and basic evil.

The accusations are being made as a counterclaim in a suit initiated by the RIAA in Tampa, Florida. Check it:

In the case of UMG v. Del Cid, the defendant has filed the following five (5) counterclaims against the RIAA, under Florida, federal, and California law:
    1. Trespass
    2. Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030)
    3. Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201)
    4. Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523)
    5. Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (a)(2)(C);
(c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code §§ 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
, 15 U.S.C. § 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. § 559.72 et seq.

Sounds about right. Reap what you sow, and all that.

Canon has announced the development of 50 mega pixel sensor. With a physical footprint similar to the sensors currently found in today's digital SLRs, Canon also managed to pack in 50% greater light sensitivity, too. Rumor is that Canon also wants to introduce a new file format as well.... ugh. But, still great news.

I wish, however, that the focus would switch from how much data a sensor can capture to the light sensitivity and quality of image produced. That's the frontier in digital photography right now.

Zack got drafted to the AAA division of Little League this year, by passing two years in the major and playing a league largely filled with older, more capable kids. His coach had managed at the A level for the last two years, where Zack had been playing and his strategy was to build a AAA team composed of last year's All Stars from the single A division.

Well, it was a pretty good strategy for today that team, the Mudcats, won the City Championship! Finishing second after regular season play, the Mudcats were the only American League team to survive the first round of the City Championship Tournament with the National League teams. It took three games to win the tournament and the city championship, against teams with kids that looked like the shaved and did mechanical work on their own cars, but they prevailed!

The Mudcats have been a great team, filled with good kids who have a lot of heart. Congratulations to Zack and all the Mudcats!

Well, the iPhone's much hyped and eagerly anticipated launch was today. And there's so much out there on the web about it, I'm not even going to attempt to touch all that. I can't. Its cool....its a breakthrough and, whatever you think of how Apple handles hype and product introductions (enjoyably over the top, IMHO), the iPhone is a transformational product. Me? I'll probably wait for a second generation device that supports 3G (I already use AT&T's EDGE network and find it...lacking) and handles the whole battery thing better - still, its a fantastic product.

I'm entertained by the press Joz is getting and delighted that his product is so well received. Xeni over at BoingBoing has got a great post on the experience of standing in line at The Grove in Los Angeles for an iPod today. A couple of pics of Joz here and here.

You've got to check out The Last Supper by clarkbar6. Its hysterically funny....and the link to the Flickr page has text rollovers to identify the characters you might not know....funny.

The Los Angeles Times today is reporting today on a rare kind of coffee - kopi luwak that apparently goes for as much as $30 per serving in swanky Asian haunts. This fine and delicate brew gets its refined flavor not from the tender and methodical production on the coffee plantation, but from an Indonesian, arboreal mammal known as a wild civet who eats the ripe, red coffee beans from the limbs of robusta and hybrid arabusta trees and then crap the beans out. The beans are then lovingly extracted from the civet poop, roasted, and then offered at steep prices.

Apparently, the enzymes in the civet's stomach break down some of the proteins that make coffee bitter. They also reduce the level of caffeine in the bean.

OK, I suppose its no more disgusting than casu frazigu cheese, a rotten cheese that ships with live maggots in it - so foul that the Italian government has outlawed it, though its still prized by gourmands nonetheless. What a world, what a world. I guess I'm a culinary luddite since the edge of my gastronomical envelope stops at chocolate covered crickets.

Despite the best efforts of Los Angeles City Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and some of his cohorts on the city Council, the icon Felix Cheverolet sign has been granted historical landmark status. The city's Cultural Heritage Committee voted to declare the fifty year old sign a historic-cultural landmark. As a multi-generational native of the Los Angeles area, I grew up with the sign in the South Figueroa area and I'm pleased that the Cultural Heritage Committe saw past the mayor's redevelopment aim. Los Angeles' architecture and culture is, for better or worst, oft embodied in its kitsch. And I've always loved Felix.

The photo is courtesy of Tejana's Flickr stream.

Bud Selig, you should be in the house when Barry Bonds surpasses Hank Aaron's all time home run record.

Granted, Bud, you've got reason to be conflicted. Steroid use and allegations of Bonds' use of steroids, in particular, have cast an ugly pall over the record, Indeed, over all of baseball. But you're the commissioner: it's <your job to police the use of performance enhancing drugs and you have not done so. Despite the apparent evidence of Bonds' cheating, you should consider: How many other players have taken steroids? Why did Major League Baseball, and you, aloow more than a decade of unscrutinized, muscle-bound players like McGuirre, Palmiero and Canseco? Why are they home runs less suspect than Bonds? How many great pitchers who today throw hard past the age of 40 can themselves be beyond suspicion? And, if Bonds' accomplishments are in question, shouldn't we look at our attitude toward all potential records? If you won't go see Bonds break Aaron's record, then you shouldn't attend any games where the whiff of steroids is in the air.

