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Saturday, December 29, 2001
Holiday treat 
Roses
| | Dave has some kind words for both Susan Kitchens and myself. Susan's on top of Rose Bowl Parade preparations. We're planning on going down to hang with friends in Pasadena to take in some of the preps as well. Hey, maybe we'll connect and co-blog whatever. Why not? |
Hating Reality, cont'd
| | I like to listen to KQED, the big public radio station in San Francisco. Since I moved to Santa Barbara I can't do that on the radio any more, so I have to use the computer. Fine. The problem: like too many public (and commercial) radio stations, KQED streams to the world through Real audio, which changes its players and services and constant tie-ins and come-ons about as often as Rob Glaser changes his underwear. And every time I download a new player, my "favorite" station settings are obliterated. |
| | A few minutes ago I pulled down "Open Radio Tuner" under the Radio menu of my RealPlayer and was sent here, to a page where I am invited to sign up for Real's Message Service, by which Real.com will send you "just the updates you want... direct to your desktop." What makes these people think I want a message from GetMusic.com, CNN, Rolling Stone, Artist Direct, NBCi or Launch? If I want fucking messages (which I don't) from any of those companies I'll go get some from their Web sites. |
| | On Real's tuner page, you can search through 2500 stations and press a "+" button to add them to the "favorites" your cookie helps you remember. I just added 5 public stations (to my personal favorites Web page, not my RealPlayer). Two of them — KCLU and WUNC — don't work (via the Real page — they do from links on their own sites). The "featured genres" are topped by Live Baseball ("New!"). Click on that and you go to a page that says you need a RealPlayer GoldPass, and that there are "no games today." No shit. It's fucking December, dudes. (I'm not even carping about the unwanted pop-under ads, which are now almost ubiquitous.) |
| | Of the 20 or so genres you can search, none are "public." Choosing all the "news" stations brings up a full roster of BBC and CBC services, most of which work, but plenty of which don't. |
| | When I go to "Add new channels" on the RealPlayer, a "connection failure" occurs. |
| | Earth to Real: I am not a pin in your bowling alley. And by the way, you're rolling gutter balls. |
| | Meanwhile I'm still wondering why more of these stations don't dump Real and go with MP3? It's so much easier on the listener. Cheaper at the transmitting end too. |
| | There has to be a better way. I've ranted about all this before. Now maybe it's time for action. I believe much of this is what Craig Burton likes to call "a directory problem." And I have an idea for a directory solution. Stay tuned. |
Copy cat
| | Remember Drew Kaplan's DAK, which sold all kinds of doo-dads, mostly electronic, with long-form copy ads and catalogs, from the 60s into the 90s? |
Red hearing
Nets are breaking out all over
The dad thing, cont'd
Found
| | A CEO that speaks (or at least writes) in a human voice. Too bad it's one of the few actual HTML pages in a site that's nearly all Flash. (Thanks to B!x for the link.) |
Dotcom memorial
| | Fortune: 384 dotcoms that spent their last VC bucks in '01 |
Rapfilter
Serious blog serial
| | Then he flipped slightly to the side and I could see his mouth open and close. His eyes were shut. He was gasping, struggling. He was not OK. |
| | That's going one step beyond "sticky," if you ask me. |
| | Hope he's okay. (A day earlier she said he was, but that shouldn't spoil the story.) |
Can't spell Heaven without e'v
| | But here's the big news: Ev expects to have money soon! Perhaps he has insider information that the world is about to become a just and fair place... |
Hunks Eleven
| | Saw Oceans Eleven last night. It's a heist movie with lots of snappy dialogue between one-dimensional but sufficiently quirky personalities to keep the thing interesting. Solid action, expert direction. Yes, it's beyond implausable, but that's part of the fun. (Biggest glitch: cell phones that actually work on the Casino floor in the Bellagio. I've been there and tried that. There's no way.) The big surprise: George Clooney is much prettier than Julia Roberts. |
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