Liberal Leadership

Interesting coverage of the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race -- on the MetaFilter blog. Link.

BellSouth plays Snidely Whiplash

BellSouth is set to shut down New Orlean's city wide WiFi because they claim it's illegal competition for the services they offer. Link.

Peer-to-Peer-to-Lawyers

First you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the lawsuit...
Streamcast Networks sues Kaaza/Skype under RICO statutes :-)

Link via Om Malik.

Apple iPhone

OK, so someone in Australia says it's "all but confirmed" but any way you slice it - this thing better be an insanely great device. Dual Core iBooks and a wide screen video iPod on April 1st would be nice too :-)

Link to Gizmodo.

Apocalypse Pooh!

I imagine Disney lawyers will be issuing iFilm with a take down notice faster than people ran to catch the last chopper out of Saigon... until then check out this 9 minute mashup from 1987!

Link to iFilm via BoingBoing.

What kinda Wireless?

It's good to know that when I bolt out of bed in the morning to engage in work I truly love I'm barking up the right tree -- at least according to #4 on Paul Kerodsky's "Ten Emerging Technolgies That Will Make a Difference" list.

Tufte on Photography

One of my design heros, Edward Tufte, on aesthetic controls for photographers.

Link to ask E.T.

South by Southwest

Here are some great archived keynote and confernece discussions (Podcasts, MP3, Video) from last weeks "South By Southwest" Interactive conference held annually in Austin Texas. Good stuff for geeks, entrepreneurs, creatives and anyone who's curious about emerging trends.

Links to audio.
Links to video.

South Park & Tom

So Comedy Central buckles-in on a 2nd airing of a South Park episode about scientology. Tom Cruise presses for a ban on the episode and gets it. Now it's likely waaaaay more people will search, download, view and talk about it due to the controversy. Matt & Trey are smart guys and probably knew that demand for a banned episode would shoot into the stratosphere.

Here's a great post by Bob Lefsetz in which he uses this story to illustrate the changes now underway in media -- big, small, old and new. Good stuff.

Link to LefsetzLetter.

UPDATE: Yeah, well what the hell do I know... 3 hours after writing the post above I found the South Park scientology episode posted on YouTube in one of my RSS feeds.

"Pimp Your Ride" -- D.C. Lobbyist Style

A great story on indicted Washington D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff's 2002 BMW 745i... apparently it had everything but fur dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

Link to the NYTimes vis SmartMobs.

Some Assembly Required

Here's a really cool time lapse video of the 12 month assembly process for the new Airbus A380 - compressed into 7 minutes.

Link to video (via digg).

Ask a Ninja

This... is really funny.

Link.

The Perfect Mug

Barney Gumble would love one of these.

Cubeland

A great article from Fortune on the history of the office cubicle.

Link.

SNL Portman Rap

This is a few days old but Princess Amidala busting a move is worth a look ;-)

Link to SNL Digital Short.

Cool Keyspan iPod Remote

This looks pretty cool for browsing / playing iPod content remotely... I wish the Logitech Harmony line of remotes had this kind of capability.

Link to Keyspan Press Release.

A Net Saturated World?

If I was an incumbent telco or wireless carrier I'd be kinda worried about this...

Currently there is a kind of "illusion" that you need phone company.
Just like when Edison was in the business of providing light, people figured out pretty quickly that what they really wanted was electricity. What people are figuring out now is that they want CONNECTIVITY.

Over time it's likely to become increasingly hard for incumbent telcos to support their existing business models. I think an argument can be made that the main purpose of their "new" network offerings (3G, EVDO, etc.) is to support their current business model and billing infrastructure. If their "Port Blocking" or throttling of bits associated with VoIP services like Skype and Vonage isn't evidence enough that they're freaked out, their terms of service which tightly control what customers can actually do over their new network connections oughta be... is this a value-added consumer experience?

Link to SmartMobs.

UPDATE: Mark Evans has some interesting, related info here.

Business Week on Net Neutrality

"THE SQUEEZE. Recently, executives at some telephone companies have indicated that their business model for providing broadband service will include not only charging customers for an Internet connection but also assessing a fee on Web sites to enable their customers to reach them more quickly."

"Essentially, what these executives are proposing is the creation of a two-lane Internet where larger, more established Web sites with financial resources that pay for fast-lane access will be able to squeeze out smaller, emerging Web sites."

Link via SmartMobs.

South-Park-ified

Me as a South Park character (although I doubt the Nuns at St. Dominic's Elementary School would approve).

Link to South-Park-maker.

Toronto to become a WiFi Hotspot

The Toronto Star reports that Ontario Hydro is planning to make the entire city a WiFi Hotspot... I bet Ted Rogers doesn't think that's a cool as I do.

Link to the Toronto Star and the CBC chimes in here.

The PopePod

His Holiness scores a 2GB iPod Nano. Hallelujah! :-)

Link to Engadget.

"Walk The Line" Commentary

I'm a huge Laserdisk / DVD junkie and have many favorites when it comes to top notch director audio commentaries and supplemental materials.

Last night I watched "Walk The Line" on DVD with director commentary by James Mangold ("Copland", "Girl Interupted") and I'd put this experience in the Top 5 best commentaries I've ever heard (along with Scorcese/Schrader's "Taxi Driver" and John Sturges "Great Escape" commentaries). Absolutely awesome insights on many topics.

Well done James!

Link to the James Mangold page on IMDB and here's a great audio interview with him on KCRW's "The Treatment" with Elvis Mitchell.

RIM-NTP Resolution

My guess was a settlement in the neighborhood of around 500 million dollars... and it turns out to be just a little higher than that.

Link to Mark Evans.

Eco Mouse Trap

At least this method provides a chance for creature rehabilitation and for you to read the mouse your Victim Impact Statement, spelling out exactly how you feel about loosing your cheese.

Link to BoingBoing.

London's Giant Squid

Right now NASA is calculating exactly home much Tzatziki will be required to make this thing go away!

Link to BBC.

"File sharing not theft. Never has been." says BBC.

Adam Livingstone
Producer, BBC Newsnight

"The BBC has clarified one of its scaremongering 'filsharing = paedophilia' industry shill pieces with a complete 180 reversal and the declaration that filesharing is not theft. The snowflakes are settling in Hell right now."
--- via Digg.

Link to the BBC article and Cory at BoingBoing chimes in here.

A Meditation on "Mobile"

“Hi Mum, guess where I am?”
“I don’t know dear. Are you at home or in the office?”
“No - I’m standing in the middle of a field!”
“Gosh, are you dear? How’s that possible then?”

Yes, this quote is an exageration but pretty much hits the nail on the head when it comes to the demographics of mobile device and mobile platform usage.

Link to a great post by Russell Buckley over at MobHappy.

Bob Iger's inspiration for Pixar Deal

Bloomberg news is reporting that Bob Iger made the decision to acquire Pixar while watching a parade at the new Hong Kong Disneyland theme park. While watching the parade it appeared that all the new characters were from Pixar films, not Disney ones.

"It really hit me hard that we had had 10 years of real failure," Iger said.
"Keeping animation strong is incredibly vital."

This is a massive and sorry indictment of Michael Eisner's final 10 years.

Link via The Disney Blog.

Enron Trial Blog

TrialWatch is a pretty cool Enron Trial blog offered up by the Houston Chronicle. Very good stuff.

Link to an NPR RealAudio piece.

Link to post about evidence that's now on-line.

Link to the Houston Chronicle's TrialWatch RSS Feed.

What if...

Microsoft redesigned the iPod packaging. A brilliant parody.

Link to video.