Ben Hammersly creates the fodder feed for the LazyWeb, which IMHO is one of those clever “windshield wiper” ideas that once you see it you’re think, “Man! it’s so obvious, why didn’t someone implement this sooner!” Very ingenious! I hope to contribute!

Neat idea: “nntp//rss — Bridging the worlds of NNTP clients and RSS feeds, nntp//rss is an
application that will enable you to use your existing favorite NNTP newsreader
to read your [RSS] information channels.”

Ahh, in case you didn’t know … “La Quinta Cove [is] alerting residents that firing their guns into the air at midnight can kill.” Ok, happy new year then …

Today Doc posts about retiring an old “1980-vintage Panafax PX-100 fax machine”.

However, I have a bigger request. When will we rid the planet of fax machines entirely? I mean, technically do they really have a purpose these days?

It seems that the workflow for faxing is ridiculously wasteful for most fax transmissions.

Basically, I print something just so I can fax it. Why waste the paper? When all I really need to do is email or “remote print” the document.

Then if the receiver actually needs to use the content of a fax they would have to re-type it or OCR the page (Ugh!)

Please! What a waste!

Don’t we really need cheaper network-accessible remote printers? I believe this will lead to fax extinction!

Sweet! I just configured jpcache to cache and gzip compiled pages on hatch.org. So the b2 powered blog should feel snappier. I need to work out a few of the kinks with respect to expiring the cache when there are new posts and/or comments. Plus, I had to trap the gzip compression function in b2, because jpcache does it as well, but for the most part it seems to be working well.

Clay Shirky “… hosted a two-day brainstorming session for 30 or so
people on the subject of social software. In addition to the usual “sit
around a big table and talk to each other” format, [they] set up an
in-room chat channel accessible over the WiFi network which created a
two-channel experience — a live conversation in the room, and an
overlapping real-time text conversation.”

Quote pulled from a Slashdot thread about Engineering
Careers Short-Circuiting:”The computer pond is shrinking, but
that’s because it’s been overstocked for quite a while. The talented,
smart, crafty, dedicated fish will always be in demand, the ones who are
simply looking for a paycheck will be walking an unemployment line.”

No! Really … I mean pay them: Kroger lets shoppers pay via fingerprint

I’m not sure if this MPEG Movie is a real XBox commercial, but either way it’s just plain bizarre.

UPDATE: Well, I guess this is old news, because the commerical was banned in the UK back in June.

Billy Bragg remembers Joe Strummer: “Joe opened the back door of the theatre and let us in, he sneaked us back to the hotel for a beer, he too believed in the righteous power of rock’n'roll. “