On April 8, 1974, when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's all-time career home run record with his 715th homer, one important person was not in Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium: baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Aaron had endured literally tons of hate mail and numerous death threats in gracefully ascending to the record of a white American icon. The commissioner had declined to witness the shattering of the greatest record in sports, in which a black American hero risked his life every time he came to bat, in favor of honoring a previous commitment to address the Wahoo Club, the Indians' fan club in Cleveland. Without a doubt, your good friend Henry Aaron's struggle to surpass the Babe has no equal in Bonds or any other ball player since. Nearly a million letters to Aaron when he was pursuing Ruth's record scolded Aaron for his worthy pursuit, many containing death threats or threats of violence, epithets and nastiness. Aaron pursued his place in history with a dignity and courage to this day unmatched - even Bonds recognizes this.

Thirty-three years later, you have a choice: be a witness to history, when Barry Bonds breaks Aaron's record, or stay away. Whatever you think of Bonds personally or of the mess made of the sport by steroids, do not make the same mistake as your predecessor. You should be in the house when Bonds clubs home run No. 756. Maybe Bonds will make it easy on you, commissioner: If he hits three homers this weekend, you can watch the record fall at home in Milwaukee. But it its in San Francisco or (God forbid) Los Angeles or San Diego, you should be there celebrating baseball and an enormous achievement.

According to Marmot's Hole, the Korean press is all set to blame America if the Taliban makes good its threat to kill the 23 (whoops, now 22) Korean Christian-evangelists currently held hostage. The logic looks something like this: Afghan President Hamid Karzai won't negotiate with the Taliban because America and Great Britain tell him not to. Since Afghanistan relies upon foreign aid, the press concludes, Karzai dares not offend America or our allies. Its our fault.

Anyone who buys that might want to consider that President Karzai

• Doesn’t want to turn kidnapping into a lucrative business, and more to the point
• Realizes that Korea’s contribution to the fight against the Taliban has been next to nil, and its 200 non-combat troops will be withdrawn by the end of the year
• Knows that realeasing enemies of his state back into the population at large is an invitation to greater mayhem.

While I'm tubthumping about Afghanistan, can you imagine how President Clinton would have been excoriated (or hell, any of the last five or six Presidents for the lack of any progress on catching Osama Bin Laden?

I'm a Corey Doctrow fan and a shirt he designed spoofing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is on sale courtesy of the good people at Shirt.Woot. The shirt's inspiration was this post about the British "Keep Calm and Carry On" tees. The shirt features the text, "ZOMG TERRISTS GONNA KILL US ALL ZOMG ZOMG ALERT LEVEL BLOODRED RUN RUN TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES MOISTURE BOMBS ZOMG!" around a modified DHS logo, with the eagle clutching an empty water bottle and a pair of shoes.

As you might expect, Doctow's released the shirt's art under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license for your remixing pleasure.

He did it: On Tuesday night, at home in San Francisco, Barry Bonds hit his 756^th home run. Bonds has the title of home run king all to himself, ending Aaron's 33-year reign. For one spectacular moment, Barry Bonds and everybody cheering him could forget about the controversy surrounding his chase and appreciate the phenomenal feat.

Conspicuous in his absence was Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig. Noteably absent, too, was Hammerin' Hank himself thought Aaron did send along a video congratulations played on AT&T Park's video screen immediately following the achievement. I'm sure Barry's family is enormously relieved that the deed is done and this circus in their lives can end. Of course, with a grand jury indictment expected next month, a whole new and far more grisley circus appears imminent.

If you're a (Silcon) Valleywag like me, you might have pondered how Google will monetize YouTube and recoup that $1.7 Buh-illion purchase price. The answer, of course, is advertising. That is how the Googlenaut feeds its momentum, and it does it so well. Last year, YouTube generated close to $20M in advertising (and you didn't even notice, now did you?!).

But the next phase of Google-Oogley has begun: video overlays. Breaking out of the boring pre-roll, post-roll, interstitial model with which all those brilliant minds from the broadcast world have infected web video, YouTube's decided to try out using video overlays: 10 second overlays that occupy the bottom quarter of the screen. Big whale advertisers like Warner Music and New Line Cinema are already ponying up about two cents a click - that's NOT chump change when you're serving up the kinds of number of customers and video views as Google. Or Yahoo. Or My Space, even.

I'll be interested to watch how this "plays out."

Four years ago, as I was preparing to dive back into the "video over the 'net" world, I bythely predicted that terabytes worth of NAS (Network Attached Storage) would be cheap and plentiful as consumer products. Of course, as often happens, my prediction was a bit early. But Amazon's selling products from HP that appear to be evidence its happening. Sure, we've been able to buy not only home NAS kits from the likes of NewEgg for a couple of years, and folks like Buffalo, Netgear and Linksys have doing it for awhile now. But when you can buy products from HP off of Amazon, I think that moves it from the realm of Alpha Adopter (geek purchases) to the mainstream. I'm sure the the Petabytes of home storage that will blossom across the land will be filled with legal, DRM'd content and not those nasty pirated content from torrent sites. Sure they will.

