Handy tool for webmasters and designers: color palette generator, which allows you to copy/paste a URL to a picture and get the palette of colors visually and in hex. You might also check against your site logo to get complimentary colors for your site design.

Hat tip to Lifehacker. Also added this to our growing generator list.

- The funniest hotornot type site I’ve seen in awhile is beersex which asks how many beers you’d have to drink before having sex with someone.
- Mad Libs alert: 210+ Star Wars lines with word replaced with ‘pants’ creating lines like: I find your lack of pants disturbing
- Amazon’s A9 gets gutted
- B5 Media which I once enthusiastically referred to as “another sweatshop blog network” closed a venture capital investment for $2 million. In a strange but eerily prophetic move, one of the key investors Rick Segal barely mentions the B5 writers in a ‘why we invested post’ and goes as far as to say “All of this translates into an opportunity to grow a business that is about the intention economy.” Segal tries to explain what an “intention economy” is but it reminded me too much of the attention trust stuff which couldn’t keep my attention. Bingo! Yes, my BS bingo card is now full. The ever snarky Valleywag doesn’t think B5 Media deserves the money. Later today we have a live interview planned with Jeremy Wright, one of the B5 founders who is also an author of a book on blogging that has recently earned out. The interview was scheduled before this VC news was known but I’m sure we’ll get into all this and more. Looking forward to the chat later today, Jeremy.
- Guess the Screech save my home t-shirts weren’t selling well, so now a Screech sex tape is making the media rounds with an alleged Dirty Sanchez scene. Even though I’ve worked with adult webmasters and sites for years, I had no idea what a Dirty Sanchez was and for those of you who know what one is, you are sicker bastards than me.
- Greg explores experience-based leveling in non-gaming environments. I like the idea of giving something extra to those who spend time at your site, it seems only natural. I’d like to do something experience-related here someday. I’ve been noodling some ideas on this front for awhile. Got some good additional ideas, feel free to tell me about it below.
- Dude turns his basement into an 80s style arcade. This would be a good thing to use the extra rooms for when our teens leave the nest.
- Pac-man in Excel. Works in 1997 or 2000 [Thanks Scott]
- blogger loses libel suit
- dramatic video reenactment of Mark Foley having an IM conversation with a 16 year old boy [via YouTube]. I’m with Adam Ash on Foley helping the Democrats. Let’s see this scandal eviscerate some more of the Republican party because it’s well past time for a change. And yes, Foley was a Republican, not a Democrat, FOX. Major faux pas there or intentional? The Huffington Post says the AIM username Foley used Maf54 is still online.
- While talking about the House and politics, US House passes law to outlaw online gambling. Now it’s waiting for Bush to sign — which he will do. This is already having repercussions as my friend from Sweden who works for an online poker company told me his job is now jeopardy.
- Xbox 360 goes eyetoy-ish with the vision camera and a free Xbox Live Arcade game called Totem Ball. Major Nelson reports that the free offer has no time limit.
- Don Dodge lists over 1,000 jobs currently available at Microsoft and is looking for 20 great people so he can bag a referral bonus and take his family on a nice vacation. He indicates he got his job this way. Referral programs do work.
- For those brave enough to install beta AOL software (hint: use a sandboxed machine) AOL Open Ride offers what looks like from screenshots like a curious user interface that combines browsing, IM, email and media player and fills up screen space based on what you are doing [thanks Nathan]
- cocaine energy drink has 280 caffeine per serving

- Google now allows adding some 1,220+ widgets which they call modules to your webpage. Add TD Keno v0.3 to your blog or website. Check it out below (might not work in some RSS readers, so clickthru to the site if you don’t see it), the screenshot above is v0.1 which is what you’ll find in the Google directory (they’re a bit behind) but the most current version is 0.3:

You can change the border color of the gadgets.

- Xbox 360 point whores will allow slacker gamers to pay for Xbox 360 achievement points at about $1 per 10 points.

Matt from 37 Signals makes 14 observations about casinos from a design point of view. Most of the points are valid and it’s a good read but there are a few glaring errors that those who visit terrestrial casinos will spot out and dismiss.

I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I enjoy visiting many different casinos. We also sign up for their player cards and have become mini-collectors of the cards. When we visit Reno or Vegas we much prefer to be in a vehicle where we can literally get in, make the walk, play a few games, and then leave. We sort of treat them like sightseeing locations and often go from place to place. It’s not uncommon for us to stop in for less than an hour, play a couple machines or hit the craps table and then leave. If we are winning we’ll tend to stay longer, but if we win big and it requires IRS reporting, we usually leave right away. There is something odd about winning big and sticking around. You will give the money back to them and they know that, so one way to be a smarter gambler is to leave when you get far ahead. This guarantees you won’t gamble the winnings back. It’s harder when you don’t have transportation outside, that’s why they want to fly you into these places so you are stuck.

