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April 30, 2006
overheard in italy 1
"i like-a new york, because-a when i-a talk-a like-a dis in London they-a say 'hey, you're from italy' - when i talk-a like dis in new york, they just think i'm-a from new york!"
Posted by Steve at 10:50 PM | Comments (31) | TrackBack
oh yeah, uncle buck
a damn good re-enactment. god am i glad we have you tube so i can waste my time watching stuff like this.
Posted by Steve at 10:42 PM | Comments (1772) | TrackBack
April 28, 2006
SES Milano
Here's me (center) with Tiziano Fogliata (left) and Simone Carletti (right) at SES in Milan this week. Tiziano and Simone have been two of the biggest proponents of FeedBurner we've had in Italy, and they continued to do so at SES.
Posted by Steve at 07:51 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
April 25, 2006
let me translate...
let me translate...
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
Posted by Steve at 10:58 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
today in Milan...
Lot going on here today...more pics soon!
Posted by Steve at 10:14 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
April 24, 2006
good technology gone bad: buckeye cam
i remember the days when a deer hunt meant slogging through the weeds on farmer Johnson's farm, hoping to run across the elusive five-point. now these cheaters have ruined the sport with thier technology.
i was somehow targeted on wordreference.com with a google adsense BFA for this. funny.
BuckEye Cam - Trophy Shots
Posted by Steve at 01:57 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
April 23, 2006
survey your feed readers
John Z has some pictures of how you can survey your feed readers with a FeedFlare. John, has anyone ever told you your blog logo looks a lot like the Windows XP logo in the periphery? (my steve rubelesque premonition wants me to blog "i predict that John Zeratsky will change his logo!")
Enough about me - by John Zeratsky
Posted by Steve at 10:09 AM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
Google base people profiles: now all Hot or Not
Google Base people profiles used to all be Adult Friend Finder ads...now they are all Hot or Not ads. funny. take a look at some of the exciting friends you can meet!
http://base.google.com/base/search?a_n0=people+profiles&a_y0=9&a_s0=0&a_r=1
Google Base
Posted by Steve at 09:48 AM | Comments (42) | TrackBack
world cup german - the essentials
useful phrases such as:
"Can you please direct me to the nearest pub?"
Wo ist die naechste Kneipe bitte?
"I strongly disagree with the referee’s decision"
Dem Schiedsrichter stimme ich ueberhaupt nicht zu (can be
abbreviated to 'Dem Schiedsrichter icht blind', meaning 'The referee is
blind!')
Mind your languange in Germany this summer [via Daily Mail]
the Daily Mails World Cup 2006 feed can be found here:
Posted by Steve at 09:10 AM | Comments (202) | TrackBack
April 22, 2006
Russ hangs up the shoes...
First checking to see if it is Dia de los Innocentes. Nope. okay, this probably isn't a joke.
After four years, Russ Beattie hangs up the shoes and puts a "cerrado" sign on Russell Beattie Notebook. I've enjoyed reading Russ' insights into mobile, his rants, and even his blogging flame wars. Russ wasn't afraid to put his personal life and personality on his blog, even to the lengths of having scary threats put on his family that should serve as a lesson for everyone in the blogosphere.
He doesn't need to explain to me why he's exiting the blogosphere...it takes a really long attention span to run a blog. I've pretty much given up here, now just posting links and other random thoughts. It gets tiring after a while. The good news is, even archived content can earn good AdSense or YPN dollars!
link:
The Last Page
Posted by Steve at 08:07 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
April 20, 2006
Google Talk integrating with Asterisk
Joe, this bud's for you.
Skype has been really sucky lately. other options are starting to become appealing.
Networking Pipeline | Blog | GoogleTalk Gets a Facelift for Business
Technorati Tags: VOIP
Posted by Steve at 04:11 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
more on Sony Ericsson W800 vs W810 [via MobileBurn]
i've pretty much stopped reviewing phones here because Michael Oryl at MobileBurn just does such a great job. His review of the W810 Walkman phone is no different. If you were interested in the W800, read this review. If you are here in the US, the major thing you want out of this phone is the 850Mhz band that allows it to work on Cingular.
Sony Ericsson W810 Review (MobileBurn)
btw - his feed is here:
http://www.mobileburn.com/xml/rss2.jsp
Posted by Steve at 12:43 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Live Drive, GDrive, whatever. gimme gimme gimme
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1951172,00.asp
Posted by Steve at 12:20 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
blogger beats chicago newspapers to press
Outside my window this morning I could see the sirens and the rescue crews on the bridge. The buzz around the office was "someone jumped." So I went to all the Chicago news media sites...Chicago Tribune.com, Suntimes.com, cbs2chicago.com, nada, zip, zilch.
