➠ February 24, 2007
NFL Wants To Trademark A Euphemism For Its Trademark
“The league has sought to forbid advertisers from saying things like “Get a new color TV in time for the Super Bowl!”, so instead they have to use euphemisms like “The Big Game” instead. […] But advertisers may have to come up with some new euphemisms next year because now the NFL is seeking a trademark on “The Big Game”“
Six Apart spins like a Whirling Dervish.
Suw Charman takes on SixApart over the crappy state of MovableType today. The load caused by comment spam (and their crappy “search” engine) were the main reasons why I defected to my own Django-powered system in December. (Good comments thread on this post too)
➠ February 22, 2007
Tumblr
Attractive lightweight simplistic blogging tool. “If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.”
Toothpaste For Dinner blog: My adventures in Second Life
Heh. Glad to see I’m not the only one trying to understand the draw of Second Life.
prooveme.com: strong authentication for openid
OpenID provider which uses SSL client certificates, not passwords, to authenticate. Doesn’t work terribly well (I haven’t successfully logged in anywhere with it!), but a clever idea for an unphishable OpenID. [Update: I’ve got it working a couple of places now. Not clear at whose end the remaining bugs lie.]
Schneier on Security: CYA Security
I U+2665 Bruce Schneier. “Much of our country’s counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.”
➠ February 21, 2007
Second Life Barack Obama meetup
Now that I've got a suitably powerful computer, I've finally had a chance to poke at Second Life.
It's not living up to the hype by any stretch, though it is fascinating. While looking for something to do, I "transported" into this Barack Obama "meetup", which was guarded over by a stormtrooper. Obviously.
Audit: Anti-terror case data flawed - Yahoo! News
“Federal prosecutors counted immigration violations, marriage fraud and drug trafficking among anti-terror cases in the four years after 9/11 even though no evidence linked them to terror activity, a Justice Department audit said Tuesday.”
➠ February 20, 2007
Birth Of An Apple Store
Webcam trained on the construction of the new Apple Store in Boston. Obsessive much?
CD Purchase: Various Artists - The Triptych: Mixed By Fred Deakin
A stonkingly good mix-CD set from Fred Deakin of Lemon Jelly. A fantastically wide church of music, condensed to three CDs: From The Jesus & Mary Chain to The Rutles.
Tantek's Thoughts: Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design
Nothing earth-shattering or new, but food for thought.
➠ February 19, 2007
Clyde on Ice
There were no other dogs at the dog park today, and with the icy ground, more resembled some sort of alien planet.
On the Poop Deck
Raking through some old photos, I found this one from when Joy & I took an Alaskan cruise in September 2002.
I brought along a fake plastic dog turd from Boston (which originally was sent to me from Scotland by my mum as part of my Christmas presents one year) *just* to take this photo of the "poop deck".
HEAVENLY DEAL: XM & Sirius to Merge
I’ve been claiming this as an inevitability for some time — The satellite radio “battle” has been so reminiscent of the British satellite TV war in the early nineties that merger was the only way out.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Net giant supports open ID scheme
BBC covers Open ID. Shame that the number of places you can sign up for an Open ID now outnumbers the number of places you can *log in with one* by about 10 to 1.
➠ February 18, 2007
Dream Recorder
Sleep analysis tool for Macs, using the built-in iSight and microphone to work out when you’re in “deep sleep”. I think Joy would kill me if I started sleeping with my laptop, though.
ongoing: Dub, Baby
Tim Bray blogs the lovely CD Baby order confirmation emails. “Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.”
I'm