I will post a few pictures one of these days showing the many different player cards we have. We’ve probably visited hundreds of casinos in a half-dozen states (Washington, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Arizona) over the last ten years. We’ve also checked out the casino on board a Carnival cruise and Montana is loaded with quasi-casinos which are basically keno and video poker machines in bars. We get offers from casinos — free rooms, free stuff, exclusive tournaments — almost every mail day. Today, several offers alone came in. We could probably blog about these creative offers each day (might make good content for our casino-oriented blog, actually). Casinos are some of the most determined marketers out there.

The vast majority of these free offers go unused in our case, but every once in awhile we get an irresistible offer like free rooms, airfare, dinner, gifts and free cash and we’ll usually jump for those. Also, it’s nice to get rooms comped during trade shows like CES. We’ve had our airfare paid a few times, but that’s harder to get those offers when you aren’t high rollers. We’re more likely to visit 200 casinos and spread the money around than one gambler would spend at his/her favorite casino.

Now for the mistakes in the post starting with the sound of coins being used as an intentional baiting trick. This might have been true at one time, but not for the last few years.

coins hit metal

Most coin slots at casinos in Nevada and indian casinos elsewhere have been replaced by EZ-ticket (paper) systems. Coin-operated machines still exist, but are in much smaller number than even five years ago. It’s more difficult these days finding coin-operated machines than EZ-Ticket machines. I miss the sound of the coins dropping, but the coin bins are dirty and smokers too often use them as ashtrays. It’s like fishing for valuables in an outhouse toilet. Fortunately, some of the machines allow putting a cup underneath the slot so the coins will fill up the cups, but those are rare too.

Yet there’s only one place to get paid out in bills: the cashier window. And to get there, you’ve got to pass all those other places that want to take your money.

Wrong. There are an increasing number of ATM-like machines that you can cash in on or break down larger bills without ever visiting the often understaffed casino cage. My wife and I love these machines. They are conveniently located, often near the free serve yourself non-alcoholic beverage stations.

About the only time you need the casino staff these days is for cashing out jackpots or problems with the machine. We were playing at a casino recently and this elderly woman was covering her ears because the slot machine was turned up way too loud. She told us that she asked for them to turn up the volume when she first started playing, but they overdid it.

Free booze is delivered to gamblers without them having to get up.

There are a number of indian casinos who don’t offer alcohol either because of liquor laws or because they are understaffed. They offer free soda and coffee and you need to get up to get that more often than not.

Future casinos will be even more (online) flexible
Last year I bought stock in IGT which makes many of the more popular slot machines. IGT has been making moves in portable gambling that has been legalized in Nevada with their experiment at the Venetian. I’m looking forward to seeing how the casinos do with these new PDA-like devices that are going to extend the gambling experience beyond the machines on the floor. The casino owners and operators are hoping this will help combat the online gambling, but these portable devices are still prohibited from being used in rooms.

There are definitely moves in the last 10 years though for terrestrial casinos trying to do more things which bring in the internet into the experience like following real time Keno game results on the official casino website. If the US Government would loosen their ties on gambling via the internet, we’d see some very creative terrestrial-online casino mashups. Alas, it doesn’t look like that will happen any time soon, but I’m fairly convinced that this will happen during the next 10-20 years. I think what will help this along is more true web interactive television.

Anti-gambling preachers should look to parents to protect kids, not legislation
Those opposed to gambling and who too often prey upon fears of slot machines next to schools should realize that parents have more to do with influencing kids than any machine with bells, whistles and lights. I’m not in favor of slots being put next to schools but I don’t like the government telling the bar owner in town that he can only sell (state sponsored) lotto tickets, (state sponsored) scratch cards and pull tabs while indian casinos can create their own mini-Vegas. Let’s get this legalized and taxed so every public school can have a computer for each student.

Parents have to teach their kids about responsible entertainment, just as they teach their children about other things which when utilyzed in excess can hurt them. Nothing in excess that I can think of — food, drink, work, play, maybe even sex — is good for you. Life is full of excess and temptation and it’s important to teach children in this world self-control. Those with addictions and abuse problems can’t fix these problems by blaming business owners. We all should be informed enough to realize that casinos are businesses explicitly there to keep us smiling while they siphon the cash from our pockets. The same could be said of sporting events pitching $4 hot dogs.

We’ve already planned to take our oldest son (16 currently) to a casino on his 18th birthday (legal in some states) if he wants, and he said he does. If this happens, we will hopefully teach him how to only spend discretionary income and that casinos are there to take your money, not make you money. That it’s fun to win, but you will probably lose. The odds are against us. I realize there are professional gamblers, but how many happy pro gamblers do you know, really? They are happy like big jackpot winners, I’m thinking. On a high when they are winning and bumming out when they are on loss runs, but then does anybody check back with these folks in a couple years when the loss streaks are longer? Where did the winnings go? I wouldn’t want to try to be a professional gambler. For one, I’d suck at it, because most times we do lose, not win, but at least I’m not under some false and dangerous illusion that I can actually beat the house. I remember reading a stat that most huge jackpot winners are back to their regular (or worse) income within six months.