I clicked on my Google Reader bookmark, and hey, Paul Baker, one of our IT dudes here at FeedBurner, had it all documented from his walk in.
Check it out
picture below also links to Paul's blog where he has a lot more pictures of the event.. Yep, the media landscape is changing :)
Diver submerges and all you see are bubbles. FeedBurner
Posted by Steve at 12:16 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
April 19, 2006
nielsen ratings - what goes on your TV? how does it work?
nielsen setup
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
I was at someone's house today who is a "Nielsen Family." So what does that really mean?
1. You get all this crap you see in the picture bolted on to *every* tv in your house.
2. The installers acutally come in, take apart your TV, and attach an auditory sensor to the speakers on your TV. Get this - on every TV station broadcasted via OTA, cable or satellite, there is actually a sound that only nielsen and dogs can hear that identifies which program you are watching.
3. Whenever you watch TV, you have to use the special "Nielsen Remote" that just has six buttons labeled 1-6 on it. Each family member has a number that corresponds to them. e.g. Dad =1, Mom=2, Dick=3, Jane=4 to start watching a program
4. You have to press the button every 40 minutes (!) to show that you are still watching TV. This prevents someone from turning on the TV, walking away, and jacking the ratings
5. All this data is relayed to a box in the basement via RF, that dials into Nielsen at 2am and does a modem transmit.
6. Nielsen compiles all this data overnight from all its households, and sends it out to their subscribers by 8am in the morning so everyone can see the previous night's ratings.
You have to sign up for this for 2 years, and get paid nothing! Amazing.
Posted by Steve at 05:18 PM | Comments (197) | TrackBack
April 18, 2006
rick says podcasting is big
...and i tend to believe him. i gotta admit, i wouldn't have seen it coming.
Podcasting is big
Posted by Steve at 03:47 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 15, 2006
Wal-Mart phasing out firearms...
does that mean they will start carrying Ozzy Osbourne records too?
read more...
Reuters Business Channel | Reuters.com
Posted by Steve at 09:38 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
Chinese online travel market
China is a changing place for sure, and when I was there, a lot still seemed like the wild west - but the amount of foreign investment and influence can't be denied. The online economy is evolving rapidly, and the pure scale of people makes it possible to create business that otherwise might have a hard time in similar economies.
Total sales at
Ctrip, the country's
largest online travel company, will jump from $41m last year to about $63m this
year, according to
Deutsche Bank, which
includes transactions completed offline as well as online.
China's online travel market taking off - Personal Computer World
Posted by Steve at 09:25 AM | Comments (231) | TrackBack
April 14, 2006
my plan is almost complete - USB charging
i suggested a while ago that everything should charge via USB. take a look at some of this stuff! The only one I own is the USB sushi, and I use it all the time.
Wired News: Weirdest USB Gadgets
Posted by Steve at 12:13 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Tool...coming soon
10,000 Days
i really, really hope i can still get into tool. i seem to be outgrowing most of these types of bands. can tool hold up?
Amazon.com: 10,000 Days: Explore similar items
Posted by Steve at 09:40 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
getting your moveable type blog to be UTF-8
there's probably another way to do this, but it's pretty easy to get your moveable type blog to spit out UTF-8 so it flips your readers' browsers to the right encoding.
just put a file called .htaccess in the root of your blog directory with the following code:
addType 'text/html; charset=UTF-8' html
addType 'application/xml; charset=UTF-8' xml
that's it.
Posted by Steve at 11:38 AM | Comments (329) | TrackBack
rss advertising - brent hill gets a mugshot
a good article on RSS advertising featuring our very own Brent Hill.
Adotas » Feedburner’s Brent Hill Fires Off on the RSS Feeding Frenzy
Technorati Tags: rss, advertising, google
Posted by Steve at 10:10 AM | Comments (70) | TrackBack
April 11, 2006
dead squirrel in a tree
dead squirrel in a tree
Originally uploaded by steveobd.
this poor squirrel met an untimely death. you don't get to see that very often.
