jtnt://life/unedited

Via Slashdot:

How Battlestar Galactica Killed TV: “Don Melanson writes ‘Following up on the MPAA going after torrent sites, you may be interested in Mindjack’s latest feature - Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV by Mark Pesce. It includes a post-script written in reponse to the recent Torrent site shutdowns.’ From the article: ‘While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for ‘word-of-mouth’ to spread about Battlestar Galactica.’”

This is how it works, people. Just like when bands let people tape and freely trade their music. Ever heard of the Grateful Dead? Phish? Dave Matthews Band? All of them owe their success in part to embracing this sort open trade. They knew that the more people that heard their music the more people would like, and thus buy, their music.

The other part? Quality product. Yeah, that’s the hard part.

Seems the AARP site was recently redesigned using web standards (a few piddly hiccups keep it from validating).

I think we’ve reached the lowest common denominator here, people. There is simply no excuse for not developing this way now.

I have a feeling I could get along with these people. At least the kindergartners.

(Via: Huffington Post)

I’m on the look-out for a simple multiple clipboard utility. Basically, just an app that allows you to keep keep a list/databse of the snippets you Edit: Copy. I need no other fancy features. My only requirement is that it live in the menubar (optional: contextual menu) and not have an icon that shows up in the OS X Dock.

I’ve run into the following apps:

• Butler
• CopyPaste-X
• iClip
• iPaste
• Spike

CopyPaste seems to fit my needs (and have some pretty sick advanced features if you want to use them, but they are out of the way if you don’t), but I’ve just downloaded iPaste, so the race is still on. And I’m still open to suggestions.

Smart Marketing agency and my employer, Erickson Barnett, launched the new Ascend Therapeutics site yesterday.

Today I came up with an idea that I think could warrant a patent. After doing a single search for “browser” and “bookmark” against the US Patent Office database, I knew that knew that it could land a patent.

Check out some of the beauties I found in just a few minutes poking around the USPO’s virtual filing cabinets:

US Patent 6,851,060: User control of web browser user data

Specifically, allowing a user to see his/her authentication information and saved cookies.

US Patent 6,853,980: System for selecting, distributing, and selling fonts.

Specifically, an online font store that displays related fonts with the currently viewed font.

US Patent 6,772,124: Content-driven speech- or audio-browser

Specifically, a search engine for audio files.

Sorry these are so web-centric. There are obvious, completely novel things patented in other areas, too, though:

US Patent 6,832,916: Soap dispenser hand wash interval timer

This is literally nothing more than a soap dispenser with a sign that says, WASH UP with Soap and Water. Get rid of germs in only 15 seconds” over it, as the patent says that the user “may use an ordinary clock” in determining the intervals.

I bet you never would have expected to find an image like this in the United States Patent and Trademark Office database. I bet you’d be even more surpised if you found out it was a drawing of a patented beer glass.

Another fine example of American ingenuity in design. Form really does follow function.

And then there are those that are completely justified and somewhat ironic in their titling, like US Patent 6,862,223, and I quote:

MONOLITHIC, COMBO NONVOLATILE MEMORY ALLOWING BYTE, PAGE AND BLOCK WRITE WITH NO DISTURB AND DIVIDED-WELL IN THE CELL ARRAY USING A UNIFIED CELL STRUCTURE AND TECHNOLOGY WITH A NEW SCHEME OF DECODER AND LAYOUT

Monolithic indeed.

It’s like the first time I got my picture in the paper for being a cub scout in a local parade, but much geekier… I am quoted in a Wired News article on the security oversights Apple made with Dashboard Widgets.

“I hope they see the danger, if only for their marketing,” said Tolson. “All it will take is one seriously nasty widget to completely wreck (Apple’s) image of ‘no viruses’ or ‘Macs are inherently more secure’ message. And you better believe that would become news.”

I said it then, and I’ll say it now… “Nasty widgets” is fun to say.

GimpShop is the open source image editing software, the GIMP (the worst UI in the world and perfect example of why OSS isn’t in the mainstream yet), hacked, er patched, to look and feel like Photoshop.

I’m in the middle of the 40mb download (not bad, considering Photoshop would likely be well over 100mb), but from the screenshots, this looks like it could be a killer combination.

Now available for OS X, Linux, and Windows XP.

Sweet. This guy should be rich.

—

UPDATE: It doesn’t change the UI as much as I would have hoped/thought. It organizes the menus better (like Photoshop’s), but the same schlocky interface problems that seem to always plague projects like the GIMP remain. I guess I should have known, but I got so excited about the prospect of a more Photoshop-like GIMP that I got a little carried away and a bit too hopeful. Damn. Nice work, still.

This is just a test post using MarsEdit, blog posting software from Ranchero. Since no one reads this anyway, no worries.

Wow, this is great. I may be $24.95 poorer soon.

1) A student is suspended when he refuses to hang-up his cell phone (which
aren’t supposed to be in use in his school) while on a call with his mom, a
soldier calling from Iraq.

“Kevin got defiant and disorderly,” Parham said. “When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we’re not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days.”

How thoughtful of you? Is this how we’re teaching kids to respond
appropriately to situations? A kid cusses and he can be arrested?

Read full article.

2) Andy Roddick loses match after he corrects umpire and turns a
double-fault into an ace, allowing his opponent to rally.

“I didn’t think it was anything extraordinary,” Roddick said. “The umpire would have done the same thing if he came down and looked. I just saved him the trip. He’s working hard up there.”

‘At a boy! So infrequently do we here such good news from our sports stars.

Read full article.