California Storms Slideshow

The nice thing about living in Southern California is that we always get nice weather. But when we do get bad weather, it doesn't come at us in a girlie-man kinda way.

It was bright and sunny this morning in Hermosa Beach. I shall now resume my daily jogging as soon as I buy myself a new pair of New Balance 716. My 1-year old pair lost its structural integrity on last saturday's 45-min run.

Google Movies: Showtimes, Reviews and More?

Those crazy google guys are doing it again:

Just in time for the Oscars, we've created a new "movie:" operator that enables you to find movie-related information faster and more easily, whether you're looking for titles or actors, director or genre, famous lines or obscure plot details.

If you're looking for the finest pieces of motion picture ever made throughout the entire history of mankind, movies which relegate the likes of Muybridge, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Fellini, Wim Wenders to the deepest pits of irrelevance, there is one, and only one movie: Google Search you'll ever need to check on a regular basis:

This one.

Communicate, Collaborate, Securely, Cross-Platform

Joi Ito is telling us about a really cool new cross-platform tool, Shinkuro:

It's basically a very cryptographically robust, cross-platform collaboration tool. It allows you to create groups and share folders of files, has a shared chat space (like IRC) and allows you to share your desktop screen with other members of the group (yes, across platforms). The shared files are transfered in the background and edits to files are sent as diffs which can be accepted into the original by the recipient. There is also standard IM with your buddy list. The great thing is that all of the traffic is encrypted. 256 bit AES and 2048 bit RSA keys. Each message is encrypted with a unique key, and the key is transmitted under the RSA key. This is very important since I know for a fact that people sniff IM and other traffic at many of the conferences and public places.

I'm chrisholland!shinkuro.com

For now, you can obtain an unlimited license for free. I bet this offer won't last.

The User-Owned Phone System

David Beckemeyer just posted a review of this really cool embedded linux PBX firmware solution: SIPatHome:

The rebels are at it again. This time they've built a free, open-source VoIP platform for embedded devices. It's a VoIP PBX in box, a cheap affordable box. The box, in fact, is a common Linksys router. It's called SIPatH (hey nobody said geeks know how to name products)

Two Iranian Bloggers Jailed

From Jeff Jarvis:

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is urging support from all bloggers on Feb. 22 -- today -- to bring international attention to the plight of two bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, jailed in Iran. Here's a BBC story.

I first discovered the Iranian blog culture when its Johnny Appleseed, Hossein Derakhshan, reported on the arrest of blogger Sina Motallebi. We blogged about that and brought international attention to the story and Sina credits that with helping to get him out of jail and out of the country.

These people are in jail for doing exactly what we have the privilege of doing: Speaking. We must stand with them.

So please link to the Committee to Protect Bloggers and please bring attention to what his happening to our colleagues in Iran.

If you're reading this, please read and link to the effort to free Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad.

Momentous Weekend!

Josh and Amy just gave birth to their first baby son, Donovan Josiah at 6:50pm on this Friday February 18th, 2005.

Tomorrow, Joe is turning 30.

Sunday, Tom and Laura are getting married.

Numa Numa Kid

Numa Numa!

MSN to Mac Users: We Don't Like You

Embedded Windows Media streams have worked fine in Safari for quite some time now. There's also Windows Media for Mac. What's the rationale here? Try to get me to switch back?

eBay REST API and Affiliate Resources

eBay REST API.
eBay Affiliates Program.

Presence vs Communication

I'm an always-on'r

Here's looking at you ...

Glancing

ricerpod vs podricer

[11:16pm] _adam_gfx: i am waiting for a ricerPod from ptorrone
[11:17pm] _adam_gfx: with a fin and Vtech stickers
[11:19pm] valmont: holy shit. google returns no result for ricerpod
[11:19pm] valmont: updates his blog
[11:19pm] rojisan: of course not.  everyone knows it's a podricer
[11:20pm] valmont: lol. no hit either! hahaha
[11:20pm] rojisan: podricer is gold
[11:21pm] PicoloPoo: i'd play with a podricer

The Joy of XUL

Happiness, is XUL

Best From Apple: Protecting the Computer

It's no secret to most Administrators of any sizable pool of desktop computers, that users of those machines tend to find ever creative ways to tamper with their systems and render them unusable, resulting in costly losses of productivity. Whether they fall prey to the Microsoft Windows Security Flaw "du jour", click "Yes" to ActiveX prompts triggered by some ad banner, or still find a way to run some spyware-carrying file-swapping program, opportunities to compromise the integrity of a machine abound.

In very specific cases, it might be worth an Administrator's time and regained sanity to investigate migrating a portion of their user base to the Mac OS X platform, upon evaluating the tamper-limiting features it offers.

uhura chris

uhura_chris,
originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Ernest is evil. He's making fun of the fact that i'm always wearing my Motorolla HS810 Bluetooth ear peace. What can i say. it works well. So i use it. With the powerbook for iChat/VoIP. With the t610 in the car or at my desk for work conference calls.

Rational Discourse. Where Art Thou?

There are a few reasons behind my light blogging of late. My off-work hours are filled with a number of projects I'm juggling at the same time. One of them is both insanely exciting and frustrating. With this in mind, I have a question for you, my readers:

How do you find common-ground with a few key persons who can't seem to agree with your perceived common good, how do you engage in rational, productive, solution-oriented banter, how do you get them to refute specific points you're making?

Is Beer the answer?

I've got 50 GMail Invites ...

... i'm aching to get rid of. gmail me at frenchy if you want one.

The Sorry State of Broadband. Municipalities to the Rescue

Last night i finally got around to put into words my frustrations as a broadband consumer. If you share these frustration, please, do spread the word, let your lawmakers know.

A Bleep on News.com, w00t!!! :)

lookie at the bottom of this page.