Being a slow start of the weekend, I came across this little gem on youtube after missing most of it on REAL tv. Let me set this up for you. Imagine you’re laying on your favorite recliner around midnight. All of your kids and wife are sleeping and the dog is on your lap. The house is finally cooling down from a hot, unusually dry, summer. You turn on the TV for some downtime before bed. The eerie silence of the night is broken by the booming sounds of an over volumed info-merical. A split second before you change the channel, something on the screen perks your interest. There’s a lady holding what looks like a giant toothbrush. Although not intended to be used on THIS end of your body, this incredible apparatus shares the same function as your everyday toothbrush. Click play on the video below to see for yourself. If you make it to the end of the clip without hyperventilating from laughter and purchase this product, you also get the ‘get a grip’ handle. This unique, suction cupped old time telephone receiver looking thing will help you get out of the shower without slipping. Of course if the suction is not firmly establish, said device will hopefully smack you in the face to remind you to NEVER stay up late.
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Increasingly more people are ditching their landlines for mobile phones and voip. A friend of mine who use to work for a telephone company said phone company’s reliability and their infrastructures are the result of the cold war. There are lots of redundancies in phone lines to keep those system running in case of an emergency. When was the last time the power AND phone went out at your residence during a storm? As times have changed, even my friend has now switched from his fail proof landline to VOIP. This brings up an interesting question. What do you do when you want to send a fax and you have no phone line?
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CompuServe started in 1979. By the time I was given my first computer, they were in their prime. Outside of the academic, military, or government bodies; this was the only way to get email and tech support for a PC user. In its’ hay-day it had over 1/2 a million users at any given time. Anyone who was interested in technology went to their forums and used their services. Those people that went there were being charged by the hour! Can you image having that kind of business model in today’s internet environment?
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Have you ever gone to a website that had some information you would love to read but can’t due to some design oversight? Whether it is dark font on dark background, small fonts, bad spacing, narrow margins, cluttered screen, or anything else that distracts you from the article you are reading; this little tool I found will help you clear out the mess.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
All you need to do is move the white ‘readability’ button to your browser’s toolbar so it can be readily available where ever you go on the web. If you don’t have a toolbar for links enabled you can also drag it to your ‘favorites’ in IE or ‘bookmarks’ in FF.
Now whenever you go to a site that is hard to read, just click on the ‘readability’ on your toolbar or in your bookmarks and the page will be transformed into a white page with black, easy to read, font.
An alternative to this method is to simply highlight the text and paste it into your favorite text editor or word processor. The only drawback is you may accidentally paste some web element too. What ever method you choose, just make it easier on your eyes will ensure you have a long more enjoyable web experience without wanting to jab your eye out with a dull knife after read a site with dancing green leprechauns tiled in the background on a size 6 script font.
You may be wondering why a technology blog would write about Michael Jackson but anyone who has seen Captian EO at Disney theme parks can tell you; Michael Jackson loved technology. I went there to see it with my family in the late 80s and early 90s. It was a short 3D film that took what seemed like hours in line to see, but I came out of it in shock at the experience. I thought to myself, if I was not here now, there would have been no way for a person like me to have had such an experience like this in any town or country in this world…unless drugs were involved. It had lasers, smokes, and starfields that made me feel like I was flying through the universe. Even Michael knew that anything is better with lasers and 3D glasses (and not those cheap blue and red ones either). While the show is long gone, the impact it had on me lingers on for a kid growing up shooting his little brother with plastic laser guns and making paper spaceships. His music videos were also cutting edge. While Elvis and Sinatra had their share of the spotlight on TV, it was merely there to showcase their careers. Michael Jackson was shaped by TV and television was shaped by him. He was not just a person that need to be listened to, he had to be watched. From the outrageous dressing style to the moonwalk, one would be cheated from the whole experience if his music was their only source. One of my friends today pointed out a link to the studio that made his Thriller album, Westlake Recording Studios. Look at all those buttons to press!! Read more…
