This MSN story: Digging for Googleholes should be titled Digging for Articleholes. It would seem that the author didn’t spend any real time searching or using the many advanced search functions. Something netizens learn about search engines right away is that the more specific you are with queries, the better the results will be. One word searches, in my experience, don’t usually turn up what is expected. You?

Thanks to Dave Winer, who linked to Michael Gartenberg’s weblog I have just learned that AOL’s weblogs are now LIVE! Yesterday, I was saying I had just checked out AOL 9.0 Optimized beta. You can create one too, but you must be an AOL member (a good sticky feature for AOL so that members never leave and thus, lose their weblog, I guess). I set up my AOL Journal (blog) in about 2 minutes and here is the URL to the blog (you know you want to bookmark it! LOL): http://journals.aol.com/tdphpscripts/Technologyontheweb/

It adds a bot to your IM list (see #1) so you can just type a normal IM to the AOL Journal bot (see #2) and it will create a new blog entry (see #3). Slick!

How about adding images? Didn’t figure that out on a quick view yet. Also, I’m not sure why it added the words “feeling” and “hearing” to my blog entry. Maybe the AOL Journal bot has issues Hmm

Update: There doesn’t appear to be a way to add pictures through IM to the AOL Journal bot (yet), but when you use the Add Entry link (doh! see above) then it is pretty obvious how to add pictures. The feeling is your mood at the time of the entry and you can choose that from the dropdown menu, and you can also select what music you are listening to (for the hearing). You can also update through IM using the following codes:

Journal Commands
Change Journals: Type journal: followed by a journal name (e.g. journal:my first journal).
Add Subject to Entry: Type subject: followed by a journal entry subject (e.g. subject:blogs).
Add Music to Entry: Type music: followed by a description of what you’re listening to at the moment (e.g. music:springsteen).
Add Mood to Entry:Type mood: followed by a mood (e.g. mood:happy).
Quit Journal: Type quit to leave the journal you’re currently working on.

I love videogaming. It’s one of my true passions as far as hobbies go. I’ve bought pretty much every major videogame system that’s come out since the NES and several systems prior to that like Atari 2600, Atari 7800 (I played the 5200, but never bought it), Colecovision, etc. I was one of the sorry suckers who ponied up for the 3D0 (Trip Hawkins, you bastard!) when it came out and costed some $600 USD! Atari Jaguar? Been there, done that. And of course all those various “systems” that came out from Sega (Sega CD, 32-X, Dreamcast) before they gave up and just started making games for their competitors. So I think this amount of videogaming as a fan, customer, etc more than entitles me to call the developers out:

Stop making systems and games which are in love with technology! Please! I’m tired of games with a zillion shaded polygons that aren’t fun. Go back to the drawing board and dig up the brilliant minds that are trying to make games fun and addictive. Enough of these movie license games, where most of them just plain suck. Make videogames fun. I used to look forward to new games coming out and buying new games and I still have a subscription to EGM, but I can honestly say that 99% of the games that come out today I’ve already seen. What console video games are out that are worth playing over and over until your fingers hurt today? Grand Theft Auto Vice City sort of got me excited, but that’s the last notable game I can think of. Brute Force? C’mon. It’s no wonder there was a 9% drop in video games according to articles like this one, besides the fact that it is summer and just too darn hot to be inside playing games. Do you like videogames? Do you wish they were more fun? I do. Really. Hmm

Apparently our youngest son, Neal, is already homesick after 4 days of being away from us. You can see him in this pic in the jacuzzi taken from the suite we stayed in on our recent vacation. We offered to let him fly home, but he says he thinks he can make it another week. Boy, it’s tough being 10.

I must say that it has been refreshing getting a few days away with just the wife and I, but I do admit missing the little squirrels. It’s perhaps too quiet LOL. Anybody else wonder about that quiet when the kids are away and … actually miss it?

(source: ecommercetimes) The RIAA will not rest until it sues every hardcore peer-to-peer kazaa and grokster user. I remarked before that I think they also have to address all the IRC channels that have underground fserves and major DCC file sharing happening. I don’t think it is a winning strategy to sue your customers and that is where the RIAA is running afoul in this. Organizations like http://www.boycott-riaa.com/ are only going to get stronger by moves like this. I’m not in favor of piracy, but I am in favor of embracing the idea of fans sharing music and the studies that have shown that these fans buy more music, not less. The RIAA needs to invest what I feel will be wasted courtroom $$$ on supporting and evangelizing legitimate music download options. That or reducing the cost of CDs which cost pennies to manufacture and come out the door to us at $15-20 USD.

AOL users, if you navigate to keyword: beta then you can be part of the beta testing for AOL 9.0 optimized. I had a more comic take on this in this earlier entry and as I had figured so far, there isn’t a lot that is new so far. Maybe in the final version it will be a big new step. Here is what is and isn’t different so far and keep in mind it’s just a beta interface:

- a bit of graphical change in the signon interface, and several graphical / design changes once you get to the first welcome screen and main toolbar
- more IM features like animated buddies (looks pretty cool, but I haven’t tried yet)
- “journal” (blogging function) is not yet available for review/testing, but it’s supposed to be in the final release version

McDonald’s joins Starbucks in the quest to make wi-fi internet access available to their patrons (source: Washington Times) My thinking is that the more wi-fi the better, but in my recent vacation I wasn’t able to find many recognized wi-fi outlets. Hopefully by next year’s annual family vacation I’ll fare better. As I mentioned in my previous entry, the best connection I could get was 32k.

In this story: The Failed Promise of E-Mail John Dvorak dives into the issues surrounding the use of email today. Is it on the way out or in need of a severe overhaul?

The only thing that can save e-mail is a completely new system built on top of the existing Web. Designers of the original e-mail systems assumed that the Web would be populated mostly by good people using it wisely for communications. No one anticipated that the entire mechanism would encourage endless spam as well as mass mailing of Nigerian scam letters and other frauds.

I’ve complained about the spam I receive daily and that is after failing. I’m still pondering the possibility of going strictly to a whitelist.

This second installment starts slowly and I guess my only huge problem with this revival of the classic TV series is that it is not very much like the series. Bernie Mac is great but Bernie Mac as Bos? And not just Bosley, but Bosley’s brother? They never explain how or why or if this should make sense, but hey, it actually works. Bernie Mac as Bos is a hundred times better than Bill Murray was in the first movie. And then there is all the action. I don’t remember Charlie’s Angels being an action flick, but more like a detective flick. So if you get these series conflicts out of your head, you can then sit back and enjoy this movie. I thought it was overall better than the first. Could have had a little more skin from the Angels. Grade: C+

Bruce (Jim Carrey) has some problems: he wants for the glorious news anchor position and instead is relegated to covering human interest stories. He also has a hot girlfriend (from Friends) who prays for him. Bruce gets beat up, blows up very humorously and then blames everything on God. He is then called up via a pager to Floor 7 and a white room to meet God who offers him the challenge: see if you can do it better than me. This movie is hilarious and one of Jim Carrey’s best to date. I laughed out loud several times in this flick and the woman sitting behind me really was choked up. If you like comedies then you will enjoy this film. Bruce Almighty sort of reminds me a bit of Liar, Liar in the sappy department, but hey I like a somewhat sappy film now and again (as long as it has humor or good drama to back it up) and I’m becoming more sentimental as I get older. Grade: A-