I never knew

Forget Snakes on a motherfucking plane, in 10 days it will be Yulbloggers on a motherfucking plane. A few of us are heading down in Republican country, Austin to be more precise, to attend SXSW Interactive, that’s right, in 3 weeks you’ll all be rid of my constant talking about going, I’ll have been there.

March 10th to 14th we’ll be in the center of web geekdom, rubbing elbows with the bloggeraty. Actually, maybe my elbows will be rubbing the floor more than other people’s, judging by the crazy ass lineup of interesting stuff by day and the no less crazy offerings after dark. Here’s a view of my iCal schedule (click for larger view), having included only the things I’d like to attend at night.

Notice the slight overlaps Sunday and especially Monday. What to do? What to do?

I tip in cafes. Normal right? Question though, if every single person in the cafe is an owner or the wife of the owner and are not part of the barristas who’s lousy salary we “complement”, should I still tip?

Dave Werner’s portfolio is brilliant, I’m not a big fan of Flash but this is fantastic. The design, the ideas, the videos, the personality. Gorgeous. The only thing I don’t quite like is the “Disneyey” starry transitions but, you know, small detail. Don’t forget to check out the teaser, not available from the main nav, only from the top of the collage on the front page. Almost makes me want to go to school. (not that I’d get in anyway)

“Apple has made the iPod the most popular music player on earth, but it’s clean as a whistle. How could the same people love their super sleek music player and also love the gaudy oversaturated flashing/pulsating monstrosity of their Myspace profile?”—Myutterconfusionspace

Microsoft redesigns iPod packaging parody.

It’s been a couple of weeks but I hadn’t noticed, iStockphoto was bought by Getty Images for 50 million.

Amazing Race 9 starts tonight tomorrow. Last season I did a quick blink thing which turned out well, having called correctly the top two teams. This time I had a quick look at some of the bios, here are my choices:

1. BJ & Tyler. They look like the token clowns but are the most well traveled team.

































2. Eric & Jeremy. Two not dumb athletic guys, always a good choice on AR.

1. Joseph & Monica. Same kind of reasoning as above. Plus, she’s cute so hopefully we’ll see her all season.

   Wildcard: Lake & Michelle. Good overall except I think they’re the crazy chauvinistic moron and doormat team of this season. Those always impload before the end.

   [Update] I’m liking the latin Gilmore Girls.

I’ve bitched before (or is it laughed at) about the Canadian men’s hockey “performance” at the olympics and it still holds true. However, I’m am extremely surprised and pleased at the performance of the Canadian team as a whole.

With a total of 24 medals, good for 3rd or 5th overall (depending how you count) it brings “us” within a couple more performances of the Americans and Germans. It’s also more than the Austrians, Norwegians and Swedes, smaller countries but who usually kick ass at the games.

Of course, you have to take into account the number of medals handed out when comparing with previous games but even then, there’s impressive progress, as Darren shows. Not as big an increase as some would have us believe but excellent nonetheless.

Something that bodes very well for the future is the number of 4th places, 13 of those. I don’t have the numbers at hand but taking 1 through 5th into account and adjusting for those young enough to be there in Vancouver, there are already more potential medals for 2010. Since there were also a number of good, lower, showings by very young athletes who haven’t peaked yet, it looks like chances of reaching the Olympic committee’s goal of first place are pretty good.

Oh, and a completely useless thing to add; there are some cute olympians with great smiles in Canada.

Edgeio has launched. Thanks to one of the founders, Micheal Arrington of Techcrunch, who’s been dropping hints and is very well connected, I’m sure it will get a lot of coverage. For once though, it’s a Web 2.0 type of webapp that’s actually got some thought and value behind it so it might be worth the hype.

Great look by We Break Stuff, with lots of little visual details. It certainly stands on it’s own but I also can’t help to see it as another step in the simplebitification of the web. (which is neither a complaint or criticism by the way, just noticing)

Also some pretty impressive Ajax kung fu. At the very least go and enter a city, then play with the slider and see the content re-filtering on the go. Well done.

Your HR department requires an MBA degree for any position; it also requires five to ten years work experience in an industry that is only four years old.—How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion