20090831

Disney snarfs Marvel

Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters. | Marvel.com: "Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters."

Ugg. Family-friendly Wolvernine? Tiny Avengers? The next Kingdom Hearts should be even more surreal ...


At least it wasn't Diamond Comics!

20090827

Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood.

Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood.: "The American Red Cross is excited to partner with The CW and Alloy Media Marketing to promote the network s new show The Vampire Diaries"

Now there's some product placement!

20090815

The Brains of Early Birds and Night Owls

Lab Notes : The Brains of Early Birds and Night Owls: "Early birds wake up at the crack of dawn and struggle to stay alert and productive (especially in the cognitive realm) in the evening. Night owls perform well in the evening but are worthless if you yank them out of bed too early in the morning."

3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late: "Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours."

I'll sleep to that!

Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink

The End Of An Era: Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink: News: SFAppeal: "The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will replace all existing fare gates at its Muni underground stations with TransLink-only fare gates by fall 2010 at the earliest, according to a memo sent to the Board of Supervisors."

Oh, I can smell the meltdown from here. Every onboard has to tag the Twiki box? That's going to make for some ugly scrums at busy stops, much less a busted box making people run up and down the stations/trains.

Coming Soon: MUNI/BART to Track Your Every Move: "And how will this work for out-of-town visitors and other people who don't use Muni? There's also the whole Big Brother aspect of our every move being documented on some database."

20090810

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

FriendFeed Blog: "We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle..."

Facebook Press Release: "Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams."

Gack! Doom! There go the neighborhoods.

20090802

Sin bins for worst families

Sunday Express | UK News :: Sin bins for worst families: "the Children’s Secretary set out �400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes. Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far."

Youch. Bad enough that they're all over the streets. They've even become plot points in BBC shows like Torchwood. But in the houses? That's getting the bad end of the reality show!

Table of Hours, anyone?

20090801

The Matrix Online decompiles

Reminder: Check out The Matrix Online before it decompiles - Massively: "The Matrix Online is reminding us all that it's slowing coming undone as the system becomes more and more unstable with each passing day. Ashes raining from the sky, eyes being seen in the clouds, zombies, agents, angels, and demons all appearing out of the system's corruption to wreak havoc across the Mega City."

Oh! What a fine way to go out ... fighting!

Newsgator Shuts Down Its Online Feed Reader

Newsgator Shuts Down Its Online Feed Reader: "NewsGator, the company behind the popular FeedDemon and NetNewsWire feed readers, just announced that it will shut down the NewsGator Online Reader on August 31, 2009. The company will provide users with instructions on how to migrate to Google Reader."

Whoa! Feadreaders are dead? Is it all just a Twitter river of what I had for lunch now?