Our blog was a little dusty so when I ran accross Smashing Magazine’s new Agregado theme that is a “Life Streaming Blog” we agreed that it’s the perfect way to keep our blog full of relevant fresh content but not have to sit and write out an entire blog post.

Plus, for any of our friends and family that don’t tweet/vimeo/flickr/facebook with us they can see that content here too.

Hooray for mashups!

2001 – 2008

TiVo died this past weekend.

It’s a little difficult to breathe, let alone watch TV.  I’ve known TiVo longer than I have known my wife.  He was like a member of the family.  Like that jolly uncle that gives you bear hugs, movie recommendations and takes out all of the commercials of life for you.  Yes, he was an old uncle.  Seven years is like 432 years in consumer electronics years.  It’s good that he has passed.  Now his loud whine won’t annoy Pete while we are praying in small group.

We had so many good times together.  I still remember how much we laughed together watching that Panthers game when the guy on special teams got pantsed.  We must have rewound that a million times.  Or the time Amanda and I were actually ON tv on the Screen Savers.

Time to move on.  Amanda will have to move on without having that Gilmore Girls finale that she was “gonna watch”.   We’ll have to figure out how to clean the house without playing that Kylie Minogue concert in the background.  And because of the money-sucking-media-delivery-monopoly companies, we will have to move on without TiVo.  You see, they figured out that time-shifting was the future and developed their own Frankenstein’s monster-esque DVR’s that offer half the quality and features at twice the price.  They told TiVo to take his bright user-friendly menus and go home.  He wasn’t welcome anymore.

So go to a happier place little guy.  You will be missed.

TiVo is survived by three Macs, an iPod, and a new-to-us dishwasher.

Half the price? Really? If you remember the phrase, “There is no free lunch” you will go far. Whether it’s that “free” TV you get for going to see a condo, airline miles, brownie points, or whatever it is, nothing is free.

The same is true with the iPhone. Although the entry point for the 3G is $199 where the first-gen iPhone was $399, there is no pricing renaissance happening here. As Gizmodo points out, the new iPhone is really more expensive than it’s predecessor:

For us, we would have to go with the cheapest family plan, which would raise our monthly mobile phone budget from $100 per month, to $160 per month! Plus, we would loose our unlimited text messaging. Where did all that savings go?

The Joy of Tech came out with a humorous yet thought provoking comic about this topic (click to see it):

The financial adviser in the comic points out the power of compound interest and the effect that seemingly small amounts of money have over time. The numbers in the comic are a little far fetched, but the message is still solid.

The point of all of this isn’t to bash the iPhone. (Our contract with T-Mobile is up in a month, and we will consider switching when we have our August budget meeting.)

The point is that we shouldn’t get caught up in marketing hype or gadget envy. Your thing may not be tech gadgets, but what about clothes, housewares, or things with a motor?

Before making big purchases we should not think “how much a month”, but we should think “how much”.

The documentary is hosted by Daphne Zuniga (you may remember her from Melrose place or Princess Vespa in Spaceballs) who attends the 2006 TED conference and reports on what it’s all about and who is there. TED.org states “The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).” I can’t even begin to list who attended, but if you’re a techie/geek you’ll know all of them and be wowed.

When I was in GT class in elementary school we were given an assignment that was something along the lines of: Design a “future city” complete with housing, public services, transportation, recreation, and work areas and describe how the people will live in your city. We didn’t have to worry about being graded or fulfilling a checklist, but simply think and be creative without bounds. I remember this assignment because I had a blast brainstorming my city and building a model of it. My classmates and I had a sense of excitement and motivation that was unencumbered by those hurdles we place around ourselves as adults – being practical or realistic. Just make the future as you see fit.

As I watched this documentary, I recalled those childhood feelings in a sort of vicarious way through the lecturers and attendees as they envisioned what the future would be. But these are not children making models, they are adults with the talent, resources and drive to make their visions reality.

Amanda pointed out that to the viewer, this documentary is encouraging because it empowers you with the truth that one person can make a difference.

Here’s one of the talks on the DVD, and a superb example of the conference content. Sir Ken Robinson talks about the current public school system. There are many things in the talk that could be discussed and debated (If you watch it and are intrigued I’d love to hear from you).

Go checkout more of the talks at TED.org.

“The Netflix Prize seeks to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences.”

The winning team can bag some major cash. <dr. evil voice>One Meeeeelion Dollars</dr. evil voice> to be exact, but be warned that the problems that you are tasked to solve are very complex. We’re talking major math-brainiac stuff here.

Whatever the outcome of the contest (which will run until October, 2 2011), I hope that someone writes some software that will improve the prediction engine so that it will prevent suggestions like this one I got yesterday:

Beerfest? Gee, how did you guess?

If you are looking for a way to burn that extra productivity you’ve been trying to shed, then heat up a bag of microwave popcorn, turn iTunes to Party Mix, grab a drink, and point your web browser to Twittervision.

Twittervision is “A real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter.” If you thought that Twitter was addictive, this mashup of Google Maps and Twitter is even more addictive with its subtle on-screen action.

As new tweets come in from around the world the map scrolls to the country of origin, and the tweet is displayed on screen. You can click on the tweet to go to the user’s Twitter page or just sit back and soak in the eclectic grouping of mental energy in a tecnolust moment of zen. Or you could get some real work done.

Mashups in the digital world are taking something (video, audio, graphics) that is already out there and combining it with something else in a different way to create a new work. There are some artists that stick to this medium of taking the work of others and slicing-dicing-julienning until something new emerges.

Now being the geek I am, I love me some anime (yes) sci-fi (yes) and rap (not all of it). Thanks to Melia I’ve got the entire Kanye West “Graduation” album on my iPod and I’ve got to say it’s a great album. Even given it’s intrinsic greatness, what could make this triple Grammy winning album better? No, not chili. 80′s Anime and SciFi!

KW obviously thought the same as shown by these delicious mashups of his songs with Akira and Tron.

// Stronger // Akira

// I Wonder // Tron

And just for good measure here’s a video of this year’s awesome Kanye/Daft Punk performance of Stronger. All I’m saying is that I gotta get one of those space suits!

Beginning of this month we decided on using a shared calendar in our business Gmail accounts.  We’re already logging in each morning, and the features were way better than the alternatives (horde, iCal, paper, having Annabelle write them down).  One of those features which I think is brilliant is SMS notifications of events.

In your calendar settings there is a “Mobile Setup” tab.  Enter in your mobile phone provider info and your telephone number to get a verification code.  Once you get the code, enter it into the website to finish setup and you’re ready to go.

In Settings > Calendars there is a Notifications tab where you can have event reminders sent to you via SMS (text) along with interactions on Invitations.

This feature plus a host of others along with the great integration with Documents made the Google Calendar an easy choice for us.

So, I’m done with my commercial now – I hope everyone has a Happy Easter!