Overhyping the Recession?

With all that's been going on in the economy lately, it's hard not to start using the 'R' word that's being thrown around a lot recently. There has been the sub-prime mortgages scandal, the stock market plummeting, an extremely expensive war and an accompanying Congress that pushes the U.S. further and further into debt. As we see the dollar continue to plummet, its hard not to call a spade a spade: the economy is in recession.

However, before we start too much doom and gloom, its important to keep some perspective. To provide some, Zimbabwe has recently unveiled a $10 million bill. This is now the highest denomination of currency in the world and roughly equal to a whopping $4.00. Unfortunately it is not the consequence of a different base number system, but rather it is due to an extraordinary case of hyperinflation of over 50,000% per year! Residents who fail to spend money as fast as they can get it, must pay for daily goods such as the bar patron in this photo for his bottle of beer:

It's hard to even imagine what it's like to live in such a situation. Any sort of loan is a virtual impossibility as lenders will never be able get their money back in time to make such a venture worthwhile. Saving for retirement is clearly a fruitless endeavor, as is virtually any sort of saving for a future expense whether it be a vacation or saving in case of a medical emergency.

So while we hang our heads with the dollar tanking, exports dragging and job markets drying, let's not forget it could be a whole lot worse!

Scrabulous Sued

Sad news for those of us who were avid users of the 3rd party Facebook application--Scrabulous has been demanded to remove its application by Hasbro and Mattel. While on the one hand I am saddened by this news, on the other hand I am perplexed as to why the makers of Scrabulous, brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, came up with business plan hinged completely upon copying a well-known game. While they might have gotten away previously with claiming the only make "a little bit of money" through advertising costs in order to run the server on Scrabulous.com now that they have built the Facebook add-on and it is being run through its servers, how can they justify what must be a good sum of advertising dollars (the application services 500,000+ users per day) on complete copyright infringement?

When I first saw the application on Facebook and its detail down to the coloring of the the double/triple letter/word scores, I was surprised not to see any advertising of the parent company (not that I knew who it was at the time), a trademark sign or the fact that it wasn't simply called "Scrabble". According to the Agarwalla brothers, they were even approached by investors. What exactly did they think was going to happen? That Hasbro and Mattel were going to offer them money for copying their game? Let's be honest, this piece of software was not exactly Photoshop CS3 (not that I could make it, but a multinational corporation would have zero trouble). Or did they think the corporations would simply ignore the lost revenue even as the application grew in popularity?

I can only imagine that the success of their application grew much faster than they could have imagined and before they knew it, lawyers were knocking at their door. Still I have to say they were a bit naive.

Rogue Trader on the Loose

Not to be confused with these Rogue Traders, a fascinating story to come out on Thursday was the case of 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel, a junior member of the trading staff at the Société Générale bank. At the time of writing, the bank's officials and police investigators continue to leave it extremely unclear just how Kerviel was able to trade $73 billion worth of trading positions without any oversight.

It is also very unclear is what his exact motivation was for doing this. At this point, any comments are only speculative. Perhaps he thought he had an insight into the market that he did not have? Or maybe he could have been going for glory? It is intriguing to wonder what would have happened if the $7.3 billion in losses he incurred had had been in the black instead of the red. I heard a story recently from a man who runs a stockbroking firm who had an employee simply enter one more zero than he meant to and in very little time had cost his firm $1 million. Perhaps Kerviel made a simple error as such and then began a Martingale strategy that spiraled out of control. The mysterious lack of transparency in what actually happened makes me wonder if this was the work of a nihilist going for notoriety and destruction a la Fight Club.

One thing is for sure: in a relative sense, it certainly makes one feel better about what we see as 'big' losses when compared to the work of Mr. Jerome Kerviel.

DS & Disneyland Partnership

In what I think is a very clever move, Nintendo and Disney have worked together on a project to use Nintendo DS's as interactive tour guides while at Disneyland. Having been there recently, I remember thinking that although it was a great time, the time spent sitting and waiting in line there was easily the least fun part of the visit. Though I didn't have one at the time, I saw a couple of people there playing on their DS or Sony PSP while waiting in line. The DS in particular seems like a great idea with its ability to play with nearby DS's using the console's Wi-Fi connection and it's clamshell design would help protect it from the trauma while sitting in a rollercoaster rider's pocket.