I’m also reminded of this guy sitting next to me at a casino who hit a straight flush. It was a nice hit and paid out like $19,000. When he was whisked away to be paid the jackpot at the cage, the dealer told us he lived in his car and the money would be dumped back in the casino. He was a “regular.”

I hope my wife and I are good enough teachers with our children to prevent them from ever being those kind of regulars anywhere. I think it was a bit sad that the casino employee was doing business with somebody like this, but then he was the one making the really bad choices. Had I known the guy in any capacity beyond sitting next to him at a one time encounter I’d be saying: dude, get a job, get a place to live, don’t be at the casino hoping for some magic cash windfall.

Priorities.

Back to our kids whom I think we wouldn’t be able to educate as well without having these personal, direct experiences. Not saying that Straight Flush Guy Living In His Car was the ultimate teaching tools, but it ranks up there with those splattered on the highway flicks they show you in driver’s ed.

And yes this transfers to other experiences.

We’ll make the same offer on our son’s 21st birthday to go to a bar and let him indulge if wants. I think it’s cool if your kids want to be there with you on these ’special’ birthdays. There will only be one time in their lives that they turn 16, 18 and 21 and what parent wouldn’t want to be there (if wanted by the child)? Neither of my parents wanted to be with me on those two birthdays. I’m not resentful for it, but I think it would have been neat if either had asked. Were either of your parents there celebrating your 21st birthday (or 18th if that was the legal age for gambling or drinking in your state)?

As for driving, we have two teens that are driving age and neither drive yet. We’ve told them on driving that there’s no point in doing that if you don’t have a job and first comes a job. I’ll drive our kids to and from work until I know they will stick with and keep the job. That’s the tradeoff for getting a car. I’ve seen way too many inexperienced kids driving and getting themselves injured or killed. Part of our job as a parent is keeping our kids alive during their learning years. Buying kids some fast car and turning them loose with their friends is the ultimate accident recipe.

I’m tired of some jello-kneed parents blaming businesses for their children’s problems. Let’s remember who is lifting the drink glasses or feeding bills into machines. Self-control, discipline and the ability to exercise the most powerful word in the dictionary — no — belong to the person making the decisions. No casino or barkeep in the world can make me do anything I don’t want to do. I’m saddened for those kids with parents unable to separate entertainment from excess and teach them accordingly. I should point out that neither of my parents, one of which has been deceased for 10 years, were able to teach me these things directly, but indirectly they were excellent teachers.

Strong parenting is needed more than ever in this country and it starts with a steady, reliable family structure. Not a broken upon broken upon broken home with parents who are completely disconnected with what their children are into and doing.

Back to the future … of casino design
While casinos might have been the model of designs for systematically draining our wallets, a lot of that activity has been changed with an emphasis on the activities around gambling, as Matt correctly point out in his post. Rising hotel room prices, Wi-Fi being offered at non-ridiculous rates (I remember a hotel casino that charged $20/hour to use the internet). It’s not all better, but it’s getting there. The Peppermill in Reno currently going through a $300 million expansion is going to offer HDTV monitors with internet for those in the sportsbook. Blogging from the sportsbook coming to a casino near you in the next 5-10 years.

Keep in mind these are the same sportsbooks where cell phones aren’t allowed. The internet has changed the casino industry and I think in better ways. Everything changes over time. One exciting model of design that will be interesting to watch unfold will be the terrestrial-online casino mashup. Even more so for people like my wife and I which visit these places recreationally and see the changes over the years.

There is a mini vlogger (video blogger) debate on whether or not one should bother. We all see these video sites popping up everywhere so clearly a lot of people believe video is the next frontier. Is it? Should you create a vlog?

As listeners to our weekly podcast here will note, behind the scenes I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to integrate video into our weekly Hmmcast. So far my biggest enemy remains time and I haven’t figured best how to overcome that yet. While some vloggers might have all the time in their world to throw at creative passions, unfortunately at this stage in my life I don’t. In my childhood years I did and in my yearning years I will, but probably not during my earning years. I’m envious of those who do have the time.

On June 14, 2005 while producing an original pilot vlog called “The Two” I laid out the time requirements for the three different mediums from a creator and publisher perspective:

1-2 hours - vlog (2 minutes, scripted, produced, compressed, edited, published/FTP)
30 minues - podcast (10 minute show, show notes, compressed, edited, published/FTP)
5-10 minutes - average sized blog entry (100-200 words)
1 minute or less - link blog entry
30 seconds - moblog (camera / picture phone send)

I think in retrospect a few of these times were a little on the low side. Not even once have I been able to create a scripted vlog version of the weekly Hmmcast in under two hours from start to finish. The Hmmcast in its current 7-12 minute incarnation, counting the pre-production time, takes from 1-2 hours to complete. Adding lighting, virtual backgrounds, props, video, titling, a script — which is necessary to keep some sort of logic, flow and reduce meandering — makes a total production that exceeds four hours.

