Sorry… Things have been pretty dead here at The Foo Logs in the past week or so. The reason - I have been desperately trying to keep a deadline to finish my college work. The deadline to hand in my paper is today and there have been multiple late nighters, lots of coffee drinking and sleeping at 4am days leading up to this.
Right now, I am almost zombie like, tired and cranky. It’s funny, years ago when I doing my bachelors, I would have the same late night and work till the early morning routine and would promise never to do it again. But here I am doing it all over again. Some habits die hard, especially the bad ones.
Few things I can be sure off, I’ll be doing the happy dance later today when I hand in my coursework, get some sleep and The Foo Logs will be alive again. Oh yes, Ghost Rider comes out tomorrow and there is another happy dance for me to do.
I was floored by 3 musicians at the Grammy Awards yesterday. First off, 18 year old Robyn Troup, the “Grammy Moment” award winner that sang with Justin Timberlake — I don’t think I have heard a better live singer lately. In the Beyonce mold, she is a lock on to get a recording contract and may actually be a real challenger to Beyonce herself, both in looks and vocals. She definitely put everyone else to shame — even Red Hot Chilli Peppers. (Well, almost everyone if you count out Police) The other two were the teen pianist and violinist that did a short excerpt. Definitely envy their talent and wish I could play a musical instrument like that. I am wondering why they held it at the Staples Center (a basketball arena) instead of the bigger Kodak Theater. The echo that the singers made when they were singing were a little annoying.
Cafe.com is a free social networking game community that allows you to chat, meet people and play games. There are hundreds of easy and fun individual/ multiplayer games to choose from e.g. Swordfish, a Tetris like strategy game in a deep sea fishing environment and Ironsides, a Pac Man maze like game with an 18th century naval warfare theme.
Each player creates a 3D avatar, thus defining your online profile, appearance and persona of your character. Throughout the game, possessions can be accumulated by purchasing items to further enhance your gaming experience. These items may give you an advantage while playing with opponents. For example, some items may increase your gaming speed, some may obstruct their game play or freeze opponents. The virtual setting is such that each player that wants to play a game, needs to go into an individual room. These rooms are available for players to chat, launch multi player games and can contain up to 6 players.
For those who want to have some gaming fun while meeting others, this is a great place for it. The whole online setting makes one feel lively and cheerful with its bright/ fun colors. I am not sure whether it is a good or bad thing giving players the ability to cheat (with those virtual items) but it does make the whole gaming experience more challenging.
Nevertheless, Cafe.com is one of the few online gaming sites suitable for teens, toddlers and adults alike. I can see this place becoming pretty addictive for some (as I found out myself!). So go ahead, don’t take my word for it, give it a try.
This post is brought to you by Cafe.com
Can’t believe it but I just saw on TV that Anna Nicole Smith died this afternoon at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, FL. They have yet to report the cause - it seems that she just collapsed and died. Looks like everyone is scrambling to read the news, every site that has the news (from CNN to USA Today) has been really slow. Pretty tragic as her son died suddenly too last year, just about the same time she gave birth.
J received an email couple of days ago from AT&T (via her school district) about a phone scam going around. Thought I might want to share it with all of you.
The basis of the email is that you should never dial a number with the area code 809. Con-artists will get you to call by leaving a message telling you that they have information about a family member who has been ill, to tell you someone has been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls.
If you call from the US, you will apparently be charged $2425 per minute or, you’ll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you’ll often be charged more than $24,100.
It turns out that the 809 code is located in the British Virgin Islands and if you start calling it, you will be responsible for all charges regardless of how much it is. I am not sure whether it is true or just a hoax but you never know — better safe then sorry.
Google has an online version of Microsoft’s Excel Spreadsheet software to compliment their online word processor. Called Google Spreadsheets, it is an addition to their already released Google Docs (a converted tool from the company Writely they acquired last year).
With Google Spreadsheets, you can now enjoy intuitive online navigation and editing, like any traditional document or spreadsheet from any computer having access to the internet. I am not sure when this was released to the public as it was on ‘limited beta’ in June last year.
Spreadsheet documents can be saved online to your Google account or to your hard drive. Each spreadsheet can be up to 10,000 rows, 256 columns, 50,000 cells or up to 20 sheets whichever limit comes first. A user account has a limit of 100 spreadsheets and you can import/ convert xls, csv and odf file formats up to 1 Mb.