With this latest development of GPS navigation, mapping, and possibly even more exciting features of informing you of the wait times at rides all around the park, this really seems like a great idea. From Nintendo's standpoint they get the advertising for those seeing kiosks and other visitors with DS's and their impressive functionality and perhaps additional sales from people planning to head to the park who hear about this news. Disney of course benefits from increasing features for its visitors and perhaps by encouraging them to bring something to occupy themselves while in line, reduces the greatest detraction from their amusement park. It will be very interesting to see the final product.

The $50,000 Bed

Amidst all the the various A/V gadgetry at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, was a product that garnered attention not so much for a breakthrough technology, clever design or other points of interest popular among CES attendees, but rather for its sheer superfluousness and gall: The Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed, AKA The $50,000 bed. Now while I've been thinking recently that perhaps we should have devoted a little more of our income to the furniture we spend a good third of our life on, I hadn't yet looked what this price range had to offer.

Though I imagine a good-sized majority of the public wouldn't want many of the features the bed comes with, I have to admit, I do find the feature list tantalizing. As someone who will take their laptop into bed from time to time, the wireless connectivity is a plus. Then there is the iPod connection to listen to something as I fall asleep and even an attached projector to watch something on the opposite wall!

I could definitely appreciate the dual controls of firmness as I enjoy a soft, cool bed while my better half prefers the complete opposite. Finally, said better half would also occasionally much enjoy the feature that jostles a back-sleeping snorer to roll back onto their side.

Even still, $50,000 for a bed seems almost laughable. It seems like you could buy the various components with the exception of the snore-preventer (who knows how well that actually works) and build it for under 10,000 I'd imagine. I guess the reality is that this bed is made for the Donald Trump demographic who only wants the best and gives price tags barely a passing glance.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray the Final Chapter?

Due to living without a TV for quite a while and having laptops no bigger than 15.4", I've barely had a passing interest in the whole HD-DVD versus Blu-ray format war. However, with my recent purchase of a projector, I starting to take a much closer look at how to jump into the HD revolution since there is definitely a noticeable difference between standard and high definition when you blow up an image that big.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a pretty price conscious guy, so I was pretty heavily leaning towards the cheaper HD-DVD alternative. Most of the news I had read in the last few months seemed to lean towards HD-DVD winning the format war. It seemed that HD-DVD was selling more players, particularly when you excluded Playstation 3's from Blu-Ray's count since those were really bought to play games, not movies. Furthermore, the tech-junkies were saying that the features of the two discs were nearly identical and when you factored in the lower cost of HD-DVD, Sony's Blu-Ray format was starting to look in dire shape.

However, fast-forward to January 2008 and in a surprise move, two of the biggest movie producers, Universal and Warner, have suddenly jumped shipped and dropped their former HD-DVD exclusivity. This swing leaves HD-DVD reeling as Blu-Ray now has a much larger share of the DVD market available to them as they retain their Blu-Ray exclusive deals.

Many predicted Sony would lose this format war as they did the PSP UMD, the Minidisc and of course the notorious Betamax. However this time it appears their high-risk tactics with PS3 such as delaying the release, raising the price well above its competitors and taking a loss on each unit sold, all in order to squeeze in the Blu-Ray functionality, paid off in the end. I believe that while some felt PS3s didn't 'count' when statistics were gathered regarding Blu-Ray players sold, at the same time, surely all those who had bought PS3s were much less likely to go out and buy an HD-DVD player and then HD-DVDs than to simply buy and rent Blu-Ray discs. From the studios' standpoints, as the PS3's sales picked up steam, the impetus was clear.

So now while those HD-DVD players look mighty tempting at their now-low price, the prudent option is to look exclusively for a Blu-Ray player. Specifically, the informed choice is actually to purchase a PS3 due to Sony's recent announcement that there will be a Blu-Ray 2.0 format that has extra features which will only be available to future Blu-Ray players....and their Playstation III. However, while they continue to hover around the $400 mark, I'm going to wait this out a bit longer.

Craigslist Secret Forums

Thanks to some generous family members (who are also understanding of the annoying specificity of my wishlists), I received some Christmas money to spend on my favorite genre of goods: electronic gadgets. Another annoying trait of mine when it comes to buying things is trying to get the best possible price / most bang for my buck when I have a set amount of cash to spend. This trait is probably a significant reason why I love to do shopping on Craigslist. The unfortunate shortcoming of Craigslist of course is that you have to deal with Craigslisters.