They could have picked Thomas Edison and his lab in Menlo Park, NJ. They could have chosen the Wright Brother's bicycle shop in Dayton, OH. They could have chosen Philo Farnsworth and his lab on Green St. in San Francisco. But no - they chose Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in Job's parents' garage in Los Altos.

The good folks at PodBrixhave chosen to immortalize the young Woz and Jobs in a Lego playset, and I've got to say they really chose the right guys to immoralize. I mean, who do you want your kids growing up to worship? Marylin Manson or Woz? I mean, c'mon! Woz got his Prius going 104 MPH and he did not have any cocaine in his pocket! Seriously, very cool. I'm sure we'll have to get one for Uncle Peter as well as our house!

Hmm.... a very interesting patent application by Google showed up on the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday. No, I'm not that big a geek that I regularly troll the USPTO's site - I'm hopefully awaiting the award of several patents to Akimbo, so I checking it pretty regularly right now.

Anyhow, the patent application details a system through which Google offers mobile (phone) based payments a "GPay" service. Examples of payment scenarios given in the patent include paying for goods from a vending machine, as well as purchasing items directly from offline retailers. While the example used is a phone, it’s entirely feasible to apply the GPay Mobile payments system to a variety of platforms - and, probably in Google's best interest to assure that. Of course, all the rabid rumor mongers expecting a Gphone offering from Google will interpret this as a sure sign of a Gphone exclusive application, giving Google (or their carrier partners) a distinct advantage over other carriers in enabling mobile payments from a handset.

The application isn't new - you can use your cell phone to make payments for things like parking and event tickets sporadically around the U.S. today. Cell phone based payment has been utilized pretty significantly in Japan for three or four years now. But Google's payment details a better method - typical of Google in simplifying it and just doing it smartly, simply. Exciting stuff, I think.

Remember Eudora, the email client that introduced millions to SMTP based email? If you were an early internet user on the Macintosh, you probably used Eudora (anyone remember Quickmail?!). Interestingly, Qualcomm ended up the owners of the inimitable email client and quietly put it to eternal rest last May, unnoticed by nearly all of us. But Qualcomm decided to do a good thing: they open sourced the Eudora code. And the wonderful Mozilla folks have decided to give it life.

Code name Penelope (Eudora 8.0.0b1), it is now available. Penelope is essentially Thunderbird wrapped up in a Eudora skin, but for folks who invested a lot of their time and sensory memory into the Eudora UI - all the keyboard shortcuts, toolbar icons, menu structures and behavior of Eudora is captured in Penelope. Reading the notes on who is developing Penelope, it looks like the last Eudora team at Qualcomm has skipped on over to the project - very, very cool. Having worked on a much loved and widely adopted product (ok, well....ok...another one, too) that had an end of life long before users were ready to give it up, it is a delight to see this: one of the wonderful enablements of the open source movement and I (again) applaud Mozilla.

An homage to the fleeting nature of fame on the Internet, Meth Minute 39 presents "Internet People." Lonely Girl, Andy Melinakis (who?!), Rocket Boom, William Shatner singing "Rocket Man".... it all gets a mention. A fun little viddy if you're an internet watcher.

Its got a 3-inch, 922,000 pixel LCD display (with HDMI viddy output) and a 51-segment auto-focus sensor attached to a new CMOS 12.3 MP sensor on a rugged, beef body. 6fps continuous shooting, 45mx shutter lag, 13ms start-up time and the Nikon EXPEED image processor. Focus tracking by color and scene recognition join up with live view on the LCD monitor. Yummo.

So it's just an early look over at DPReview.com, but I already know I need one. Now if all my friends and family were to chip in, they could probably get it for me as a Halloween gift... I've got to have one!

Editor's Note: Apparently, the user defined data times out at some point....which means you might, at some point, see a movie but without my face! Thought I'd leave it just as is!

Shutterfly's got a new piece of bait to lure traffic to their photo processing site: custom videos. Its pretty fascinating to marry a little facial recognition technology to do face extraction with some smart sprite , provided by Personiva. But the end result is a bit dodgey, I think.

I made the one above using my own photo because the two I made with pictures from my kids were too creepy! The effects used to make the eyes blink and animate the mouth are interesting, but a little off putting. What is really creepy is that they extract the faces from the pictures you upload, and don't include the person's hair. Ok, no big deal on a grown man, but very disturbing with the children. Of course, the alpha-blending required to make transparencies through hair would require more processing power than Personiva wants to throw at this kind of application. But ultimately, it ruins the effect.

