Microsoft’s new homepage design has less clutter and spotlights its Zune player. I prefer it over the previous style.

Digg adds content specific videos and podcasts in addition to the news. It seemed like the firehose main digg feed has become like 70%+ videos, so this seems like a logical progression. Like Microsoft, although not as severe, they’ve also made a few design changes. I like the options to better target what I’m looking for from digg and will be adjusting my subscription accordingly.

Also, on the podcast front — and due to the weather the Hmmcast that was scheduled for last weekend has been postponed until this week instead — you can add podcasts that aren’t in the database (Hmmcast isn’t in the DB as of this writing) in the appropriate category. I think ‘tech’ is closest from the subcategory choices: art/culture, business, comedy, education, games & hobbies, gov/org, kids, health, music, news, religion, science, sport and TV/film.

Broken digg images everywhere during update
Curious sidenote: when Digg went down to implement this new site version they broke their digg count image for every third party site, including this one, which can be seen clearly in the image featured in my last post. I wonder why they didn’t at least use that image space to produce a static image to return during the update?

Maybe the downtime was minima I don’t know, but it made several other sites I saw this morning display broken digg images, particularly the ones who put the digg count button at the very top of their site like the screenshot in the last post. This was why we have the digg image set to only show on dugg stories down at the bottom of the page. Don’t get as many diggs with this placement but it doesn’t make the page look partially broken during times like these. Maybe next time they’ll serve up a static image of the last known counts? Hope so.

Alien Crush (TG16, pinball), Gunstar Heroes (Genesis, shooter), Ice Hockey (NES, sports) and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (Genesis, puzzle) have been added to the Wii Virtual Console as of 9am PST today 12/11. I just verified on our Wii and all of them are available.

On 12/1 Donkey Kong Junior (NES), Columns (Genesis), Ristar and Victory Run (TG16).

Genesis titles are $8 USD (800 Wii Points)
Turbografx-16 titles are $6 USD (600 Wii Points)
NES are $5 USD (500 Wii Points)

Still no word on when the internet browser or multiplayer online gaming will be added, but there has been a fairly significant amount of coverage over the safety of the Wiimote wrist strap and a rumor that the Wii is now shipping with a more sturdy wrist strap.

As for letting go of the Wii while playing, I’d recommend buying one of the Wii protective gloves. Our oldest son has sweatier hands and this helps keep a better grip on the Wiimote. I also noticed it was easier to keep a grip on while bowling.

Is it safe now to assume that Niall Kennedy didn’t leave Microsoft thinking happy thoughts?

Once a Microsofty that I gave three to one odds being a possible blogger replacement for Scoble, he apparently was (is?) so at odds with official Microsoft RSS blog that when they hotlinked one of his Flickr images without permission, instead of dropping them a note asking them (politely/sternly/whatever) to remove it, he changed the hotlinked image to a semi-pornographic (note: never saw it, just going off Todd Bishop from the Seattle PI’s report below) image.

:

[Kennedy] wasn’t pleased that Microsoft used his photo on a commercial site, without attribution. In addition, he said, the use of the photo violated the Flickr terms of service by not linking back to the site.

“Basically they stole one of my photos and put it on their blog,” Kennedy said. “I decided to make them very aware of that fact.”

I don’t like unauthorized hotlinking either, but definitely wouldn’t have gone that far with people at a company I used to work at.

Couldn’t Niall just pick up the phone and call somebody over there he worked with and knew? Doesn’t he have some insider connection to the RSS team being he helped develope an RSS platform there? I’m not a Microsoft employee, never was, and even I know a few people at the big M internally I could contact to get help with a problem like this. It’s not like this was happening on some splog from somebody in Russia or China.

If all else failed he could have blogged about the negative experience and enjoyed 15 minutes of blogger attention for sticking it to Microsoft. Probably would/will get slashdotted and dugg anyway.

The Microsoft RSS blog probably burned through a small bit of bandwidth, but oddly, they weren’t even burning Niall’s bandwidth. A look at Niall’s Flickr account quickly reveals that he is a pro member which means for $24.95 USD a year he has unlimited bandwidth. The Microsoft RSS blog team was burning Yahoo’s bandwidth.

Come on, Niall, it’s not like this was your own webhosting account! If Microsoft had done the same thing to one of the images on Niall’s own web hosting that would have cost him money. Since we know that’s not the case, now we get that they violated the image copyright. Yes, that sucks and is wrong but if Kennedy hasn’t been ripped off hundreds, maybe thousands of times before in the same manner, I’d be shocked. Has he taken this action with anybody else or was it only Microsoft that was punished?

