Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times wonders: Is There a Method in Cellphone Madness? Saul is a brave man as he trys to meander through the morass of billing, costs, and basically anything having to do with costs on phones as we experience them now. He’s brave because I don’t think anyone really understands the pricing plans and economy. It is worth a read if for no other reading that he uses the phrase “avaricious oligopolists.”

The MPAA shuts down a town’s municipal WiFi because someone in the town was pirating movies. It’s a small town (Coshocton, OH) with a small set of users who all used the same IP address but this sort of craziness is nuts.

Carrie Prejean must be really trying to outdo other colossal PR disasters and create a new definition of hubris. How else could she continue to trip over own mistakes so easily. Let’s skip over her early failures. Lately, word surfaced that there was a (GASP) sex tape of her, doing the naughty by herself. She claimed it was the single biggest mistake of her life. Well, apparently that single biggest mistake turns out to be more than single, as more tapes have supposedly surfaced. Larry King must be laughing. Not since Sarah Palin.

Maybe the Tea Baggers movement will end up feuding itself into oblivion. Somehow I doubt it, and I hope it doesn’t. At the moment the Tea Baggers ire is focused on the Democrats. If power changes hands, I’d love to see if the anti-government hysteria would continue.

Joe Hewitt of Facebook, who developed the Facebook app for the Iphone caused a stir when he said he was done developing for the iPhone platform, due to Apple’s crazy policies. Here’s his statement.

The Republican National Committee makes a move that makes them look like the Democrats on a bad day. Apparently if you worked for the RNC, your insurance policy allowed for coverage of an abortion. Not any longer.

The latest Gillmor Gang takes on the Droid vs the iPhone, among other things, and gives new life to the Crunchpad, which surely needs it.

The Ballad of Windows 7.

Google Street View Captures Us Outside Wayside Theatre

I guess it isn’t surprising that Google’s Street View captured me and our two costume designers out front of out place of business, Wayside Theatre. When the weather is nice, heck, even sometimes when it isn’t, we frequently have discussions outside. This shot is obviously from last fall. A larger view of the theatre shows that it was after our renovations were complete. The flower beds don’t have the current foliage of this year. Thus, the WVPT banner means it was taking place during the run of The Mousetrap, a show that WVPT sponsored. And the American flag indicates that it was on Veteran’s Day last year which was one year ago today. Our town places flags up and down Main Street for all national holidays.

So, there you have it, me and our two lovely costumers talking about something important. Well, at least I hope it was important now that it is memorialized. Interesting that the address is wrong though.

Google Finds Osama Bin Laden with New Goolgle Earth Feature

No, not really. But hey, the new feature in Google Earth that will allow for real time tracking of people and cars could probably do better in finding OBL than the US has done. I'm sure it will look spooky to all sorts of folks concerned about privacy and the like but hey, Big Brother has been watching for some time and in so many ways, all you can really do is wave. Wait, that's going out to a round of beta testers today.

PopSci.comVia Gizmodo

AT&T and Google Up The Ante in Ongoing Mud Fight

The first round was about Google Voice being rejected, or still be reviewed as Apple says, with no one believing them. The FCC stepped in, asked questions, got answers, and the fight continues after Google pulled a Joe Wilson on Apple’s claims.

Now round two has AT&T saying that if Google wants to play like a phone carrier with Google Voice it has to adhere to the same regulations that phone carriers do. Google says AT&T is being silly.

Everyone involved realizes the high stakes involved in this mud fight and they feel good about tossing each other under the bus when the need arrives. Something tells me this will be sloshing around for quite some time.

Meanwhile Google and Microsoft are slinging mud at each other over browser wars. Ain’t technology wars fun.

Google Irony

This was hanging off our fax machine when we got into the office this morning. I somehow find it ironic.

Apple or Google: Who Wins the Orly Taitz Award?

Somebody is telling stories again. From the looks of it, most likely it is Apple, but that's not a definitive thing. Yet. Remember back when Apple, Google, and AT&T had to answer the FCC's questions regarding the Google Voice debacle on the iPhone? Everybody published their respective answers, but Google was the only one who redacted some of its response.

Now, supposedly due to Freedom of Information Act requests, the FCC and Google have removed the redactions and we see that Google is directly contradicting Apple's claim that they didn't reject the app, they are still reviewing it. Google lists some communications that say Apple did indeed reject the app. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch says Google dropped a nuke on Apple with this one, and has one more up its sleeve. Apparently visual evidence of the app's rejection.

Nobody really bought Apple's story to begin with, and this is certainly far from decided. When corporate battle is joined, anyone can say anything. But one way or the other, someone is going to join the Orly Taitz Hall of Fame on this one before it is over.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Take it for what it’s worth. Frank Schaeffer helped weave the Christian Right into our political life, then had a Lee Atwater-like change of heart once things got out of control. Here he talks about how we are damaging our political and social fabric.

American Express and Discover are ditching over limit fees. They’ll make up for it in other ways.

This story is recycling again after it came up during the last administration. Politicians and scientists may debate whether or not climate change is real, but the military is preparing for climate change as a threat to national security.

The man who made a bundle by destroying the media, Rupert Murdoch continues his myopic ways. Now, he wants the names of those who subscribe to the WSJ on the Kindle or he’ll take his publications of it. I say take his publications off the Kindle.

Our Marines can’t use Twitter, Facebook, etc.. but the British are encouraging their troops to do so.

Apple goofs again. And again. And again. Sorry. Broken record there. This one is about Boobs. No dictionaries this time. Just boobs. Apple has reached a tipping point where they fortunes are starting to decline. This happens to boobs. It’s called gravity.

Andy Borowitz on Twitter and the Taliban.

Loren Heiny thinks the Apple Tablet will boost Tablet PC sales. I’d prefer we stop calling these rumored devices Tablets.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

This week’s Claude Rains moment. Cheney told the CIA to keep info from Congress.

I”m curious as to why there isn’t more coverage of the cyber attacks that are hitting the US Government. Probably because we are afraid to admit something, and also because there is no good video.

Folks are spending a lot of time arguing about saving journalism and the like. I’m not sure it is worth saving at times. Here’s an example of why. From Dvorak Uncensored, some interesting “suppressed footage” from 60 minutes the Swine Flu vaccine disaster from 1977-78.

Newt Gingrich gets it thrown back in his face by a New Hampshire fisherman.

The Republican sex scandals keep getting sillier and sillier. So does the coverage and the commentary. How about this from John Marshall: Economy May Force Politicians to Have Sex with Their Own Wives.

Frank Rich, predictably, continues to elevate Palin through his derision of her. Of course she deserves the derision. Rich’s problem here is that he understands ‘real Americans’ as much as Palin, Mika Brzezinksi, or anyone else who has been tossing that phrase around lately as if it means something. 

Google shakes up things with the announcement of the Google Chrome OS. Some (like me) think this will change things long before we even see the eternal beta. Some think not. Hot topic in the tech world, that will turn hotter.

Walt Mossberg Puppet on Arrington and Google Chrome

Fake Steve Jobs is back and he’s pointing to a pretty funny puppet parody of Walt Mossberg taking on Mike Arrington and his thoughts on the Google Chrome OS and computers that don’t need anything but a browser. I guess we now are going to see more knockoffs of Loren Feldman’s puppet shtick, even if they don’t cut as deep.

(Warning some of the language is more than adult.)

Honoring Those Who Sacrificed

Map the Fallen is an interesting project from Sean Askay on the Google Earth Outreach Team that aims to honor the more than 5700 men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.

Sharing it on America’s Memorial Day seems only appropriate.