It's kind of cute and funny for about the minute it takes you to upload a picture and watch the video, but then you're done with it. I'm not sure how Personiva's hot new viral marketing technology's going to "People engage with the brand in ways that extend the lifespan and reach of the brand message" in a way that actually drives traffic and picture orders for Shutterfly.

It's that time of year again: International Talk Like A Pirate Day: September 19^th.

From the official website:

Today's New York Times devoted the entire Science section to honoring the 50^th anniversery of Sputnik. Sputnik was a watershed event in human history - it changed everything. I wasn't alive at the time, but I can imagine the sense of awe and wonder that the little "beep beep beep" coming back from space must have made on those hearing it at the time. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957 and wasted no time trumpeting their triumph. in a stare down with the U.S. over the sites of both countries' newly crafted nuclear arsenals, the Soviets were only too glad to use this technological triumph to strike fear into the hearts of America's techological and industrial mighty.

It is Sputnik that catalyzed the creation on NASA, DARPA (and, therefore, the Internet) and the computer industry. It jump started and invigorated a technology revolution that has had enormous and mostly beneficial implications for the global economy. What the world needs now is a Sputnik for education or food production.

Visit the Times' site and view Sputnik inside and out. If you're too young to remember Sputnik, go learn why its such an important event in human history.

On Tuesday the reported that Microsoft was pursing a stake in Facebook. A year ago, Yahoo was sniffing around at at purchase of Facebook with a reported valuation of $1 billion. But if Microsoft bought a three to five percent stake in the company for $300-$500 million, Facebook would suddenly be valued at $10 billion — half as much as Yahoo. And, reportedly, founder Mark Zuckerberg is holding out for $15 Billion. Eegads.

Facebook has created something of significant value, no doubt. Not only does Facebook have millions of users, for the hottest demographic (at which Facebook is squarely aimed) Facebook has become a seminal application replacing email as the primary use of their computer. I know high school and college kids who are more concerned about getting on to the computer to login to their Facebook accounts than they are to take or make a phone call. It IS how they communicate and interact with their friends. And they've been able to create a lasting and growing entity where MySpace has clearly failed. Viacom's acquisition did not help anything there.

But does anyone know yet how Facebook is going to make money? How will they monetize all those eyeballs in the prime advertising demographic? Chances are, they're going to share that revenue with someone else, which is why they're such and attractive target for a Yahoo or Microsoft particularly since neither seem to be innovating these days, particularly on the Web 2.0 or social networking. At least Google's smart enough to be throwing some research dollars at Carnegie-Mellon for Social Stream.

What will Facebook do with $500 million if they got it? Well, despite their Facebook's constant assertions that thye've built to scale their service to be much larger, me thinks they doth protest too much and an infrastructure investment would follow. Lucky Cisco and mass storage vendors. The other piece is advertising. Online advertising is still pretty primitive in terms of matching ads to viewers. With all the data Facebook has about its highly prized users, an investment in some analytics could reap some serious advertising revenues. Headcount and Aeron chairs probably would be on the spend list, too.

Has Sillycon Valley descended into Bubble 2.0? Reached Delusional Level Red? Nah... I don't think its another case of tulip mania as it is an example of Joe Bessimer's adage (often attributed P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute... and two to take 'em."

The brewing tension between Apple and developers who wish to write 3^rd party apps for
the iPhone (and the iPhone users who want to use those apps) continues to grow. I still marvel at Apple's ability to dissimulate innovation on their own inspired products. A group of disaffected developers decided to throw some of Apple's promotion right back at 1 Infinite Loop, co-opting Apple's "Crazy Ones" ad and making it their own to deliver their message.

With my beloved Giants nowhere to be seen in the playoffs (it was obvious there was no chance this year well before mid-season!), I've got to find someone to root for in October. Zack is rooting for his Yankees as they take on the Cleveland Indians. But Zoe and I are rooting for the Bosox - beantown's finest. In their opener against the Angels at Fenway, the Sox looked hot with young pitcher Josh Beckett blanking the Angels with a complete game 4-0 shutout. Hot, hot, hot. Looks like the Rockies are on a tear - ripping through the National League West in the last part of September and spanking the Phillies in the first two games their play-off series. I'd prefer an Arizona-Boston World Series, but it would be fun to see the Rockies continue on their current tragectory.

Go Red Sox!

It's pretty amazing that you can buy a 500 gigabyte hard disk for about a hundred bucks these days. That's half a terabyte of storage for a C note! Twenty years ago, that kind of storage was a whole room of equipment in a dedicated facility with raised flooring, expensive air-conditioning and fire suppression equipment - millions of dollars. Thank Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the amazing economies of modern hard disk storage.

