So I’m stuck babysitting a major server restore and I’m bored out of my ever lovin’ mind. With me is my laptop, a stack of old TV shows and movies, and Photoshop.
Voila! Star Trek episodes we will never see!
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 1
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 3
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 7
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 10
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 13
Star Trek TOS viewscreen 14
Want to advertise on national TV? Don’t want to mess with an ad agency? Got around $1,500?
Google TV ADS (and a quick tutorial by SLATE) can make it happen!
In the sample, their TV ad ran for 54 plays on 4 networks for just $1,300.
Wow.
I can hear advertising media departments and reps freaking out from here.
Every Monday I like to post some music to start the week off on the right foot.
First off, Jens Lekman – You are the light
Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party
Jaga Jazzist – Animal Chin
…and finally, Sesame Street: Ernie and his Rubber Duckie
Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.
* “Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?” Dude… it’s too early for my mind to get past the first few words of that sentence. Let’s just say we’re in one of those doll-in-a-doll things and enjoy some toast here. [SCIENCE DAILY]
* CERN creates 10 million mini Big Bangs in one week! There’s a horrible pun I can make here, but I won’t. [REUTERS]
* It looks like shy people’s brains really are “wired” different from everyone else’s. “About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are “slow to warm up” in a situation but eventually join in.” A genuinely interesting read! [LIVE SCIENCE]
* “Astronomers Take Close-Up Pictures of Mysterious Dark Object.” It really is amazing how much of the universe we have learned about while still on this planet, but dammit, Jim, we should be exploring stuff like this on real spaceships by now and not just taking photos of it from Earth! [SCIENCE DAILY]
* The Greek debt crisis just got much worse. The EU desperately needs a good de-greecer. (Another horrible pun, but I couldn’t help it!) [ECONOMIST]
* Do you “share” your music? Did you know Apple, LaLa and Walmart embed your name and some of your personal information in every track? Whoops! [TECH CRUNCH]
* “Rescue workers who developed lung problems after they responded to the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, showed their breathing hadn’t returned to normal seven years after the attacks.” Very sad. [BLOOMBERG]
* “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth.” Sooooo let me get this straight. I lose a big chunk of money every single paycheck to pay for (and reserve) my own social security. This is now considered an “entitlement”? It’s an “entitlement” to get the money I worked all my life for back? So what, exactly, has all the money taken from every paycheck I work for been spent on? Do they seriously expect the people who lost all this money to sit back and not express a slight bit of discontent at this? Oops. There I go thinking again… Nothing to see here! Move along now! [WASHINGTON POST]
* Can vegans eat Oysters? According to SLATE, yes! [SLATE]
* FDA says anti-bacterial soap is the same thing as regular soap! Looks like bad news for anti-bacterial bleach! [FDA]
* OK, so now there’s no smoking allowed on submarines below decks, but smoking will be allowed above decks? Um… I think I see a problem with this when a submarine is usually underwater for months at a time! Besides, don’t submarines have very high tech scrubbers for consistently great air quality? This sounds like somebody’s personal agenda finally getting through. [CNN]
* And finally, hell just might drop a few thousand degrees this week. The man who helped come up with the idea of using explosives to extinguish oilfield fires, who put out the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter”, a real life hellfighter and hellraiser, just died. Hey Hollywood – you need to movie this man’s life. They don’t make ’em like this dude anymore. [NYTIMES]
Just another random photo of a Texas sunset in April. The breeze was still warm and fast from the early afternoon, quickly pushing the visiting clouds away.
Random April Sunset 2010
I’m having a little trouble with Meebo working for visitors from Russia, so I’m switching it off until it’s resolved.
AT&T just doesn’t know what the hell to do anymore.
On a new story on Business Insider, they say that “AT&T is undertaking an ambitious rebranding effort under the banner “Rethink Possible” that includes a redesign that updates its trademark logo.”
AT&T is pulling in the big guns on this, using Omnicom Group’s BBDO ad agency for this project. I worked with Omnicom a loooong time ago, and I know firsthand they’re an awesome company, so expect some slick ads and PR for AT&T coming soon.
But despite all this, AT&Ts service still sucks. Their horrible service is the core problem they either will not or can not address. Until that core problem is fixed, all this new and improved imaging will just be burning money. Because when Consumer Reports labels you as the “worst carrier in the US”, and hundreds of bloggers (like me!) go out of their way to mention how horrible the cellular service is and keep as many new customers away as possible, I predict AT&T is will *not* see a lot of new subscribers regardless of how awesome the new ads are going to be.
I also predict AT&T will see a big “churn” this year (customers leaving their sorry service), as the first generation iPhone customers will finally be free to leave their cellular contracts without a financial penalty.