A little over a year later and Brad echoes these time sentiments, but from a viewer’s perspective:

I can read material ten times faster than I can listen to it. At least with podcasts you can listen to them while jogging or moving where you can’t do anything else, but video has to be watched. If you’re just going to say your message, you’re putting quite a burden on me to force me to take 10 times as long to consume it — and usually not be able to search it, or quickly move around within it or scan it as I can with text.

So you must overcome that burden. And most videologs don’t.

Well said.

As far as attention span goes, two minutes of video are like reading 20 blog posts or listening to five minutes of audio in the background. I think a lot of material is being pushed into video format that doesn’t belong there. News on video only works if you have strong visuals and audio to compliment the material. And it works even less if you are talking about it on camera with no exterior related footage. Screenshots can work, but they aren’t as good as a live demonstration and many things on the web work better as a screencast than in a video. The two can be combined, but then that requires creating a separate screencast and blending with a video; more editing.

And have you ever messed around adding titling to videos? It can be as involving as creating graphics. Sure, there are templates and tools out there to help save time, but if you want to do something that doesn’t look completely cookie-cutter — just like with making web graphics — you need to put in the time.

Can you create good video content?
I think anybody reading this can create interesting video content, just as I believe anybody can write great text or record a worthwhile podcast. The not so secret ingredient to creating quality? Time. Time spent thinking, planning, producing and publishing. Short circuit the process somewhere and the quality inevitably suffers. Note: consider the editing process as part of the production and publishing.

Therefore the challenge I’ve been facing isn’t whether or not an interesting vlog of Hmmcast can be created. Heck, Aldo Nova laid down an entire album mostly by himself — and it was pretty darn good — but it took him a long time in the production mode. In the albums that followed, Aldo didn’t take as much time and what happened? He was seen as something of a one album wonder. I wonder what he is up to these days? Last time I read anything about him he was hanging with the band Bon Jovi.

Definitely have gained a lot more respect for folks creating daily video blogs with the production quality of Rocketboom over the last couple months. On that note, I see Amanda Congdon might be back vlogging her cross country trip, sponsored by Ford and others. She is one of those rare exception talking heads. With a smile and looks like that, she doesn’t need as much pre and post production — extra visual stimuli — as an aging white guy like me.

Experiment: How long to create and publish a mostly bare bones vlog?
I was curious how long a mostly talking head segment with a minimal amount of pre-production took. For this post I decided to conduct an experiment and compare against my time estimates above. One take, minimal production and a script using a Samsung Digital Cam and Visual Communicator. I started the timer at 11:00am and the result can be viewed at the top of this post.

My video experiment above is an outtake and something I would definitely have shot over. That said it still took a little over an hour to go from conception to shooting to labeling and uploading (motionbox was very slow to upload for some reason). I’ll let you point out the rough spots and mistakes in my experimental video but if I had done more takes the time for a finished video that is less than one minute would have gone over 1.5 hours. After uploading the video I spent more time shooting other videos and working with the editing tools. At some point I looked up and gasped at what time was showing in the systray.

Am I just moving way too slow on this stuff or what? I need some expert vloggers to tell me what I’m doing wrong here or to confirm that yes, indeed, video eats time.

Interactive video
You’ll note above I tried using the new motionbox video service. I like the feature that allows anybody to clip out, tag and link to sections of the video and it’s taking the Google video permalinks a step beyond. The next logical step for this type of feature would be to allow embedding on third party sites only the clipped sections of the video which motionbox doesn’t allow. I’m guessing this is a copyright concern? Maybe if they limited the copyrighted clips to no longer than say a certain percentage of the overall video? I don’t have the solution to prevent DMCA violations here but there has to be some happy middle ground.

This would be the vlog equivalent of blockquoting from another blog post or article. This would also enable creators the ability to upload source video of scenes and outtakes and let other people mix, mash and edit their own video masterpiece. This could also save time in the overall process and provide an viewer interactive element which sounds like a win-win to me. I’m interested in exploring the possibilities here further.

But vlogging is for amateurs like podcasting, right?
There is something to the thinking of screw production values just point, shoot, stop, title and upload. This might work ok in a situation where a vlogger labeled all his/her stuff as source material only and licensed it so that it could be used in other videos. This could be appealing because:

a) it throws the quality argument completley out the window. I’m seeing videos of watching paint dry as source material
b) it allows source content to be shared with little care or concern as to whether it has mass appeal by itself and
c) it is an authentic amateurish effort, no Hollywood crap
d) it could provide linking to the original source creator’s website from the masher (mentions inside video are useless in current search engine algorithms)

Time isn’t on our side
As you can probably surmise by now, I’ve pretty much switched gears with the Hmmcast and no longer am looking at a weekly video version of the entire show. If I can’t create at least a semi-respectable vlog, or something that I think is creative and useful on its own, there seems little point. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to create a video blog, because I very much do but I wonder how many others feel like I do?