Today, the Nobel Prize in Physics was bestowed on the two gentlemen for their work in 1988 to discover and define the fundamental physics that allowed for the radical miniaturization and cost reduction in hard disk based data storage. In 1988 the Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter Grünberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR. Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current. It took nine years before the GMR effect was suitably industrialized and launched, but immediately became the standard technology for commercial hard disks. This may not be as lofty a discovery as the quantum physics of Einstein or world shaking as Fermi's work, but at a practical level this is the most noble work of physics. I'm delighted to see the Nobel Prize committee reward this achievement.

Congratulations and thank you Monsieur Fert and Herr Grünberg.

Yesterday, I sang the praises of Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert - this year's Nobel Prize winners for Physics who were rewarded for their discovery of the phenomenon of giant magnetoresistance, or GMR. This is the fundamental science behind the miniaturization of hard disks. Today, I want to praise the engineer whose work manifest that scientific discovery as a life enhancing practical application.

Fert and Grünberg's discovery was published in 1988. It was the work of IBM research engineer Stuart Parkin at IBM's research labs in San Jose that begat the now ubiquitous hard disk application of GMR. The discovery of the phenomenon of GMR is a great and wonderful thing, but even Grünberg acknowledges that it was Parkin's work that opened up practical vistas that were beyond even the imagination of the physicists when Fert and Grünberg published their work. Many expected that when Fert and Grünberg received the prize (and this one was anticipated for several years) that they would likely share the prize with Parkin.

Stuart Parkin may be relegated to the background of the rich tapestry of modern invention as have so many seminal contributors (witness Doug Englebart). But I'd like to acknowledge him, for it is his contribution that is the foundation of the iPod and countless local, affordable, tiny data caches. It dropped the cost of the most critical component of computing - storage - by several orders of magnitude - and was a critical component in making practical so many of the wild-eyed dreams in computing that we now take for granted. Thank you, Mr. Parkin.

Even the world of gastronomy isn't safe from the ravages of the post 9/11 world. A Thai restaurant in central London put a scare through the city when chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon prepared his fiery signature nam prik pao chili sauce. Fumes from a huge pot of dry cooking bird's eye chilies sparked a terror alert that led police to break down the restaurant's door. Soho residents had complained of a chemical burning their throats and the London Fire Brigade quickly dispatched a chemical response team. Firefighters emerged from the eatery with a pot containing nine pounds of smoking peppers.

The chef was baffled by the commotion. "I was making a spicy dip with extra-hot chilies that are deliberately burnt. To us, it smells like burnt chili and it is slightly unusual," he told the London Times newspaper.

"I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was. But it doesn't smell like chemicals."

Looking for a complete new waste of your time? Perhaps a new internet addiction? Try the new Google Image Labler. As a means of generating those oh-so-valuable tags on their image file index, Google has invented a game to entice us all to provide those tags. When you log-on, you're randomly assigned a partner - another person who is playing - and you job is to match tags on pictures for two minutes and earn points. You're both simultaneously shown the same image, and you keep typing in words until you match, or both participants pass on that image. The goal is to generate as many points together as possible.

Some are easy, some are hard and the more descriptive terms are worth more. For example, matching on "man" or "actor" might yield you 50 points, where matching on "Lawrence Olivier" might garner you up to 150 points. Hooking up with a newbie or someone who just can't identify anything can be annoying, but getting a partner who is good is a real rush as you start racking up points. If you're the kind of person who easily fell prey to the black holes of time that are things like Tetris, Bejeweled or Word Sleuth, beware: for you, this will be addictive. You've been warned.

Formed in 1943, the Sugar Association was an industry trade gropu "dedicated to the role of scientific study of sugar in food and communication of that role to the public". Here's an example of their selfless quest for truth via a "Sugar Information, Inc." promotional poster.

Mary got to school early for Student Council. Her team won in gym. After play rehearsal, she'll Watusi with the gang. She needs sugar in her life. For energy. She needs energyless, artificially sweetened foods and beverages like a turtle needs a seat belt. Sugar swings. Serve. Serve some. Sugar's got what it takes... 18 calories per teaspoon and it's all energy.

Note to Mothers: Exhaustion may be dangerous - especially to children who haven't learned to avoid it by pacing themselves. Exhaustion opens the door a little wider to the bugs and ailments that are always lying in wait. Sugar puts back energy fast - offsets exhaustion. Synthetic sweeteners put back nothing. Energy is the first requirement of life. Play safe with your young ones - make sure they get sugar every day.

According to The Times of India, the deputy mayor of Delhi, S S Bajwa, was killed by a band of monkeys. Mr. Bawa apparently died this morning of head injuries after falling from the terrace of his house after being attacked by a group of monkeys. The city has long been plagued by monkeys attacking humans (remember Secretary Rumsfeld's trip to India in 2002?) for quite a while. Roving bands of Rhesus monkeys hav long invaded government complexes and temples and snatch food out of people's hands on the streets. The problem is exacerbated by large population of devout Hindus (who revere the monkeys as a manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman) providing them offerings of bananas and nuts.

