GearBits

Personal Video Recorder Delivers Over WiFi

Sharp Electronics and Instant802 Networks have announced a partnership, bringing video distribution into the wireless age.

The partnership has resulted in the Sharp Galileo Personal Video Recorder (PVR), one of the first devices to leverage 802.11-based wireless systems for video distribution.

Instant802's wireless software platform is used for range of data networking devices. The Sharp Galileo PVR is one of the first consumer electronics devices using the platform. Instant802 also provides residential gateway solutions integrated with security solutions.

The Galileo PVR is available immediately in Japan, and is expected to hit North America later this year.

The RIAA Owes Us Something Back!

This evening I was loading up some things from my storage unit and noticed my 120-tape cassette organizer over in the corner. Years ago before CDs, I spent lots of hard earned gas station wages on 8-tracks and cassette tapes. I didn't own a good turntable until much later so never really got into albums. Twenty-five years later, a lot of my cassettes are junk having lost the battle against time. My first CD (Talk Talk - It's My Life) sounds as good now as the day I bought it. Here's where the RIAA comes in...

I know that the majority of the money I paid for those cassettes and 8-tracks didn't go into media costs. I paid for the licensing of the music recorded on the media, the record company's profits, the distributor's profits and the music store's profits. So how do I recoup my licensing fees on these hundreds of junk cassettes? I think I should be able to trade them in for CDs of the same title for a nominal media fee; a buck a disc ought to do it.

How about it RIAA? Take a break from grousing about lost profits and give something back to the consumers who have fueled your Learjets for all these years. We pay good money to license your music. Put some permanence into the licenses and support media mobility for anything we buy legitimately. I'll be holding my breath.

You can now resume your regularly scheduled grousing.

Should Men Wear Kilts?

Disclaimer: I am a Survivor nut. I have seen every episode, attended weekly Survivor gatherings, dressed as Rudy Boesch at a Survivor 1 finale party and I think Big Tom should be president.

My question after last night is: Should men wear kilts? The king, Richard Hatch, was nattily attired in a Utilkilt when he wasn't naked. The garment appeared well-made, very utilitarian, and looked good even on Richard's big ass. And we all remember Rupert quickly made himself a skirt on Survivor: Pearl Islands when his Levis started chaffing.

Is is possible for a normal, heterosexual, red-blooded, non-Scottish male to wear a kilt and be taken seriously? For some reason, I think the answer is no and that's a shame. We men just don't have any variety when it comes to clothing choices. For formals we wear tuxedos. To dress up we wear suits. Business casual puts us in button downs and khakis. Casual finds us in jeans. Slumming has us in t-shirts, shorts and trainers. Where does the kilt fit in? That's what I want to know!!!!

Janet Gets 'Most TiVo'ed Moment' During Super Bowl

Who'd have guessed we'd get free pr0n during the game yesterday? Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" (Justin Timberlake's words, not mine) definitely gets nods for the most TiVo-worthy moment of Super Bowl XXXVIII. Makes me yearn for a HD DVR just that much more.

Thanks to LostRemote for the link.

Super Bowl Ad Features Music Outlaw

Over three years, 14-year-old Annie Leith downloaded nearly 1000 songs via Kazaa. The downloading, illegal in the U.S., got Leith into legal trouble with the Recording Industry Association of America in September 2003. Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled for $3,000.

Now, that experience has landed Leith in an ad for Pepsi and Apple Computer, to be shown on Super Bowl Sunday. The ad introduces a promotion in which 100 million bottle caps on Pepsi soft drinks include a code for free downloads on Apple's iTunes Music Store.

The partnership deal is one the most visible of recent digital music partnerships. Coca-Cola has partnered with Musicmatch to promote its Sprite soft drinks, and Heineken has partnered with RealNetworks in a giveaway of beer 12-packs.

In the Pepsi-Apple Super Bowl ad, which features Leith, her sister, and 14 other music downloading outlaws, Leith acknowledges she was among hundreds sued for downloading songs, then vows to continue doing so... on iTunes.

