This one is brilliant. Imagine pointing your browser to Bevmo or even your favorite vineyard’s website, finding that wine you’ve been wanting to try, then just turn on the tap and voila, wine by the glass. Sound too good to be true? Well then, check out this new offering in the video below. Yes, it is all in French, but you will get the idea.

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Tags: wine

Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? I have... twice. Both times were in hotels early in the morning before 7am (I was working for an A/V company at the time during college). Each time was for about 15 minutes. Let me tell you, 15 minutes in an elevator by yourself seems like forever. But how about this poor guy. 41 hours. Click on the picture below to see video surveillance footage of his day and a half stuck in the McGraw-Hill Building in New York.

Tags: elevator

Click play to listen to Paranoid Rock by Go Home Productions

I dig on these mashups. If you haven't heard a mashup yet, you're in for a fun ride. To get a taste, hit play above and listen to Black Sabbath and Queen in a way you never have before.

This latest offering from Go Home Productions includes unique, never heard before mixes and mashes of the following artists: The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, The Sex Pistols, Ce Ce Peniston, The Stone Roses, Billy Joel, The Byrds, The Supremes, Keith Mansfield, The Beach Boys, The Cadbury's Fudge Advert, Carly Simon, Luther Vandross, REM, Nirvana, Alan Parker, Black Sabbath, Queen, T.Rex, The Commodores and Burt Bacharach. I must admit, that is the first time I have ever written "Burt Bacharach."

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Tags: mashup, music, dj

It was just a matter of time.

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Trying to figure out how much cash you might be eligible for with the Economic Stimulus Package? Me too. So I found this calculator on the IRS website which helps you figure out what you may be eligible to receive. Read More...

Tags: irs

Saturday, my wife and I took our two boys to see the U2 3D Movie. I have to say this was an absolutely amazing show. While I do like U2's music, I would not classify myself as a US zealot. I do own a few of their albums, but have never seen one of their live shows. However, this movie -- filmed in IMAX 3D format -- was second to none. We paid $15.00 a ticket, but I would have easily paid twice that and still felt like it was a steal. To be able to experience a live show live that would have cost 200 times that same amount.



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Tags: U2, entertainment

I came across an article on the Motley Fool last week which does a great job of packaging up my feelings on the major music labels and their thugs known as the RIAA. To quote the article,

"As I've said before, a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers -- which doesn't seem that outlandish at this point -- then I guess we'll all know the extent of the desperation. Investor, beware." Read More...

Tags: music, riaa, business

As reported by Business Week yesterday, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet. Since their whole rootkit thing when so well for them, I guess it was only a matter of time before they jumped on the DRM free bus.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group, which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

The irony behind this move by all the major labels to step away from DRM has very little to do with accommodating the needs of their customers, but a feeble attempt to supplement distribution channels. Apple is a primary reason behind the labels shift to DRM free, but the labels newfound interest has little to do with customer benefit or even a business ploy that will affect Apple's digital music leadership position. Let me explain... Read More...

Tags: sony bmg, rootkit, drm, apple, music

In true JibJab fashion, these folks have created another great animation. Hit play and get yourself a quick review of the last year.

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Tags: jib jab, politics, animation

All my feeds are now live. In addition to subscribing to this blog, you can now subscribe to any (or all) of my photography galleries.

Photography Feeds
abstract photography
architecture photography
black and white photography
landscape photography
panoramas photography

Blog Feed
Ramblings from Mike

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I am in the midst of creating some need feeds for my photography. As a result, I need to change the feed url for this blog. Please update your readers and aggregators to point to: http://feeds.morper.net/morperblog. I will be doing the cut over sometime this week. Read More...

This is a very though provoking video. It's as much a brief lesson on Web 2.0 technologies -- among other things abstracting content from structure and repurposing content -- but it also is an interesting piece which gives you pause to the world we're creating with all of this information. Is copyright law relevant? Are we making too much information available? Not enough? What do you think?

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Tags: mashup, visualization

There is something to be said about keeping a sense of humor through challenging times. And while the Daily Show writers certainly seem to have not lost their wit, they have put together a great clip explaining -- in true Daily Show style -- why they are on strike.



Learn more about the strike and how you can support the Writers. Read More...

Tags: screenwriters, daily show

Unfortunately, the following is not a joke:

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California's wildfires that no news organizations attended.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.

