Of all the places in the United States to hear complaints about billboards, signage and especially the American flag, Las Vegas would seem an unlikely source — but that is exactly what’s happening at a Hummer dealership.

Dealership owner Dan Towbin said his big flag, which at 30 feet by 60 feet is about the size of a competition volleyball court, fits his dealership. “The building’s oversized, the sign’s oversized, the cars are oversized,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The man in the CNN article complaining that he can’t sleep because of the flag waving sound is hilarious. Vegas has to be about the noisiest town in America and he’s being woken by a flag fluttering in the wind? Dude can sleep through neverending neon but goes into instant alert when there’s flag wind action.

Also seems strange to have the dealer admitting — though not in as many words — the vehicles he sells are road hogs. Hmm, my second Hummer mention of the day already and it’s not even 11am. Ronald McHummer, anyone? I suppose it would be appropriate for the main blogger of a site with Hmm in the name to own a Hmmer, sans the U. Too bad no such vehicle exists yet.

My dream Hmmer would be eco-friendly, fuel efficient, affordable, roomy interior, computer networked, GPS, EVDO, solar panels and not be a road hog. If anybody wants to design and build the Hmmer, let me know when I can test drive. Would gladly pay more than $10,000 for the Hmmer.

Have made a few changes around the website:

- the show similar post function number of words to show was reduced from 250 to 150
- increased similar posts that show at the end of posts from 3 to 5 6, I like a lot of the results I’ve been seeing
- added new advertiser: Chitika. These ads are experimental only at this time and are non-contextual so that they can run on the same pages as the Google Adsense

Hmmcast vacation day: doctor time
Don’t sigh now but I’ll likely be taking a Hmmcast vacation day today. The reason (or excuse if you prefer) is that I need to take my wife to the specialist related to her injury back in 2003 (yes, she’s still in pain even after her surgery) and while I could be all geek and bring along the camera and laptop and put something together on the road that seems insensitive. She wants a geek there by her side, not blogging.

So instead I’ll hold her hand and read the dog-eared magazines in the waiting room. The specialist is a good hour away and then we’ll get lunch. I don’t see us getting back to the office until late afternoon. Depending on how she feels I might take her out somewhere and make it a day on the town.

Hey this kind of sounds like something one would put in Twitter. Am I being assimilated?

Near the top of my favorite Scotty lines in Star Trek The Original Series is: “Check the language banks and find out what … a ‘heater’ is?”

That comes from episode #49 from the second season: A Piece of Action where an alien world is evolving around a book from the roaring twenties. The ‘heater’ in question is a weapon.

Scotty died in 2005 and his ashes were flew into space. Amazon Web Services evangelist and Syndic8 guru Jeff Barr’s wife Carmen is a real estate agent here locally and was negotiating the sale of Scotty’s house. How did that work out, Jeff?

I had assumed Scotty’s ashes would be floating around space for a long, long time exploring the galaxy but that was not the case.

The payload was found in its designated recovery zone 20 days after Farmington, Conn.-based UP Aerospace sent it up in a 20-foot rocket on April 28.

The rocket, the first to be successfully launched into space from the fledgling Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, made a 4-minute suborbital flight before drifting back to Earth.

From this are we to assume there is no way to tack along our ashes when we exit this life on a probe visiting other galaxies?

On May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted. Today Microsoft’s wallet erupted, bionic style.

Lots of stories in the RSS reader this morning are about Microsoft spending $6 billion to acquire the ad firm aQuantive. For those who thought M$ was going to wait on the sidelines in the online advertising space, this cash deal is a spoiler.

I just peeked over at Techmeme and as expected it’s an orgy of tech bloggers feasting on this juicy Friday news. While wrapping my mind around this deal, let me round up some hmm-worthy posts I’ve read on the subject from others below.

- Kara Swisher thinks the price of the deal is insane. Her disclaimer says her spouse, Megan Smith, has been an executive at Google search since 2003.
- Is this really that clear, Scott Karp? “It’s clear now that the media and advertising industries, which thanks to Google and Web 2.0 now include the software industry, will be dominated by a new breed of company — the vertically integrated media and advertising company.” All that’s clear to me is that Microsoft has opened it’s warchest and said to Google (and eBay) we’re ready to play.
- Jay Sears: “Is “frienemy” just a new way to say “coopetition”? Will this wave of consolidation result in the balkanization of the Internet?” Ya lost me somewhere between the doublequoted quasi-words and balkanization, Jay, but perhaps other readers will better be able to follow.
- I’m with you Mathew, I hadn’t ever heard of aQuantive until this morning either. Good thing Larry Dignan is on the case and gave a yearly recap from aQuantive’s SEC filings.
- Mary Jo Foley points out this is Microsoft’s biggest acquistion ever. As others have pointed out this is almost double the price Google paid to acquire Doubleclick ($3.1 billion)
- Greg Sterling: “The consolidation continues . . . and when the dust settles there will only be a small number of very large firms that control 90%+ of all online advertising.” But I wonder, Greg, what the remaining 10%+ will have for combined traffic? I’m guessing it’s a significant chunk of traffic. Might not be a lot of well known hitters, but there will still be a huge market in that remaining percentage.
- Howard Lindzon is glad he owns Valueclick (VCLK) stock (I do too) and plans to buy more. I’d probably buy more if Valueclick would shutter Commission Junction. I do not and have never owned Microsft (MSFT) or aQuantive (AQNT) stock. I do own Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO). There’s all the stock disclaimers.

