Mango Apricot Guacamole
ouch!
Are we living in a designer universe? I know it's in the Telegraph, but Gribbin is a serious guy, and it's just a thought piece anyway. Fun to think about and I suspect this is basically the case.
i know this has made the rounds many times already but worth another watch

kittens inspired by kittens
MPEG LA announced today that websites streaming free H.264 video will be able to do so royalty free forever:
MPEG LA is announcing today that it will continue to offer a royalty-free license for the H.264 video codec for video sites that offer free video streams to consumers “during the entire life of this (l)icense.” In other words: Web sites like YouTube will be free to use H.264 for its streams without having to fear they’re eventually going to have to pay massive royalties to MPEG LA.

The company, which has assembled a patent pool for H.264 patents, had previously said that it would offer H.264 streaming for free until 2016. That announcement was met with skepticism, with Mozilla CEO John Lilly at the time tweeting that this was “like 5 more years of free to lock you in 4ever.”
This still doesn't solve all the worries, but it's certainly a nice step and removes the most wild speculation from the equation (e.g. "I won't be able to put video I shot with my h.264 camera onto my personal website and show it to my friends without paying MPEG LA!")
Laying railroad tracks.
Teledystopia
Le Monde du Wylie....

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/08/foam_fan_wylie_dufresne

_thinks.html#ooid=tzeDJvMTrIAvpEywXXD1IY78cKaoSSTv

sdb
WTF? Motorola buys 280 North, creators of the Cappuccino web framework which includes the very Apple-esque programming language Objective-J (a play on Apple's Obective-C language.) Cappuccino is a very cool way to write web applications. I think Apple missed the boat here on an obviously good fit. Hopefully Motorola will be a good steward - they might really have something here for developing their own flavor of Android (or just for writing apps that run under Andriod.) It just strikes me as a strange (but good!) move by Motorola.
I know Steve has told this story, but have we ever seen the video?

The dirty little secret about Google Android

tl;dr: Android is ceding control back to carriers.
tv hat
pls explain canning and pickling
smokey fungi
What could go wrong? Pavlovsk seed bank faces destruction?
Pretty goofy, but holy cow, yoyo freestyle world champion.
had to pay a long term debt for grand generosity paid to me so table for two @ kurumazushi.....the famed sushi master of masters on 47th st in an office building on the 2nd floor, its a playpen for the rich or the crazy days of expence accounts if you want to eat what came in today.....i learned there that $15 toro is days old and/or lower grade, still amazing to eat but the super A+ and just off the plane is $40, $50 and above a slice depending on location

my dept is paid, the meal lasted 1 1/2 hours and it was apox 55 pieces each, and while art, it cost the same as an art piece but nothing compaired to the generousity of my guest over the last 25 years.....

p.s. we did it sans wine/sake/beer as my pal has gone sober, could only imagine what the bill w/b, and honestly I would have been fine (food quality wise) w/ paying 1/3 of what we spent at Bar Masa but that would not have payed the debt
dan barber of stone barns
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html
No Shit -- They're Competitors
The Singularity Will Not Be a Webinar
The clock is ticking for iPad competitors -- giving Apple a 1 year head start is poor strategy
NAB & RIAA v. CES & sanity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UXlL0FIF9Q&feature=player_embedded

spoof in use
Mosque-gate