Zune Sucks

Today marked the much-anticipated release of Microsoft's attempt at the iPod killer. It's called the Zune, and you should not buy one.

"But Steve!," you say, "it has this cool soft rubber coating and I can send songs to my friends wirelessly!" My response? Wirelessly is not a word, and it still sucks. You can send songs to your friends if they have a Zune, but it takes a while and you can then only play the song 3 times. Lame. Also, their marketing tag line for the Zune is "Welcome to the Social." When was the last time you attended a social? Was there ice cream?

Seriously though, the real issue with the Zune is that Microsoft has agreed to pay the major record labels a portion of the profit from each unit sold. This is because they are assuming that most Zunes will be loaded with stolen music. While this may in fact be true, it's not right of them to assume it, and their paying of the labels sets a very dangerous precedent. And the consumers will pay the price. Literally.

Browser Updates

The two major browsers have released new versions recently. Here's the info:


Firefox has been the better browser for a few years. And while this new release is probably great in ways that I haven't yet investigated, there is one noticeable change that has been bugging me already. The tab close buttons have been moved to the individual tabs instead of at the right of the screen where they were previously. Fortunately this can be fixed pretty easily by changing the value of the browser.tabs.closeButtons key in the about:config to 3.


IE is trying to compete by offering the functionality that Firefox has offered for years: tabbed browsing and RSS feeds. It's about time, Microsoft. I'm still not going to use this browser, but at least it might make the masses a little more web-savvy.

New Look

As you may have noticed there have been some changes here at SPDN. We're using a new CMS now and the kinks are still being worked out. You might also notice that not all of the archives have been transferred over. Give it time.

Let me know what you think of the changes. Unless you don't like them.

New Shuffle

Yesterday Apple released its new iPod shuffle. As you can see, it's even smaller than the old shuffle. Pretty soon we really will be using the iPod invisa from the SNL sketch.

Note: I used to have a link to that sketch but it was taken down by youtube.

Wikipedia Lists

Every time I think that I've seen the coolest thing ever to hit Wikipedia, I find something cooler. This time it's their list of lists of lists. What? That's right, they have long had lists of cool things. What could be better than a list of those lists? A bigger page that breaks those lists down by category and lists everything! Confused yet? Just check it out.

Rupert's Space

MySpace has just been purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. If you're not familiar with News Corp, they are the conglomerate that owns Fox, DirectTV, TVGuide, and a shit-ton of newspapers. Yes, Fox News and MySpace are now owned by the same company. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It sounds like they're putting some money into the site though. Hopefully that includes more/faster servers.

04/05/06

As Dan pointed out to me earlier, today at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. This will never happen again. Of course, yesterday will never happen again either, but that's beside the point.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

I recently discovered a cool site called Six Degrees of Wikipedia. This is similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon except that it finds the shortest path between two wikipedia articles.

For instance, there are only 3 degrees of separation between the University of Michigan and testicles.

WashDryIron

Behold the WashDryIron, which will wash, dry, and iron your clothes for you. But why doesn't it fold them? What about putting them in your dresser? I think it could use some work.

And We're Back

Sorry for the recent outage. Dan was moving the server. Hopefully I have lost all (both) of my fans.

Timing is Everything

Check out this gallery of cool images taken with a high speed camera.

Alexadex

Caution: Nerd Alert

Alexa is a site that tracks website traffic. The alexadex is a new site "where players compete for fame and glory by buying and selling shares in sites on the world wide web."

I just signed up and it seems pretty cool. It kinda reminds me of the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

Uncyclopedia

I've posted about the greatness of Wikipedia before, but lately I'm becoming a fan of Uncyclopedia. It's similar to Wikipedia, except that every article is false. A good example would be this entry I read recently about Nobody. My favorites are that "He doesn't like Sara Lee" and that "If momma ain't happy, he's happy." If this doesn't make sense to you, just go read it. It will probably make you laugh.

Population Map

I think maps are cool. I really like this one from ODT that shows each country by population size. You can click to enlarge. Each grid square represents a million people. Take that Canada!

Firefox 1.5

If you aren't already using Firefox, you should be. Version 1.5 just came out so this is a perfect time to make the switch.

Hit the Motherload

Comedy Central is launching a broadband network tomorrow called
Motherload. Why is this cool? It will feature a bunch of new content that you can't see on TV. It's kinda like MTV's Overdrive except that it should suck less. Hopefully it will work with Firefox, but I'm not holding my breath. The big draw for me is the extras and clips from The Daily Show and South Park, but hopefully the other stuff will also be cool.

Addendum: It does seem work with Firefox.

Frappr

I just created a Frappr map for this site. What is Frappr you ask? From their site:

"Frappr is an online tool that lets you map out the zip code where you live, work, vacation, or anything else! You can then share your unique URL with friends and find out where the rest of them live and work in relation to everyone else."

So would you, the 5 people that visit this site, do me a favor and go there and add yourself? I don't care if you use a fake name. You can also give shoutouts, so you might enjoy that.

Flock Me

Flock is going to rock your world.

Soundboards

I'm not sure how people have the time to do this, but I found a site that has what they call 'soundboards', which are basically just flash movies where you can play quotes from your favorite characters at the push of a button. Here are links to some of my favorites. It will surely bring you at least minutes of fun.

Family Guy
Peter
Stewie
Quagmire
Old Guy
Whole Cast

The Simpsons
Homer
Homer Sings
Ralph Wiggum

Other
Ron Burgundy
Cartman
Napoleon Dynamite
The Ladies Man
Office Space
Chris Farley

Future Me

I don't know about you, but I love the future me. Fortunately there is now an easy way for me to send my future self an email.