Hey AT&T, you’re a lot like the punk fighter who talks a lot of smack but gets knocked out in the second round by the champ. Saying you’re awesome means nothing. Do you want people to take you seriously? Want to be the champ? Quit talking trash and show us something. Spend 3/4 of that “rebranding” budget on substantial network upgrades so your own customers will notice and freak out at how awesome things are now that their calls don’t drop every two minutes and they get more than one bar of signal on their phone. Make your service so wonderful people recommend you to their friends.
As Craig Ferguson would say, “Ah hah hah! Made myself laugh!”
Here’s the link to the story on Business Insider.
AT&T Fail Logo No 2
Apple just announced their new iPhone 4.0 OS will come embedded with a new addition called iAd.
According to Macintouch, “a new “iAd” advertising system that Apple is building into OS 4 for in-app HTML5 ads with “emotion + interactivity” to the tune of 1 billion ad impressions per day.”
What? Seriously?
The idea behind this, according to the story on Engadget, is “…to keep users in the apps to see interactive, “emotional” ad content as often as once every three minutes — not to “yank” them out… — while developers are rewarded with a 60 percent cut of the revenue.”
Do I mind developers getting money? Absolutely not! That’s why I have paid for 100% of the apps on my iPhone. Every single icon has a receipt from either iTunes, Rock or Cydia.
Which is exactly why I have a tremendous problem with the iAd being implemented in the core iPhone 4.0 system.
I paid for the iPhone device, I pay for cellular and data service to the iPhone, and I paid for every app on the iPhone. Why, exactly, am I going to see ads on this device? Why should the bandwidth I am paying for be diverted to the downloads of advertisements I do not want to see? What more do I need to support since I already will have paid for the device itself, the service it runs on and any apps I wanted?
The iAd is nothing more than a overt cash grab by Apple. Saying the developers will be “rewarded” with “60%” for their work is just a diversion from the remaining 40% Apple will drop straight to their bottom line.
Apple has an interesting use of the word “rewarded” in their press release. The developers invested their own time and money to make the apps in the first place, so shouldn’t they get something along the lines of 80% of the iAd revenue for their work? 70% even? “Rewarding” them with little more than half of the income they will get from people using their product is a touch greedy.
I bet the iPhone 4.0 OS will be jailbroken soon after it will be released to disable the iAd system. You watch.
Besides, the iPhone 4.0 is just catching up to what I have already been able to do with my first generation iPhone that’s been jailbroken for over a year!
Plus, my iPhone has things the 4.0 OS still doesn’t!
Apple also announced the iPhone 4.0 OS won’t run on my first generation device, which is perfectly fine with me since I already have all of the 4.0 benefits without any of the wasteful overhead.
So thanks, Apple, but I’ll pass on the cash grab.
Imagine how far ahead of the game Apple would be if it actually had the nerve to truly open the iPhone to all 3rd party developers. Opening the app store to all the jailbreak apps on Cydia and Rock would not only give them a much higher income source than anything the iAd would generate, but also push their marketshare far, far ahead of the newcomers.
While driving around south Texas last week, I saw there was some more progress on that overpass in Falfurrias.
Return To Falfurrias Overpass 1
The wiry strands from my last visit are now encased in pillars of concrete, and horizontal support beams for the overpass are now in place.
Return To Falfurrias Overpass 2
The “downtown” area of Falfurrias is directly behind me where I took the photos. If you take the road going straight past the Burger King, you’ll get to Kingsville in about 40 minutes. To the left where the overpass is pointing is North and will get you to Alice, Texas. To the right going south about an hour is McAllen.
Return To Falfurrias Overpass 3
The overpass project is moving pretty fast. Since Falfurrias is the first town past the inspection checkpoint, I wonder if they’re going to run the overpass all the way south to meet it?
If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now. The FDA is awesome. On the occasions when the FDA tag teams with the DOJ? Watch out!
The FDA and the DOJ just popped Guidant LLC for $296 million. Their crime was withholding information about “short-circuiting failures of three models of its implantable cardioverter defibrillators: the Ventak Prizm 2 DR (Model 1861) and the Contak Renewal (Models H135 and H155).”
“The devices, once surgically implanted, constantly monitor the electrical activity in a patient’s heart for deadly electrical rhythms and deliver an electrical shock to the heart in an effort to return the heartbeat to normal. If they fail to operate properly when needed, a person can die within minutes.”
Nice company.
This $296 million fine is also “the largest criminal penalty ever imposed on a device manufacturer for violating the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act”.
Maybe nailing companies with $200 million dollar fines will get them to be a touch more responsive to things like this!
If you know someone that has an implanted defibrillator, have them check with their doctor to see if it happens to be a Ventak Prizm 2 DR (Model 1861) or either of the Contak Renewal Models (H135 and H155). You just might save their lives.