"We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. "Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received."

Here is the rest of the Reuter's press release. But to really enjoy this stupidity in action, check out the actual "press conference" below.

Yeah, this is the stuff that keeps Jon Stewart and the Daily Show stuff fully employed.

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Tags: politics, fema, pr, jon stewart

Another outstanding source of information. This time for the San Diego fires. This map comes courtesy of KPBS in San Diego. Click on the link below the map for a larger view of the map.


View Larger Map

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Tags: fire, google, mashup, visualization, california, san diego county

One of the fires currently out of control in Southern California is about 5 miles directly north from our home. Called the Santiago Fire, it was started by an arsonist. The Orange County Register is maintaining an outstanding Google Map of the fire's progress. What's more, each of the points denoted on the map provides a wealth of information.


View Larger Map

Many thanks to the OC Register for maintaining this great source of information.

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Tags: fire, orange county, google, mashup, california

As a Southern California native, I have seen my share of fires, but this year is different. Every year it is the same week -- the week before Halloween. As of this writing, there are 16 major fires burning in Southern California, all fueled by some of the driest weather I can remember, coupled by 90+ degree temperatures and of course, very strong Santa Ana winds (in excess of 80 mph gusts in some areas).
The closest fire to us, the Santiago fire, is about 10 miles due north from us and was started yesterday early evening by an arsonist.

Below is a Google Map maintained by the Orange County of all the active fires.


View Larger Map

And after the jump (click "read more..." below), you can see an amazing image captured by a NASA satellite today of Southern California. Read More...

Tags: fire, google, mashup, visualization, nasa, california, orange county

So a bunch of aerospace guys got together to build a half-scale X-Wing fighter. Not happy with just making a model, they decided to make the wings open and close remotely. Oh yeah, and they stuck for solid rocket engines in it.



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Tags: star wars, entertainment

I love these guys. Great satirical stuff for you and your cubical swelling colleagues. From calendars to great inspirational videos, you owe it to yourself to at least visit their website. And with the holiday season nearly upon us, there are many gems here for you to purchase for that special boss in your life. I did.

Here's a $5.00 off coupon for this shirt above.

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Tags: humor

This morning at exactly 4:30am, I awoke to find the house shaking. This is the second quake we've felt at our home in the last couple of weeks. It appears this morning's shake was a 3.7, while the last quake was a 4.7. As a Southern California native, earthquakes are nothing new. And to be honest, I find them interesting.



After being unable to get back to sleep, I figured I'd go check out the quake's epicenter and magnitude. The USGS has great map data for all quakes, including the "mashup" above.
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Tags: earthquake, mashup, google

Wow, who knew a little Javascript would garner so much attention. Yesterday, Ryan over at 37signals.com shared his lack of interest for Lightbox. For those of you not familiar with Lightbox, it is effectively a method to view a larger rendition of an image on a webpage where the background of the page becomes near black, while the image itself appears to be in a pop-up window. Ryan's post indicated that he believes that context is lost when this new image supersedes the page -- effectively all style, and context of the site is lost. Well, I disagree when it comes to presenting photography.



The screen shot above illustrates the Lightbox affect -- a near black background with the image enlarged and brought front and center.
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Tags: 37signals, user interface

Web 2.0 apps aren't the only mashups in town. In fact, DJs have been mixing songs together for years. This started off innocently enough back in the 80s when club DJs would match the beats of one song, transitioning it into another.

Fast forward to the days folllowing the dot com bubble burst of the late 90s and DJs began to move match beating to a new level. Instead of simply producing a continuous stream of foot-tapping tunes, DJs began to sample clips from one song, insert them in to other tracks and effectively "mash" the two songs together. To illustrate this idea, Check out this clip from Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions (GHP) called Rapture Riders:



Click play to listen to Rapture Riders by Go Home Productions

Who would think Rapture by Blondie and Riders on the Storm by the Doors could sound so good together. And this is just a taste of the talent of GHP. This week, GHP released a downloadable album of 20 of the such tracks, aptly called This Was Pop 2002-2007.
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Tags: mashup, dj, music

It seems like about once a year I overhaul the website. Well, I'm in the midst of another one of those "overhauls" at the moment. So far, so good. I have managed to keep all the blog entries from the last year ('cause I know you are all oh-so interested in my ramblings). But more importantly, I have started to get up onto the site a lot of my photography and it is finally being presented in a manner I am happy about.
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These JibJab guys are really funny. Well, at least I think they’re funny. You may remember their great parody of This Land is My Land starring George Dubya and John Kerry.  Today I discovered an email from them in my inbox letting me know of their latest creation... an animation poking fun at the American news media. Good times.