How to produce and publish a vlog with the minimal amount of time available to me in any other quality than source material? Maybe I’m being way too quality-consicous or maybe I just don’t have what it takes with video. I’m going to keep working on this behind the scenes, as I don’t give up easily.

The whole process sort of reminds me of writing and producing music. I’ve written and recorded a couple dozen songs mostly when I was in a band in high school and that was a long and arduous process. I enjoyed it — and still do — but I didn’t own two businesses back then and have a family to support and raise.

So instead I’ve turned my interest to the idea of a monthly vlog. In other words, perhaps a most Hmmworthy of the month segment which pulls in the best parts of an entire month’s worth of Hmmcasts (generated from posts and comments here at this blog) and clips out the most Hmmworthy parts. This seems more realistic time-wise and something I could build on a little bit each week. Not sure that this is will actually get done but this seems more realistic than a weekly vlog version of each Hmmcast. Now when or if this site ever makes about ten times the amount of money it’s currently making, then I could easily justify spending 4-6+ hours on a weekly vlog. Otherwise, that time is much better spent programming or writing and sharing text material.

Podcasting on a weekly basis is very possible for a site with limited time and human resources. It might even be possible for a single website owner/creator working part time on the web to do a daily podcast. However, a daily vlog for a single person working part time? I’m sure there will be a few exceptions — there always are — so I won’t say never, but the vast majority of individual vloggers at least will not be able to keep up with this publishing schedule and maintain any sort of production quality and viewer value. And if the production quality slides viewers will eject — quickly. Brad wisely pointed out that video demands too much viewer attention.

I’m most attracted to producing more regular source video material and not worrying so much about production values. Just as I’ve thought about producing audio files that others could incorporate into their online creations.

I spent much time today planning, shooting and editing video and the result is this single blog post and some more raw source video that I might use another day. I also made a title graphic for a video that I will use another day. In that same amount of time I could have written a dozen blog posts and taken a bunch of screenshots for several different blogs plus created logos and graphics for at least one webpage. I feel like I didn’t accomplish very much today. Do some vloggers feel like this?

Yeah, I’m sure the process gets faster, but weeks have gone by and I’ve been trying to speed up the process. It’s not getting much faster. Maybe I need to seek out better tools?

I’m opening up the discussion below for good input and suggestions how one might better be able to do the whole video creation and production process faster? Ideas? Also, feel free to play around with clipping and tagging my experimental video. Flash 9 is required.

- a man in drunken idiot mode jumps into a panda cage at the Beijing zoo and is bitten by the surprised panda. The man retaliates by kicking and biting the panda and gets bitten again. Dude, next time stay home and dial up a pandacam instead.
- Google is offering Adsense to a select few publishers to use in newsletters and mass market emails. This is one of the few places where I actually support limited, by invite only testing. Please, please, please do not open this service to the masses, Google.
- And while we’re G talking, Google Analytics now allows up to 50 profiles (domains) instead of 10 [Inside Google via Cristian Mezei)]. I learned recently that a privacy policy is required for each site that uses Google Analytics, and this is a part of the Terms of Service many sites are not following, including this one up until yesterday (see Hmm Privacy Policy). Here’s a handy Privacy Policy generator you can use to stay in compliance. I found it necessary to tweak a few things for this site as some of the statements don’t match what we’re doing here. Overall though, it’s a handy timesaver and better than having nothing at all.
- Wired lists its best and worst Web Pooh Point … Oh sites. Losers: MySpace, Seth Godin’s DOA Squidoo, Browzar, Fo.rtuito.us and Friendster. The winners? Flickr, Writely, Del.icio.us, Odeo and Netvibes.
- 1080p coming soon to Xbox 360. No native 1080p games yet but that will change too.
- Amazon and Del.icio.us Live Writer plugins from Scott Watermasysk
- Willie Nelson is back on the road again after his tour bus was stopped, searched and police found pot and shrooms. Citations were issued.
- New question to ask when buying laptop: was the battery made by Sony? Toshiba the newest in line to recall batteries made by Sony. Some 340,000 of them.
- A 4-year old Bonzo? This kid has mad skills [watch video]. Let’s hope this isn’t some kind of YouTubeFake. Bonus: Mark Cuban likens YoutTube to the early Napster days and Napster looking to sell outright or a “strategic partnership”. Meanwhile, YouTube and Warner cut deal. Cuban updates his post and says it doesn’t change his opintion.
- Apple sells over one million worth of movies the first week
- better than a coin flip, let Tekken decide
- VS Studio 2005 SDK v3 released via vsipmembers.com [thanks Jason]

Blufr is where you try to guess whether something is BS or not. I prefer the title BS or Not better, but dropping the extra ‘fer’ is clearly more trendy. There are numerous ways to receive Blufr that don’t require visiting the website directly such as a Blufr RSS feed or subscribing via email.

They also provide code which lets you embed Blufr in your site or blog post and change twice daily. Go ahead and try to call their Blufr below. No way. Yes, way.