The Lord of the Rings Wireless Games

Wireless software publisher JAMDAT Mobile has announced that it is launching wireless games based on The Lord of the Rings epic. Available through Verizon Wireless' Get it Now service, the games suite include six separate apps:

The Return of the King is an eight-level scrolling adventure game with Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, Pippin and Sam battling Orcs, Uruk-hai, Trolls, the Army of the Dead, Shelob and other foes.

The Lord of the Rings Trivia includes more than 360 trivia questions covering characters, objects and locations and more from all three chapters of the Ring trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings Pinball is a fast two-table pinball game wrapped in a Middle-Earth theme.

Wallpapers offer various Middle-Earth images including characters, locations, scenes, and maps. Finally, The Lord of The Rings Tones Player provides ring tones based on the musical score.

Adobe's New EBookstore

Software company Adobe Systems recently opened an online store offering customers digital content in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).

The Adobe Digital Media Store offers ebooks from publishers such as Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, and Random House, and includes links to digital publications such as BusinessWeek, Popular Science, the New York Times, and USA Today.

Adobe's move is the latest chapter in the two-steps-forward, one-step-back saga of the ebook industry, which last saw Barnes and Noble exit the ebook market.

Based on Adobe Reader 6.0, digital content from the Digital Media Store uses a digital rights management (DRM) scheme that allows users to view paid-for material on desktop computers and Palm OS-based handheld computers.

New 'Queer Eye' Promo?

Wicked

Three years ago while waiting for a flight to take off or land or board or get de-iced or some other air travel inconvenience, I noticed the guy next to me was reading a book with an interesting name, "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire. A conversation ensued and he told me how wonderful the book was and that I just had to read it. I did a few days later and Wicked instantly became one of my all-time favorite books.

The Wicked Witch of the West was my ultimate horror when I was a little kid. She absolutely scared the holy crap out of me and I just loved it. I can remember watching The Wizard of Oz on our old black and white TV with my hand perched on the channel dial. When the Witch made an appearance, I had to quickly change channels and then switch back and forth a little bit at a time. I just could not handle her in large doses and those small doses gave me nightmares for several days. What an awful woman! I was doubly freaked when I first saw her on a color TV and learned that she was green. Ick.

Maguire's book put a wonderfully woven history behind her and creatively explained a lot of the things that I had always wondered about her. Like, where did those flying monkeys come from? Why is she so green? What's she so pissed about? What's up with those slippers?

Now, my favorite book is a musical on Broadway starring Kristin Chenowith as Glinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West. It's playing at the Gershwin in NYC. If I can figure out a way to get up there and see it, I'll report back.

Eye of the Beholder

Speaking of virtual people, the website for the first ever virtual beauty pageant - Miss Digital World - is now open, and accepting entries.

Franz Cerami, creator of the pageant, said "Miss Digital World is the search for a contemporary ideal of beauty, seen through virtual reality."

The outpouring of interest after the first announcements meant that the pageant - aimed at digital artists, advertising agencies, movie production companies and videogame developers - has pushed back several entry deadlines to December 20.

Prospective contestants should note that models "should not have taken part - not even as extras or cameos - in pornographic films, shows or plays nor have made statements...in any way out of tune with the moral spirit of the competition." (Too bad... it would have been nice to see Lara Croft on that catwalk...)

Contestants will be programmed to parade along a virtual catwalk, surrounded by virtual guests, with a virtual emcee presiding over the event. The winner - determined by votes over the Internet - will be crowned at a real world celebration in November 2004.

SciFi's New 'Battlestar Galactica' Pretty Good

I remember when watching Lorne Greene battle Cylons was a weekly feast for my 9-year-old senses. The original Battlestar Galactica series, which aired 1978-1979, was high-quality science fiction...at least that's the way I remember it. Sure, it got pretty bad the last several episodes, but hey, don't most shows?