What We Call the News | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Tags: jib jab, entertainment, animation

Via Robin Good’s blog, I tripped across this movie (actually a thesis project by two undergrads at the University of Applied Sciences Ulm, Germany) which poses some questions about Google and their intents. Visit the masterplanthemovie.com website to hear what they have to say. I just downloaded it and will watch it on my iPod next week. What do you think of The Google Master Plan?

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Tags: technology, google

For all you Lost fans out there, I came across an interesting article this morning. If you type the mysterious numbers from Lost (4 8 15 16 23 42) into Google Maps, they correspond to the approximate latitude and longitude of an island in the middle of the Pacific. Hmmm, is that where they are?

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Tags: google, lost

I’m sure you’ve used Google Maps before to find an address or get some driving directions. But how about for a greeting card of sorts? Well, someone has cobbled together a pretty cool site called geogreeting.com which allows you to do just that. How you say? Well, magically (and don’t ask me how) they have found buildings in the satellite imagery used for the site for all the letters of the alphabet. The result? See for yourself:

By clicking on one of the letters, say the “k” in Mike, you will quickly see that building is located in  Salt Lake City, Utah. (Click on the map above to see it --- and where all the other buildings -- are located).
 
Give it a try over at geogreeting.com

Tags: entertainment, google

This one is kinda cool. Thanks to Digg-ers for finding this one. For those of us that were kids of the 1980s, you will recognize all of the video games in this 1:33 movie. [ Link to 80s video game movie ]

Tags: entertainment, frogger

A couple of days ago, Jon Stewart and his “Resident Expert” John Hodgman (who is also the “I'm a PC” guy in the latest Get a Mac ads) did a great skit on Net Neutrality. The folks at Buzz Out Loud should be proud. Take a moment to watch the Senator Ted Stevens Net Neutrality segment.

Tags: daily show, jon stewart, technology

Here are a bunch of interesting maps visually representing different socio economic information. In the case above, this is a map representing refined petroleum imports.

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Tags: mashup, visualization

Um.... wow, what to say. Should the folks that put this together be praised or just institutionalized? For your geekery enjoyment, you can watch all of episode IV (that was that first Star Wars that came out in the late '70s) is ASCII. What's ASCII? Look at the picture and you'll get the idea.

So how can you see this? Yeah, you need to be a dork (I musta qualified). Open up a Terminal session and enter: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl.

May the force be with you.

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Tags: star wars

Last week, a Jet Blue Air Bus made an emergency landing at LAX after the pilot determined that there was a problem with the front landing gear. CNN covered the landing live. However, I think the most interesting coverage is this podcast. Joe Deon is a pilot "for a leading US carrier" and he brings a recorder with him on his trips.

On the day of the emergency, he recorded the conversation between the Jet Blue crew and folks on the ground.

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Tags: jetblue, podcast

According to NASA's site, this image shows the initial ejecta that resulted when NASA's Deep Impact probe collided with comet Tempel 1 at 10:52 p.m. Pacific time, July 3 (1:52 a.m. Eastern time, July 4) . It was taken by the spacecraft's medium-resolution camera 16 seconds after impact.

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Tags: nasa

For the last year or so, my son has really gotten into Star Wars. And with the new movie out, he decided he wanted to make his own Star Wars movie. So armed with his LEGOs and iStopMotion (a great stop animation application) we created this movie.



So how did we do it? Click through "Read More..." below...
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Tags: stop motion, star wars, software, legos

Whether you think this whole podcast thang is just a fad or a sad excuse for a bunch of uber geeks to play with their toys, here is proof of the true value of podcasting. Education.

Where else can you learn the proper technique to pour a Guinness? How about in a London pub? I'm thinking a pub in Cork or Dublin might be better, but London is close enough

So wait no further... direct from Tod Maffin's How To Do Stuff podcast site, advice on Guinness perfection from experts, from a pub in London, England.

How To Pour A Guinness

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Tags: marketing