We tried to ignore this the first 12 times it came in to the tip jar, but after several hundred more we decided to
stem the deluge and just publish it already. iGuy is a, um, friend for your iPod. It's rubberized projection, it's
wacky camaraderie, it's Gumby for your iPod/iPod Photo. $34.95. iGuy for iPod mini to descend in June. End of
story.
[Thanks, Larry]
[Engadget]The new service will let people create a homepage, giving them one place to go for e-mail, headlines, weather reports, maps, movie schedules and, of course, Web search, Search Engine watch says.
The portal will be in keeping with Google's trademark uncluttered design, however. The portal will look just like Google's homepage, but just below the search box will be links to news, Gmail, and other services.
The new feature will be available to people with Google accounts for e-mail, mailing lists, news alerts and other services through Google Labs. [via c|net news.com]
Woohoo! A Pix is headed to my hood!
"Add brewery buds Jerry Fechter and Don Younger to the list of restaurant and bar owners putting down roots in North Portland. Fechter and Younger, who own the New Old Lompoc and Southeast Division Street upstart the Hedge House, will open a new brewery/distillery in an old warehouse on the corner of North Williams Avenue and Failing Street this fall. Even better, the pair is toying with the fate-tempting idea of calling the space Failing Williams. The new bar will share the roomy space with its current Division Street neighbor, Pix Pātisserie. Pix's Cheryl Wakerhauser is launching a second Pix branch that she's terming a French-style "chocolate laboratory" featuring white lab coats and good-quality cognacs in August. Holy hell, why don't we just move Pioneer Courthouse Square to NoPo right now and make the migration complete?"
And, there's a new fish and chips place to try on Alberta, called Halibut's.
[via Willamette Week]
The National Lacrosse League on Wednesday awarded a professional indoor lacrosse franchise to Portland, said NLL Commissioner Jim Jennings.
The team, the league's first in the Northwest, will begin competing in the 12-team league in January of 2006 and play its home games at the Rose Garden. The season lasts through April.
The league said the team name will be chosen by the fans, and invited fans to submit names at the team's web site, www.nllportland.com.
Here's a simple and fun project to do with Google maps and Flickr. Flickr member iDanSimpson has a step by step on taking a screenshot of a location, zooming out and using the build in slideshow to make a little view of just how small things are. It's much like a DIY "Powers of 10". Link. [MAKE: Blog]
Wow, a Tablet Mac might be hitting the scene soon! Awhile back there were stories (2004) about a tablet Mac and today Mac Observer reports "Apple Computer was granted a patent for an enigmatically titled "Electronic device" Tuesday, May 10th, 2005. Illustrations for the device clearly indicate it to be a tablet-style Macintosh, and patent filings specifically compare it to the "HP Compaq Tablet PC" and several other tablet machines". Of course if you're jonesing for one now, you can always make your own. [MAKE: Blog]
This will likely come in handy for someone- incompetech,com has PDFs you can print out in just about all the graph paper styles one may need- Metric, Multi-Width, Asymmetric, Dots, Iso-Dots, Hexagonal, Hex Dot, and Celtic Knot. Neato. Link. [MAKE: Blog]
border="1" height="174" hspace="4" vspace="16" width="140" />
Tech pundit Robert X. Cringely is floating the idea that sooner or later Apple is going to license the iPod to other
manufacturers and get out of the business of selling
iPods (you have to scroll down to the
bottom of his most recent column). The fact that Stevie J. pulled the plug on Mac clones notwithstanding, here’s his
line of reasoning: Right now they’re using the iTunes Music Store to drive sales of iPods, but Apple continues to face
downward price pressure on the iPod and eventually they’ll be forced to cut margins on the iPod (all of ‘em) to the
point where they’ll no longer be all that profitable (at least not at the kinds of margins that Apple is used to
enjoying). Cringely thinks that the long term profit margins on iTunes downloads are better and more scalable than for
hardware, so he thinks that they’ll start letting other companies make iPod clones that are compatible with the iTunes
Music Store and then stop making their own iPods to focus entirely on selling downloads. Crazy? Yeah, but you know how
Steve Jobs likes to pull unpredictable crap like this, so don’t put it past him. If the iPod stops being a moneymaker
don’t expect him to hold on to it out of some sentimental attachment.
[Via Digital Media Thoughts]
[Engadget]
David Pescovitz:
"Noodling" is a kind of fishing where you dive underwater, grab hold of a catfish with your hands, and then pull it to the surface. (Image by Keith Sutton from an ESPN Outdoors article.) Noodling has been illegal in Missouri since 1919, but for a limited time this summer the Missouri Conservation Commission is allowing it in three rivers. From A Knight Ridder report:
When (noodler Howard) Ramsey gets a bite when he goes catfishing, it hurts. He isn't dangling a worm or a piece of chicken liver on a hook in front of the fish. The only bait he uses is his fingers or his toes. And when a big catfish clamps down, Ramsey knows it.
"I have a lot of scars from where big flatheads have bit me," Ramsey said. "When you swim into one of their holes, they aren't too happy to see you.
"I've had them clamp down so tight on my arm that I didn't know if they'd ever let go. They have rows of tiny teeth, and when you try to pull your arm out of their mouth, they'll just skin you. I even had one fish that tore my tennis shoe right off my foot. I couldn't walk for a couple days. But that's all part of it.
Link (Thanks, Dave Gill!)
UPDATE: Thanks to Carlo Longino, Matt Vance, Jacob Simpson, and the other readers who urged me to watch the documentary Okie Noodling! Link [Boing Boing]
Mark Frauenfelder:
A lot of comic retailers are going to give away free comic books on Saturday. Fantagraphics has published a nice giveaway comic, and Girlamatic will be free to all visitors all day on Saturday, May 7, 2005, starting at midnight Eastern time.
If you haven't yet checked out the great comics on the site (including
Jenn Manley Lee's amazing "Dicebox," Jason Thompson's creepy
teen-angst drorror -- horror and drama, get it? -- "The Stiff," the
Narbonic spin-off "Li'l Mell," or the too-cute-for-words "Jeepers,"
just to name a few, now's your chance!Girlamatic is an award-winning webcomics publication, one of the first
and most successful spin-offs of Modern Tales, featuring lots of
comics that aren't specifically targetted at male readers, and that,
you know, kind of sort of are mostly intended for female audiences.
But guys are welcome or whatever. I guess that's the
politically-correct way to put it. Or, as Girlamaticker Lisa Jonte
puts it -- "Come for the cooties, stay for the comics!"Subscriptions cost $2.95/month or $29.95/year and include heaping
helpings of our eternal gratitude. We don't use no stinking DRM,
and members are welcome to share their passwords with friends,
within reason (share your password with two or ten people, we're okay
-- share it with the whole public internet, we're not happy -- that sort of thing).
It's opportunities like this that make me wish I still worked in an office. (Thanks, Adam!)
Message 4577623 [B3TA]
[Gizmodo]