Elaborate Christmas Scam?

After looking over magumbo_2000's eBay auction selling his kids' Nintendo DS Christmas gift, it's hard to believe that it's genuine. It may be because he made $5, 300 on products worth $700 and I'm envious, but the father chooses to remain anonymous. It's probably an eBay stunt to drive up bids, selling cute pink baby clothes doesn't turn much of a profit...

Cell Phone with Vanity Mirror

Forget GPRS, SMS, and ringtones, cell phones with vanity mirrors are what's next!

Watson 1.7.5

Watson is a Sherlock-like program for OS X that has various channels. I've just started to play with it so I don't know much about it, but it's cool. There's channels for weather, eBay, epicurious, phone numbers, etc. Karelia Software developed Watson, but sold it to Sun and can't distribute it on their site any more. I found a copy here along with registration info so download it now!

Baby Blog

Cute family blog about the Saunders Family with tons of baby pictures. I don't like children or babies, but this was too cute to overlook.

reBlog

reBlogging is what I wanted to do with my blog when I first started. Instead of creating content or writing a diary I wanted to compile content from other blogs that I found striking. A reBlog sounds interesting, but it's nice to write my own comments along with the links I find. I like keeping a regular blog instead of a reBlog, but reBlogs are helpful.

Reading Your Country's Travel Guide

I really wanted to spend winter break in London or Paris this year to go site seeing and take tons of pictures, but that's not happening. Instead I'll probably spend it working or sleeping, the latter's more likely. Even though I won't be going to Europe it's still fun to read travel guides and look at photos of all the beautiful places. I've discovered Wikitravel to be an excellent, though currently incomplete, source for general information on several destinations.

After looking through London, Paris, and Tokyo I decided to see what was written about the United States. It turned out to be an interesting read because things I didn't really pay much attention to were mentioned like what accent is portrayed in mass media and types of alcohol served at restaurants, if any.

My favorite facts about our culture:

"A degree of romance is attached to non-American English accents, and people may be friendlier to you because of yours."

"Unlike much of the rest of the world, tipping in America is essentially mandatory for polite patrons -- and, indeed, tips often form the majority of a worker's income."

"California wines are some of the best in the world, and are available on most wine lists in the country."

"At the college or university level the United States, by almost any measure, has no peer."

Reading about your own culture can be almost as compelling as another one.

Chris Webber Never Agreed to "Apprentice" Charity

I'll admit it, I watched the three hour Apprentice season 2 finale yesterday like many others. I was rooting for Kelly because he was a successful project manager three times while Jenn stayed on the sidelines until she was the only one who hadn't lead a team. Most people at Lincoln Center wanted him to win along with fired candidates from both seasons; Trump wasn't going to surprise us and choose Jenn when nobody wanted her.

I did applaud Jenn for finding another person to emcee her event at short notice though. Chris Webber backed out of a charity event at the last moment to go to a meeting instead. Or so it seemed. He claims that he had nothing to do with event and never promised to participate at all. On the show it was a bid deal that he didn't show up and it looked like the whole event would cave in because he wasn't there. The event went off smoothly, but now all those who didn't care about Chris Webber before now dislike him for slighting a charity event. Webber's lawyers are looking into legal action now.

"Challanges"

I think this was done on purpose to embarrass Bush...

Update
The image URL keeps changing! Here's where it is now.

Update 2:
"Challenges" too much for the White House.

Ogo: IM, Text, and Email Machine

Cingular is offering a text only device called the Ogo that sends IMs, text messages, and email. It looks pretty snazzy and user friendly once you get over the learning curve. With a price of $79.99 it sounds like a good deal, but having to pay for each IM and email account does not. If buddy lists weren't stored on servers making them accessible from any device with an internet connection, then the Ogo would be worth considering. My advice, buy a PDA with wifi or a Treo.

Google + Amazon = Googlezon

Everybody likes Google, but is it going to take over our lives by filtering our news and collecting personal information based on our purchases? Maybe, but that's the worst case scenario according to whoever created this movie. Any company, even one as beneficial as Google, that gets too big has the potential to cause consumers pain. I like Google now and hope it continues to be innovative (make Hello for Mac), etc, but if it merges with Amazon then I'll be concerned.

Link Courtesy Yan Feng.

Update
The creators of EPIC/Googlezon write about their project. Robin Sloan and Matt (doesn't have a website).

Human Corporation

From DubyaSpeak,

Tommy [Thompson] was commenting on the fact that we're a large company -- country, with all kinds of avenues where somebody can inflict harm.
-- Not the first time Dubya has confused "country" with "company"... White House, Dec. 4, 2004

See! See, this is how George W. Bush is running our company country. I should learn how to run one of these large corporations because they all seem to be benefitting from Bush's policies. We should all take a look at Monsanto; after contributing to the Bush campaign they ended up on the Fortune 500 list for the first time. However, most people would get tired of being in court all the time.

