NOTE : Nice - I was updating the main blog index page, and saw that AllConsuming.net was no longer working. They have been taken over by the Robot Co-op, the folks who brought you 43Things etc. Now, if I add anything via the 43X sites, I can auto-create a blog entry here. Nifty!

Now I just have to remember to go over to 43X and update…

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Another app that I use a bunch is the EULAlyzer. The name is a mouthful, but it does a great job analyzing the EULAs (End User License Agreements) and Privacy Policies that you have to agree to in order to determine if there are high-risk terms. This saves you time, and (in more than one situation) your butt. I used to be a “Click-and-Agree” type of guy, but I’ve backed off of a bunch of stuff that I was investigating on the net due to EULAlyzer. Good stuff, and you can’t beat the price (free baby).

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Maybe that should be “catch-up”. Here’s a no-order list of stuff that I’m doing, have done, would like to do, played with recently, no longer playing with, etc etc.

Went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night with Anne, Sharon, Amanda, and John. Movie was great (although significantly edited down from the book to fit into the “full-length feature” format, but not too bad), but even better was that we saw it in IMAX format. Fantastic - if you can go see this on the BIG screen, go for it. Well worth it…

Top links on my browser (which is the new IE7 Beta, btw, but I do have Firefox, so get offa it) are Tech.Memeorandum, Diggdot.us, and Netvibes. Del.icio.us is always a click away, but these are the links that I check regularly. Of course, bOING bOING is still my homepage…

I listen to KEXP in the car and online quite a bit, but also like using MusicMagicMixer to make mixes out of the MP3s I have at home.

Blah blah blah — see, I told you it would be random!

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NPR : There is No God

I heard this on NPR this morning - very well written (spoken?), and I enjoyed every moment of it. If you can, listen to the essay instead of reading it…

I have always considered myself spiritual, but certainly not in the organized religion sense of the word. I believe that what we believe is entirely up to us, and no should attempt to change that or tell us we’re stupid for believing it. We’re all equal here, and if I believe that there’s an elephant in Penn’s trunk, so be it. Funny how so many religious teachings at the core go along the same lines : tolerance of others, love thy neighbor, etc. get twisted by one organization or the other… Perhaps if we all believed that “there is no god” we might all start believing in each other.

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Random musings from the inaugural Seattle Mind Camp…

• Good stuff all over the place.
• I got lost too, same as Scoble. Been in that area before, knew where I thought I was going, but it still took a couple of wrong turns before I found the place. I actually used Google maps on my SMT5600 to find the place.
• Non-geeks don’t really get it - my wife called it my “geek-end” - but it was a great experience for me.
• I had a great time - not just listening and looking and lurking and contributing, but meeting a bunch of very cool/smart people.
• I even co-hosted a session on “Dealing with The Information Glut” with Ario. Carlos has a good writeup here.
• It’s great to see what people are talking about now that it’s over, and some of the pictures, the links, and (best of all) the OPML.
• As a result of adding in the OPML to my feedreader, I have learned about all sorts of cool stuff - social networking with a group gatekeeper!

Looking forward to the next one - thanks Andru for putting this together (and all of the sponsors for making it free).

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It’s all about getting the right ads in front of eyeballs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not a big fan of ads, and I’d rather have ad-free anyday. However, if I’m going to accept advertising (and I certainly might if my sub fees were waived as Russell Shaw mentions), it might as well be ads about stuff that’s meaningful to me. I mean, I have to agree with Eric Schmidt as quoted by David Utter - I want to see ads that I care about.

Fr’instance, I could be sitting here watching the Sonics on TV, Googling some pizza deals, and the next commerical on the tube could be for a local pie-maker. With some additional ads on my laptop for the other local competitors. Make it easy for me. Once you grok where I am, and what I’m looking at, you can tailor ads that are more likely to be interesting to me. Google already knows what I’m looking at online (if you login), and, with a potential addition of TiVo to their portfolio, they would know where I’m at, and what I’m looking at on the TV. Correlate my physical location (via my TiVo address), and my online location (via the IP of where I’m active on Google), and you can provide me personalized advertising in the above scenario. Kinda scary, kinda Big Brother, but at least I don’t have to watch ads that are absolutely no interest to me…

The Motley Fool via Tech.Memeorandum

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I’ve been reading the reviews/opinions from today’s Microsoft presentation, and I’ve checked out the new Windows Live and Office Live sites.  Can’t say that I’m too impressed (mainly because there’s not much there yet).

Sure, it’s where we’re all going, but it’s really nothing new.  A good start to Microsoft’s efforts to consolidate a set of services/data to try to get more Internet eyeballs (I can’t remember the last time I went to a Microsoft property that wasn’t in an attempt to find tech help for some odd Windows behaviour), but mostly all ad-based (”This advertising model has emerged as a very important thing,” Gates said.).  I wonder if the “AJAX-based Hotmail-replacement with Outlook functionality” is the same as Kahuna.  Zimbra looks cooler.

Maybe when the Gadgets get rocking, and it can show all my multiple email accounts and calendars and tasks and notes, and syncs with my other data sources, and does everything that Google Desktop does plus Netvibes and Tech Memeorandum , I could see myself using it (because I like integration).  Are my expectations too high?  Well, you gotta have a dream…

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