The flagging system that Craigslist has is a pretty good idea. It attempts to be purposefully a bit ambiguous and open in its guidelines for what should be flagged, though it acknowledges on its own website that the Unofficial Flagging FAQ is the best resource for the guidelines. Unfortunately, the flagging system's usefulness is of course highly dependent on the users of that area. If you're in an area where Craigslist is very popular with relatively savvy users--the supreme example being San Francisco--posts that break the rules are fairly quickly flagged and removed. Washington D.C. on the other hand, while having a decently sized community, is somewhat lacking in the flagging department.

While searching for a popular item like the Wii, the listings were inundated with scalpers. Although this is stated as being against the rules in the FAQ (some communities are apparently very vigilant about flagging these), I acknowledged the inevitability of this situation. Where I began to get annoyed is fake posts and spammers. Both would use the ploy of advertising at a very good price and get tons of replies. I believe the fake posters were mainly middle and high school kids playing pranks on each other (they would say to please call them instead of email) while spammers had a ploy of emailing you and writing something along the lines of "Sorry, someone else is already coming to see it, but just letting you know I got this for free at http://www.free-wii-spam.com !"

Unfortunately, neither of these ploys were getting flagged very quickly and the Craigslist Flagging forum specifically asks you not to request people to 'team flag' a post. Fortunately I eventually found a way to get these flagged (you can see this effort either as diligence to improve the community or revenge for wasting my time). Apparently there are 'secret' forums on Craiglist that while hosted by Craiglist, the official site does advertise the URLs. Fortunately there is a site that does. Of most use to me was the Flagging section which listed a forum simply called "Flagging Bad Ads Down". Within minutes of me listing the spammers' deceptive posts, they were gone and I felt vindication (okay I admit I was probably doing it for the revenge reason).

First big win!

While I received some great presents at Christmas, perhaps my favorite was giving to me by the EUR/USD. I have been trying to implement the strategy outlined by Jacko in his thread on the Forex Factory forums. Once again, the basic strategy is to only buy in the direction of the strong bullish trend on the EUR/USD pair with a 50-pip trailing stop loss and only to buy on 50% Fibonacci-line dips and round numbers. What really makes the strategy flourish is the employing what he calls an "Anti-hedge" trade where after a losing trade, you wait for the price to drop a further 50 pips and place a buy stop where you were stopped out. The idea is that once the long-term bullish trend picks up again, it will pick you up along the way and likely cover your original loss and then some.

Thursday was exactly one of those anti-hedge trades that was a loss back on December 14th, but the buy stop was set and waiting to be picked up when the Euro took off after Christmas. The trade very narrowly escaped being stopped out at 1.4591 and ended with a total pip gain of +191! Since the full trailing stop loss only rarely gets hit (since price would have to shoot directly down after entering) and the strategy has a good winning percentage, I risk 5% each trade meaning I nearly made a 20% account gain on this trade alone. After all the reading, researching, practice and work I've put into learning trading, it was extremely satisfying to finally see a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course this is just a single win, but its the exact encouragement I needed to continue in my efforts.


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

The Wii Shortage

A very kind and generous person offered to buy me a Wii for Christmas (perhaps I should be too old for one, but they look like so much fun!), however, even though over a 13 months have passed since the video game system was released, the Wii continues to be out of stock all over the country. The question is why? While they might have had the excuse that they underestimated the demand there would be for the systems back in the first couple of months after its release, at this point in time, its hard to really accept this excuse.

A popular conspiratorial theory is that Nintendo is purposefully maintaining an artificial shortage in order to maintain a high level of demand. While this successfully creates a scapegoat for eager Wii customers to vent their anger, the theory doesn't make a lot of sense in the end. While the Wii is the most popular video game system at the moment, it is far from the only video game system on the market. Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation III serve as more than capable substitutes for failed Wii customers. Nintendo would be very foolish to engage in this possibility, particularly when they would be losing the opportunity to sell future Wii-licensed games to each potential buyer which is where the real money is made.