Posted by Steve at 09:19 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
April 10, 2006
urban ninjas - you gotta see this
i guarantee you will say "wow" when you watch this:
Posted by Steve at 10:34 PM | Comments (177) | TrackBack
Eduardo Arcos featured in La Nacion.com
If you happen to be able to read Spanish, there's a good interview with one of our FeedBurner publishers, Aduardo Arcos, in the latest La Nacion.com, an Argentinian publication. Eduardo is one of the founders of Hipertextual, the blog network that publishes ALT1040 and Gizmología.
In the article, he explains the weblog network business model of how he hires and pays his writers based on the popularity of what they write based on the advertising dollars they bring in, and some of the basic differences between blog networks and traditional journalism.
I personally find it fascinating that some of these blog networks that are not American based are finding a way to flourish in their parallel blospheres, I think much more so than the versions that are simply translated versions of Weblogs, Inc or Gawker Media.
Plus, blog networks that exist in Latin America or the Phillipines that can get paid in Google AdSense US dollars can actually leverage their content a lot further than a commercial publisher working in a closed local advertising economy.
Blogs vs. medios tradicionales: un juego de diferencias | LANACION.com
Posted by Steve at 09:21 PM | Comments (263) | TrackBack
April 09, 2006
half-life2 running on bootcamp, intel mac
i can't imagine i won't end up buying an intel mac of some sort, especially if they start producing a 12" with high resolution. all OS emulators i have tried pretty much have sucked...can bootcamp be different?
via vidaextra
Posted by Steve at 10:09 PM | Comments (120) | TrackBack
Bridges - Jets Overhead
My Yahoo! Music pick of the week:
Posted by Steve at 07:41 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Manholes of Japan
they decorate manholes in Japan...here's what they look like:
Manholes of Japan
Posted by Steve at 06:16 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
April 08, 2006
homepage leapfrog: now i like netvibes
i've written before about how much i liked pageflakes , and i still do, however, after a week of using both of them as homepage tabs in firefox, i've switched back to netvibes. the feed reading experience is now the same, and everything just loads a little bit faster.
but in general i like the way this is headed - MyYahoo! like headlines that allow you to read feeds with never leaving the homepage. it's great.
netvibes needs more and better modules/widgets though. both pageflakes and google homepage seem to have a vibrant development community going, and netvibes seems woefully behind on this front. they have been innovting quickly however, so i hope there is more coming soon.
Posted by Steve at 11:42 AM | Comments (158) | TrackBack
Korean casinos
oh, this was interesting....while in Korea, there was actually a casino attached to my hotel. they checked your passport before going in the casino. why?
because only foriegners are allowed in the casino!
yep, if you had no passport or have a Korean passport, no entrada. "Sin for everyone else but us." you gotta love it!
Posted by Steve at 08:50 AM | Comments (512) | TrackBack
April 06, 2006
Why VOIP Needs Crypto [via Wired News]
articles like this get me excited about reading Wired again. call me paranoid, but i pretty much assume that if people want to eavesdrop on any of my conversations these days, whether it be voice, email, IM, or VOIP - it's certainly possible. very few files on disk are actually encrypted these days, and i certainly don't count on the network being encrypted either.
Wired News: Why VOIP Needs Crypto
Technorati Tags: VOIP
Posted by Steve at 01:41 PM | Comments (244) | TrackBack
April 05, 2006
iSkoot
this is cool - if you have a high end S60 phone and an unlimited data plan - iSkoot allows you to use your skypeout minutes to call skype contacts or anyone else via the IP network on your phone. i just tried it out, and although it takes longer to connect than a normal call, the call quality seemed to be right up there. Link below
Welcome to iSkoot
Technorati Tags: voip, skype, mobile
Posted by Steve at 04:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 02, 2006
gmail vs yahoo mail spam filters: no contest
we actually don't have any spam filters on our mail at work. it's every man for himself on the spam filter front, so and i generally use spamarrest as my method for keeping the wolves at bay. some people don't like it but i consider it an intelligence test for anyone who wants to email me.
i also forward a copy of my email to both yahoo mail (the paid version) and gmail, for ease of reading, and more importantly, archiving and searching.
so basically, the same email traffic goes to all three services. spamarrest is challenge and response, so basically spam only gets through if i've allowed a mailing list to come through with no challenge. you can see from the spamarrest stats, most of my email is indeed spam. (click picture below for full size)
of the other two services, i gotta say - gmail's spam filter kicks yahoo mail's ass any day of the week. i'd say yahoo probably lets 5X the spam through that gmail does, and that's with the paid upgrade to yahoo that supposedly has better spam filtering.
Posted by Steve at 07:09 PM | Comments (224) | TrackBack