Well, SciFi, the cable channel, has been touting the new Battlestar Galactica, its two-part mini-series that picks up 40 years after the previous series ended...sort of. It's a bit complicated, and no quick summary could accurately describe the relationship between the two series, but it's enough to say that the premise is pretty much the same: humans are good guys, Cylons are bad robots that humans once created, and now the Cylons want to kill all the humans. SciFi's website described it thusly:

Forty years after the Cylon Wars, humanity's deadliest enemies have reemerged with a vengeance. In a sudden, devastating nuclear attack, the Cylon robots — who have now taken human form — wipe out billions of people. Only a ragtag fleet of Colonial forces is left to shepherd humanity's few survivors to safety.

Anywho, the second of the two-part mini-series played yesterday and I have to admit to enjoying it. The action was pretty good, the acting was better than the original show (not hard to do), and the special effects were top-notch. There's a pretty nice, long review of both episodes at the UGO Battlestar Galactica Hub. SciFi is showing both episodes back-to-back this coming Sunday (Dec. 14, 2003), so catch it if you can.

iTunes Hacked

Apple's digital rights management (DRM) system on the iTunes Music Store has been challenged by Jon Johansen, well-known as the author of the DeCSS program for bypassing DVD copy protection.

The new program, QTFairUse, does not actually crack the DRM. Instead, it intercepts the music file while it is in the process of being streamed and before the DRM is applied.

While this implies that - similar to DeCSS - the program works only on content legitimately purchased from iTunes, a number of observers suggest that the program can be mis-used because it allows users to compile their own database of unprotected - and potentially distributable - content.

In its current release, QTFairUse does require some programming knowledge to implement, but more user-friendly versions are likely to appear in time. The current version is available only for Windows-based PCs.

Opus Returns: Berke Breathed Comes Back to Comics

If you were conscious in the early 1980's, you likely read Bloom County, a bizarre and hilarious cartoon strip involving intelligent little kids, frighteningly lifelike adults (complete with phobias and fetishes), and talking animals (one rather sceptic cat (shown) and one confused penguin, among others).

Well, Berkely Breathed, the author of Bloom County is back in the game. In Sunday comics the nation over, Opus Returns appeared in half-page, full-color glory. Check out the website for more info. If you're a fan, you'll be hoping that Milo, Bill the Cat and the rest of the gang come back, at least for tasty cameos.

Ack! Thppfft! (Thanks, Dan)

Lost & Forgotten 70's & 80's TV Shows

I was reminded yesterday of a couple of old TV shows from my youth -- shows that never made it past a couple of seasons. These were the campy, the strange, and the just plain bad shows that were basically there to flesh out the networks' season opening weeks, and some didn't make it much past the pilot episode. In no particular order, some of the ones that I recall from my youth include (with links to their IMDB entries):

• Automan (1983) - Desi Arnaz Jr. starred in this short-lived show about a cybernetic crime-fighter that could transform between a man and a car (and I think he could even change into a panther). Dumb, but you gotta love those 90-degree turns at speed.

• Otherworld (1985) - IMDB describes this retarded show best when it says "Thrown into another dimension, a family must keep ahead of a tyrannical state's hunters while searching for a way home." My one clear memory is the two teenage kids defying the government and teaching the other native kids rock & roll. It was never clear what was worst: the acting, the plot, or the concept.

• The Phoenix (1982) - In just 4 short episodes (that's all that was filmed), this show reached new depths of stupid. Plot summary: an archaeology expedition in Peru uncovers a casket with the body of a human-looking alien, Bennu, who must learn to live on Earth as a castaway who fights crimes and solves mysteries while avoiding US government agents who want to play "Alien Autopsy" with him. Who thinks up this stuff?

• Ark II (1976-1979) - OK, this wasn't really a "lost & forgotten" show, but it just hangs on the fringe of my memory, so I thought I'd include it here. This Saturday morning live-action show was the adventures of three young scientists in the 25th century after the planet has basically been polluted to death. They had this bitchun' RV-slash-science lab (called "Ark II") that they travelled around in. The best part, however, was the jet-packs: I swear they were real. :-) And they had a chimpanzee (what was it with chimps on TV in the '70's?). Oh, and the lead scientist's name was Jonah. Get it...Jonah...driving the Ark...sigh. There's a really nice fan page here (source of the photo to the right).