Another popular scapegoat is scalpers. Scalping really started to become popular with the (relatively short) Xbox 360 shortage following its initial launch and has only increased in popularity with the Playstation III and Wii . With eBay and Craigslist as their venues of choice, scalpers have a low-cost way to reach a huge amount of customers. This is likely to be particularly effective with parents of demanding children who might be well-to-do enough to not sweat the extra $100-200 if it means they can satisfy the pleas of their kids. Some argue that these scalpers are buying up multiple wiis as often in order to create the storage and maintain the high demand necessary for scalping at higher prices. Unfortunately while its difficult to say whether scalpers on craigslist are able to sell of their stock of Wiis, on eBay, a simple search for finished Wii auctions shows that only in the exceptions of $500-600 Buy It Now auctions, scalpers are having little trouble selling all their stock at a high markup.

Perhaps the best argument I've heard recently is that it is much due to the devaluing of the dollar. For whatever marketing reasons, Nintendo sells Wiis for $250 in the U.S. and 250 euros in Europe which is now roughly equivalent to $365! That is a rather large amount more money to be making on every console sale in Europe. I have heard reports that Wiis are fully stocked even in supermarkets in France and I heard from some travelers to the Spanish Canary Islands that Wiis are even well in stock there! When you look at the price difference, it would not be surprising at all to find out that Nintendo is focusing its supply efforts towards its European customers rather than American.

My favorite argument however, is courtesy of Joy of Tech (click for big)

Google Knol

As part of their continuing efforts to take over the globe, Google has recently announced plans to launch a project named "Google Knol" which is a clear attempt to grab market share from Wikipedia. Assumedly, Google can see Wikipedia coming up increasingly higher in search results and sees an opportunity to grab an huge source of revenue if they are able to provide that service along with their AdSense links along the side. A more trusting observer might take Google's move more in line with their stated goals of 'organizing the world's information' and of course 'Do no evil'.

After all, as Wikipedia has gained in popular, conversely (and expectedly) it has come under greater and greater scrutiny. If you have ever come a page that has that has been vandalized before the community can change it, or come across a completely unsourced and rather biased statement within an article you will certainly know why.

The basic concept of Knol is that articles will be written by an individual author who is likely to be an expert in the individual field with a small blurb about the author in the corner of the page. Furthermore the author will be able to share a "substantial" amount of the ad revenue generated by the page. Upon completion, articles will be rated by users and thusly organized by Knol.

Although I certainly can't predict who will 'win' the long-term battle between Google Knol and Wikipedia, Knol does sees to help a lot of the significant shortcomings in Wikipedia. Many people will prefer articles written by experts in the field versus the Wikipedia's 'consensus' model for decision-making. Furthermore, having one person write the article will eliminate the problem of wiki-vandalism as well as the prose and structural quality concerns that arise when several people attempt to collectively write an article.

Knol's concept should also alleviate the problem of people editing articles that refer to themselves in order to eliminate criticisms and cast themselves in a better light. Two recent examples come to mind including the study by Lowell Sun which found congressional staffers making over 1,000 edits to their representatives' pages and the site WikiScanner, which was created to track the sources of millions of edits, found numerous amounts of edits of private company and other wikipedia articles edited by the subjects of the articles themselves--including such organization as the CIA.

Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Google made the interface for editing and creating the articles more user-friendly--particularly for the inexperienced user.

The addition of the of the monetary incentive will set up an interesting economy within the project. If Knol is successful and the monetary incentive is great enough, I imagine companies might be created to hire writers to cover a plethora of articles.

Still, I'm not quite sure if the Knol will turn out to be a better service than Wikipedia. When I look at voting tendencies of social websites like Digg and Reddit, people often vote 'up' articles that they agree with while the goal of an encyclopedia should be objectivity.

A screenshot for the curious: http://www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html

Entrepreneur Quotations

Being an entrepreneur and running your own business has long been a dream that has fascinated me. It's an amazing accomplishment for anyone who manages to succeed at it, as it combines a plethora of requirements including creativity, diligence, bravery, intelligence, interpersonal skills, managerial skills and perseverance among many others. While it begins with just a good idea, it ends up being so much more than that.

The following is a fantastic collection of quotations regarding the endeavor and serves well as motivation for those of us who might need that extra push whether it be to get started or continue through the hard times.

1. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
2. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon, entrepreneur
3. Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't - A student in Warren G. Tracy's class, entrepreneur (Thanks Daniel!)
4. The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning - to create a product or service to make the world a better place - Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, investor, author
5. Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory - Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader
6. Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners - Robert T. Kiyosaki, author, entrepreneur, investor
7. Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence - Lisa M. Amos
8. Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life - John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
9. In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President
10. The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place - Jim Rohn
11. Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them - Anonymous
12. Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make - Donald Trump, real estate and entertainment mogul
13. The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities - Michael Gerber, author, entrepreneur
14. An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it - Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries
15. The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer - Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's
16. I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful - Warren Buffet, investor and billionaire
17. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
18. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover - Mark Twain, author
19. There is a tide in the affairs of men
    Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
    Omitted, all the voyage of their life
    Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
    On such a full sea are now afloat;
    And we must take the current when it serves,
    Or lose the ventures before us - William Shakespeare, author
20. Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

Rekindling of an Arrested Development movie?

In what can only be described as the best news to come out of the writer's strike so far, while promoting his promising new movie, Juno, Jason Bateman has put a glimmer of hope in fans of the cult hit TV show Arrested Development that a movie may still be forthcoming. The show, which received massive critical acclaim, Emmy awards, and a cult-like following for its fiendishly clever jokes, was the victim of lackluster ratings and an unfortunate premature cancellation. There was hope that the show would move to another network like Showtime or make a movie, but nothing ever came to fruition.

However, because of the strike, the show's creator, Mitchell Hurwitz, has had spare time on his hands and has begun to play with the idea of an 'AD' movie once again. Bateman and Hurwitz released a joint statement through none other than Keith Olbermann (apparently a huge fan and friend of the show) stating, "It's something we're very interested in doing, but only after the writer's strike, and only if the powers that be, approve."

As someone who holds this to be the funniest and cleverest show ever created, to say I am intrigued by this would be a vast understatement. While the more cynical might point out that rumblings of a continuation of the program have been around ever since the end of the show 22 months ago, the more optimistic might point to shows such as Family Guy, Futurama and Jericho whose rabid fan support were able to actually bring those shows back from cancellation (Futurama in the form of movies). Furthermore, perhaps the blessing in disguise of a writer's strike in combination the recent success of Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno) was just the sort of impetus Hurwitz needed to propel us into more AD gloriousness.

Negativity is Contagious

It's a bit of common business wisdom that one customer's negative experience will have a 10 or 100-fold repercussions. A recent study from the Journal of Consumer Research found that this not just a bit of lore but demonstrable. What's particularly interesting about the study is their finding that it was much easier to influence someone with a positive impression of an item to change than one with a negative impression. This is very interesting when applied to internet blogs, social media sites and forums. I doubt I am the only one to notice that if the first 1 or 2 responses are negative, it seems to almost always devolve into an unrelenting slew of negativity from the following responses.

Also highly intriguing in the study was that if a person learned they were going to be presenting their opinion in a group, they were significantly more likely to form a negative opinion. This is the kind of predilection we might expect in too-cool-for-school teenager who cynically jibes at most things due to a self-conscious fear of putting themselves out for judgment, but to see this tendency remain in adults is both surprising and telling. This finding is also interesting in the context of the stereotypical professional critic who is far more snobbish than the average person, perhaps largely to do with having to present their opinion in front of a massive group of people.

Clearly the age-old maxim of "the customer is always right" is one to live by, if not to please the already displeased customer, but if only to prevent the outbreak of the highly contagious negativity virus.

Turning Video Blogging into $$$

Working from home is a dream that many aspire to, though few are able to achieve. The potential draws are plentiful: eliminating the commute, looking after one's children instead of an expensive nanny, flexible hours, less micro-managing bosses, and for some, less aggravating coworkers. Unfortunately, those last two factors--less oversight and employee cooperation--are two big reasons why employers are unlikely to grant their employees this freedom.

Instead, the best way to achieve this dream is to start one's own business, particularly an online-based one. One method that is gaining increasing success is video blogging, or as some less-than-creative people have coined it, vlogs (no word yet on whether that is 'vee-lahgs' or 'vlahgs').

A recent article by TVWeek.com reports that some video bloggers like the Ask a Ninja series earn upwards of six figures per month. This is very impressive considering that upon first viewing, most surely would have dismissed it as a short-term meme. The fact that the team have managed to turn such a profit out of the series even after a relatively lengthy period of time speaks volumes to their talent in business, perhaps even more than their comedic talent.

