Like most Charlie Rose fans and PBS supporters I’m also a huge fan of “The Simpsons”, but I’m watching the season premier right now and it’s one of the worst Simpson’s I’ve ever seen – just terrible. It feels like some sort of writer’s strike is going on and they brought in the 4th string team. Odd, and sad.
This Myspace post moved to TR
This excellent film reflects on the ironies and quirks of the American middle class experience as it follows a family on their roadtrip to a California beauty pageant for little girls. Alan Arkin is the explosive grandpa, Greg Kinnear his son the wannabe motivational speaker, Toni Collette the strugging wife with a teen who refuses to speak and a bright and enthusiastic daughter. The cast is simply superb both individually and together. Little Miss Sunshine succeeds where hollywood typically fails miserably by bringing complex, funny, and tragic characters together and making us care about them all.
I admit, I enjoyed the series. Go Benji.
Thanks to the clever chat tool by Chat Creator I just participated in an informal gathering that was helping Robert Scoble pick a name for his upcoming PodTech.net TV show. I wasn’t up on the details of the show until now. Looks like a kind of TechCruch TV with a lot of 2.0 sites, news, and people. Looking forward to it!
Part of the deal when we bought my son an XBox 360 was that he get the Rockstar Games Table Tennis Video Game, widely reviewed as a masterpiece of realism. I’m a regular competitive Table Tennis player and fan and I’m really impressed by how realistic the game is in terms of *watching* the play. However, since you use controllers rather than paddles much of the play is counterintuitive (e.g. you don’t do anything to hit the ball, rather the controller adjusts for your location, ball placement, and spin.)
I’m glad people will gain more respect for quality Table Tennis, though I doubt much of the viewed skill will transfer to the real game.
My son simply crushes me at the video game.
Ironically this game is made by the same folks who brought the controversial Grand Theft Auto (“GTA”) series of games so wrought with violence and cruelty that they were banned in Australia and have become a poster boy game company for the anti-video game lobby.
No, you can’t shoot or rob your virtual table tennis opponent, though maybe that’ll come in the next version…
Today CNN’s online video headlines:
True, they did include some info about the Korean Missile launches and Israel’s attack on Gaza, but as usual left out the tolls from global catastrophes like malaria and HIV.
Is it presumptuous of me to suggest that American news is becoming a mental garbage dump? Ironic that it’s us and not the networks that are to blame. Networks just put out stories that attract our attention, and for the most part those stories are not reasonably interpreted as news.
The World Cup has been fun to watch and here is a great little chart at the FIFA website with tournament standings and upcoming game times. I think I’ll root for England because it’s time we all get over those tax problems of the 1770s.
The Globalist points out that international sports events are now signficant at a macroeconomic level, and that World Cup 2006 should add about 5 billion euros to the German GDP this year. Their 2002 article was more interesting in terms of itemizing both the benefits to co-hosts Japan and Korea and the potential costs which included the *drag* on the UK economy if England made it to the final and people slacked off at work to watch their team. Clearly, soccer sports quite an economic kick.
One of the great things about the internet business space is how one person can build an empire with the same revenues / impact / influence as a very large company.
Markus is such a fellow and I’m glad to see he’s blogging about his ongoing adventures creating and running one of the top dating sites in the world – PlentyofFish.com. Markus provides a lot of detail and insight into how he created the site almost as a lark and now effectively competes with major corporations in the social network/dating space.
With 200 Million page views monthly and climbing, Markus really knows his stuff. One observation he makes I’m still trying to digest suggests that eventually *only* small companies will rule the internet due to their much greater flexibility and effeciency. Yahoo, Google, MSN are betting billions that they’ll maintain the huge stakes in the online world rather than small niche companies. Frankly, I’m guessing there is room for everybody in the expanding online business space.
Beware Blinko and all other ringtone providers. I recently discovered a 7.99 charge on my son’s part of our many paged cell phone bill. He’s a clever guy and insisted he’d been very careful about avoiding sign ups for paid services, so it appears he was either scammed by a ringtones provider or we were slammed with a ringtones subscription. Sprint actually confirmed that we had not downloaded anything with the service and – incredibly – could not tell me the company that had signed us up.
After getting Sprint to remove last month’s charge another appeared this month. Texting 42222 appears to have “unsubscribed” us from the service we never subscribed to in the first place and Sprint removed the current new charge but refuses to remove older charges I’d not noticed. I think I now got them to block the possibility of this happening again, but I’m very pissed that Sprints “default” position seems to be to assist these scamming Ringtone S.O.Bs.
I’ve learned that ringtones and downloadable phone content is a 4 BILLION dollar global industry (yes – four billion). Incredible, especially since so much of this industry is driven by teens who are either scammed into subscriptions or foolishly spending their parent’s money.
The industry is plagued by scams, the most common of which gets teens to sign up their phone for a ‘free’ ringtone but then have the account trapped in the fine print to pay a monthly charge. If this isn’t bad enough the phone companies, who are making huge profits themselves off this garbage, are not at all helpful in tracking down the scammers or applying appropriate credits.
UPDATE: Class Action Suit against Blinko:
Myles McGuire
Blim & Edelson, LLC
53 West Jackson Blvd.
Suite 1642
Chicago, IL 60604
Tel.: 312-913-9400
Fax: 312-913-9401
myles@blimlaw.com
UPDATE: Based on all the comment I recommend anybody affected by these Ringtone Scams contact the FCC commissioners as follows. Be sure to indicate your phone company and detail how they failed to address your complaints. In my opinion it should be illegal to bill these services without a written, signed authorization from the account holder.
Chairman Kevin J. Martin: KJMWEB@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Michael.Copps@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: Jonathan.Adelstein@fcc.gov
Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate: dtaylortateweb@fcc.gov
Commissioner Robert McDowell: Robert.McDowell@fcc.gov
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Joe Duck 