• The Man from Atlantis (1977-1978) - The sheer power of Patrick Duffy's acting skills carried this lame show into its second season. Duffy played the part of Mark Harris, lone surviving Atlantian, complete with gills and webbed hands and feet. Lots of underwater swimming shots while Duffy fights crime and solves mysteries. Perhaps it would have lasted longer had they brought The Phoenix onto the show...hmm...

• Quark (1978) - This was a half-hour live-action comedy about the misadventures of Adam Quark, the captain of a United Galactic Sanitation Patrol ship (i.e., a space garbage scow). I remember only thinking that this was a damn funny show. Given that I was 8 or 9 years old when I saw the 9 episodes that were filmed, it may not have been.

• Q.E.D. (1982) - IMDB summarizes it best: "The tales of Quentin E. Deverill, an eccentric expatriate American professor who uses his unique skills to solve mysteries in Edwardian London." And it didn't last the season?!?

• The Max Headroom Show (1985) - Basically, this show was about a future where the TV had to stay turned on ('off' knobs were illegal) and the main personality on the tube was this virtual/CGI being named Max Headroom (who turned out to be a real person, if I recall correctly). Usually just referred to as "Max Headroom," this show was hilarious: I never understood why they took it off. Probably the same reason they dumped 'Greg the Bunny' (a recent fave...that will be on this list as well in 15 years or so).

• Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (1980) - Two unlikely partners, an accountant-wanna-be-private-eye and a con artist, team up to fight crime and solve mysteries. It lasted a mere 14 episodes despite starring Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen (makes my head spin even thinking about that combination).

I'm sure you all remember more...what were your favorite shows that didn't make it?

msPOD

Microsoft has announced a new initiative to power handheld media players - similar to Apple's iPod digital music player. Devices based on Portable Media Centre will enable users to store photos, listen to music and watch movies and TV shows on the road.

Portable Media Center is a variant of Windows CE.NET - previously named Media2Go - that will power devices shipping in 2004.

Licensees include Creative, iRiver, Sanyo, Samsung, Tatung, Viewsonic. The handheld players will support MP3 as well as WMA9, Microsoft's own digital audio and video format.

Dell recently announced plans to produce a digital music player, the Jukebox. There have also been rumors about a video iPod for some time now, though with Apple one is never sure until the official announcement.

Amazon.com Launches Full Text Searching of Books

A letter from Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, on his Amazon.com site today, states:

"Starting today, you can find books at Amazon.com based on every word inside them, not just on matches to author or title keywords. Search Inside the Book - the name of this new feature - searches the complete inside text of more than 120,000 books - all 33 million pages of them."

Click here, for example, to find all the books that mention MemoWare, Craig's main online endeavor before GearBits.

After finding books that mention your search terms, you can also see a scan of that page. An Amazon.com press release gives more details of the service. The service inaugurates a capability unmatched by any other major online or bricks-and-mortar book retailer - although publisher O'Reilly's subscription-based Safari service has previously allowed IT professionals to search through the text of 1,000 selected technical reference books.

This appears to be the first results of Amazon.com's foray into search, under its wholly-owned A9 subsidiary. A9 was founded earlier this year, and operates independently of Amazon.com under Udi Manber, a former executive at search giant Yahoo.

Ozone: Composing on the Go

Not many people know this, but one of my passions is composing music. In between working on various projects for GearBits, Qvadis and Kinectrics and more, I'm within months of launching a new site around this passion.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd do a wander through my various pieces of studio gear (this is GearBits, after all), for anyone who's interested. And if there is anyone, it'd be great to hear your thoughts.

Here's the first in the series.

Home audio/MIDI recording used to mean devoting a room or den to a range of equipment, including a computer, a MIDI keyboard, control surface, a mixer, a preamp. And there was no way you were going to pack this in the back of your Saturn if you wanted to compose in, say, Tahiti.