If that’s indeed the case that he singled out Microsoft, then let me provide the definition for this sordid affair in one word: grandstanding.

I get more pissed at hotlinkers who cost our company money and rip us off than those who do only the latter. I’d like hotlinkers to do neither but it’s a fact of running any website that people are going to link your content without paying any regard to the copyright. The solution if you can’t get their attention? DMCA takedown notice.

An unregistered commenter on the Seattle PI piece writes:

Mr. Kennedy may have had a point, but the way he did it was completely childish and unprofessional. Just a CC logo would have been much better and to the point. Good luck to him in getting any company to hire him, or work with his business… I know I wouldn’t.

This seems extreme too and unsurprisingly comes from some anonymous coward. My name is signed on this piece and Niall can contact me if he feels the desire or need to refute anything written here. Have some stones anon cowards and sign your name if you want to take a shot at somebody. These are the bottom feeders of the web.

BTW, the odds now of Niall Kennedy being the Scoble replacement blogger are “safely” a million to one

To end on a more positive note, I think Major Nelson’s blog has ascended to being the Microsoft blogger at the moment (certainly open to discussion/debate in the comments below on this if you feel differently as I haven’t read/followed all the Microsofty bloggers). Nelson’s blog is updated regularly, full of good insider content, interesting podcast and fresh material from the source. Scoble rarely covered games when he worked there and actually pointed to Major’s blog as being better than his at one time. Nice work, Major!

Update 6:56pm PST Looks like Niall is saying he did contact the author of the offending hotlinking post at Scoble’s blog:

Robert, want to review your facts at all? I contacted Sean Lyndersay, the author of the post, this morning telling him he might want to swap out the image and let him know each of both the CC violation and the Flickr ToS violation. After the image was removed from the Microsoft blog I swapped the original photo back in. Sean replied to my e-mail with his own interpretation of non-commercial.

Strangely, I just read Scoble’s post and it is very similar to what I said above. No, I didn’t read what Robert sais before writing my post. I wouldn’t change anything except that I’m still a little confused if Niall contacted the author of the offending post before swapping out with the porn image or after. I think if he did it afterwards that still was unprofessional and unnecessary. I’ll jump over to Scoble’s blog and leave that question right now in case Niall doesn’t get over here.

7:17pm PST: Sent Niall both a message through Skype and an email directly to get his side of what happened. Will update when/if I hear back from him or of course if he leaves a comment below.

12/5/2006 8:17am PST: I just got done speaking with Niall Kennedy on Skype before he left for work. He insists the image he swapped out was not pornographic, disputing Todd Bishop’s original blog post quoted above.

The official Seattle PI story published in the Business section does not say he used a pornagraphic image, saying specifically:

partially censored image of a naked person,

Hmm, I wish he would have showed me the actual image so I could see because that makes a big difference here but he refused to share them with me during our conversation.

I’ll have more details in a follow-up post and perhaps make more references and changes (with strikethru) to the above text shortly.

12/5/2006 1:26pm PST: Niall dropped me an email to let me know he posted his account of what happened.

After reading Niall’s post and reviewing the entire sequence of events, I feel like in particular with my direct Skype conversation he was being unnecessarily evasive and stoic with me — and totally disagree that the picture he used wasn’t pornographic (you can see the guy’s intentionally exposing genitals Niall, come on!) — about the photo.

Niall could have simply said “goatse” and I would have known the image he altered immediately and we wouldn’t have had to do the not going to show you neener, neener dance. It’s a well known internet story and I’ve been around the block awhile, but instead he felt this was only something he could share on his blog? Weak. As someone who came late to the story, long afer the picture had been swapped and removed, I missed the details of the picture itself but fortuantely others like Rogers Cadenhead helped fill in the details.

Niall also offered a link to a screenshot showing what was swapped on the Microsoft site for those who want to decide if it’s “porn” or not. I’m not going to strike the title again but I definitely would have left it “porn” if I had known it was the goatse image. I’m not going to further strike/change the title again.

I don’t know what kind of guy Niall is to work with, but if I worked with him and he pulled this Goatse swap nonsense, I’m guessing we’d have been exchanging terse words privately on the subject.

