Windows Live interactive map lets you drive down streets

This is a very early preview, but windows live local (virtual earth) is coming out with a feature similar to Amazon A9's street view that lets you simulate driving down city streets. The preview works for Seattle and San Francisco, and one city took 10 million photos alone. Basically you can use your keyboard to drive a car down the street, simulateously viewing what's infront or to either side of you. This is another impressive beginning to the Live Local (Virtual Earth) offering, which has set out to give you a birds eye view of the world. If they can make this a smooth navigation and rotation of angle, it will be killer.

Microsoft Viral Campaign: Origami Project

Microsoft has launched a viral campaign called Origami Project. Little is known but it is estimated to be a portable computing/video/entertainment device of some sorts. More from the viral effort will be released on March 2nd, according to the animation-

Technorati Tags: origami project, microsoft, viral

Civil Dissobedience against Star Bucks

More artistic civil dissobedience like the mc donalds billboard liberation front and shop dropping. Here's a guy putting up an "i love a good starbucks invasion" poster next to a new Star Bucks that is opening in his area.



Technorati Tags: civil dissobedience, star bucks, billboard liberation front, mc donalds

Indie Rock online radio station

Haven't tried this, but suposed to be a good Indie-Rock online radio station for free streaming. Take a look at the sample bands from various days- a lot of good stuff (What I picked out from the list - Elliot Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, Shins, Guided by Voices, Radiohead, New Pornographers, Strokes, Interpol, Dandy Warhols, Killers, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Hives, White Stripes, Hot Hot Heat).

Technorati Tags: music, indie rock, radio

Online music purchase growth is exponential

Here's a graph that someone took the time to draft together plotting the music purchases from iTunes since the store opened in May 2003. Growth has been exponential, with the current rate hitting 71 million songs per month and over 1 billion total. Shows the power of the market, and why the RIAA should be embracing and not fighting.


Technorati Tags: music, itunes

Mark Cuban offers $1 Million dollar bribe to humiliate Donald Trump

Mark Cuban is publicly offering a million dollars to Howie Mandel for a charity of his choice if he can get Donald Trump to put a rubber glove completely over his head and blow it up on his show. Trump will be there promoting The Apprentice. Definately one way to spend a lot of money quickly, and since I think Trump is a joke I'm all for it.

Google's Rebuttle to the Government over China Business

Kind of interesting to read Google's response to the Government's accusation that the search engines were basically selling their souls as the price for business in China. Read what the US House of Representatives said to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco. Then read what Google said back.

National Archives video footage now on Google

Google has begun yet another ambitious project to put online important works. This time its the "National Archives", a collection of historic US videos now for free on Google Video.

Bill Walton Sounds Off

Bill Walton has a few memorable sound bites on this interview discussing a)Larry Brown's mishandling of the Detroit situation last year and b)the rediculous Knicks situation.
espn radio

$1 million bounty on prohet cartoonist

"A Pakistani cleric announced Friday a $1 million
bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad, as thousands
joined street protests and Denmark temporarily closed its embassy and
advised its citizens to leave the country."
What is it coming to when anything's up for sale, when we've all become bounty hunters?
[via AP]

MSN search and win

There's been a lot of news that the runners up in the search wars have been researching just what types of bribes they could offer in order to get users to switch over to their engines perminantly. Yahoo has been surveying yahoo mail users on what might be the best incentive - cheaper netflix, cheaper yahoo music, free email upgrades, etc. Now comes MSN, who has set up a special search page that gives you a chance to win prizes every time you search - as long as you scan your first page of search results for the "search and win" link that is randomly seeded. It remains to be seen how good a bribe it has to be to change user habbits, but if it works for you -
MSN Search and Win

Google Earth Hosts the Winter Olympics

If you like to play with Google Earth, then you might enjoy loading the winter olympics skin. Shows historical facts, places of all events, and more. On the google home page, there's a link to load the information (on top).

True Video iPod Soon?

