My Chumby has arrived and I am pleased....I would have got it for the internet radio streaming alone, but all of the incredible other things I am leveraging make it well worth it for me...if you get one let me know and I'll share some channels.
Per Amazon - Introducing Kindle™
Three years ago, we set out to design and build an entirely new class of device—a convenient, portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers. The result is Amazon Kindle.
We designed Kindle to provide an exceptional reading experience. Thanks to electronic paper, a revolutionary new display technology, reading Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper—and nothing like the strain and glare of a computer screen. Kindle is also easy on the fingertips. It never becomes hot and is designed for ambidextrous use so both "lefties" and "righties" can read comfortably at any angle for long periods of time.
We wanted Kindle to be completely mobile and simple to use for everyone, so we made it wireless. No PC and no syncing needed. Using the same 3G network as advanced cell phones, we deliver your content using our own wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet. Unlike WiFi, you’ll never need to locate a hotspot. There are no confusing service plans, yearly contracts, or monthly wireless bills—we take care of the hassles so you can just read.
With Whispernet, you can be anywhere, think of a book, and get it in one minute. Similarly, your content automatically comes to you, wherever you are. Newspaper subscriptions are delivered wirelessly each morning. Most magazines arrive before they hit newsstands. Haven’t read the book for tomorrow night’s book club? Get it in a minute. Finished your book in the airport? Download the sequel while you board the plane. Whether you’re in the mood for something serious or hilarious, lighthearted or studious, Kindle delivers your spontaneous reading choices on demand.
And because we know you can't judge a book by its cover, Kindle lets you download and read the beginning of books for free. This way, you can try it out—if you like it, simply buy and download with 1-Click, right from your Kindle, and continue reading. Want to try a newspaper as well? All newspaper subscriptions start with a risk-free two-week trial.
Kindle’s paperback size and expandable memory let you travel light with your library. With the freedom to download what you want, when you want, we hope you’ll never again find yourself stuck without a great read.
We're very proud to introduce Amazon Kindle and we hope you like it as much as we do.
- The Amazon Kindle Team
I particularly like the boulder pranks...
http://view.break.com/300267 - Watch more free videos
I thought this was great when I saw it and had to share. - Den
Shakespeare Insult Kit
Combine one word from each of the three columns below, prefaced with "Thou":
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3digg this del.icio.us
artless base-court apple-john
bawdy bat-fowling baggage
beslubbering beef-witted barnacle
bootless beetle-headed bladder
churlish boil-brained boar-pig
cockered clapper-clawed bugbear
clouted clay-brained bum-bailey
craven common-kissing canker-blossom
currish crook-pated clack-dish
dankish dismal-dreaming clotpole
dissembling dizzy-eyed coxcomb
droning doghearted codpiece
errant dread-bolted death-token
fawning earth-vexing dewberry
fobbing elf-skinned flap-dragon
froward fat-kidneyed flax-wench
frothy fen-sucked flirt-gill
gleeking flap-mouthed foot-licker
goatish fly-bitten fustilarian
gorbellied folly-fallen giglet
impertinent fool-born gudgeon
infectious full-gorged haggard
jarring guts-griping harpy
loggerheaded half-faced hedge-pig
lumpish hasty-witted horn-beast
mammering hedge-born hugger-mugger
mangled hell-hated joithead
mewling idle-headed lewdster
paunchy ill-breeding lout
pribbling ill-nurtured maggot-pie
puking knotty-pated malt-worm
puny milk-livered mammet
qualling motley-minded measle
rank onion-eyed minnow
reeky plume-plucked miscreant
roguish pottle-deep moldwarp
ruttish pox-marked mumble-news
saucy reeling-ripe nut-hook
spleeny rough-hewn pigeon-egg
spongy rude-growing pignut
surly rump-fed puttock
tottering shard-borne pumpion
unmuzzled sheep-biting ratsbane
vain spur-galled scut
venomed swag-bellied skainsmate
villainous tardy-gaited strumpet
warped tickle-brained varlot
wayward toad-spotted vassal
weedy unchin-snouted whey-face
yeasty weather-bitten wagtail
Letterman
Gene Simmons
Kurt Vonnegut
Slash
Barack Obama
turntable. Not too mention the kick ass lot of 80 Jazz albums I won on eBay which has me super hooked on Ramsey Lewis (highly recommend for anyone who hasn't listened. If you want one yourself her you go. Every night since the acquistion we have had 'Dinner Dance Party' with my wife and son at our house....its been a blast, highly recommended.* 1 can (6 oz size) frozen orange juice
* 1 cup water
* 1 cup milk
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 12 ice cubes
Directions:
1. Mix together in blender at high speed for 30 seconds. Serve
immediately.