No longer. Amazingly compact, the Ozone by M-Audio is combination keyboard, MIDI control surface, microphone preamp, USB audio and MIDI I/O - in a package no bigger than a laptop. It's like a portable keyboard for your PDA...but more.

Put Ozone together with a laptop and software like Sonar, or Reason, and you have a complete personal mobile studio. Talent not included.

Everything you need is at your fingertips - fullsize keys, mod and pitch wheel, MIDI controller knobs, microphone and instrument monitor and gain levels, headphone volume. The back panel sports a balanced XLR input, ¼-inch line-level input, ¼-inch stereo input, two ¼-inch line-level outputs, ¼-inch headphone output, sustain-pedal input, MIDI I/0, and USB port. One quirk for me is that the Ozone cannot be powered parasitically, an AC adapter must be plugged in at all times.

Output from the Ozone is amazing - very clean. Recording at 24-bit, 96-kHz recording turns out product that is excellent. The preamp does provide a sound reminscent of some older mixers, but hey, I'm not a great vocalist, so this is an extra for me.

Its size, weight, and capabilities make the Ozone a great accessory for the touring musician or composer. Now all I need is a ticket to Tahiti.

Microsoft: All Your TV Are Belong To Us

As blogged by Lost Remote, Reuters is reporting that Microsoft is starting to promote its video delivery system. In short, Microsoft wants telecommunications companies to use its format to distribute TV broadcasts, which would then be decoded in Microsoft-powered set-top boxes.

"Microsoft said that through the compression technology of its Windows Media Player 9 it can now offer standard broadcast quality television over an Internet connection of 1 Megabit per second (Mb/s). High definition TV will be offered if a consumer has a broadband Web connection that allows four to five Mb/s.

Microsoft said Internet television should be cheaper to bring to consumers than current cable TV which is transmitted over a separate video network with MPEG compression technology.

A set top box to receive and decode Internet TV could cost as little as $50 in four years time, down from a bill for materials of $150 now."

Yeah, that's what I want -- to rely on the world's #1 monopoly for access to all my media. Anything proprietary is inherently more expensive -- that's basic economics. Why would the telcos opt for a system that, in the long run, will shift their profits into the hands of Microsoft?

The FCC recently passed legislation requiring that all TV's be able to receive digital signals without a set-top box. This move by Microsoft flies in the face of that consumer-friendly move by the FCC (one of its very few in recent years).

I think the telcos and the FCC are smarter than this and that Microsoft will have a hard time getting this widely adopted. That's my prediction, at least. What's yours?

ACME: Mightier than Microsoft

A fixture on the business 500 lists since 1935, ACME Corporation still stands today as the premier diversified products conglomerate.

The Complete Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products showcases the breadth of products available from this industrial powerhouse.

Its celebrated founder Charles "Chuck" Jones took the company from humble beginnings to its acme as a major supplier of devices pushing the boundaries of physics.

The one blemish in ACME's record is a lawsuit brought against it by one of its clients. Despite a spirited defense, the matter remains before the courts.

Infinite Secrets

One of my favorite TV shows is "Nova" on PBS. I love history and science so for me they smacked one out of the park this past Tuesday with an episode called "Infinite Secrets". The one hour show delves into the amazing journey of the rarest of all works by Archimedes called "The Method". This book actually describes Archimedes' thought processes behind his work into solving for the volumes of complex 3D shapes.

No one knows how many copies of "The Method" were produced by the legendary genius who died in 212 B.C., but this particular one was transcribed sometime in the 10th century A.D. It ended up in a monastery that unfortunately had a parchment shortage around 1100 A.D. This prompted a well meaning monk to wash Archimedes' writings from the parchment and then re-use it to copy down a prayer book called a palimpsest. The dark ages finally gave way to the renaissance when interest in science and mathematics bloomed again. Unfortunately, the problems that renaissance scholars spent so much time on had already been solved by Archimedes centuries before and still "The Method" sat hidden in a Constantinople monastery ready to unlock these secrets if they had only known.