What makes this even more clear is how many popular video bloggers are completely unable to transmute popularity and page views into streaming income. Stars of one-off popular internet videos for example rarely make money off of their 15-minutes of fame. Some like the infamous Star Wars kid actually end up trying to sue those who made them famous because of the subsequent jokes at their expense while others, like Tay Zonday, singer of Chocolate Rain, has managed to turn their video's popularity into appearances on Jimmy Kimmel and endorsing national soda brands. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

Against the grain review of No Country for Old Men

Just when I thought I had a good handle on picking good movies to see at the theaters, I had the chance to see No Country for Old Men last week. All signs seemed to point that this would be a success--IMDb was rating it over 8.5/10 and Rotten Tomatoes, who I've been looking to more these days as a good judge of quality, had rated it 95% based on the professional movie critic reviews coming in. Furthermore, it was written and directed by the Coen brothers who I've really liked in the past with Fargo and the Big Lebowski and the script synopsis sounded very entertaining with a plot surrounding a drug deal gone bad, violence, mayhem and a $2 million stash. Finally, it even had a healthy looking cast list including Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson.

Alas, I found the film to be a bitter disappointment. Although the acting was great and I enjoyed all of the scenes with the film's villain, played superbly by Anton Chigurh, it simply was not an entertaining film. Tommy Lee Jones' character in particular was grating and boring as he played the extremely cliche old sheriff from a small town who imparts nuggets of wisdom through rural anecdotes. During his long-winded stories and monologues I actually found myself inadvertently daydreaming on more than one occasion! I cannot understand how a movie about a man on the run with $2 million of drug money from a vicious killer can actually result in a boring film!

The worst part (***spoilers here of course***) was the ending where the Coen brothers just come off as pretentious by taking the route of 'Hey I bet you never expected we'd kill the
main character surreptitiously off camera and then suddenly end the film 10 minutes later with a cut to black and no real conclusion to the plot! Aren't we hip and unpredictable?!'

As I see good reviews poor in, I can't help but accuse the film of being an Emperor with no clothes on, but perhaps this film just wasn't for me. Alas, I don't see any way I could have seen this coming unless perhaps I had seen more of the Coen brothers' films. Ah well, no system is perfect, bad luck I suppose.

The Kindle: Flop or technological breakthrough?

Amazon has recently released its long-awaited (at least by some) e-Reader, the Kindle. When i first looked into it, it seemed like a very intriguing piece of new technology. Their video demonstration points out some key features that makes it deserving of some praise, notably:

• Electronic paper design eliminates the need for a backlight, thus reducing eye strain, battery drainage, and allows it to be read outdoors in the sunglight.
• Wirelessly connects to Amazon's store and various blogs and newspapers from most anywhere as you would with a cell phone, yet there is no subscription or data plan to pay as you do with cell phones, PDAs, certain laptop hotspots etc.
• Relatively light and thin
• Books are sold for a reduced price
• Purchases are automatically backed up on Amazon's site which is always a worry for me with purchasing music online.
• For the eco-friendly among us, the device could potentially significantly reduce paper usage.
  

However, once you dive into the Kindle a bit more, some of the detractions start to glare.

• First and formost is the $399 price tag. When you compare it to the iPhone and remember its quick $200 price drop, its hard to pay that kind of money for a product that feels like it will be lowered in little time.
• While the selection sounds big, 89,000, in reality it leaves out a huge amount of fiction books and for students, textbooks which they would love not to have to lug around campus are unavailable.
• It completely takes you out of the used book market. Since there is so much DRM on the ebook files (as you would expect), you have no ability to purchase or sell the books second hand. Furthermore, the options which let you 'rent' the book cost a lot more than buying a book new and selling it on eBay or Half.com
• iPods/iPhone comparisons can only go so far when you can't even fit it in your pocket. For those of us with Y chromosomes and no purses, this a fair issue. Furthermore, mp3 players filled a desire that that has been with us since walkmans and portable CD players while the desire for carrying around multiple books might not be as strong.
• Speaking of the iPhone, comparing the two illuminates another problem with the device...

(it's kind of ugly)

The Perils of Sitting

Some unfortunate news for those of us with jobs primarily spent sitting at a desk (seemingly the story of my life since graduating college): Prolonged Sitting Causes Disease. Now this wouldn't be so much of surprise were it not for their finding that even if one gets the recommended 30 minutes of exercise per day, what one spends the other 15.5 hours doing is just as important.

I remember at one of my previous jobs there was a huge emphasis on health at work including ensuring an ergonomic set-up at the desk, advising neck and wrist stretches, exercises while at the desk, full body stretches every 1-2 hours...it began to get a bit ridiculous. When you are up against a deadline, does it really reflect well on you when your boss comes over to see how the project is doing and you're staring off into space bobbing your head back and forth.