Niall seems to blame Microsoft the organization (???) for the acts of senior Program Manager Sean Lyndersay who when he realized his mistake promptly removed the image and apologized in an update on the same post. According to Niall, Sean did engage in some sort of a unnecessary discussion about whether the image being stolen used was for commercial use or not, which seems strange considering Sean didn’t attribute the usage either way (and very clearly should have — there is absolutely no disputing that). Sean’s actions were clearly wrong and ill-advised, but IMO, Niall’s response was too extreme in this circumstance.

As I said over at Scoble’s blog, if this was some splogger from China or Russia I’d be all for the Goatse technique. I’d applaud loudly in appreciaton of Niall’s actions if that had been the case. You are welcome to disagree and debate below, but that’s my opinion as of this moment in time.

Somewhat ironically Niall starts his piece out by mentioning other sources (”There have been a few accounts on the web about a copyright enforcement action I took yesterday morning …”) giving their account of the events but he doesn’t link out to any of those sources, including Hmm. This is one area I’m not crazy about either. If you are going to write a post at least in part complaining about proper attribution then link out for reader’s (and your own) sake. It supports your willingness to evaluate the point of view of others. Whether or not Niall thinks he did anything wrong, once he did this in public the public gets to scrutinize. Even if he doesn’t link to me, why not link to Todd Bishop or Scoble?

Sorry, Niall, this whole situation was handled poorly all the way around. That’s simply one third party opinion and you can do with it what you will. Agree, disagee, avoid, discard, whatever.

Who in the tech world hasn’t been following this story with a lump in their throat? CNET editor and Tech TV Alumni James Kim, his wife and children have been missing for eight days near Roseburg, Oregon.

Today a helicopter hired by the family found James’ wife, Kati, and two children. A state trooper on video offered no details on their medical condition although Kati Kim was said to be “walking.” They are in the hospital. Also in the video segment, the trooper used the word “crash” but then backed away from that when asked for more details.

James Kim left two days ago with snow shoes to find help and as of this writing is still missing. No details yet have come forward on what exactly happened but the roads in the area where they were traveling this time of year can be severe. The area where the mother and two young children were found wasn’t accessible by 4×4 and only Snocats could get around.

Kim has always struck me as an industrious guy and I remain hopeful that he too is found alive. I hope he only traveled during the day with the heat of the sun above him and was able to keep warm through the biting night. There are logger cabins strewn throughout that area and he could have stayed in those areas to avoid being outside when it grew dark and temperatures dropped further.

It’s good to hear that Kati Kim and the two daughters will be sleeping in a warm bed tonight, I hope James is found and he will be too. More news is supposed to be available at 5pm PST today (about 30 minutes from this post).

Please keep the Kim family in your thoughts and prayers tonight.

Update 5:00pm PST: CNET is offering a live stream of the press conference.

They found James tracks some two miles away. They will be continuing to search throughout the night. Searchers from various agencies are out there looking for James Kim. Kati Kim and the two children reportedly are in good condition.

They will be working 24/7 until they find Kim and bring him home. They will be using night vision gear to follow the tracks. Dog teams are coming in the morning as well as some horse teams will be deployed.

5:15p: To survive the eight days Kati Kim used the car to keep the heat on until the car ran out of gas. Then they burned their car tires to keep warm.

When available, updates and information will be made available via flashalert.net.

Techmeme currently enjoys the #1 tech news aggregator spot but Megite, who started out with — but has thankfully stopped — a questionable marketing blitz (hitting the comments area of blog posts that were marginally related to shoehorn in a link back to megite.com), has been making impressive, positive moves in the field.

Megite owner/operator Matthew Chen contacted me recently when he noticed that Hmm was blocking his spider and we had a short, but nice exchange about Megite. A quick aside: I like the name Megite better than Techmeme or the godawful named Tailrank which sounds like the name of a hotornot site for derrieres.

Hey Sterling, tried leaving the following comment on your blog which I’ve slightly modified below but it never showed up (false positive for Akismet, maybe?) and don’t see your trackback link any more:

Not sure if you knew this yet about Megite, but if you send Matthew your OPML he’ll make up your own Megite virtual newspaper based on the feeds you’re reading. This is a feature he’s had for quite some time, but I didn’t check out until he shared it with me.

He emailed me about this feature and asked for my OPML so I pointed him to it and he made this Megite page for Hmm . He said a version is coming that will better deal with dynamic OPML files like the one I use, that way it can deal with dynamically updated OPML.

Also if you use the WP Bad Behavior plugin you’ll want to get the Megite spider IP addresses so your site isn’t blocking his spider.

Megite river of news (RoN) is also new. The RoN style is how I prefer to read RSS feeds daily (still) using reBlog. Since March 2006 I’ve used Reblog to scan/read through over 100,000 posts and mark over 13,400 as ‘published.’

