May 2006 Archives

We at FeedBurner got quite an honor bestowed upon us yesterday.

FeedBurner Named to Red Herring 100 List

Tonight, John and I are doing a little demo and meet-and-greet at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. on behalf of FeedBurner. Well, let me rephrase that...John will be doing most of the demo and I'll probably be like "uhm, I just started..."

Meet the Vloggers Midwest is an event featuring some prominent vloggers (video bloggers) and their discussion on how they're using the medium, their experiences, their triumphs, etc. I'm psyched--this should be fun.

Everyone's raving about the Apple Store that just opened last night in New York City. Here's Apple's time-lapse photography of the opening and the subsequent 24 hours. Pretty cool.

Update: Click on the 05:00am time slot and you'll see a guy propose to his girlfriend. Hopefully, she'll come back sometime today and give us a time-lapsed answer. (thx Kottke)

My buddy Jake Parrillo, a Village of Frankfort trustee, got a nice little mention in the Chicago Tribune today...

The measure inspired Trustee Jake Parrillo to call for another financial break--a waiver of vehicle sticker fees to reward motorists who drive hybrid vehicles.

"Even just a small step advancing energy independence is a good thing," he said.

I wholeheartedly agree, my friend. Way to bring it to the masses...

The Cubs finally won a game. Let's hope they keep it up.

Flickr redesigned to "gamma." Nice.

I put up a Flickr gallery of my Secret Machines photos from May 13, 2006. The show was truly amazing.

There's nothing better than reading about something - anything, really - that might improve your commute. Far too many Americans spend way too much time in the car each year (thank you, sprawl!) and it's just not worth taking the time out to discuss how much that sucks.

Thanks to the fact that I'm now working in the West Loop as opposed to the Loop center, the EL is no longer my preferred way to travel downtown--the Metra is.

Other than back from my days as a Geneva High Schooler coming downtown for Blues Fest or the fireworks and trying to figure out how to find my way from Ogilvie to Grant Park (usually while sipping on some sort of Snapple and vodka creation I had created on the train), I really hardly ever took the Metra before a month and a half ago.

So good news for Katie and I (and the rest of my fellow North Line travelers)...

Starting next year, Metra commuters who pass through Ogilvie Transportation Center will be able to buy everything from fresh baked goods to produce at a French-style market that is one of two anchor tenants in the long-awaited MetraMarket project.

[Chicago Tribune]

The advertisement on the bottom of the Rolling Stone *free* wallpapers celebrating their 1000th issue.

Are they really trying to hawk subscriptions on the bottom of a free wallpaper made available on their website?

Last night's Lost was insane.

That is all.

I can't wait to play some Baggo this summer. I wish this weekend was going to be warmer, but it just simply won't be.

Taking a page straight from John's little Google experiment, I've been working to try and make sense out of Google Reader for the past couple weeks (among other things including Google's new Calendar product).

As far as newsreaders go, I'm sure that this is great and all but it just doesn't seem to work like I'd like it to. The navigation is sketchy and enough to make you say "why did it take me back there when I clicked that?" (in a completely nonsensical way).

The only thing that actually made me feel better about spending time on something that has generally produced little results in my eyes along my path to a more enlightened organizational scheme is the fact that they just slapped the "Labs" designation back onto Reader. I remember it was there for a while, then it went Beta, and now it's back to Labs. It's as if they're telling me, "hey justin, it's cool, we know this product could use some serious work so we're going to call it something Labs, sound cool?"

From Gizmodo...

In short, Amazon is creating a music store and branded MP3 players aka iPod-killer (*snort*). This is all very potential and unconfirmed, but let’s give our source the benefit of the doubt.

While it's only a rumor for now, it appears that Amazon thinks that they can create an iPod-killer. I highly doubt will happen in the next two or three years, let alone anytime sooner than that.

You're seeing some new posts in the infancy of Ward-o-blog, and it's something that might not make sense to some and might make a lot more sense to others. A little more or a little less sense--I really can't be held responsible either way.

You have witnessed the "archiving," if you will, of melody to funkytown, my first blog and certainly not my last. Every post you saw there is now located under the Funkytown archives on Ward-o-blog, so you can still search and fine whatever you'd be looking for within the archives.

All of a sudden, I realized that having a blog that was totally generic-sounding that had nothing to do with my name wasn't going to be of much value to me in the future. I feel like my life has taken a turn down a more digital, online corridor and it's something that I should reflect on my personal site. At least, that's the thought or idea or goal or what-have-you. I'm not really sure what it is.

I do know one thing--I needed to get off Blogger permanently. I wish they would spend some money on upgrading that god-awful system and it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Hopefully they surprise me, but it's way too late. I've put Ward-o-blog on a solid-ass Movable Type install, so expect it to be a lot cooler in the near future once I get around to putting a little more muscle into it.

Welcome to the first official Ward-o-blog post!

Hope you enjoy the new site. I've got some cool stuff in store as time permits, so that's something to get psyched for.

How does Microsoft actually think that an ad like this will draw people away from Google Maps or Yahoo Maps? They're totally behind the curve...

But oh wait, it's Microsoft. They can do whatever they want and seemingly get away with it. They've got the moola.

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MoveOn.org Civic Action: Save the Internet

Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

Many members of Congress take campaign contributions from these companies, and they don't think the public are paying attention to this issue. Let's show them we care - please sign this petition today.

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