Furthermore, it isn't as if standing up at one's job the pinnacle of health either. When I was in high school and college working jobs standing at a counter, I would regularly leave work with a bit of an aching back, knees and /or feet. Still, that never stopped Donald Rumsfeld from working from a stand-up desk. Perhaps that is the way forward.
Likely, optimal solution is to get a job where you are moving around frequently, however not everyone can be P.E. teachers and forest rangers and few jobs like that seem to pay well.

For the Family's Computer Repairman (by default)

As Thanksgiving approaches, Lifehacker published a helpful article for anyone visiting friends/family this weekend for whom they are the 'go-to' computer fixer-upper: How to Fix Mom & Dad's computer (while the turkey is in the oven).

I am in that position somewhat for my family, though only in a limited capacity due to their unwillingness to listen to my suggestion of 'buy a PC otherwise I don't know how to help you'. Still, this list is just as handy for one's own computer, if for nothing more than as a checklist to go through when you feel like your computer is slowing down.

However, in my experience, I'd say that the real solution is more likely to be reinstalling of Windows after which the computer always runs noticeably faster. Unfortunately that usually runs into two major obstacles: 1) "Now where did I put that windows install disc...." and 2) "Where did I put all the other install discs I'll need once I format the drive". Still, all the Spybots and CCleaners won't be able to acccomplish what a fresh reinstall will do.

In the meantime my personal checklist for PCs is:
1. Install and run Spybot S&D
2. Install and run Ad-Aware
3. Install Firefox + Adblock Plus
4. Defragment drives
5. Create a system restore point, then install Easycleaner and use the add/remove programs to uninstall any unnecessary programs, registry cleaner and delete any suspicious entries in the 'startup' section after double-checking with a Google search.
6. Restart!

Google's OpenSocial vs. Facebook: The Battle Begins

Recent developments have seen the surge of Facebook as it strives to compete with MySpace. As someone who has made this switch I assume it has been due to the prevelance of spam and profiles that often end up rather intrusive both visually and audibly. However, I must admit that I am not sure why Facebook appears to continue to not fall prey to the spam problem since opening their network to the public after previously only allowing accounts linked to college email addresses. Certainly their move this year to allow 3rd party applications to be developed has helped their popularity a great deal.

While Google has been involved in the social networking part of the web since January of 2005 with Orkut, it has been one of the few arenas Google has entered that has been largely a failure (with the anomalous exception of Brazil for some reason). Recently, however, Google has announced their OpenSocial project which, while combining forces with the declining MySpace looks to undermine Facebook whose application platform is open in the sense that anyone can develop for it, but is closed in the sense that it forces developers to use a specific markup language exclusive to Facebook.

What makes this develop even more interesting is the rumors of Google's overall project for social networking code named 'Maka Maka". Purportedly the strategy is to create a social network that can beat out Facebook with an 'outside-in' approach. Theoretically developers will be able to connect together gmail contacts, emails, calendar, picasa, etc. and all other google products that many of us use and virtually eliminate the need or desire for an external web platform like Facebook.

Of course, in the end, perhaps Facebook will simply cave into joining OpenSocial but manage to cement itself as the King of social networking platforms. Or perhaps its recent surge will be enough momentum propel itself in front of Google and MySpace for the forseeable future?

Gas Prices: Not so high afterall?

While everyone continues to complain about the rise of gas prices, the New York Times produced an intriguing visualization of gas prices over the last century (adjusted for inflation of course).
[click for big]


at the time of this printing (in May), gases still hadn't even reached the previous high! This seems very odd when there is plenty of talk about diminishing oil reserves and 'peak oil'--surely the lack of supply should result in a higher price? I assume the technology involved in oil drilling has improved ,driving costs down, but there is also the increased difficulty in finding new oil reserves to account for.

Furthermore, why do people complain about the price while simultaneously there is so much talk about climate change and energy dependency? Increasing the cost of oil will have ramifications on everything from consumer choice of cars to the economic viability of the energy industry investing into renewable resources. It just seems odd to me that this issue receives so much political attention while government-regulated oligopolies like cell phones, internet and cable tv total nearly $200 a month in many areas. For instance, in this day and age, why I am I still forced to pay for channels I have no intention of watching?