Hmm thoughts
After reading all the posts out there on this subject I’m surprised to see there wasn’t a higher frequency of mentions about AdCenter. Microsoft has been horrible about promoting what they are doing with AdCenter and ever releasing a contextual ad strategy to rival Google Adsense and YPN.

In the press release linked at the top of this post, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer fingers Xbox Live:

“Today’s announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to the full capacity of the Internet. Microsoft is intensely committed to creating a thriving advertising business and to partnering closely with all key constituencies in this industry to help maximize the digital advertising opportunity for all.”

After reading this let me say again that Microsoft has done a horrible job with AdCenter to date. At the end of 2005 I encouraged Microsoft to get AdCenter in our hands, to show that advertising was an important part. Over the last 18 months they’ve done little more than kick tires and go after advertisers trying to market on their sites.

I still believe Microsoft’s golden goose advertising opportunity is micropayments. That’s been laughed off by non-believers when brought up in the past, but I won’t be dissuaded. When they can get people to pay upwards of $10 for HDTV movie rentals there is a big slice in that pie that webmasters could share in revenue-wise. AdCenter could start strong with webmasters in a niche that Google and Yahoo can’t touch. Where are they? Why don’t they pull the trigger?

Good or bad move?
This six billion dollar man move to acquire a company most readers probably have never heard of either is ballsy but is it smart? On one side it will quiet critics like me who have been wondering when Microsoft would get out its checkbook, but the other is it shows Microsoft is in the game. They are ready to deal. Only one thing to say about that.

It’s about freaking time.

Just asked my wife how much she spent on clothes online last year and she said it was over $5,000. Considering we’ve bought no computers ever online, the following stats makes sense for our household.

A report by the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org, out today, found apparel, accessories and footwear sales hit $18.3 billion in 2006, while computers were $17.2 billion. The group predicts 10% of all clothing sales will occur online this year, a sea change in how people shop.

My preference remains for any single purchase over a couple hundred dollars — and that’s every computer and most game systems these days — is to buy in a retail store. How much clothes shopping do you do online? What about computers? Where do you prefer to buy them from?

Remember a few years back when Bill Gates falsely predicted that email spam would become a thing of the past within two years?

While I’ll admit that email spam has improved a little bit, it is far from gone. In 2004 he also predicted the death of the password. I’m still using passwords, how about you? Then there was Gates prediction that we’d see a $500 Tablet PC for students and speech recognition will be “there” in 2-5 years. Hmm.

For those keeping score, Gates doesn’t have a good batting average making predictions. So what does he do? Make more predictions!

The Seattle PI points to four new predictions by Mr. Gates that will happen within the next five years. His predictions are bolded, my comments are not.

1. All reading will move online as device form factors reach a tipping point in size and simplicity. While I’d agree that this will eventually happen, we’re not going to be there until it’s as easy and friendly as folding a magazine or book. Baking in the sun with some hard to read in direct sun electronic device isn’t going to be welcomed in large numbers — and hasn’t — for longer than five years.

2. Thanks to Internet delivery, TV viewers will see individually targeted advertising. As part of a family that hasn’t had television service for 324 days and have been watching DVDs and games and TV shows through the (legally) available networks online, this one seems possible, however there are way too many television sets out there to become dust magnets in the next five years. There are plenty of people who don’t want to login to watch an episode of American Idol.

There is also a bandwidth quality issue. While I understand we’ll continue to get bandwidth upgrades and the quality of the streaming picture will improve and someday match cable, satellite and over the air networks this isn’t going to cause people to mass exodus for internet TV. I think it might be more like 7-10 years. Sorry Bill you’re close on this one, call it a foul ball. Strike two.

3. Consumers will be the ultimate winners as the old business models for newspapering and print advertising collapse. It’s bad enough that bloggers cover this story ad nauseum, now Gates is filling barf bags. I don’t think we need to wait five years for this to happen, it’s already happening today. Newspapers are going out of business, merging and/or being forced to intensify and improve their web efforts.

But.

The major newspapers like The New York Times will still be here in five years and still printing, still serving happy subscribers. Similar to my response in #1 there are a lot of people who prefer to read news in print, particularly seniors. We’ll call this one a foul popup, Bill.

4. In five years, the number of people consulting the printed Yellow Pages will drop to “near zero.” I laughed out loud when I read this. The Yellow Pages are still very powerful and I don’t see five years breaking that down for people searching for businesses. When the internet is everywhere and everybody carries around devices perhaps then the Yellow Pages usage will drop to “near zero” but Bill is again being too anxious.

There’s a common misbelief that technology adoption moves fast. Sure, technology itself moves fast, but adoption moves slow. Look what’s happening with console video games. The new systems come out but take a couple years to takeover the prior generation systems. Sony is still releasing new PS2 games because much to their chagrin the PS3 isn’t selling as well as the PS2.

Remember how we were all supposed to be using HDTVs? Ha. Do your own self-study and ask your friends how many HDTVs they have and use. We have two HDTVs and four regular TVs. Adoption is slow.

Bill Gates will be stepping down from his post at Microsoft to spend the next phase of his life focused on philanthropy. I hope we don’t keep reading geriatric Gates predictions that never happen. Cannot diminish Gates being a smart man but he can no more tell the future than your nearest 1-800 psychic.

Electronic Arts (EA), the company with the lock on the popular Madden franchise, is booking half of its revenue for online gaming. I’m surprised they aren’t booking more. Online gaming is the future and if I owned a game company we would put more like 75% of our apples in online gaming. Our company would make sure we were taking advantage of the opportunities on Xbox Live Arcade (how many titles does EA sell there?) as well as the sparsely populated Playstation Store.

While they might have the NFL license wrapped up, EA shouldn’t be banking too much on Madden. Madden 07 didn’t have significant improvements over prior years, hopefully Madden 2008 due out this August does. One of the most anticipated EA games Spore [see Spore raw video footage in this past post] by the Sims creator Will Wright might not be released until fiscal year 2009, which sent negative energy toward EA stock.

“Spore explains a lot of it,” Pachter said of the company’s fiscal 2008 forecast miss. EA’s investment in online games explains the rest, he added.

I’m not sure if the “investment in online games” part is perceived as bad or good by this article(?) If it’s bad, then I guess if my fictional games company was public, I’d be taking a hit for focusing more resources and energy on online titles. I’m particularly interested in co-op titles because I think it encourages gamers to work together.

When it comes to buying games for the console systems it’s a big plus for those with online gaming options over those that don’t have online play. Even something as small as sharing leaderboard scores is better than nothing.

What games are on EA’s table?
A new Simpsons game to go along with the movie release this summer and a Harry Potter game. The Simpsons games to date have been eithe really bad or ok, there hasn’t been a really good Simpsons game. I haven’t played any Harry Potter games (are there any?), so will leave that to the comment area. As mentioned above, I’m less excited about another yearly Madden title, even though it’s the best football game out there. I suppose there is only so much they can do with football, but, well … it is starting to feel like a yearly money grab title to me. Any other gamers feel the same way?

I continue to look forward to Spore. It seems like a limitless game, but with less tedium than The Sims. I hope EA has thought about making this cross platform and not only a PC game.

This might be a bit stale for others, but was news to me that with the PS3 1.70 system update it’s now possible to play the PS One and PSP titles purchased from the Playstation store on the PS3. They also made bigger font text to indicate what the content is: video, demo or game.

In three words: things are improving.

There still isn’t a lot of content to try and buy, but a few new goodies abound including a new duck game called Super Rub-a-Dub. Would still describe with the cliche feast and famine with the former belonging to Xbox Live and the latter going to the Playstation Store.

Also, what about the HOME project? Wasn’t it supposed to be released for limited beta testing in April? I signed up but never heard anything back so I guess this means I was not accepted? Was anybody reading accepted yet?

BTW, I’m enjoying the Spider-man 3 game shown in yesterday’s Hmmcast. Historically I’ve dissed most movie games but this one is ok. It would have been better as a MMORPG rather than Spidey webslinging his way around the city completing missions alone and if you could interact with the environment more as the 1up 6.2 out of 10 review recommends. Maybe we’ll get that in Spider-man 4.

Last night while inside Second Life doing some scripting working on a sign which SL residents can click and send me a message, a friend mentioned that Digg was blowing up. Sounded interesting so I asked him to pass along the link. He sent me digg’s home page URL (doh!) and said it had to do with takedown posts over the HD-DVD decryption key being hacked.

After I was done coding and being one not to follow digg much any more, I didn’t check into the story deeper. This morning’s RSS feeds are lit up over the subject. The front digg page as of this writing is still filled with stories about the subject.