Makes: 2 servings
It's all about the link train, other bloggers give this a try if your just a reader of this blog please click here to add me to your technorati favorites....don't know what that is click anyway and find out.
Here are the rules:
1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.
2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can be accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.
3) Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.
4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)
5) Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want good kharma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.
My New Faves
mind for design - fave the site
in one ear and... - fave the site
diy happy - fave the site
The Original Faves
Bobs [ReformatThis] - Fave the Site
Everyday Weekender - Fave the Site
Armen’s Blog - Fave the Site
Gary Lee - Fave the Site
Dosh Dosh - Fave the Site
Nate Whitehill - Fave the Site
Ms. Danielle - Fave the Site
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Rutherford, CA
Christine and I decided to try this place to celebrate our 5th anniversary. The place has a reputation for great service and good food with excellent presentation. I'll review the meal itself in a second, but let me get somethings out first.....location was incredible as you can tell from the picture its beautiful, what you can't tell is that you are looking out over the entire Napa Valley and it is fantastic. complimentary valet service was nice. We were seated in a table overlooking the valley and really got to enjoy the view. On to service, we had this french waitress who wouldn't smile, clearly not having a good day. The sommelier was a guy named Chris, he was quite informative. I must admit we probably had 12-15 different people provide us service over the course of the meal, so they are definitely attentive. There must have been problems in the kitchen the night we were there, because the cadence of the meal was totally off....we ended up waiting between courses for an eternity. We decided to go with the 4 course fixed price. Here goes: the food was 'OK', price was ridiculously high, we probably would only return for sunset drinks...for the same price we could have ate at French Laundry or Le Bec Fin, and I can't even put this place in that league. The chef started us with an amuse buche then quickly into our first course I had Hamachi Sashimi on Lemon Gelee with Cucumber Jus, Christine had an Asparagus Soup with Lemon Creme next I had Tai Snapper with pork belly and Christine had Halibut which was excellent. For the main I had bacon wrapped veal tenderloin and Christine had Liberty Farm Duck...we both preferred the second to the main. For dessert I went with the sorbet which was refreshing and Christine had the phyllo wrapped chocolate dumplings which she loved. Overall if the meal came out in a timely fashion and a we had a lead server that was having a better day we would have rated this one higher.
Our rating:
Expected so much more: 2.5 stars out of 5
Napa, CA
To start off I had flash fried calamari with a spicy chipotle chili glaze and pickled ginger, at first I thought this was going to be like a very typical calamari dish and was going to leave me craving for a good traditional red sauce, but I was wrong....the chipotle glaze which was a little oily was out of this world....the pickled ginger was a perfect complement...this was a great start. Christine had the endive and pear salad with blue cheese, candied walnuts and honey mustard vinaigrette and she thought the combination was well suited and liked it. For the main I had the roasted duck breast with wild mushroom risotto and black truffle jus, the duck was slightly overcooked but all in all I was quite pleased, great flavor pairings...Christine had the mongolian style barbecued chicken breast with basmati rice and grilled pineapple salsa and thought it was a great way to do chicken....not typical and great flavor. Service was decent, we had a bit of an annoying waitress...the drinks were great however. All in all the restaurant was great and we would definitely go back....sit outside if you can.
Our rating:
Great, would definitely return: 3.75 stars out of 5
A while back I reviewed some Fork Art.
Here is something along the same lines, Carved Crayons from Pete Goldlust take the everyday and making it much much cooler.
Ok just booked some travel, for a wedding anniversary trip to Napa Valley, I've talked about farecast before and I just used it to time the absolute best price on this trip, not only are they spot on with the fare indicators, but the interface is fantastic....every airline and reservation service should model this UI, needs a small tweak here and there, but all in all top notch.
To Do Management:
I've also been using Remember The Milk religiously. This is far and away the best to do list manager, again great UI, keyboard shortcuts, shareable, rss-feed, great Netvibes widget.
Mind Mapping:
A few years back I used Mind Manager to facilitate some brainstorming sessions and it worked pretty well, more recently I had the need to do something similar and leveraged free mind (an open source mind mapper). I just got turned on to Bubbl.Us I guess it was only a matter of time before this space became web 2.0 savvy. I love it.
