"West Bank Story"

"West Bank Story" won the Academy Award for short film (live action) last night, and I love the fact that I was able to pick it up on iTunes for two bucks. It's a great short film.

It's good enough that I'd like to share it with other people, and it would be cool if I could pre-buy, say, five "copies" of it through iTunes and post a code on my blog that would give a free download to the first five people that used the code. Better yet, iTunes could offer volume discounts to people who purchased multiple copies of a given song or movie to encourage bloggers to promote them.

The upside for bloggers would be that, once the practice took off, people would begin searching blogs for free copies of music or movies they're looking for, and drive traffic to blogs that otherwise would not receive attention.

Vista vs. Mac OS X

Here's a great video that combines a voiceover of a Microsoft official giving a demo of Windows Vista with video of Mac OS X actually performing most of Vista's "revolutionary" features. Shows how much of Vista has been around in Mac OS X since Tiger came out in 2005.



Got the link here.

iPods in airplanes

My ultimate geek fantasy- Apple and airplanes combined!

Courtesy of iPodObserver.

McNugget-Enhanced Cheeseburger

This gem courtesy of Clara, who is obviously under the mistaken impression that if I were to die of a heart attack in the immediate future, there would be a tremendous windfall for her.

Check out A Hamburger Today, which runs articles on burgers, including today's piece about Norah Jones and the Corner Bistro, which has the best burgers in the world.

The "Web 2.0 video guy" interviewed

http://battellemedia.com/archives/003386.php

Go, Steve, Go

Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Teachers"

Mac vs. Windows

Without getting into "the whole thing" (the Mac vs. Windows debate), here's a good article that summarizes a Windows expert's conversion to the Mac.

The iPhone as the first 3G UI platform

Good article (with some great videos).

Tech support

Read the fine print

Iran

Here's an article that does a good job of summing up where we stand with Iran these days.

I think the vast majority of Iranians just want to go on with their lives and don't give a rat's ass about America as long as we don't make their lives difficult. In fact, I think the majority of Iranians are probably somewhat pro-American and are opposed to the extremist elements of their own government that make their lives difficult.

But, from a geopolitical standpoint, the government of Iran is certainly positioned in opposition to American foreign policy. If you accept the premise that governments have "enemies" in the world, Iran would be one of ours, and has been since at least 1979. This is not to say that I think the concept of "enemies" should necessarily lead to forceful conflict- to the contrary, I think forceful diplomacy is the tool that should be called in most (but not all) of our challenges, particularly in the Middle East.

It's unfortunate that the Bush administration does not value this tool, because I think forceful diplomacy is the only way to successfully deal with Iran right now, and Iran has certainly become our number one concern.

It's also unfortunate that one of the many casualties of Bush's legacy is the value of US intelligence reporting in the eyes of informed Americans and our allies around the world. I have little doubt that there are some serious, nefarious things Iran is up to in Iraq that US intelligence may be able to shed light on, but who's going to take us seriously now?

I'm Amp'd

I don't exactly fit the Amp'd Mobile demographic, but I love this commercial:



The sparklers won me over.

Steve Jobs on DRM

Apple released this letter from Steve Jobs a few days ago. While there are certainly some serious business reasons why Apple is taking this public position at this time (such as the pressure they're feeling from European governments to open up their proprietary DRM system), I think Jobs does a nice job of laying out the DRM issues clearly and fairly.

It's particularly interesting that Apple is talking this stance publicly now, while Microsoft has been taking intense heat for having bent over backwards to appease the DRM requests of music publishers with the Zune and the high-def video industry with the changes it's made to Vista to support HD DRM.

In my idealized view of the world, Apple stands up valiantly for the rights and interests of its users, while Microsoft shepherds its captive user base forward, making decisions based purely on the interests of itself and its business partners. Clearly, this view of the world belongs in Coca-Cola land- but there is a kernel of truth to the philosophical differences between the goals of both companies, and it's refreshing to see these differences playing themselves out on the DRM battlefield.

Fantastic video about Web 2.0

This video does an amazing job of describing what's going on as the Web evolves through and beyond "Web 2.0". Credit goes to my coworker Nolan for passing this along to me.

Prediction

If Apple releases music from The Beatles on iTunes (rumored to be announced at the Super Bowl tonight), the files will be released at a higher bitrate than the standard 128kbps AAC files that are the norm on iTunes. Either a higher bitrate, or Apple Lossless.

We shall see...

Widgets Everywhere

http://widgets.yahoo.net/blog/?p=16

Copilot 2.0

Copilot from Fog Creek Software is one of the most impressive software services I've ever seen. It lets you easily and effectively connect to virtually any other computer over the Internet and control it remotely (with permission)- and it works regardless of whatever security and firewall settings are in place at either side of the connection.

I've used it several times to troubleshoot problems on people's computers in a number of situations, and it's simply amazing.

Version 2.0 was recently released, and it's got some impressive new features, including Mac support.

Cool stuff.

Windows 386 Promo Video

Yikes!

"The Hitcher"- Israel style

Yikes!

One more reason I'm not a pilot

And I thought my job was stressful...