Last year, India's High Court orderd the city to address the mounting problem. So the leaders of Delhi employed monkey catchers to roam the city with large nets (yeah, that same image you've got from cartoons of the proverbial dog catcher), but that didn't work. So what do they do? They created monkey mercenaries - they actually trained bands of larger, more aggressive Langur monekys to maraud the smaller Rhesus hordes. A municipal government is actually training (arming?) mercernary monkeys to cull little terrorist monkeys.... ok, this so surreal and reminiscent of human life my little head is about to spin off...

About a month ago, I commented on a potential Microsoft investment in Facebook that would give the social networking company a $15 billion dollar valuation. Today, the Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft has confirmed their $240 million investment to purchase a 1.6% stake in the young company which hopes to break even this year with revenue of about $150 million.

Why? How?

Why is fairly easy to recognize, if not rationalize. Sillycon Valley has the fever again over web sites with lots of users, as well they should: Facebook signs up an amazing four million new users every day. Even if they lose 90% of those people within a month, those are amazing numbers. How do you monetize them? Advertising, and this is the germ behind the fever. As the almighty advertising dollar is rapidly shifting from print and TV to the Web, new fortunes are being made. I reference Google, that little company with a $209 billion market cap, built on web advertising. As Microsoft and others attempt to get a piece of that monstrous pie, Facebook is the most delectable slice. So GOOG and MSFT have been fighting over Facebook all summer.

How involves more conjecture than observation. One theory is that 23 year old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Harvard drop-out, now billionaire - sound familiar?) thought up the most outrageous sum he could. Hell, if Yahoo was willing to pay $1 billion for the company last year (how glad is he that he turned them down?), perhaps people would bite at $10 billion. They did! $15 billion was probably the apogee of the ridiculosity curve. Somewhere, somehow, there's some numbers jockey in Microsoft's corporate development group that can justify the evaluation and investment cost based on cash flow. I must not have taken enough Accounting courses in business school to figure out how.

The other theory about how, and these are not mutually exclusive, is that this is about face:

The exec on the losing side was probably my old 3DO colleague, Omid Kordestani. I'd assert it was rational to let this go. In fact, I'd surmise, getting Microsoft to shell out that kind of money for the right to sell Facebook's advertising (the core of the deal) was a hell of a strategy. Go Omid. Time will tell.

I have a feeling I'll be blogging more about advertising on the web, particularly as it relates to selling adds for video-on-demand. To quote the kids, its just a "sick" market (meaning, crazy wicked hot).

I was 10 years old in 1973 when I discovered skateboarding - then a quintessentially and nearly exclusively Southern California pursuit. One of my big influences was a seventeen and a half minute long, black and white, short film called Skater Dater made in 1965. I instantly recognized it as having been filmed locally, around Long Beach, San Pedro and Torrance. I could identify (and idolize) the cool kids in their stylish windbreakers hanging ten barefoot (eek! - the dad portion of my adult persona shudders in horror) and nose walking on their Black Knight decks. Ostensibly, its a pre-teen love story, but I'm pretty sure that was lost on me. Those kids were board dropping, nose walking and alley-ooping and I knew that was what I wanted to do. The soundtrack sounded like it was lifted off a Dick Dale or Ventures album, and that was cool

I probbaly haven't seen Skater Dater again since I was in junior high. What a delight it was to find it on Google video (thanks Mark Frauenfelder on BoingBoing.

As most readers of this blog know, I'm fairly moderate politically. I'm more liberal on issues of our society and international issues, more conservative with respect to fiscal matters. Side note: I find it amusing that mainline protestant Christians (Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopaleans, - of which I am one - Presbyterians, etc.) are considered theologically liberal amongst American Christian. Somehow, I find it easier to praise liberals than Conservatives, but probably only because the offenses committed on the right seem more egregious than those I see on the left. But I hope I'm relatively even handed in my critical analysis of both left and right.

Toward that end, let me offer modest praise to two decidedly conservative world leaders: U.S. President George Bush and newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Now, I have been heard to utter the phrase "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot" on more than one occasion. That's probably not fair, since the President is not an idiot. Its the neo-con agenda and rationalization of the same that offend me, but the President is a fairly smart man and certainly one that understands how power is utilized. I've been consistently disappointed and often angered by his diplomatic record but it is specifically a diplomatic choice of his that I want to praise: the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. To be clear, Congress awards the medal, not the President, and this was a bi-partisan sponsored bill in both the Senate and the House (I'm happy my congressman and one of my senators were the Democratic sponsors in each of the houses of Congress). But it was the President who took the public lead on dealing with China's denouncements and threats in the wake of the decision to honor the spiritual and cultural leader of the once soveriegn nation, now subjugated province of China, who the People's Republic denounces as a separatist and traitor.