Not one for rumors, but thought I'd throw this out there. ThinkSecret, the premier Apple rumors website, has on good word that there will soon be a true video iPod out, rather than the current iPod that plays video on the side. It's expected to have a 3.5" screen and use a revised click-wheel that only appears when someone touches the screen. The picture here is probably a fake, but at least an estimate based on the leaked information.

Controversial cartoons cause pro-Islamic hacking

"Approximately 800 Danish Web sites have been hacked since the end of January...Messages on the hacked sites include "don't ever
tallk [cq] about our prophet," "[expletive] Denmark," and "Let the
Muslim people live in peace [expletive]." Most of the hackers are "posting hate messages,"
Preatoni says, but there are exceptions. "In some examples, we actually
saw intelligent educated people who hacked and posted very polite
messages, explaining what they were thinking."...
Other worldwide hacking protests have flared up
in the past, including a surge in attacks after a U.S. spy plane was
downed in China in 2001. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq,
there was also a "massive Islamic protest" on the Internet, Preatoni
says...The reaction to the Danish cartoons, however, has yielded the largest number of defacements in such a short time"
[From PCWorld]

how dumb is isiah thomas?

Today's Bill Simmons article:

"A well-placed source tells me that Isiah Thomas is prepared to trade
Channing Frye and Penny Hardaway to Denver for Kenyon Martin and Earl
Watson, but only if Martin agrees to an MRI on his surgically repaired
knee. If Martin's knee is in good shape, the Knicks are calling off the
deal. If the knee is in rough shape, the deal is on. If the knee is in
such terrible shape that the doctor says something like, "Wow, there's
a good chance K-Mart might walk with a limp for the rest of his life,"
the Knicks will throw in an unconditional No. 1 in 2009 as well as Nate
Robinson and $3 million dollars. So stay tuned."

It doesn't even seem like a stretch that this is what runs through Isiah's head!

Yahoo toolbar brings tabs to internet explorer

Yahoo released a beta of their toolbar for IE that allows you to open tabs in the browser. While it can definately be helpful to have, the feature ads another row to your toolbar, and doesn't go away when you have no need for tabs. Definately a necessary feature if they want to make this a very useful feature, but it won't really matter soon since IE is getting a tab overhall on its own.

Go Daddy's Super Bowl XL Commercial Journey

Go Daddy, now (in)famous for it's scandelous superbowl commercial in 2005, took 14 edits of commercial drafts to get clearance for what eventually aired on Sunday. I wasn't all that impressed with the humor or sexiness, but I guess you can't hold them responsible for airing such a truncated commercial when their hands became so tied. Here is their timeline and revision discussion of the whole journey to Super Bowl XL night.
Also here is Google Video's recordings of all of the commercials, playable consecutively for a full Super Bowl commercial experience.

1 GB Nano now, and the shuffle on cheap

Apple rolled out the 1GB iPod nano for $150. The probably soon to be non-existant iPod Shuffle saw a price drop for the 512MB and 1GB models to $69 and
$99, respectively.

play real soccer on your cell

'Siemens' phone makers will be coming out with a game that uses the camera on your cell phone to actually monitor the movements of your foot for a soccer game on the phone. [via Gizmodo]

Watch the Super Bowl Commercials on Yahoo

"Yahoo, in cooperation with IFILM, will offer an archive of this year's commercials on Yahoo Video shortly after the game ends on Sunday evening. You'll also be able to watch commercials from past "Big Games." IFILM content can currently searched via Yahoo Video and BlinkxTV as well as their own site." [via SEW]

ESPN responds to bad feedback quickly

A few days ago ESPN started selling their popular commercials on iTunes for $2 a pop. The commercials met immediate criticism, as the $2 price tag used for tv episodes was being assigned to a :30 second spot. As user reviews piled up on iTunes bashing ESPN, the company clearly noted that it would lose its celebrity status for commercial appeal. The $2 fee was dropped quickly, the user reviews (now considered irrelevant) were wiped clean, and ESPN started over giving their content for free.
User reviews with $2 fees

User reviews with no $ fees