Search:
Rollyo is a Roll your Own search engine that federates across sites of your choice, with a web 2.0 social network built in. I have basically been using a shared Guitar Tab search engine, which is awesome, and a Mr. Fix-It search engine for a home project I am doing.
Food:
You must check out Wheel of Food, basically enter a zip code and a query (like, Atkins or Asian) and the wheel of food spins.
In any event its an awesome gift, I can vouch for the quality, quick turnaround and great price.
Enjoy and when everyone is asking you where you got the hat remember wonderfunk!
Not so shameless....it comes as no surprise, I am a huge google fan, and of course leverage a number of the tools coming out of the googleplex. I am asking each of you to check out the Free GooglePack....I know you already have some of these tools so why download....well easy you can opt out of the things you already have from the web page. So do me a HUGE favor and click the button to the RIGHT--->> in the sidebar and go get yourself some great software for the right price $0.
For those of you not familiar, GooglePack includes: GoogleEarth, Picasa, A Photo Screensaver, Google Desktop, Google toolbars for IE, Firefox, Norton Antivirus , AdAware SE, Adobe Reader, GoogleTalk, Skype, GoogleVideo Player, and an HD Image Player. You don't need to include everything, you can easily pick and choose what you need.
Get the googlepack, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Dennis
wonderfunk
What a great contest.
microdose if you are reading I think this contest is tailor made for you.
Discover Magazine has a brilliant contest challenging people to video tape themselves explaining string theory
I am listening to: Presidents of the United States of America
Pretty cool aggregator+
In their own words:
Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.Here is an aggregate pipe I created....if you like this blog you will probably like this pipe....it is a subset of what I read daily.
by Nelson DeMille
Enter perrine architecture with their perrine pod (available Mar 1) Not only is this cool on one story, but they are stackable to 30 stories and the expandable to your hearts content. Think life size lego home on steroids with a great look. Anyway if you spend some time and poke around their site, they have already thought of some cool ideas.
From the architect:
Anyway, I'm a fan....I wish the price point wasn't outrageous, but hopefully this will come down over time, or someone will blatently rip-off the idea and provide it more affordably. digg this del.icio.usPicture a design so sophisticated and fabulous that it seems futuristic, yet so simple and uncomplicated that you wonder why no one has thought of it before.
"My design is about appreciating the beauty of simple, uncluttered space." The perrinepod is very functional, very sexy, very simple, with the form of the spaces inside following the function, there's no pretense, just simple, beautiful designs. It's a really cool thing to have no falseness - for example, the bathrooms are simply designed as a place to wash, backed up by quality materials.
Living spaces have become as transient and irrelevant as clothes. It's no longer a look for a generation, the look of 'now' only lasts for a three to four year period.
That approach is not sustainable and people are putting themselves under a lot of unnecessary pressure trying to keep up. The Perrine Pod is the antithesis of all of that - simple design, beautiful materials that will remain classic. It's not a 'look at me' statement, but a home that is comfortable, stylish and above all, functional."
- Jean-mic Perrine
From WebProNews.com
Apple's CEO has a problem with public schools that he sees as rooted in the unions that prevent principals from firing underperforming teachers.
Even though Jobs shared a Texas stage with Dell's co-founder and CEO, Michael Dell, the iconic Apple executive stole the show at an education reform conference. He criticized teachers unions and textbook publishers during a talk that received applause from attendees.
An AP report on his remarks cited Jobs' observation that no amount of technology could turn around classroom performance. Jobs compared the inability to fire poor teachers to a small business that couldn't get rid of its bad employees.
He called out unions for specific criticism:
"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.
"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."
Some observers commenting on Jobs' remarks saw money as the cure. Said Robert Scoble:
If you want better schools, pay teachers $80,000 a year or more, AND give the staff power to get rid of bad apples (bad pun, given the cause of today’s post, I know) and you’ll see school quality turn around in an instant.
Don Dodge disagreed with the money argument:
The problem is not money. Schools already get more than 50% of the local budgets in most cities and towns. Health care is the same deal. We spend more per capita on health care than any country in the world. The problems with education and health care are not lack of funding. The problem is lack of incentive.
Dell chose to keep his remarks less incendiary. He said a less-competitive job market for principals contributed to the problems in schools.
digg this del.icio.us
To top it all off they are the first airline to go Carbon Dioxide Neutral.
I love it when companies shake it up and while not ignoring capitalistic instincts. Then again I guess we need to check back in 5 years to see if they are bankrupt, but until then I'm a fan.
Here is my obligatory 