In 1846, a biblical scholar named Tischendorf discovered the faint writings of Archimedes underneath the palimpsest's religious text and stole a single page. In 1907, Johan Heiburg transcribed the text with a magnifying glass, but still did not grasp the importance of the find. The world wars ensued and the palimpsest was lost again until the late 1990s when a family in Paris contacted Christies auction house wanting to sell a rare prayer book. It was "The Method" and the book sold to an anonymous collector for $2 million. It is now in the midst of a painstaking complete translation and restoration using all the technology available to us in this modern day. Great stuff!!!! Set your TiVos.

Sci-Fi's 'Taken' is Good TV

I just watched the first episode of Taken on the Sci-Fi channel and I'm already looking forward to the second episode. Yeah, it's that good (even better than V was way back in...um...1983).

In a nutshell, Taken is a fictional account of alien encounters with us terrestrials dating from the old Roswell events of the late 1940's to present day. It involves aliens with unknown motivations, shifty-eyed military types, and a host of other mysterious characters.

Taken is a Steven Spielberg production, meaning that it has a bit more credibility than your typical made-for-TV mini-series. So far, it's really enjoyable. The acting is pretty good and, unlike most TV fare, the production quality is top-notch -- on par with most movies I've seen recently.

As I always say, TiVo it if you can...watch it live if you have to.

Getaway In Stockholm 4 On Its Way

The supreme nutters behind the "Getaway In Stockholm" videos are set to release number four in their infamous series this October 15th. The teaser trailer is available now via their website. If your jaw is still a bit slack reading this, let me fill you in. Several years ago, some soon-to-be Darwin award winners in Stockholm thought it would be cool to secure a really fast car, goad the local police into a chase and then film the whole thing. They did. It was very cool and it spawned sequels and copycats galore. At times the calls are so close and the speeds are so great that these videos are almost painful to watch, but impossible to turn away from. Don't try this at home.

They Leave in Threes

Warren Zevon - 9/7/2003 - link
Johnny Cash - 9/12/2003 - link
John Ritter - 9/12/2003 - link

Thanks.

TechTV Up for Sale?

The Wall Street Journal and LostRemote.com are reporting that Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and owner of TechTV, is looking to sell the $250-300 million business. No interested parties have publicly come forth yet. Read more at Reuters.

Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary

Who would have guessed that J.R.R. Tolkien once worked on staff at the Oxford English Dictionary? :-)

An OED newsletter article traces his early contributions when he joined the OED in 1919: selected words that started with the letter W such as waggle, waistcoat, wake, walnut, walrus, wampum, wan, and want.

Tolkien was very interested in the etymologies of words, and upon taking up a post at Leeds University was rumored to have had a lengthy lecture on the etymology of the world walrus. (And you thought your prof's lectures were boring...)

His more notable contributions to the OED began 50 years later, when he was asked for help on the definition of the word hobbit. The final version:

In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973): one of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal men.

Other Middle-Earth words that have been accepted by the OED include mathom, mithril, and orc. Now under consideration, perhaps for the next edition of the dictionary: balrog.

Don't Like What's On TV?

From the "stop and count to 10" department...

So there you are, watching some sporting event when the station decides to cut to something else (usually another sporting event). Or, two events coincide and the one you want to watch is of course the one that isn't being shown. What do you do?

Well, according to the Lowell Sun, one Boston man's solution was to bombard the station with half a million emails.

"A [Boston] man who crashed FOX TV's computer system with more than 500,000 e-mail messages to protest the station's airing of Red Sox games over NASCAR races will now have plenty of time at home to watch TV.

Michael Melo, 45, of 12 Rainbow Lane, was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court to one year of probation, the first six months to be spent under home confinement, after he admitted he exceeded the authorized access to a FOX TV computer, causing $36,000 worth of damage to Channel 25."

With all that time on his hands at home, you have to wonder how much of it he'll spend watching TV.