The fascinating part of the story is the understory. Some digg users are claiming not only their posts were removed but their accounts banned. In this day of blogvengeance, they just posted about the experience and the digg effect promoted these stories.

First official reponse? Digg’s Jay Adelson posted an explanation that digg had to comply with the law and explained that they were notified that posting of the HD-DVD hack constituted intellectual property theft and they could be responsible.

After it was clear the digg community disagreed with the official position, Digg’s Kevin Rose indicated they changed their minds:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

Check out the number of diggs to Kevin’s post on the official digg blog. 10,000+ and counting.

Download Squad sums up how users feel about DRM succintly:

Witness the modern equivalent of the 95 thesis’ Martin Luther nailed to the door of Wittenburg church. We, digital citizens –commonly referred to by the vulgar term of ‘consumers’ — have had enough of content lock-in. We’ve bought and re-bought entertainment media — repackaged and regurgitated digital vomitus — until we’re blue in the face. We’ve been told time and time again that DRM is for our own protection, and we’re finally and inconsolably fed up.

Be sure to read the Download Squad comments for reports from digg users complaining about the heavy hand of digg.

Om Malik ponders:

1. Is it legally liable for the actions of its community which was initially pointing to a story published by an independent publications? If that is the case, then YouTube-Viacom drama becomes even more intriguing.
2. If not, then did Digg act rashly?
3. Can Digg recover from this set back?

Let me try answering Om’s questions.

1. The courts already ruled that a site isn’t responsible for messages posted on comments and messageboards.
2. Digg clearly made things worse by taking down the posts with the hacked code and nuking users when they didn’t have a rule which specifically forbid these types of posts. Adelson’s post was too little, too late. Rose mentioned they remove some types of stories, but they didn’t have a rule specifically forbidding the HD-DVD hack posts. As for banning users over posting something that they didn’t have a specific rule in place? Way too heavy-handed. Banning users is lame anyway unless somebody is trying to hack your server.
3. This is digg’s first major credibility hit. It also proves that there is no such thing as unedited community content. There can’t be. Digg clearly does have some editorial criteria making it at least a little Slashdot-like in that sense. Again, banning users over posting stories that are on the gray line is the type of thing AOL would do with terms of service violations.

Wikipedia weaknesses shining through digg? Is digg wrong to change their position? The hacked HD-DVD code also made the del.icio.us most popular list. If the MPAA is going to pursue takedown notices, they’ve got their hands full.

Hmm thoughts
We don’t own an HD-DVD player or a single HD-DVD yet. Do own Blu-Ray player with the PS3 and bought the Mission Impossible set on Blu-Ray. That’s our one and only HD quality movie purchase to date. We haven’t even bought and downloaded through Xbox Live the HD quality movies. Might try one someday, but I’d rather save the Microsoft Points and use them for something else.

Personally and professionally, I don’t like or want to support warez or cracks. I don’t use bittorent for illegal purposes. Don’t link to sites like that and ask other readers to please not do that here either. Plenty of other places to do that and you know what? I wish to respect copyright owner’s wishes because, well, I’m somebody who publishes copyrighted material and would like my copyright respected. However, if somebody posts the HD-DVD hack string below which I’ve so carefully avoided using in this post, I’m not going to remove it. That’s on your head and I’ll dutifully hand over the IP of the commenter if the MPAA comes knocking with court order. Fair warning.

We all have our own value system. I don’t judge others, direct family not included (as a parent it’s my responsibility to influence and teach my children), who use bittorrent to get around DRM for MP3 and movies. If others want to surf warez and crack sites and/or use bittorent for illegal purposes (I think it’s great using P2P for legal purposes, BTW), then go to town. You decide what works for you and I’ll decide what works for me. That includes friends too.

I understand and agree with those who dislike DRM. I would prefer no movies, music or media be DRM protected. I believe strongly someday that will happen. I’ve never burned an archive copy of any of our 500+ DVDs. Conversely when I buy a CD one of the first things I do is rip it to MP3 so I can keep the source material safe and/or listen to it across multiple computer platforms (iTunes, Zune), so if that act makes me a hypocrite, I’m guilty as charged.

Where do you stand?

The internet speed limit has been broken:

Researchers on Dec. 30 sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard communications protocols. The next day, using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps.

Forever Geek takes us back in a time machine and outlines the cost and features of an internet connection in 1995.

America Online and Prodigy - $9.95 / month included 5 hours, $2.95 for each additional hour
CompuServe - $9.95 / month unlimited access to basic services, forum access billed at $4.90 per hour
GEnie - $8.95 / month offered 4 hours of non-peak time access, $3.00 per hour otherwise.

I was happy to get rid of DSL at my secondary office in favor of EVDO recently. $59.95 a month is a bargain comparatively in 2007. One can only imagine what speeds we’ll get in 12 years for the same dollars.