Hat tip to Techcrunch.

One of my favorite things about Linux is the Live CD option where you can test the OS without the need to change your existing OS or setup and install. For commercial Linux offerings see this post: SuSE Linux installed in dual boot, plays nicer with Windows than Red Hat? The more unique hardware you have, the more difficult it can be to get some flavors of Linux running.

Chris Pirillo pointed to Kororaa recently that has a nice package showing off XGL. I burned the ISO using Deepburner and gave this a try and first time out it discovered my NVidia graphics card and the wider LCD monitor resolution. It didn’t however start the DHCP so I needed to type the following code at terminal to get internet working:

I then tried the newest version of Ubuntu. That had internet working out of the gate but the monitor resolution was way off and couldn’t be corrected through the Monitor Resolution settings.

There are lots of different Linux Live CDs out there. What is your favorite and why? Feel free to link it up below so myself and others can burn the ISO and give it a try.

Update 9/12/2006 4:27pm PST: A long list of Linux Live CDs, complete with name, ISO size (min and max), primary function and download links.

With a rather phony “Uh oh” there could be another console crunch with the PS3 at launch in the US receiving 400,000 units:

Ken Kutaragi, president of SCEI, revealed the reduced numbers following the news that Europe would not see the release of the PlayStation 3 until March 2007.

European gamers most definitely are bummed, as are Sony shareholders who took it in the wallet on a further deterioration of Sony stock price.

Despite all the complaining about the PS3 pricing, 400,000 units will unlikely be enough to go around the entire US on launch day. I’ll be heading out on launch day like I do with every new gaming console launch trying to snag one and this is definitely unfortunate but not surprising news. Most console systems these days take months before the average Joe can walk into a store and buy one at random. Keeping demand higher than supply means Sony will get free press — most of which will probably be negative — for an extra 90-180 days.

With the advent and popularity of blogs, online media and the power of search engines, I’m not sure console shortages help manufacturers as much any more. Didn’t seem to hurt the Xbox 360. It will be interesting to see if the PS3 pricing backlash actually hurts launch demand. I don’t think it will because hardcore gamers like myself don’t buy based on popular opinon and there are enough PS2 fans salivating for the PS3 that 400,000 won’t suffice. I’m also curious how many will buy as a “cheap” Blu-Ray player.

The last video game system I was able to bag on launch day was the PSP, of which there were plenty to go around. Speaking of the PSP, Sony is playing catchup with Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade (who would have thought?) by planning to launch a classic game download service for the PSP (thanks darkmoon). The Nintendo Wii will be launching with its own classic games download system for snagging all those great NES, SNES and N64 titles. By adding minor changes to great classic games, similar to what Hollywood is doing with some films like Star Wars, they can keep selling the same games on every new system. Cha-ching.

One of the top searched keyword combinations for this blog remains PSP internet and that’s something that was resolved in late July 2005. Will Sony take advantage and fulfill this desire for online gaming? They better move fast as the Xbox Live Marketplace continues to gain marketshare.

If the PS3 online plans prove to be a mediocre offering, that could prove to be a severely damaging blow to the PS3. One of the few things Sony has going for it is support in the homeland and their RPG offerings. Still, they never could get their mammoth MMORPG property Everquest to take off on the PS2 and Everquest II on the PC hasn’t been able to compete against World of Warcraft.

The PS3 is expected to launch in the US on Sunday November 19, 2006 with 20GB model for $499 the the 60GB model for $599. Japan will get their PS3 fix on November 11, 2006. I’ll be trying to buy the 60GB model. Any readers planning to buy the PS3 on/around launch day?

Before getting to the 40th version of Hmm quickies I wanted to share some more RSS reading stats that I’ve gathered over the last six months or so. These thoughts are usually most relevant when creating these quickie posts which are my way of saying I came across a bunch of different things I wanted to share but only had a little bit to say on the subject at the time.

If you don’t own and/or contribute to a blog you can safely skip down to the quickies section bolded below as you probably won’t be interested in the rest of the behind the scenes DVD filler. For those who actually like blogging about blog reading, it’s meal time.

What makes a power RSS reader?
For those new (sometimes I forget that there are new readers coming here every day) I would probably be classified as a power RSS reader in that I scan hundreds of posts — sometimes 1,000+ — every workday. On a really busy workday it is easily more than 1,000 posts. I’m not in the league of those super power RSS readers who claim (or actually do) have more than 1,000 RSS subscriptions. I bow to their superior RSS skills.

The most subscribed I’ve ever been is in the 400+ feeds range. At the time I felt I couldn’t keep up with that many so I went through a major cleaning and have since learned about an efficient system that helps me scan and read through a significant number of posts every day. The system I’m currently using allows me to sift through nearly 200 feeds daily without getting swamped or taking too much time. I feel like the number could be 250 or even 300+ without burying me, but that hasn’t been tested yet. With a couple vacations and AFK time I did get as much as nearly 10,000 posts behind, but I was able to get caught back up without surrendering to the reblog equivalent of “mark all as read.”