Diplomacy with China is international politics in the Big Leagues. The delicate balance between trade and human rights is a tough one, and holding China publicly accountable for its Human Rights record has not been a triumph for any western leader in memory. But by honoring His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the issue of Tibet as well as China's handling of human rights is more effectively kept part of the global public debate than denouncements over Falun Gong, et al. With the amount of trade we give China, we have diplomatic power. This is how a lame duck president with strong ties to China should spend this is political capital.

And Sarkozy? There's a lot to love about this guy. If there's a nation that needs a little butt kicking by conservative leadership, it would be France. Not only is the French president standing tough against Iran's nuclear ambitions but he's taking on the powerful French unions who are bound to preserve his country's corrosive welfare state. Republicans in the American Congress think we have high taxes? Geesh.

What caught my eye, though, was President Sarkozy's much publicized decision to walk out on CBS reporter Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" when she asked him a gossipy question about his relationship with his then-wife during taped interviews. President Sarkozy's behavior was no issue - he firmly but politely ended the interview, shaking Stahl's hand and wishing her "Bon Courage" with his departure. What I found refreshing was that he refused to give in to the voyeuristic intrusion and refused to speak of matters of personal concern with no political import. Bravo. This is a French leader, the first in history that I can name, who is endeavoring to reverse the decades (centuries?) of French chest-thumping and public lambasting of America. He publicly attests to wishing to cease the assertion of French cultural superiority and snarky mudslinging about American policy (deserved or not). Rather, he professes a partnership on issue of congruence (Iran's nuclear ambitions) and respectful disagreement on issues about which we disagree (the war in Iraq). Sounds right. Time will tell - Sarkozy may not be what he appears, but I like the first impression. Hopefully, Jean-Marc or Pierre will repost with their ground's-eye view of their new leader.

You many not know of Paul Rand, but you know his work: the IBM logo, ABC's logo, Westinghouse's logo, ABC's logo, UPS' logo, NeXT's.... and on and on. Paul Rand was a giant in the world of design.

Rand was recently inducted into the One Show Creative Hall of Fame and the embedded video is a four minute film that is a tribute to his work, as well as providing Rand explaining his work (from which I transcribed the quote above.

For those of you wondering what the inimitable Timo has been up to holed away writing code with Peter and Morgan, I can share this since its in the public domain. OK, its not like have a bunch of info I'm not sharing - they're being good boys about staying stealthy (and I'm not seeking like Tim and Peter's San Diego contingent!). I had the feeling that Bruce Leak of QuickTime, General Magic and WebTV fame, might be bankrolling their efforts. So, no new news, but cool nonetheless. Who knew Timo was such a cute spokesmodel?

My last post was showing off Timo's little moment in the sun as the poster boy developer for Android. Today, he sends me a link to the video above with the description, "I've been mocked!"

I've never written a review for or plugged a music release on my site before, but I'm so wildly captivate by the new Raising Sand album featuring Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, produced by that musical magician T-Bone Burnett. This new release is likely to get a lot of promotion both for Christmas sales and for Grammy nods, but try to look through all that.

I always thought it weird that the blues revival that was hard rock in the late 60's and early 70's was led by a bunch of white boys from England. That scrawny, leonine kid from the north country who loved Muddy Waters and could add a shrill bit of white soul to the Gallows Pole as the front man for Led Zeppelin was and is an oddity, and is (for better or worse) a part of my musical foundation. Teaming Plant, known for his screaching, with the ethereal angel of bluegrass was a daring move. Or was it? In fact, its this part of the hype around the project that drives me nuts. I don't think for a minute that these two didn't know that they would be great together. They'd done a tune for a tribute to Leadbelly sometime back, and it clicked. But for a whole alubm, hard part was finding the right tunes. Enter the musical genius that is T-Bone Burnett. Ever since seeing Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, for which Burnett produced the soundtrack, T-Bone's been something of my musical guide for roots music. American roots music is Plant's passion, and Kraus' metier.

The album's songs were selected (and produced) by Burnett with input from Plant and Krauss. Burnett put together the musicians (including himself on guitar) that present a haunting and rich sound, providing a diverse mix of blues, country, folk and roots rock songs from a wide range of writers, including: Tom Waits, Gene Clark, Phil and Don Everly, Little Milton Campbell, Mel Tillis and Sam Phillips. Hell, the band deserves mention, too, becuase they are a Who's Who of bluegrass/blues/roots musicians: Marc Ribot, Norman Blake, Mike Seeger, Jay Bellerose, and Dennis Crouch (Norman Blake was the first bluegrass artist I was really aware of). This album really isn't a duet album...T-Bone is more than producer and musician, but third man. And, in truth, I'm not tickeled by the couple of solo songs on this album.