Reblog is a free rsss reader that can be installed on your own server [Hmm review: Reblog]. In August of this year I made a Reblog screencast showing how fast you can skim through posts. If you have a little extra time, install this program and then try it for a month. Try reading your RSS feeds this way and get back to me with how it works for you. Hands down to date this is the most efficient way I’ve found to skim/read the maximum amount of material in the minimum amount of time.

Yahoo sure likes to make deals toward the end of the year. Last year there was a flurry of acquisition activity and this year they are starting to heat up in the same department.

Yahoo will index and tag content from seven major newspaper chains and make the news content from 38 states available on the web. Yahoo will also power local events listings, maps and search technology on the local newspapers’ websites. The partnered newspapers will also use Yahoo’s advertising platform to sell and host the targeted local ads on their websites. The ads will largely be powered by Yahoo Local.

I’m not sure who this deal helps more, a print newspaper business moving (begrudgingly?) to the web or Yahoo. And why are they using ads from Yahoo Local and not Yahoo Publisher? We still don’t subscribe to any newspapers, you?

Perhaps just me, but why does this deal — piggybacking on what I wrote Monday on the allegedly leaked internal Yahoo memo — all feel like a part of some throw at the wall and see what sticks scheme?

Yesterday another deal that was announced which makes more sense is Yahoo Answers teaming up with Answers.com to form a definitive Q&A database, which answers.com CEO explains::

“The phenomenon of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ has taken on extraordinary momentum, as evidenced by the meteoric growth of Yahoo! Answers,” explained Bob Rosenschein, CEO of Answers.com. “While our existing content is incredibly rich, relevant and cross-disciplinary, answers drawn from a community Q&A site provide a flip side - the dynamic, interactive voice of the people. User-generated content is a powerful wave on the internet and is a direction that we will continue to actively pursue.”

It’s going to be tough for Microsoft Live QnA or Google Answers to put a dent in that combination.

Another thing Yahoo continues to be doing right is improving their developer relations, products and services. This will always pay dividends in the software world.

Google stock (GOOG) has passed the $500 stock price mark and continues to be on the move. As a GOOG shareholder I’m naturally hoping that GOOG will continue to move onward and upward. Why not $600, $750, $1000+?

This morning I learned that Google has tweaked their Page Creator program adding in browser image editing, multiple sites and automatic mobile edition of pages. I was less than enamored by the debut edition of Page Creator earlier in February 2006 and haven’t really returned since. I just looked at what I have on there and it’s like any other crappy personal homepage.

I doubt even if the Page Creator was the coolest page creator on the planet I’d spend much time using it, but kudos to them for making this easy for people who don’t want to get down and dirty writing code and creating graphics for their own pages and domains. Now if Google creates a bunch of nifty tools and offers the ability to host it on your own domain, that would be more compelling …

BTW, while we’re talking stock, Microsoft (MSFT), which I do not own any shares currently and have never owned, is also enjoying some stock success reaching the $30 mark for the first time since 2002. I’ve been thinking about buying Microsoft stock quite a bit lately. My primary holdout has been seeing how the public responds to Vista.

Most hyperbolic title of the morning thus far goes to Wired declaring that Second Life Will Save Copyright. Enough already, people. Second Life is a lot of things to many different people, but copyright savior is not one of them.

The company plans to develop an infrastructure to enable Second Life residents and landowners to enforce IP-related covenants within certain areas, or as a prerequisite for joining certain groups. In effect, Second Life’s inhabitants will self-police their world, according to rules and social norms they develop themselves.

This is exciting, because it turns Second Life into a laboratory for trying out alternatives to prevailing real world copyright rules.

Exciting? Hmm, rather I think this puts more red tape on something that was supposed to be open and free (as in free to roam, not free in $$).

To bring readers up to speed who aren’t spending any time in their second life (can’t blame you there), there is an object running around the world called CopyBot creating copyright havoc which can copy other objects at will and without the copyright holder’s permission, including textures and prims and perhaps even the accompanying scripts. These digital copies can be given away, used or sold without compensating the creator.

I’ve spent nearly a year now in Second Life (Dec 31, 2005), owned land, created an alternate avatar, run a business inside SL as well as participated in a group blog which covers MMO with a primary focus on SL. You can find me logged into SL daily and can buy objects and scripts I’ve created in world that CopyBot may have already copied without my permission. Hopefully this gives me enough direct knowledge in what’s going on in world to offer some experienced commentary.