It took a little over five months to happen (March 20, 2006 - September 6, 2006, results pictured above), but I finally have clicked my way to the 10,000 published mark in ReBlog. Something marked as “published” means that I’ve found it interesting enough to read past scanning the headline and a few sentences. Some quick stats:

• Roughly 9% of all posts I’ve scanned get marked as publish and read. This number has gone down from a little over 10% during the summer period. Just as there is usually a summer traffic slowdown to sites (this site actually gained traffic though), the quality of posts I read during the summer seems to have declined as well.
• I have to click ‘publish’ or ‘archive’ for every post in my reader which means that over the course of 5+ months I’ve clicked (made) a decision on well over 75,000 posts in my reader alone. 75,000 / 5 months = 15,000 clicks a month (approximately) or about 500 posts per day 30 days per month. I should reach the 100,000 post mark by Halloween if the current pace of feeds with posts continues
• marking something as “archived” isn’t necessarily a thumbs down on the post, it just means one reader (me) wasn’t sucked in by the quick pitch.
• an average workday (Monday - Friday) is bringing in around 800 posts a day across my radar for a decision (publish or archive) and the numbers fall off on Saturday (the worst posting day) and improve slightly for the second worst posting day of the week Sunday
• A small percentage, around 5-7% of these posts have become linked in this and other blogs where I contribute. It used to be higher, but over the summer as mentioned above it seems like the noise to signal rate has increased. I didn’t cut many feeds during that time, so hopefully now that summer is over the percentage will increase.
• Top 5 feeds I’ve marked posts as publish: Digg 1,757, Lifehacker 541, CNET News 537, Delicious Popular 441, Slashdot 292. As an individual, I wouldn’t try emulating any of these sites, because they are all group written and post way too frequently and with diverse content. The content from the individual authors at each publication would be much, much smaller but possibly of higher quality. It would be interesting to look at the number of marked published from individual bloggers and compare. Maybe I’ll do that when the published number hits 100,000.
• I created a screencast showing how quickly decisions are made on posts and what criteria used. Meant to be helpful to writers for how to better draw (one, at least) reader’s attention.

Which of my posts are you marking publish?
This is information for the blogs I subscribe to that I’d like to share someday. I’ve been thinking about whipping up a mod for Reblog where feeds that I subscribe to could receive this information updated once per day. I don’t want to unlock (it’s behind an htaccess protected gateway at the moment) reblog feed which is a stream and republishes the feed’s entire post. I think that is a little too splog-like for my liking. Instead, an RSS feed with the raw stats, headline and link could be a good syndication format for this data and be helpful for blog publishers.

As a reader this wouldn’t be of much use but to fellow writers/publishers it would show what one of their readers is actually reading. Click counts don’t tell the same story that something which is manually marked ‘publish’ does. For readers who don’t leave many comments/trackbacks but read regularly and wish I’d get more involved with what they are doing, this also could become a conversation door opener. Something like: “I noticed you are marking publish frequently on posts with ___ topic. Do you think this would make a good category or standalone blog?”

How can I get you to subscribe to my blog?
This is a question I’ve fielded a few times. There are three proven effective ways to get my attention rather quickly (attention usually followed by interest, usually followed by curiosity, usally followed by subscription based entirely on the quality of your site/blog):

1) comment and/or trackback several times from your blog to this one with some in depth commentary. I’m not talking one or two word or sentence quips, but real human dialog and feedback.

Make enough or frequent quality comments and it’s almost guaranteed (probably 90%+ chance) I’ll subscribe to your blog at some point. Even if your posts consist of mostly disagreeing or challenging my opinion. At the very least, even if I don’t subscribe to your blog, you’ll probably see some return linklove in the weekly Hmmcast or other posts where something you said made me go hmm. Thoughtful responses get my attention. Watch Hmm for posts using question marks. Those are opportunities. Really.
2) create something that gets linked by one of the feeds I subscribe to and I’ve marked publish. If you create solid enough content I will come across your site sooner or later. The numbers are with you, really.
3) share something cool. Now what I consider cool and you consider cool could be at odds, but that shouldn’t stop you from sharing. I’m a picky bastard who has been around the web block for over 10 years, but I am always looking for new, innovative sites, products and services to learn about, add to our business and my life and share with others. If you have created and shared something cool, I’ll probably find you and not far behind that will be subscribing to your blog.

Bonus Tip: You could also offer to write a guest post here or at one of our other blogs. While we haven’t ran one of those here in quite some time, guest written posts that fit the flavor of this blog and are done well are always welcome. This blog currently receives over 3,000 uniques a day on average and well over 5,000 page views a day according to server stats. Not a huge audience, but respectable as far as blogs go. Guest posts are a good way to get another writer’s attention, especially if they are well written. Also, we don’t have a problem with embedded but marked ads in post, so this could be an income opportunity as well. To get in touch with me about this, just leave a comment below that you are interested. I’ll get back to you personally.

