20060228

Paying For a Muni Ride

SFist: "The best part of The Examiner's article is a quote by Muni's official apologist Maggie Lynch: “People think paying their $1 doesn’t matter, but it does.' That's nice. Does paying the additional 50 cents matter, too, or is that optional? Because the fare hasn't been $1 for a long time, you know, Maggie. Sigh. We can't help but wonder how Muni might improve if the people in charge of it actually rode it every once in a while."


"Hey, take one guess: what's the worst place on the web for finding up-to-date news about Muni? That would be Muni's very own website, of course, which despite having a section for "new links" bears abosolutely no mention of its new study showing that fifty percent of riders don't pay."


Hrump, looks like they forgot they used to have rss feeds. Bart has one, but, they don't bother to feed us anything but marketing.

Controlling RSS Overload

Controlling RSS Overload: "I've found a solution Dean Wormer would be proud of. Probation, double secret probation.


Most aggregators allow you to create 'groups' for your blogs. Into the Probation group goes every new blog I add to my aggregator. EVERY one. Consider it a quarantine tank for your RSS aquarium. Once a month, go through your Probation group and cull the herd, promoting some to the big leagues, while giving others the boot."


That's just what I do. Everything ends up in a Bloglines folder called 'Add'. Sometimes they get moved to a high value folder on Bloglines, sometimes they get moved to a low value 'river' on Rojo, and sometimes they malinger until cleanup. I also move (or retag) feeds to 'Kill' to take a second look at them on the way out ...


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20060220

Identity Production in a Networked Culture

Identity Production in a Networked Culture by danah boyd

"What we're seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access.

Having to simultaneously negotiate youth culture and adult surveillance is not desirable to most youth, but their response is typically to ignore the issue.

Teenager's space segmentation is slightly different. Most of their space is controlled space. Adults with authority control the home, the school, and most activity spaces.

MySpace is both the location of hanging out and the cultural glue itself. MySpace and IM have become critical tools for teens to maintain "full-time always-on intimate communities" where they keep their friends close even when they're physically separated."

20060217

The Mark of the Card

Contactless cards work when you hold them 1 or 2 inches from a special radio-frequency reader. Because you don't need to show them to a cashier, swipe them, sign a receipt or enter a PIN, they speed checkout.

Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover are promoting the tap-and-go cards for use when buying something quick and cheap -- garlic fries at AT&T Park, a Slurpee at 7-Eleven, a prescription at Walgreens, a Happy Meal at McDonald's, or movie tickets at AMC, Loews, Regal and Cinemark theaters."

Discover is testing cell phones with contactless chips.

American Express offers the cards, which it calls ExpressPay, under its Blue line of credit cards"

It used to be that when you lost your phone, you lost all your friends. Now you can loose a credit line along with them!

20060206

Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams

Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams: "After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams."


Whoa, weird. I've never even seen one. I missed!

Stuperbowl

What was that Dr. Seuss/Harrison Ford/NFL thing? That was just wrong.


Full Throttle (an new energy drink from Coca-Cola) showed male clichés chasing after a advertising can. The tagline is "Let Your Man Out." As SFist sez: "because Full Throttle is for men. Men who like the taste of ass"


The Seahawks ran out to "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve and I said "What the hell? What kind of theme song is that?" Then the Steelers had with "Right Here, Right Now" by Fatboy Slim. They win. Game over. Sheesh, you'd think that they could have found something that rocked in the last 5 years.


Burger King puts on a Busby Berkeley musical number. All Singing, All Dancing! Whopperettes had funny burger bit costumes (loved the Onion). Each bit flopped down to make the hambuger, making a grunting noise. They even said 'Freaky King'.


Jennifer Loves the Robot a site created by the Monster to commemorate their love. Funny. The monsters were done by Stan Winston! The monster mix mp3s were fun, too. I've seen it before, and still Hummer wins!


Go Daddy couldn't get the right tone to get a decent commercial on the air. You can see the duds at ifilm.


The Leonard Nimoy/Aleve bit worked. He "couldn't do it", took Aleve, and was able to give the Vulcan salute to an audience of Trekkies.


The Beer Institute's Superbowl ad 'Here's To Beer' had people from all over saying "cheers". I thought that it was Yet Another Bud Ad until near the end. A really nice ad on any other day.


"According to a National Retail Federation poll, this year 15.3 percent of respondents said the ads were the chief reason they tuned into the game, as opposed to some 33 percent who said the game itself was the main draw." - Daily News


ifilm

Google Video


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The Cookie Monsters of Death Metal!

Cookie Monsters of death-metal music: "Death-metal vocalizing is also known as Cookie Monster singing, if not in tribute to, at least in acknowledgment of, the "Sesame Street" puppet that blurts in a guttural growl, his words discharged so rapidly that they tend to collide with each other."


"The term also signifies a level of incomprehensibility of the lyrics, which in most cases is absolute. Given the subject matter, that's probably for the best"


Whoa, Wall Street Journal Online is Metal!


San Fransicko is certainly doing it's part with both Cookie Mongoloid and The Dead Hensons crumbling the cookie.

Cartoons of Muhammad

Ah! The dreaded Cartoon of Muhammad


Cagle has a pointer to a 'particularly offensive collection' on the subject.



A Pakistani cleric announced Friday a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad.