Site soft-launch

If you know what the words "soft launch" mean, check out a new site of ours and give us feedback.

My state map

After generating my own state map, I was surprised to find that I'd visited over half the US (not counting those where I drove through a small corner in a few hours on my way to somewhere else).

Work-Free Riches

The only Work-Free Riches site I've ever seen that made any sense.

Not the same

It's not the same thing, John: During this week's Dem debate, Dean attacked Kerry for Kerry's thin record of legislative accomplishments. Kerry responded with a supercilious "You don't understand how Congress works" answer. But there's a big difference between an executive that has personally made things happen to improve people's lives and a legislator that can only do things in concert. And Kerry's record doesn't show that he's been a successful legislator, even at a time when the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. There's a good reason that we tend to elect former governors as President, and that Senators almost always lose the general election. People want doers, not talkers. And I've always thought that Kerry was a windbag. The New Republic's etc. column deconstructs the Dean-Kerry exchange in more detail.

Newsflash: Network execs suck

You know, network execs are morons. All this week we've been watching the DVD box set of Joss Whedon's Firefly, which was probably the best series of last year that was killed by network stupidity. Now comes the news that Karen Sisco, this year's best show, has been killed. Cause you know that people want to eat up shit like The Bachelor with a spoon, but heaven forbid that a show with intelligent writing and finely drawn characters gets a chance to find an audience.

Wonkette

As politics geeks, we should probably mention that we love the new blog, Wonkette. Even though we shouldn't.

Pepsi iTunes commercial

Want to see the only Apple-related ad showing during the Super Bowl, but don't want to actually have to sit through the entire game? Here's the Pepsi/iTunes ad. Unfortunately, it still doesn't answer my question as to whether or not the bottle cap promotion will be for Mountain Dew also.

Trippi's out

AP says that Dean's fired Joe Trippi. All I can say is, wow. Here's the Wash Post report.

Orkut

Orkut (what's Orkut?) was down, but now it's back up again. Not a member but want to be? Ask.

Later note: uhhh... I meant ask if you and I actually do know each other, virtually or otherwise.

Cue the ominous music

I double-dog-dare-you to make it through the entire Making Light thread Cue the ominous music without laughing out loud. Bet you anything. Especially if you follow all the links.

Rippy the Aggregator

How can you not love something with the name Rippy the Aggregator? Doubly in this case, because it solved a problem I've had for a few weeks.

Cool Safari Trick

Here's something I just discovered by accident in Safari, and I thought I'd pass it on:

First, make sure your bookmarks bar is open. If it isn't, hit Command-B to open it.

If you don't have anything in your bookmarks bar, add something. For instance, if you're reading this, you can drag the icon in the location bar above to the bookmarks bar, and it'll be added as a link.

Now type Command-1. Whatever's first on your bookmarks bar will be triggered. If it's a link, you'll go there, and if it's a bookmarklet, that bookmarklet will be executed (although if it's a folder, it'll be skipped, and the next-most link or bookmarklet will be "clicked"). Command-2 will do the next, Command-3 the next, and so on.

So, from now on, I can just hit Command-1 and my Safari "Post to MT" bookmarklet will automagically trigger. Sweet!

From the mouths of...

Our son Sean made this trenchant observation about John Kerry after the New Hampshire results were in: "The nice thing about him is that you can manufacture an army of robotic doubles of him, and send them out to campaign. That would be more efficient, and you couldn't tell the difference between them and him."

Ralph, Don't Run!

Ralph Don't Run is a nice Flash animation that explains how Ralph Nader is responsible for Bush being in office, and shows you how you can help keep Nader from running again this year. Note to Naderites: If you still think that Nader had nothing to do with Bush's win, please keep it to yourself; we live in the real world here.

Last NH poll numbers

Here's the final polls for New Hampshire, updated as I come across them:

Candidate	ARG	Chris	Zogby	SUSA	Gallup	Globe	Suffolk
Kerry	35%	32%	31%	33%	36%	37%	37%
Dean	29%	28%	28%	28%	25%	20%	19%
Edwards	16%	15%	12%	14%	10%	12%	8%
Clark	13%	12%	13%	12%	13%	8%	8%
Lieberman	6%	7%	9%	7%	10%	7%	8%
Undecided/Other	1%	6%	7%	6%	6%	16%	20%

My thoughts: Anything other than a clear win will be perceived as a loss for Kerry. Dean can claim a victory if he both comes within 8 points of Kerry and is 10 points or more ahead of whoever's in third. Lieberman, Sharpton, and Kucinich should all go home, and whoever comes in fourth should probably join them.

Thanks, Mom

Ouch! From Political Wire

Quote of the Day

"He's such a good man. I don't know why he didn't catch on."

-- Sen. Joe Lieberman's mother, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

iPod, WMA, and choice

Scoble talks about iPods, WMA, AAC, and choice on his blog, and there's a few things I thought that he got wrong which I thought I'd point out:

• when you buy music off of Napster or Apple's iTunes, you're locked into the DRM systems that those applications decided on. Really you are choosing between two competing lockin schemes. Not quite. It's an ill-kept secret that Apple's DRM can be broken in about two minutes, with virtually no degradation in quality. So, none of the points Robert then proceeds to make about DRM and lock-in then apply to music bought off the iTunes Music Store.
• You finally got a raise at work, so have enough bucks to buy one of those new plasma TV screens. While there you fall in love with the new Windows Media Player to attach to it ... But if you buy your music off of iTunes, it won't work there. Here's where market share counts. Apple has over 30% market share of MP3 players and iPods are the #1 player sold. Every teenager I know wants an iPod, or wants to borrow my iPod headphones so that they can convince the other kids that they've got an iPod. Companies will support iPods, because that's where the money is. If nothing else, Apple's learned that from Microsoft.
• Using an iPod doesn't mean using AAC. I've got an iPod full of songs, and there's not a single AAC-encoded song on it. If you buy from the iTunes store, yeah, you get AAC files. But the iPod plays garden-variety MP3s (without DRM) just fine.

Who's buying what at the Super Bowl

Who's buying what at the Super Bowl is an AdAge.com listing of who's running what ads during the game. For those curious: no Apple ads, no Bush campaign ads.