Google Wave invites
So I received my invite to Google Wave today, and have 20 invites to pass out. If you're interested either shoot me an email, or leave a comment here or on Facebook. First come first served.
Update: To be more clear on this. What I have are "nominations", and not invites. I assume that means they won't be instant like the invites for gmail were. We'll have to wait and see I guess. 1 nomination sent so far.
Innovation for the sake of innovation
I'm all for new shit. New shit is cool. New shit is fun. But making new stuff for the sake of it being new is stupid. Take Microsofts new book styled tablet prototype, the Courier. Looks sweet right? My first thought was that I definitely need to get one of these when they're released. My second thought was "When would I ever use it?". I honestly can't think of a time where this would be more useful to me that either a laptop or a smartphone.
And what is with this fascination with writing on a screen with a stylus? Not only does my handwriting fucking suck, but I can type a whole hell of a lot faster than I can write. Hell, I can text on my phone faster than I can write. Why would I want to scribble on the screen only to have to go back and type what I meant anyway, because the computer can't understand what I'm writing?
Let's be honest, this will be used by almost nobody for anything productive. You won't see these at work. You won't see these at school (or at least in the hands of a sane person). And you won't see these out and around in public. The only place you'll see these is in Starbucks, in the hands of some smug douchebag wannabe writer.
Then again, maybe not. Apple has that market cornered.
Drink beer for bone health
Do you like your bones? Do you like having them not broken? Well then, according to a new study by Spanish scientists you should probably start downing a couple pints.
It is thought that the high level of silicon in beer slows down the thinning that leads to fractures and boosts the formation of new bone, the journal Nutrition reports.
Beer is also rich in phytoestrogens, plant versions of oestrogen, which keep bones healthy.
So drink up friends! Here's to not having broken hips when we're old and wrinkly!
Rupert Murdoch hates money
As if we needed another reason to not support the channels and sites you own, you give us another.
So, you're losing money from advertising revenue because people like me use AdBlock, or simply don't click links. I can understand you wanting to find a way to make up for this, but charging people for access to a news site is the most ass backwards way you could possibly go about doing it.
I get it. You're old. You have little, if any grasp of just how big the internet really is, and you're not likely to ever understand. So you just need to know this: Your sites aren't special, they aren't delivering anything original, and they offer no entertainment value at all. Just like mine. What makes you think people will actually pay to read your site, instead of going to one of the millions of other sites that contain the exact same stories and information?
Not to mention that this is, you know, the internet. There's this sweet little thing called copy and paste that people like to use to spread information. As soon as your "paid to read" stories are posted, they'll be copied and posted to news sites and blogs instantly. And again, this being the internet, theres not a damn thing you can do about it.
Add to that that fact that once you start charging for access, bloggers will no longer link to your site. You know, like I just did in this post? See that link up there, that goes to a site you don't own? Yea, you'll get none of that. And while one blog may seem insignificant, think of just how many of them are out there. Then when you're done thinking about that, think about news aggregator sites like Fark, Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot. They are enormous, and contribute a huge portion of your hits. Once you start charging, that will all be gone.
You're not dealing with newspapers here, grandpa. There is no monopoly on information on the interwebs. It's free, and readily available for all. Learn that fast, get with the times, or lose a metric fuckton of money.
Interesting article on the format wars
I've always believed early adopters of new technology are stupid, and it's been proven time and time again. The latest, obviously, was with those who rushed out to get their HD-DVD players and re-buy their entire library, only to have Bluray come out on top.
Or did it? According to this article Toshiba has licensed it's HD-DVD format to China, who is now producing it's own CBHD disks with the capacity of HD-DVD, and the price of normal DVDs. As the article explains, this could be the final nail in Sony's coffin when it comes to Bluray.
But, don't get too excited. Anyone who's been paying even the slightest amount of attention to the latest trends can see that all optical media is going the way of the dinosaur. So what's the next step then? Online streaming. It's already happening on dozens of sites like Hulu and Netflix.
But it too has some rather large obstacles. The largest being the US's pitiful broadband speeds, and bandwidth caps major ISP's are looking to impose.