First my thoughts on the CopyBot saga are simple: Linden Labs can’t have the dreamworld open platform they’d like to have and also be our copyright saviors. If Linden Labs steps aside I certainly don’t want government to step in and muck up the world. In terms of who created what and when, there already exists plenty of ways to prove I’m the copyright owner of something. From the article, I understand Linden Labs is going to work on some better way of identifying when an object is first created by whom, but I’m sure that will be hacked too.

Let’s use this blog for an example. Every time I write something, pings go out and notify dozens of other services. Thousands of bots hit this site regularly. In a nutshell, timestamps are going off all over the world shortly after I press the publish button. That’s my creation date with the text you’re reading and it would be almost impossible to take that publish date away from me everywhere.

In the case of Copybot and the business owners concerned about being ripped off and wanting Linden Labs or some government organization to help them? Please, no. I don’t want any more political and/or governmental intervention into our businesses. Yes, even if this means our creations will become prey for Copybot and its ilk. A copy is never the original. It doesn’t have the soul of the work, even if it has the virtually identical artificial appearance of the work. CopyBot isn’t going to make new versions, it’s only going to attempt to steal the bits.

Upgrades are one way creators can keep a step ahead of piracy. Another way is to create an online component (hint, hint) as part of objects. If the business is only in Second Life and doesn’t try to connect to the web beyond SL an opportunity exists there to combat CopyBot.

I’m not happy about CopyBot stealing my work, but there are ways to deal with these programs — both socially and directly — without needing government or other organizations. These SL merchants closing their businesses in form of protest are only hurting their own pockets. Linden Labs is flooding the world with new recruits — many of which might not even be 18 thanks to not requiring credit card verification — and if these new citizens are armed with tools like CopyBot the market will correct itself.

For years the music industry was taking advantage of its customers and artists. The RIAA has desperately been trying to hold onto an old model that made them rich, but the artists have embraced the internet to go direct to the people. CopyBot might enable others to steal the music of some famous artist, but the person who sells the songs isn’t the artist and it will become clear through other social means that no program can ever duplicate.

Of course when someone make CreateBot that is able to perfectly emulate and create new objects as we would have, than I’ll be much more concerned. Since the part of that word “perfect” insinuates something human beings aren’t, I don’t see that happening anytime soon in our first life, much less our second lives.

Why Linden Labs won’t be the copyright savior
As I write this, the sign on screen indicates there are some 1,544,736 “total residents” with 616,479 logging on within the last 60 days and 6,940 online right now. Almost weekly you can depend on some sort of exploit that taking down the grid and leaving some weird message from a Linden (the last name used in world by the company Linden Labs). The media loves to report on all the happenings like SL is some revolutionary thing and while the 3D world is cool and has taken the MMO non-game to business applications, it isn’t going to save anything while it keeps having trouble saving itself on a weekly basis.

The bigger problems Linden Labs seems unconcerned, unable or unwilling to solve are attrition and scaling. With the former, consider residents like Kent Newsome:

But I have grown bored with my personal Second Life experience. I’m not big on chatting with strangers, and there is no Second Life collective for tech bloggers- at least not one that I have been invited to participate in. I have been thinking for months about canceling my account.

Kent’s frustrations are familiar to the most popular type of SL resident, I think, which helps explain why such a small number of people registered are actually using the service (the number has since increased to over 14,000 while writing this piece). When creators come to SL they look to build and share like Amazon technical evangelist, Jeff Barr and Hipcast guru Eric Rice. I came to SL not to chat with strangers or join with other tech bloggers, but was interested in building a virtual world expansion for my existing programming business. I’ve been teaching myself Linden Scripting Language and exploring how I might utilyze SL as an additional business opportunity over the last year. If I had been looking for what Kent was interested in, I would have been gone after the first month.

(BTW Kent, if you are reading, feel free to drop me a line in world sometime, if you like. Maybe I can point you to something of interest.)

Linden Labs should recognize that the resident attrition is clearly tied to attracting different kinds of goal-oriented people and help these people better experience SL. The consumer/traveler/reporter wants to do stuff, get involved, report on the happenings and enrich their life somehow, perhaps even expand their interests in a new, different and exciting way. The business owner wants to setup shop, extend their business, promote their brand and turn a profit. The creator wants to build something cool for themselves and/or share with others either for free or maybe someday a profit (cross to business owner). Instead of drawing more red tape over how intellectual property is handled, Linden Labs should be focusing on how to cater, educate and enrich the resident experience based upon these goals and criteria.

