As Far As I Can Tell

Lots of exciting things going on this week in Internet land. For one, Flickr has lowered their pricing and increased their offerings as a result of their acquisition by Yahoo!, so I bought a pro account. Flickr is probably the most exciting site on the web today, forging new ground with tagging capabilities, innovative use of AJAX to allow inline editing, and an extremely open API to dip into. So until I get my proper photo weblog set up you can check out my Flickr page.

Secondly, Adobe bought Macromedia! I’ve been saying the phrase “Adobe Flash” and “Adobe Dreamweaver” in my head all week and it’s freaking me out. Will this end up being a good thing? Maybe, but only maybe.

Third, Skype, an online telephone application, now allows you to have a phone number. They already let you call regular phones from your computer but now Skype users can receive calls like anybody else. The people you’re talking to never even need to know it’s not a regular phone. Plus, you can choose where you want the phone number to be from and get to pick three of them.

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Spring is finally kicking in, though perhaps a bit earlier than it should. Yesterday I was talking with Meredith about how one of the reasons it’s hard to get people rilled up about global warming is that in the short term it’s symptoms are seen as “nice” side effects. Being warm earlier in the year and seeing flowers bloom a month before they should tends to make people smile after a winter that threatened to never end. It’s an interesting thing to think about because I’m sure there are other situations where positive short-term effects blind people from longer term vision.

Whether the current temperature is bad news or good I’m happy I’m riding my moped again. Luckily it started right up with no more work than mixing a tank of gas. This year I’ll be continuing my moped repair method of not tinkering with anything until it breaks. Planning for Moped BBQ 11 has begun and I need to get busy with the t-shirts and promo.

Slow down summer, I need to savor this one.

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The Glockenspiel player for Damien Jurado last night at the Rocket Star.