Bush and Putin Absorbing Culture

In Chilean ponchos. Credit: Yahoo News.


Wearing something Chinese. Credit: apocalypse.

Is it me, or do they have a talent for making ethnic garb look like cheap Halloween costumes? But to me Bush looks out of his element in anything but a Cowboy hat, boots, and a chainsaw.

Because We Need Another Diet

A Minnesota professor has created the Northwoods Diet, so if you can't shed the pounds as fast as the participants on the Biggest Loser you can try the latest fad diet.

Getting the Extreme Close Up

Is it me, or is the macro setting on Sony digital cameras broken? Using a CyberShot DSC-V1 I've tried to take pictures of things really close up, but to stay in focus I can only get so close, and that's not close enough! This is supposed to be a good camera for easy point and shoot photography but I can't set it up right to get a simple macro shot. Using an old 2.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 775 I can get extremely close to anything I want and the images turn out perfect. What am I doing wrong?

Update
I realized that the Coolpix has a closer range than the CyberShot, so it can get closer. I figured that since the CyberShot was newer it would have better everything, but that's not the case (it should be the case). Even the Coolpix 5200 has a slightly smaller (1.6 inches to infinity) macro setting than it's older cousin.

This is Capitalism

capitalism, originally uploaded by jimbouk999.

Capitalism represented in what was East Berlin? I like the caption the photographer gave for this photo.

aparently capitalism is cold and homosexual,this stutue represents this.Communism is sexy of course.

Yahoo Doesn't Like the Mac

Even though they discretely upgraded my mailbox to 250mb, instead of the standard 100, Yahoo isn't my favorite web service. Comparing the quality of their services between the two platforms, it's clear they don't like the Mac very much, especially OS X. Messenger on OS X hasn't been updated in a long time, and many of the tabs like Weather and News don't work at all. I'll admit that the Windows version of Messenger has too many bells and whistles that take up memory, but I'd like a program that works.

If you like watching music videos on Launch, then I'm sorry to inform you that it doesn't work with OS X, and probably won't in the near future. I wanted to watch a Destiny's Child video one time so I ran Netscape 4.7 in the Classic environment, but it wouldn't work! I download another version of Netscape 4.7x and still no luck. Why does Yahoo block access to this kind of media when the Mac operating system has been proven to handle this very well.

Somebody needs to write a letter or form some kind of petition to request that Yahoo upgrade it's services for Mac users. I think I'll ask Yahoo support services why they don't support the Mac platform as much as Windows. My guess was that it's a great conspiracy to subordinate Mac users.

Update
I emailed the Yahoo Launch support team yesterday and they responded today. They said they may offer Launch for OS X in the future, but they still want to hear feedback from their customers. So, I guess if enough Mac users email Yahoo things may change.

King Tut to Visit U.S.

Well, not him, but all his possessions are coming to America for 27 months.

Showcased in the exhibition are 50 objects found specifically in Tutankhamun's tomb, among them his royal diadem, or crown; the golden, jeweled container holding his mummified organs; an alabaster sculpture of the boy king; a silver trumpet; and a gilded shrine portraying Tutankhamun and his wife. Visitors also can walk through a replica of Tutankhamun's inner burial chamber, which managed to escape looting by grave robbers.

This exhibition is supposed to be bigger than the 1970's one, but will be shorter, stopping in four cities. I'm definitely not going to miss this. Even if you're not into Ancient Egypt, archaeology, or museums you should go to see all the gold and artifacts from a real king's tomb. It's surely worth the $30 (on top of the museum flat fee) to explore a treasury worth $650 million.

10,000

Today I checked my little Microsoft bcentral hit counter and found that I've finally logged 10,000 visitors. It may not seem like much compared to bigger sites, but when I first started I was happy with just 10 unique hits a day. Thanks to RSS, links from other blogs, and a few mentions here and there on blog memes I'm getting more visitors than when I first started. It's been fun starting my first blog.

Pronouncing Fashion Designer Names

Have trouble pronouncing high fashion designer names? About.com has a guide with sound files to help you out. Jean Paul Gaultier isn't that hard to say after all.

The Beast

If the Da Vinci Code wasn't a big enough challenge to Christianity, coming June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) there's the movie The Beast. Instead of suggesting that Jesus Christ had a family, this movie challenges the very existence of Him. It's too early to tell if this film will be good or have any major impact, but there is a community to discuss the film's topics. I guess the whole point of the movie is to let everybody know that there's hardly any evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus ever existed. Historians know this, but still say that Jesus was real. The film probably wants people to question their faith, yet again... Hopefully it has a good plot and doesn't get over hyped.