Going to see Sigur Rós This Friday

My Girlfriend got me tickets to see Sigur Rós this Friday for my birthday (Saturday). We will be driving up to Madison WI to see them. I am looking forward to seeing this town which is home the University of Wisconsin. I hear they have some great food here from a few friends who have been there. If you don’t know Sigur Rós they are by far the best band from Iceland. There music is so enchanting it has been known to make folks cry at concerts. If you like Radio head you should love these guys.

 

Don’t take my word for it, watch the video that goes with the new album’s song, Glósóli here. Takk is the name of the new album, and while I have only listened to it a few times, it seems to quite possibly be the best album yet. I love nothing more than seeing a band when they are at their pinnacle.

 

Microsoft to Buy AOL

The new york post is reporting that Time-Warner is looking to sell off half it’s AOL unit to Microsoft.

 

In a deal that would unite two of America’s corporate giants as partners in the Internet business, Time Warner is in advanced discussions to sell a stake in America Online to Microsoft, The Post has learned.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Time Warner is in talks with Microsoft about selling the stake in AOL and then combining it with Microsoft’s Web unit MSN.

Under the plan being considered, Microsoft would pay some money to Time Warner for the AOL stake, leaving the two companies approximately equal partners in the venture.

 

AOL has some great products not to mention it’s AOL IM service. I see this as being highly important to Google because it’s harder to gain new IM customers as they tend to be more loyal. Google trails AOL, Yahoo! and MSN in IM customers. On the other hand, both Microsoft and Google are having a really hard time finding as many quality software engineers as they would like to get. It will be interesting to see who scoops up this company if anyone does at all. It’s worth mentioning that Google just recently raised over 4 billion off selling additional stock.

 

                                  

 

Microsoft ships codename Microsoft “Max”

Yesterday Microsoft lifted the curtains off of a photo sharing app based on the new Microsoft Presentation Foundation. This new foundation gives developers access to new API’s which put the horsepower of your hardware accelerated video card on your desktop. Max lets you share photos with the people you wish to share them with by letting you decide which email addresses are given access. There was a bit of confusion as most folks thought this app was built on a P2P network. The Max folks said they looking at ways to better share your photos so check back. I wonder if they will use Microsoft’s new "Bit Torrent Like" protocol.

 

As I said a few weeks ago, I see a Microsoft Passport ID becoming much more useful in the future.

 

 

More at www.microsoft.com/max

 

 

 

MSN-FOX Fantasy Football Still Down

Update:

 

I have a backup league put together on the crappy Yahoo site. Needless to say I am not real excited about their free service, but it’s worth mentioning the fact that it actually works. MSN FOX Fantasy Football was up until now the most ambitious of the fantasy football league sites out there. Like most Microsoft products, it didn’t ship on time, unlike most products, shipping late ultimately leads to it’s own doom.

• Live drafts on the site have been discontinued.
• Offline drafts have said, "This feature is currently disabled because of high volume." (problem is it’s said this for a few days now)
• The Forums don’t work properly. Half the time you can’t post, you can’t even type in an html tag into the html editor.
• The communication is the worst I have seen for a service having so many problems. I have played every MMO to date btw.

Like my last message on the board. I have two leagues now–the Yahoo! is a backup–so I am ready for what ever happens. I was so looking forward to getting on board this league, and being one of the first commish’s I know who had the balls to pull their league away from CBS. The feeling of getting burned.

 

As the saying goes:

Trust, it’s hard to earn, easy to lose, and almost imossible to win back.

Looks Like MSN isn’t going to get their Fantasy Football App out on time.

 

Quote

TRNMCA Moderator MSN / Fox Support

Fox Fantasy Football Forums – View Post

We’re down for the evening, guys. Working around the clock to get back up by tomorrow (Wednesday). It sickens me as much as it pisses you off. Believe me, I’m a super hardcore fantasy user and understand the importance of not just a site working, but every minutae of stat for my team. This is no consolation, and you’re tired of hearing apologies, but you should be aware that everyone is putting forth the best effort and no one likes what’s happened so far and take it quite personally.

We will try to reschedule drafts that didn’t happen today if you’re still with us. The link to the form is: http://msn.foxsports.com/name/public/Fant asy/NFL/Commish/Customer/faq

You all have every right to be pissed, scream bloody murder, go to a competitor, I’d probably do the same. This is our first time and we’ve learned a ton, so we’ll be back, but agree with most of your comments and frustrations.

This has been perhaps the most frustrating time ever in fantasy football for me. I recently started a second league and MSN-FOX’s new fantasy football app looks wicked. I have all of my draft input, money collected, and there are some SERIOUS problems under the hood of this site.

1. D. Bennet (WR – TEN) doesn’t exist in the offline draft xml file.

2. There are mistakes in the player xml file. For instance a player named (-)

3. I let the team at MSN know about this over 2 weeks ago.

4. A whole bunch of folks had their online drafts cancelled due to "scheduled maintainence."

5. Folks have been trying to log on all day, only to not be able to.

6. Folks are actually logging on to find their whole league isn’t there.

7. They have shut down offline drafts.

8. Too many more problems to list.

Will Microsoft be able to pull this off? They have spent perhaps millions of dollars promoting this league, taking out full page and back page adds in fantasy football mags and sports illistrated, not to mention a million other places.

 

 

 

Google Maps Adds Katrina Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=30.013406,-90.090208&spn=0.009355,0.017164&t=e&hl=en

 

Here is a zoomed in picture of the city after the floods. It’s very easy to do before and after with this map. Sobering.

Robert Cringely’s NerdTV Starts This Week

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050901.html

September 1, 2005

NerdTV Is Next Week!

The Bob Attempts to Build Some Buzz for His Downloadable TV Show, Which — Good or Bad — Is Certainly Different

By Robert X. Cringely

Come back next Tuesday and this page will look different. That’s when we’re finally launching NerdTV after three years of fitful starts, mistakes, and hard work. Love it or hate it, I’m sure you’ll let me know.

NerdTV, as I’ve written ad nauseum, is an interview show. From a technical perspective, it is primitive, but beneath the surface, it is incredibly ambitious because it defies the maxim of Internet service design that assumes audiences are shallow and maybe a bit stupid.

 

This guy can get out there a bit, but I have been a fan for a very long time. I hope I enjoy this as much as his occasional article. Some articles this guy posts really amaze me.

NOAA.GOV Hi-Rez Photos of New Orleans Online

After looking at these photos for an hour or more, I can understand how really messed up this whole situation really is. That is A LOT of water.

 

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/090E30A_KATRINA.HTM

 

I wish VirtualEarth and Google had widespread hi rez babies like this. It only took this team a small amount of time to get this up.

 

 

Shooting at Rescue Helicopters

The last thing I will do is turn this blog into a discussion or–more likely–an argument about politics or religion, and I know it might be a touchy subject when I ask what logic–under what human condition–does a person in America shoot at a helicopter pilot who is trying to save their life? I can understand looting the local bakery, and it doesn’t surprise me to see folks stealing from electronics stores, but this really blows my mind. Can someone please answer this for me? I can find no algorithm for this type of human behavior. Unreal.

 

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/