Cell formulas and other Excel based functions work seamlessly and a frequent user of Microsoft Excel will find it an easy transition.
Additional features that I really like
- you can actually chat in real time with others who are editing your spreadsheet
- the collaborating feature i.e. you can share the spreadsheet with limitless other users for editing and reviewing.
- if you have accidentally erased something important or if you want to see how the spreadsheet has changed over time, you click on the revisions tab to browser older versions, view major changes or revert to an earlier saved version.
- when you are finished with your spreadsheet, you can automatically publish (or un-publish) it online with one click to your website or blog — and it’ll look like a normal looking web page. If you post to a blog, you can add tags as well.
Browsers that are currently supported
1. IE 6.0+ for Windows (except IE 6.0.26)
2. Firefox 1.07, 1.5.0.6+ (Mac & Windows — except for 1.0.8 on Windows and Mac, and 1.5b1 on Mac)
3. Mozilla 1.7.12+
4. Netscape 7.2, 8.0
(sorry Safari and Opera users!)
For a free online tool, it is powerful indeed for the light, medium user - Microsoft better watch out! I don’t anticipate it challenging businesses users due to the security factors involved but with Bill Gates predicting that his next generation office/ operating systems being virtually run, Google may have already jumped ahead of the game.
Congrats to the Colts. Good game.
Billy Joel didn’t sing a good National Anthem, a little off key at the beginning. Prince was awesome at halftime. Eccentric as he is, the guy can still sing and get the crowd going. Best Superbowl Half time show ever! Love the Prince symbol shaped guitar. If I am not mistaken, he threw it into the crowd at the end. It’ll probably turn up on eBay in the next couple of days.
Best Superbowl Ad
It came down to a tie.
1) Blockbuster.com
The Blockbuster rabbit and gerbil are back, but they need a little help learning how to use a mouse. Funny and cute!
2) Doritos: Crash the Superbowl
Very original. Nice play on the words! Hilarious ending.
Honorable mentions:
Coke Factory
(This ad has been out for a couple of weeks now, but I still like it)
Worst Ads:
What were they thinking!
Oh boy, The Who is really making money these days and not even touring constantly. They are already heard on the CSI TV series e.g. Who Are You? (CSI), We Don’t Get Fooled Again (CSI Miami) and Baba O’Riley (CSI New York). Now they played a Who song for the entrance of Indianapolis Colts at Superbowl 41. I love The Who, so I’m happy. Would have been happier if The Browns were in the Superbowl but I think the odds are better for me winning the lottery than them winning the Superbowl — sad but true.
The world’s most ubiquitous operating system was not always so. The evolution of Windows was often uncertain and precarious. Its success was symbiotic with advancements in processor speed and memory capacity, and Microsoft relied heavily on third-party software to bridge the gap between concept and consumer.
read more | digg story
Saturday’s word of the day is: Collabulary
n. A common vocabulary with which Web users categorize the data they find online, particularly one created in collaboration with classification experts to ensure relevance and consistency. [Blend of collaborative and vocabulary]
Example Citations:
People have a tendency to affect tagging-based search negatively in two primary ways: by not using enough or relevant tags; and by tagging the same links using vastly different tag words. For example, a link about “horses” may be tagged with “equine,” “saddles,” “mares,” “foals,” etc. In fact, it should be tagged as simply “horses”. To overcome these problems, PreFound.com crawls the web sites that users are indicating they would like to share, automatically adds tags based on site content, and then runs the site through a process much like a “reverse thesaurus” which reduces large numbers of synonyms into single “collabulary” words.
—”Tackling the Tag-Based Search Dilemma, PreFound.com Social Search Engine Introduces Automatic Tagging,” Business Wire, September 18, 2006COLLABULARY n. A collaborative vocabulary for tagging Web content. Like the folksonomies used on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, collabularies are generated by a community. But unlike folksonomies, they’re automatically vetted for consistency, extracting the wisdom of crowds from the cacophony.
—Jonathon Keats, “Jargon Watch,” Wired, January 1, 2007Earliest Citation:
I found this a few days ago and realized that it embodied the difference between how I understand tag folksonomies and how others (with whom I’ve argued) may see them. That is, I see the role of the social group — the wisdom of the crowd — as essential to the success of our folksonomic efforts. As it turns out, somebody’s come up with a word that emphasizes that (uncoordinated) collaboration: collabulary.
—Casey Bisson, “Collabulary,” MaisonBisson, March 8, 2006
Source [Wordspy]
