Turning Down 80 Billion Dollars

Rumors are flying that Yahoo! said "nyet" to an 80 billion dollar offer from Micorosft over the Holidays.

I wonder what the merged company would have been called. MicroHoo! ?

Link to Mary Jo Foley's terrific blog.

Mark Cuban on the Stock Market

yup, it's for suckers.

flickr High Speed Photo pool

More stuff get's "blowed up real good!" Link via digg.

New Sense of Place - The Geospatial Web

Now here's an NPR Boston Talk Show that fits nicely into my Wheel House!

"Just a decade after it became ubiquitous, the World Wide Web has made us blase about information. We assume we can learn almost everything about almost anything at the touch of a PC keyboard. But the digital revolution is hardly over.

Now, the digital realm is exploding into the physical world. They call it the "geo-spatial web." Already it means online maps loaded with information about the physical world, and someday soon, that physical world itself will be tagged and teeming with data for the asking: What is that building? Where is my dog? Who is that man?

The implications are huge, exciting, and scary and the result will be a world alive with information.

Hear about the ambitions and implications of the "geospatial web."

-- with NPR Boston "OnPoint" host Tom Ashbrook.


My observations on the segment:
* Guest Mike Liebhold (Senior Researcher: IFTF) does a great job explaining the Geospatial web.
* Host Tom Ashbrook tries to conjure up scary privacy scenarios but this is basically a non-issue.
* callers to the show are incredibly savvy about the GeoWeb!
* Lots of talk about flickr and Dodgeball.
* Mike Liebhold explains/addresses privacy issues really well.
* Good call from a commercial Truck Driver.
* Guest Peter Morville (author of "Ambient Findability") briefly discusses "open realms" vs. Teleco walled gardens.
* Mike Liebhold talks about cell devices with WiFi and vice versa :-)

Link to WBUR NPR-Boston's "OnPoint" Radio show web page with Real Audio and Windows Media streams and here's a link to a 42MB MP3 file you can download and toss on your iPod or MP3 player.

Pandora: music recommendation engine

A great music discovery tool from the good folks at the Music Geneome project:

"Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?"
Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs. We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you."

Well, I typed in "Dream Academy" and Pandora played "One Dream" a great song of theirs, then Pandora played "Paradise" by the Bodeans, then "Perception Room" by the Lily's, etc. etc.

Very cool tool! (uses a browser embedded Macromedia Flash player)

Link to Pandora (thanks Kevin!)

The Boss

I don't know how I missed this NPR "Fresh Air" interview when it originally aired on November 15, 2005 but here's the Boss discussing "Born to Run" with Terry Gross on the occassion of the albums 30th anniversary.

Link to NPR's Fresh Air page with the Real Audio stream and here's a link to a 40MB MP3 file you can download and toss on your iPod.

Mapping the internet

Here's what it looks like. Link via digg.

Woman marries Dolphin

I wonder which side of the Church was under water?

Link via MeFi.

Big Surf

Like, the biggest ever recorded dude...

Below is an amazing clip from this Sundays PBS "Nature" episode titled:
"Condition Black", "an episode that examines the dangerous weather system that swept through Hawaii on January 28, 1998. Surfers from around the world came to the state's famous North Shore with hopes of riding some of the largest waves ever recorded. However, the Coast Guard deemed the storm so hazardous, all access to the water was officially denied." But a small group of daring surfers made it out to a spot called "log cabin" 1/2 to 2 miles offshore in Waimea Bay. Eyewitness accounts are combined with unbelievable action footage, some of which was captured on 70mm IMAX film.

Can't say I'm too happy with the quality of the video clip or the nasty scan lines but this is truly amazing footage (8:00 mins). Hopefully it'll make you run out and catch the IMAX film called "Extreme"... or maybe just make you wax up your board :-)

Moving Big Files

A great list of resources:

"If you’ve ever had to send large files to someone and don’t have access to FTP, or the person you’re sending to doesn’t, this type of service is a fantastic resource.

Today, I have a list of 50 similar services that are absolutely free and require no e-mail registration to use. Included in the list are file size limits, download limits and the amount of time the file remains on the server for download."

-- The CreativeGuy Blog.

Link via digg.

Happy New Year 2006!

New Year's Eve From Around the World!
Way cool 360 degree panorama photos from the first few minutes of 2006 in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Minneapolis, Ljubljana and elsewhere.
[Note: Some of the panoramas also have sound]

Link via MeFi.

How the RIAA sues people

A very interesting piece on the "due process" the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) employs to sue people. Good stuff to know if you're an Evil Grandmother or Pre-teen criminal who recieves a subpoena in the mail.

Link via digg.

History of Computer Graphics

A Critical History of Computer Graphics Animation -- a fairly interesting history of CGI up to the year 2000.

Link via MeFi.

BBC on "Star Trek"

As "Number One" (actress Majel Barrett) says on the surface of Talos IV in the episode "Menagerie Part II": "CAN YOU GIVE US ANYMORE!" :-)

The BBC reports: "The Sci-fi series Star Trek is the show most people want to see returned to their TV screens, a survey has found." Link to BBC via digg.

Disclaimer:
I'm not a 'hard core' Trekkie, I just love this trick photo.
Circa 1992, Seattle, WA
:-)

Gwynn Dyer's Year End Roundup

Canadian journallist and war historian Gwynne Dyer's Year Ender is an interesting analysis of global war and peace -- thoughout 2005.

Link via MeFi.

Bad Day at 30,000 Feet

Jeremy Hermanns was on an Alaska Air flight that lost pressure. He took Treo 650 photos of the scene and, thank God, lived to blog about it
(via BuzzMachine & Lost Remote).

Xeni on NPR's covering pearLyrics

Tech journalist and BoingBoing co-editor Xeni Jardin has a segment on NPR's "Day to Day" today talking about pearLyrics, something I posted about last week. As mentioned, pearLyrics is probably the best tool I've played with, since, well -- iTunes. It's a fantastic little companion app to help retrieve lyrics from the web for music I already LEGITIMATELY own and listen to in iTunes.

Xeni's piece is solid on the issues and it's always nice to hear a beautiful alpha geek on the radio! -- especially when she's discussing important stuff like "freedom to innovate" if you're a software developer.

Link to the NPR segment stream (requires RealPlayer).

RIP Vincent Schiavelli

From "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "Amedeus" to "James Bond" this guy was one of my favorite character actors. I will miss him.

Link to Yahoo! via MeFi.

Vive La France!

They support file sharing.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

So now we know.... how they get that Caramel into the Caramilk bar...

If you really want to know here's a link via Paul Kerodsky's "Infectious Greed".