What Not To Not Watch

If you like "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" (my new fave), pop over to BBC America and catch "What Not To Wear". Trinny and Susannah make Simon Cowell seem like a nice guy as they pounce on unwary fashion disasters every week. The show is voyeuristic reality at its best as women are nominated to be made over by WNTW unbeknownst to them and are then filmed by hidden cameras for a couple of weeks to give the hosts an idea of how really tragic the situation is. They then bring the makeover target into the game by giving her a brutally honest evaluation of her couture status using a combination of the videos they took and a real good tongue lashing. After a crash course on how to dress, the invigorated victim goes on a £2000 shopping spree for a new wardrobe and then puts it all together with Trinny and Susannah's help. The wry, sharp Brit humor is the best part for me and they really do get nice results.

TeleRead.org -- E-Book Advocates

TeleRead.org is an interesting website with an interesting mission: to promote "well-stocked national digital libraries." Beyond the various lists and links, the site features a well-done blog related to e-books, the publishing industry, DRM (digital rights management), and other related matters.

As you may know, I'm a big fan of e-books, and I think they deserve a lot more attention than they've been getting, so I'm glad to see a well-organized and active site like this emerge. Check it out!

'Queer Eye' Makes Over Leno

In a stunt that could make or break Bravo's new hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Fab 5 will be making over Jay Leno, host of the The Tonight Show.

According to this article on CBSnews.com, the 'Queer Eye' gang is "...scheduled to appear on Leno's late-night talk show Aug. 14 — the same night NBC will re-air the second installment of the Bravo series. Then they'll come back the next night to show off the results of their work."

So, watch (or record) Thursday's episode for a treat. While I'm not a huge Leno fan, this could be particularly hilarious. Plus, like evey other Leno show, it'll be broadcast in high-definition TV. Bonus!

Trunkmonkey

A friend (thanks, Bob!) pointed me to a hilarious TV advertisement from a car dealer. Follow this link (MPEG).

Now...where might I be able to get a Trunkmonkey installed?

Newer, Better Services Coming from Cable and Satellite Providers

The New York Times Technology section has a really nice article summarizing the state of the cable-versus-satellite wars over our television watching. And it's just not about television -- everyone is trying to get in on broadband Internet access, cellular phone service, and a host of enhanced services like video-on-demand and digital video recording. The sector is awash in new technologies and better choices for the consumer. Hey, deregulation may actually be working! Nah...

So, will cable and satellite digital video recording services kill TiVo? Read the whole story at the New York Times website (free account required).

'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' a Total Riot

If you haven't seen the new show on Bravo called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, you're missing some fairly hilarious stuff. In fact, I'm surprised this isn't airing on Comedy Central.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy features five gay guys (the "Fab 5") who "make over" willing straight guys wanting to spruce up their looks and lifestyles. They remodel the fellow's apartment/house, redo his wardrobe, teach him some basic culinary skills, address his personal grooming (or lack thereof), and generally make sure he's down with all the latest trends.

While I'm certainly no fan of "reality TV," this is creative enough to make me forget it's part of that otherwise feeble genre. A list of upcoming episodes of Queer Eye can be found at the Bravo website. In case you want to hear more about this interesting show, NPR covered it as well (RealAudio required). And, to top things off, in what I'm is a sure sign that the apocolypse is nigh, NBC actually aired a 30-minute episode of the program last night (it normally runs 60 minutes on Bravo). Wow...can NBC get any more hip?

Toy Tech

Ever heard of Actimates? Unless you have young children, probably not. In a nutshell, Actimates are little RF-controlled robots that look like popular children's characters, i.e., Barney, Teletubbies, Arthur and D.W. We stumbled upon an Actimates Barney at a local yard sale and figured it was worth the 5 bucks because our daughter loves him. He was part of a "PC Pack" which includes a CD-ROM and an RF sender that hooks to your PC's game port. I popped in some batteries, installed the hardware and software on a Win2K box and when it didn't work I figured it was still a good toy for the money. He could talk and play games and sing. The child was happy.

My wife wanted more. Actimates also works with the "TV Pack" and specially formatted video tapes (of which we have lots) and broadcasts. I found one cheap on eBay and hooked it up to my VCR's video out jack. Not expecting much, I plopped the daughter in front of the tube, pushed in an Actimates tape and sat down to watch.

