If you are so inclined you can watch an interview with some of the developers of MSN Spaces.  The crappy new blog service for grandma from MSN.  There are so many brilliant people working at Microsoft, why can’t they come up with anything innovative?  I know a guy that works from Microsoft and he’s a total genius.

The problem is that this service is probably like the #1 service already because of the number of people using Messenger and Hotmail etc.  It just lowers the bar for blogging.  Or does it?  Do we need 20 million more blogs?  What does this do to Google?  Will Google results get more clogged up with blogs?

My favorite part of the interview is when they get all defensive about how the steal their ideas from Apple.  Actually they seem quite defensive the entire time…

"We look for great ideas everywhere and one of the places to look for great ideas is Macintosh" (~15:40)

So weak.

I almost forgot to mention the thing that bothered me the most.  The terms of service says anything you post
using MSN Spaces becomes a product that MSN can sell without paying you a cent.

These Firefox extensions are quite handy.

eBay Pulse is like Google’s Zeitgeist except it tells you what people are looking to buy on eBay.

Listen to this: An Audioblogging Manifesto (MP3 4 mins)

It’s a response to all the podcasting and videoblogging hype that has been going on.  It speaks to some issues with podcasting, namely a podcaster’s inability to link, be indexed by Google, be skim read etc.  It’s worth thinking about from a podcaster’s/videoblogger’s perspective because it clearly points out the weaknesses of these two mediums.

I personally disagree with the idea that writing is the best way to make a site more interesting.  I can create much more interesting material from a film than I can from my writing.  My writing is terrible!  Terrible spelling and grammar.  That’s me!

I think the more people create podcasts/videoblogs or other rich media the more the you and I will only see the juicy bits (meaning the good stuff).  Let’s say I create a podcast about, hmm, lets say about podcasting and I call it "An Audioblogging Manifesto."  If its well written, interesting, or generally has something worthwhile to say this podcast will circulate around and will be filtered up by the blogosphere and brought to people’s attention.  It might end up on a very popular website and billions and billions of people will see it.  Yeah, Uh.  If I don’t create that piece of art nobody gets the chance to experience it.  Cause you know, it would be really juicy.

I like seeing videoblogs and listening to podcasts because people are doing it for the love and not the money.

Although, how can you argue with this?

"Just because you’re going to be able to do a real-time three dimensional high-definition interactive virtual reality fly-through of the inside of your cat – does that mean you should?  Does that mean it belongs on your website? This is not the legacy we want to leave!   So stop the ridiculous self indulgence, and shut up and write."

(The rest of the transcript here)

Engadget‘s podcast was pretty good today.  Listen.

This guy is trying to collect a digital copy of every song ever recorded.  He’s also totally insane.  His setup includes 3 G5s and two iMac G5s.  He has over 900 000 songs in his collection.  I have ~13 000 songs and iTunes tells me that if I were to listen to all that music I’d be listening to a different song 24hrs a day for a month.  So weird.

(looks like the site is down for now)

Microsuck has a new suck engine, I mean search engine:

Kong is King.net | King Kong | Peter Jackson’s Production Diary.

firefox 1.0 torrent (PC)

firefox 1.0 (mac/linux/etc)

Because Internet Explorer sucks.

Delicious Monster’s library is a pretty cool application.  Scanning barcodes with the ol isight makes me feel like im buying things.  Its weird.