As a business owner, creator and minor consumer in SL, I have one major concern that trumps all others including copyright. It’s the dealbreaker for me.

Scaling.

If I can’t rely on Second Life to keep my store up and running because they were taken down by CopyBot or a teen or prepubescent griefer in an allegedly adult area or whatever than that negatively impacts my business. There is some degree of downtime expected when doing business online, but it should be extremely minimal (like 99%+ uptime). Downtime online is the equivalent of a closed shop offline. When you are closed the cash register isn’t ringing. Over the last 11 months, I’ve experienced a completely unacceptable amount of downtime and zero compensation from LL for the downtime. If they don’t fix this very business-oriented issue that will make me close shop and abandon my second life.

Some might attribute these problems to growing pains, but even when all systems are go the minute more than 75 avatars assemble in a single server (sim), things start to go bonky. It’s a well known problem among regular residents and something I’m surprised more reporters don’t put in bold type in every Second Life article. From a business perspective, seriously, tell me in what other world than our Second Life people will pay hundreds of dollars per month (up from $195/month to $295/month for a server) for a service which starts buckling under the load of 75 people simultaneously active?

From a business owner perspective, scaling is a much worse problem than copyright. Yes, even with CopyBot running rampant, flaunting the weakness of both issues.

I’ve been waiting for confirmation from the bulldog’s mouth regarding whether or not Jason Calacanis was leaving AOL. When it comes to AOL though, it seems more like getting a get out of jail free card in Monopoly. Just ask Vincent Ferrari who enjoyed 15 minutes of fame for recording his frustrating attempt to eject.

The never boring Calacanis promised to add more details to the last Gillmor Gang podcast, but puts in a little bit of why he left in a blog post and his comments area:

I wanted to put a year into AOL and see how far I could take it. It’s now exactly a year and I’m excited about how far we took everything.

What was the over/under on how long he’d last at AOL? I remember saying somewhere he wouldn’t last more than 12-18 months but finding that post here is escaping me at the moment. Must be among the 39 odd “Calacanis” related posts.

Whatever the case, Jason’s crowning achievement at AOL will be remembered as building a Digg-clone at Netscape and trying to lure away the top Digg submitters by paying them for their efforts. He might be excited about how far they took everything but I’ve heard very little positive about Netscape since the changeover. He gets major points though for getting people to talk about a website for a browser that most of us abandoned in the 90s.

Best of luck to Jason in his next venture which, considering his track record, will last about 1-2 years. Expect him to contine to be exactly as (at one time) competing publisher Nick Denton writes at Valleywag:

He’ll be loud, infuriating — and probably, irritatingly, successful.

But Jason isn’t the first AOL casualty. His timing conveniently following AOL CEO Jon Miller who Jason referred to as his mentor. Wow, I learn something new every day, I though his mentor was his bulldog?

“I’m not inclined to start over with a new guy,” Mr. Calacanis said in an interview on Thursday. As for what to make of the treatment of Mr. Miller, who discovered he was being replaced after a reporter called AOL asking about Mr. Falco’s appointment, Mr. Calacanis said only: “I’m perplexed. Why now?”

All kidding aside, good luck in your next venture, Jason. We may not always see eye to eye but I think Calacanis is very talented at stirring up the dust and surrounding himself with good, hard working people.

The Inquirer wonders what’s next for Netscape? I’d give it less than a year before the Netscape digg-clone project is scrapped and many of those good people Jason took with him are looking for new jobs. Maybe at whatever Jason decides to start/do next? I could certainly be wrong and Netscape will continue to flourish as a Digg-clone. What do you think will happen to Netscape?

Occasionally during the radio show on Fridays we will break away from technology and talk about weirder side of the world. If you would like to hear the audio commentary of these articles LIVE, then tune into the radio show. The show starts at 2pm PST / 5pm EST every Friday.

The following stories are scheduled to be reviewed on show #165, Oct 31, 2003:

- At least one judge who bangs more than his gavel: French judge found masturbating in court
- Man drops cell phone in train toilet and then gets arm stuck trying to remove
- Driver falls asleep at wheel and hearse cargo ejects onto the road, along with corpse
- 28-year-old man accused of stealing a man’s penis through sorcery has been beaten to death
- Buy yourself a vampire killing kit for only $12,000
- Florida women disarm an intruder with a sawed-off shotgun with rum and sandwich
- Scuba diver hopes to break world record for underwater pumpkin carving