I cannot stop listening to this album. Rich Woman is irresistable, Killing Blues haunting, and Gone, gone, gone and inffectious Everley Brothers romp. Dig it.

But then there's that little message about "beware of the predator" and being aware about being alone with adults. I guess its easier to teach kids not to trust the priest than to make sure they have trustworthy priests. Whoops... did I type that?

What's going on here? Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee announced Monday that he was investigating the Federal Communications Commission. At the heart of the matter is Dingell's accusation of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin of "possible abuse of power" and a failure to operate fairly and openly in handling proposed cable TV and media ownership regulations. Now this is an interesting turn of event.

Sherman, set the wayback machine for 2004

Anyone remember Martin's predecessor Michael Powell? Yeah, the guy derided by anyone who wasn't a fan of the cable and telephone carriers for being in their back pocket and pushing a de-regulation agenda to benefit those players at the consumers' expense. Fair or not, that was his rap. Powell's policies were mostly in step with the Bush Administration's de-regulation agenda and certainly in line with traditional Republican economic policy. In replaceing Powell, Martin quickly let it be known that he wanted to ease the rules on ownership of newsapers and TV stations. This appears consistent, doesn't it? Except that he also came out quickly and vocally for re-regulating the TV industry arguing that cable companies are garnering too dominant a position in the market. Huh?

This is baffling to me. Martin has served President Bush for many years prior to the President appointing him to the top role at the FCC as legal advisor, member of the Bush-Cheney transition team, and as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House - then has served as faithful steward of the Administration's policy on the FCC for over six years. It seems odd that he'd break with the pro-business agenda. But Martin has been the champion of "a la carte programming" - forcing the cable companies to abandon their "all or nothing" content offerings and guiding them to offer consumers to the option to only pay for the programming they wish. Sounds awfully progressive to me, and certainly not in step with Bush Administration of prior Chairman Powell's policies. A Bush appointee championing consumer rights at the expense of corporate America? Maybe I did see a flock of Vietnamese Pot Bellied pigs aloft last night.

So why would a Democratic congressman who is clearly on the side of greater regulation go after Martin? Dingell evidently decided to go forward just days after Martin came under fire for withholding from his FCC colleagues data that did not support Martin’s conclusion about the scope of cable industry’s subscriber penetration. Huh? Martin's contention is essentially that the cable companies are amassing too much market power and Congress shot down his proposal last week to introduce regulation to level the playing field. Now Dingle is alleging that Martin withheld information that would undermine Martin's contention: essentially, data that would prove that the cable companies are not garnering dominant market power. Multichannel News reports that Dingell wrote a three page letter to Martin questioning the latter's management of the FCC and noting that FCC Republican member Robert McDowell and FCC Democratic member Jonathan Adelstein refused to accept Martin’s cable data, accusing Martin of withholding data that contradicted Martin's assertion that cable has at least 70% subscriber penetration.

Who's Misdirecting Whom?

So what gives? I don't know. The back-channel stuff I'm reading from industry watch dogs - the folks in the fourth estate who try to hold carriers and the media accountable - seem to be beating a jungle drum about a rather big conspiracy. Namely, they're suggesting that Martin essentially created this whole tempest to kill the growing attention being paid to subscriber growth and monopolistic power of the cable companies. If Martin is publicly crucified for falsely accusing the cable companies of monopoly, that ought to take the heat off for a couple of years, oughtn't it? Its not not that far fetched: with the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in the next decade, the MSOs, DSOs, and Telcos are lobbying like mad and the bribing of Martin would be chump change. Still, fairly unlikely.

Now if only a case would come before the court challenging whether or not MSOs have the right to block or reroute content over the bandwidth they sell their subscribers!

I was very sad to hear of the passing of Herb Kessler last week (Friday, January 4^th, I believe). Keppler was a publisher, editor and columnist at two of the leading photographic magazines for more than fifty years. Relating teh technical aspects of the craft and equipment of photography in Popular Photography (now Popular Photography and Imaging) and Modern Photography, Herb's wry and folksy manner both illuminated the reader and often steered them away from expensive equipment they might not have needed.

At a time when most hobbyist and enthusiast publications, particular photography magazines, were little more than a vehicle for advertising and advertisor driving copy, it was Herb Keppler who established an independent mechanism for evalutating and comparing equipment, regardless of how it effected advertisors or advertising income. It became the model for what we've come to expect and enjoy the last forty years. He almost single handedly turned the world on to the virtures of Japanese camera manufacturer when the prevailing opinion was wildly biased toward German made equipment. And his folksy, personal style has been the model that today is emulated by the likes of columnists from Norm Abrams to David Pogue. I had the chance to meet Herb a couple of times at MacWorld and the Seybold Conferences and he was a warm, approachable and authentic man generous with his knowledge and kindness. Thank you, Herb, for your contribution to a grateful three generations of photographers.