Amazing stuff! This little toy runs a commentary on the video reminiscent of MST3K. He knows all the characters, sings the songs, and quips about this and that while the whole time gesturing with his arms and head. It's pretty cool and I'm sure it's ultra cool if you're two. It was a rousing success with my little one and she loves watching videos with Barney now. In fact, she usually demands it.

Unfortunately, Microsoft no longer sells Actimates, no new Actimates tapes are being produced and the special broadcasts are no more. I have no clue why the venture failed, but it seems that Microsoft, like Sony, suffers from CADD (Corporate Attention Deficit Disorder). They are on to the next potential profit center. At least they left something in their huge wake that my little girl enjoys.

Heresy: CBS's Tour de France Coverage

The 100th year of the Tour de France (1903-2003) kicked off in Paris July 5th and it is historical not only because it's the biggest, baddest, oldest bicycle race in the world, but Lance Armstrong (a Texas superhuman) is poised to join four other riders (Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain) as a 5-time winner and maybe become one of the greatest bicycle racers of all time.

As a former bicycle racer, the Outdoor Life Network has been a breath of fresh air with live coverage of each stage and expanded programming in the evenings with lots of good inside scoop, knowledgable announcers and very little fluff. My TiVo has been working overtime.

Stage 8 from Sallanches to L'Alpe d'Huez had all the makings of an utter bloodbath if such a thing is possible in cycling. It was early in the Tour, very few riders had broken, it was very long (219 km) and it was punishing. L'Alpe d'Huez has been the scene of many epic cycling battles and it's 13.8 km at a mind-blowing 8% grade came at the end of a day that had already seen the riders drag themselves over the 1566 meter Col du Télégraphe and the 2645 meter Col du Galibier. It was a powderkeg. There would be 500,000 raving maniac cycling fans lining the slopes of Alpe d'Huez! I was dying to see this race.

But CBS had other plans. There is an agreement somewhere that CBS (who used to try to cover the Tour in years past) gets a go at it for old time's sake on Sundays. This is akin to George Foreman deciding to take off his grilling apron and lace on the gloves again. CBS weighed in with a one hour (yes, a whole hour) of Sunday afternoon coverage that might have included two minutes of racing. The rest of the time was spent on human interest stories, history, pageantry and lots of commercials. It was a monster waste of time that made me wait the whole day to see the actual race on OLN. CBS, you suck.

But what a race it was! I think it is the best bicycle race I have ever seen. My wife, not even a former racer, was yelling, screaming, jumping up and down and was holding me personally responsible for Lance not totally decimating the competition. "Why is he letting that guy get ahead of him!!!!!!" I would have given a month's salary to have been on those slopes near the finish line to hear the roars as Armstrong, Beloki, Hamilton, Ullrich, Mayo and Vinokourov tried to break each other's legs and wills. It just doesn't get any better than that. Mayo ended up winning the stage, but Armstrong held off his main rivals to take 3rd and the yellow jersey. Hopefully he will keep it until the Tour ends in Paris on July 27th.

If you like cycling or just think you might, don't miss the Tour this year. Unless you decide to watch it on CBS.

'Cog' is Ad Hero

A big hit with consumers and engineers the world over, it seems, is Honda's new television advertisement titled simply 'Cog.' It features a series of Honda Accord parts (valve stems, windshield wipers, etc.) composing a modern day contraption that Rube Goldberg would have been proud of.

If your browser is Flash-enabled, feel free to watch the video here. Afterwards, make sure to follow the link on that page to read an interesting article about the ad. Supposedly, it took 606 takes to get everything to happen just right. Keep in mind while you're watching that video that there's not a smidgen of CGI anywhere -- it's 100% authentic. And Tom and Jerry always seemed to make it look so simple.

Cool Tag Heuer Ad

Combine two of man's passions -- golf and racing cars -- into one advertisement and you have a sure-fire winner. This one is no exception. Check out this online streaming ad from Tag Heuer. What a watch company has to do with golf and racing, I'm still not quite sure, but this is a pretty darn cool piece of marketing.