Oh my, this is great. I've been following a quirky little blog recently called indexed. Each day the author posts a simple diagram of sorts drawn on an index card. They are usually fun and at least occassionally insightful. Well, I really enjoy them...
Anyhow, today's is great....
http://indexed.blogspot.com/2008/05/danger-danger.html
Hey folks. I recently wrote about the ridiculously silly Eurovision Song Contest. It was great fun with plenty of wild and whacky songs, and at least a handful of good ones. Unfortunately, the voting is horribly politically biased and basically eastern european countries win now. They really should fix that.
Whatever the case, I wanted to highlight my favorite song - the Israeli entry. It was called Ke'ilu Kan (The Fire in My Eyes) and was sung by Bo'az Ma'uda. You can listen to the song at this link here:
Ke'ilu Kan sung by Bo'az Ma'uda
Oh my sweet holy pickles, batman...
A year ago (or a little over that actually) I moved from the USA to the United Kingdom. I arrived on a Friday, wandered around like a lost foreigner for a day. And the next evening on Saturday night I caught the last hour or so of the Eurovision Song Contest. Considering the bizarre nature of the contest, it would have to be one of the most comical things to run into on television less then 48 hours into my immigration experience.
For those who are unaware, the Eurovision Song Contest is a massive cross-continental music competition that takes place annually in Europe. This year is the 53rd instance of the contest, having began in 1956 with 7 contestants: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland. Since then it has grown to dozens of countries including 2 semi-final shows and a finals.
Well, this year my wife and I are going to watch perhaps some of the semi-finals and most of the finals. And I am going to have to throw my support behind Ireland and their singing turkey... :)
For almost 60 years, the United States has celebrated National Teacher Day each year. This year that day is May 6th, which has just come and gone without my notice as I know live in England! I have not yet been able to determine if they celebrate a Teacher Appreciation Day of sorts over here. Of course, they should...
My wife used to work as a teacher over in the United States. She taught 5 year olds and did the sorts of work in one week that I did in a month. Teachers have a tough job.
Whatever the case, I wanted to put a quick post together to say thanks to the teachers that taught me over the years and that teach my kids nowadays. Here are a couple links to some teacher related stories...
Well, before I've even been back to work to hand out some Xobni requests, I got this lovely email today from the Xobni team. I'd am calling this breaking news. However, I've only actually checked TechCrunch for a post on this so far and I DID get the email four hours ago. And I suppose there IS a story running in the New York Times about this... :)
Dear Xobni Beta User,So all those waiting for a Xobni invite from me or anyone else, go download now. And, btw, Xobni rocks! :)
Today is an exciting day for Xobni. After seven months of
invite-only beta, we're proud to announce that Xobni is now
publicly available for anyone to download. Your feedback has
been essential in helping us improve the performance and features
of Xobni during this period.
If you are currently running Xobni, it will automatically update
to the latest version. If you need to re-download Xobni,
download it instantly here:
http://www.xobni.com/download
You can read more about Xobni's launch in today's New York Times
by going here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html
Of course we will continue to work hard to improve the Xobni
experience. And we hope that you will continue to provide
valuable feedback.
Please let your friends and colleagues know that a better Outlook
email experience awaits them at http://www.xobni.com.
Thanks!
Matt Brezina
Cofounder
Anyone of the geeky persuasion should know well that Microsoft and Yahoo looked darn well like they were about to become one. Microsoft made an offer a while back, Yahoo rejected it, Microsoft made threats, they talked some more, etc.
For us that are big flickr fans, like myself, and maybe NOT the most huge Microsoft fans, many of us were nervous. We REALLY LIKE flickr as it is. We have invested our time and photos (and now videos) in flickr and do NOT want to see it change.
Well, fortunately, it seems now like we are safe. TechCrunch has broken the news today that Microsoft will soon pull their offer off the table.
Onward in my running quest, today the family and I visited the Virginia Water Lake that I have mentioned in a recent blog post. At first we split up with my family heading one way and me heading the other. They headed toward this totem pole that is on one side of the way. The plan was for me to run around the lake and meet them there.
Well, they ended up wandering off on another path. But I am REALLY pleased that I did the 4.5 mile loop in just 45ish minutes. That makes about 11 minutes per mile, which I think is respectable considering I just started this whole running thing. This was actually my third time out for a run.
And very cool, I got the whole trip recorded via the gps in my phone. Then, less cool, I managed to delete all the datapoints. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!! Oh well, another time. :(
And, btw, the shoes shown here are my new running shoes...
Next up... Tonight was the 2008 edition of the annual Christ Church Virginia Water youth dodgeball tournament.
I had the pleasure of serving as the referee tonight and it was really great fun. Dodgeball was imported to this group by an American youth minister they used to have. And the tradition continues in glory.
And lastly, I found this link this evening about a VERY long foosball table. This was funny as tonight before the tournament, I helped carry a REGULAR foosball table down from the youth area so non-contesting folks could enjoy some foosball. Now, if we just had one of these.... :)
Thanks to CrunchGear for the originating link...
I have absolutely got to wonder what it feels like to WALK AWAY from 20 million dollars. Well, that is exactly how team Xobni feels right now.
Xobni is a startup company which provides an outlook plugin that brings much more rich content out of the pile of data that is your email. It find phone numbers, connections between contacts and makes it SO MUCH EASIER to find that file someone sent you several weeks back.
Well, they have apparently been in talks for several weeks with Microsoft to sell themselves over to Microsoft. And they have walked away. Yep, $20,000,000.... No thanks, we're fine. In short, they were a bit unsure in the long run where the future would hold Xobni in a Microsoft world. They are working on a version for Yahoo mail and will likely follow up with Gmail, etc. Those options would likely have disappeared with this deal.
Way to go, Xobni! I am SO looking forward to Xobni for Gmail! :)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/xobni-walks-away-from-a-microsoft-deal/
If anyone wants a Xobni invite, leave me a comment. I have a handful left....
