Wow its January 2007 already.

If you are looking for some music to beat the winter blues (no pun intended), Ministry of Sound has put out Clubber’s Guide 2007. This year there is a US edition and the usual European edition.

As if there is good dance music in the US. The European one is what I am recommending here.

US dance music is generally sampled hooks covered by bad vocals with lyrics that are all metaphors for anal intercourse.

On the Ministry of Sound album you get the best club music from Europe - which is still greatly inspired by 80’s pop and alternative (new wave) music. And the lyrics…well lets just say they are more wholesome. For example what could possibly be innuendo in the phrase “I’ll lick your ice cream…and you can lick my lollipop”? (DADA Feat. Sandy Rivera & Trix on CD 1) . It is practically saying “I’m not looking to Chingy you up the butt right thar!”

2007 promises to be a better year for music than 2006 and 2005 where everyone from Alanis Morissette to Zero 7 just put out greatest hits albums. There is a new Yello album due out this year as well as Sneaker Pimps and possibly even Information Society. I certainly hope The Benassi Bros get it to together for a new release with new material.

2006 wasn’t all bad. The new Basement Jaxx rocks and Koop’s new Koop Islands CD shows that they can to even back further to revive classic jazz.

You know that you’re getting old when they call the music that you blared home from your graduation ceremony “classic rock” or even “oldies”. D’oh!

I have a new laptop and I have put many hours into getting all the little gadgets and gizmos working. From bluetooth and wifi to the CD/DVD drive.

A big problem has been getting the CD/DVD drive to work with Linux. While it worked for the install, somehow the new 2.6.19 linux kernel doesn’t detect it properly. After scouring the internet I finally happed across this thread where many people had the same issue.

The answer there, which also worked for me, is to add acpi=off to the boot line in grub. According to these guys, its actually an issue with grub and the system bios and supposedly if you use LILO you don’t have the problem.

Weirdest problem ever. If you have a Clevo M57U-based notebook (Sager 5760) this post is for you. The only thing that I don’t have working is the built-in camera for which there are no linux drivers currently. I did see projects aimed at creating the driver and since that camera is becoming widely used I assume that we will see one in a few months.

This laptop is a pain to get working but it is nice when it is.

People who I’ve hung out with at conferences this year will tell you that I am down on mobile companies. Not just because at every conference there are new ones and some that were there previously are already gone.

I met with a mobile company at a conference in September. Their CEO, CTO, EVP Sales, EVP Programming, EVP Customer Support….the titles alone should scare you. The amount of VC money pouring into these ventures with such thin business models conjures up feelings of the late 90s.

All of these new mobile companies are so obsessed with putting content and services around SMS, that they miss the real point and opportunity.

The title of this post is inentionally WRONG. Its not SMS vs. IM. SMS IS IM. Texting on your cell phone is away from computer instant messaging. And the company that figures this out and understands how to drive at both SMS and IM is who I will declare the winner.

No surprise that its happening in Europe with Microsoft and Orange.

The gulf between mobile phone and personal computer narrowed a bit more on Wednesday when Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven Ballmer, announced an “instant messaging” product to be offered by Orange, a European cellphone carrier.

When the service starts in December, Orange subscribers will be able to conduct real-time chats by voice, text or video on their phones or personal computers, using a version of Microsoft’s messaging software.

Someone at AOL needs to wake up because the ICQ guys saw this all coming 6 years ago when they integrated SMS into ICQ.

And to all those new mobile companies: Stop looking at mobile space as a technology play and start looking at the content and marketing opportunity of instant messaging. The platform will emerge as computer desktop + sms.

Here it is.

So Captain Cruch wasn’t the guy who figured it out first. Its also funny that they complain about having to call the phone company to lock down the trunks. I guess those were the days before the 1850hz TASI locking frequency.


There were rules to stay safe:

1. Don’t mess with your parent phone company
2. Don’t mess with MCI
3. Don’t mess with a phone number that doesn’t ring first (indicates Instant ANI)


When/if you watch this pay attention to the people and what they have in common. Hacking and the spirit of the internet is arguably overcoming handicaps and leveraging open infrastructure. Also realize that these were the days before the common person could afford business computers.

“He could see things that other people don’t see; and make connections that other people don’t make.”

The State of Television: The political ads and news are so negative that watching Entertainment Tonight is actually entertaining and pleasantly refreshing.

This Traditional Shaving Series on YouTube combined with the new airline rules effecting shaving cream have caused me to convert to the old time mug and brush shave. So far so good. There are some differences that I can tell but so far closeness isn’t one of them…but I’m still learning.

If you are totally bored this halloween the internet is here to help. Tampon Crafts has some Halloween themed projects that are sure to impress your friends and neighbors.

SOMA FM has launched a halloween channel called DOOMED. Dark music for tortured souls.