I write and contribute guest posts to other blogs. It’s a little more rare these days than a couple years ago, but I still contribute elsewhere from time to time because I believe in sharing on other sites I like. Also, I like the writing challenge of trying to fit the flavor/theme of another blog. Sharpen the stone.

Perhaps another way (bonus bonus tip) to get my attention would be to ask me to write a guest post on your blog. Has to be in my field of interest though, I won’t contribute to blogs with topics I know little to nothing about and am not interested in learning more. I’m also not a big fan of chainmail or link schemes as search engines don’t like these practices. Ask me personally and receive a personal response, ask a bunch of people for the same thing and that’s only slightly better than spamming in my book. Don’t start our relationship off that way, please.

Being unsubscribed
But once I’m subscribed to your blog/feed than the work isn’t over keeping me as a reader. Yeah, I know, I’m a high maintenance reader, but most don’t tell you why they leave. Most just quietly unsubscribe and you hear from nevermore. Sometimes, you’ll get lucky and get somebody back that has unsubscribed but it’s far more difficult to get on the radar after a conscious decision has been made to unsub. I’ll likely unsubscribe if you do one or more of the following:

- offer more noise (ads, spam, boring posts) than signal (original content or links/reviews with useful commentary). This is also true of your website where I’ll clickthru to read most full posts. I still prefer to visit sites over reading completely in the RSS reader. With the system I’m using partial RSS feeds aren’t a huge deal like they are to some, but I despise partial feeds with a lot of noise.
- abuse me with sounds or other crap that runs onload or tries to hijack my reading experience in any way.
- stop updating regularly (or go MIA for a long period of time completely unexplained). A post a week on average might hold my interest but only if it’s a really, really good one. I subscribe to RSS for frequent updates on topics/writers of interest, not for static content. I understand and take vacations myself, I’m not talking about AFK time. I think every writer would be improved by taking enough time off.
- update too frequently. The converse is updating too often, which are feeds containing more than 10 posts per day. The top sources listed above clearly are exceptions to this rule but only because they are the work of more than one writer. If you are a single writer site/blog shoot for no more than 5-7 posts per day on average or you’ll burn out readers like me. Think about this for a minute:

7 posts per day x 30 days = 210 posts per month = 2,520 posts per year

If you have decent sized posts, say 300 words on average (for quality posts, that’s not unrealistic), that’s like 63,000+ words per month, or about the size of a short novel (also known as a novella). Hint: create multiple blogs if you have more than 5-7 posts per day output. Better to have 2 or 3 or even 4 blogs churning out 20 posts a day than one, IMO. Maybe others will disagree, but I think it’s easier for a single blogger to create multiple heavily trafficked sites rather than one super trafficked site.

This doesn’t mean you can have a day with 10 posts or even 20 or more posts (the record for this blog is 50 I believe and made during a blogathon in 2003 where the whole point was to post once every 30 minutes over a 24 hour period), but it should be the rare exception and not the average. If you are group blog or publication, then you get a pass on this one. Still, there are some big group blogs like Boing Boing that I won’t subscribe to because of post quantity. Be a filter for us, not treat us like a garbage disposal.

To end on a more positive note, I much prefer to subscribe versus unsubscribe and thus it’s easier for me to subscribe, so please help me find your blog and more importantly stay subscribed.

And now onto the quickies
- Is a Google version of the WaybackMachine coming? Garrett Rogers from ZDnet who is making a name for himself as a page source and domain registration sleuth, thinks that might be the case [source: Search Engine Journal]
- Elliot Ness from Tucows explains why they bought failed calendar system Kiko via eBay for $258,100.
- Netscape has released a Google + Netscape search mashup. Will we ever see some originality from Netscape under Jason Calacanis watch?
- With the theatrical versions of Star Wars episodes 4-6 due out next Tuesday 9/12, starwars.com has a frame by frame breakdown of the changes [thanks Cinematical]
- Windows MySQL open source frontend Webyog
- create a mobile edition of your Wordpress-powered blog with Alex King’s Wordpress Mobile plugin.
- Gmail keyboard shortcuts

- oh yeah, Scramble is on the way to Xbox Live Arcade. Now I’m looking for Star Castle for the trifecta of classic gaming nirvana (Pac-Man already available). Other classic game titles I’d like to see on XLA. Oh, and yes, we got Time Pilot. What’s your favorite Xbox Live Arcade title to date?
- On Tuesday September 12, Apple is planning a media event with the catchphrase: “It’s showtime!” The rumor mill is working overtime churning out that it’s the long awaited movies to be available via iTunes at $9.99. Also the possibility — still very much an unconfirmed rumor — of an iTunes upgrade that would allow the movies to be shown. And another rumor, remember I said we’re in overtime, that Apple might release something that will connect your TV to iTunes.

This test is interesting to me not for the web pooh point oh elements or test results (inaccurate anyway), but because of the CSS and Javascript code being employed to check what sites you’ve visited.