Friday, August 17, 2007

Skype

I love the news media, really I do. I love how there are 10 million opinions for a single story. I am a Skype user (great chat/telephony program Skype.com. I'm reading Google News this afternoon to do some last minute prep for the weekend shows I produce and a tech story catches my eye. Apparenetly in the past 24 hours Skype has been having a lot of difficulty with a large volume of users in mostly Asia and Europe (mine hasn't had any problems). In the past 24 hours (where Skype on their blog has promised that it would be resolved in that period) the critics have come out with articles entitled "Skype outage: An unprecedented wake-up call" or "Skype Experiences Growing Pains." Heaven forbid that a company have a problem. The articles complain about how the businesses were stranded and that there was no customer support complaint system with skype. Give me a break! It's an online internet chat program. You don't see tons of articles about AIM when it goes down for long periods of time. The sentiment I seem to be reading from the critics is that Skype should have known better and that because of this glitch there are tons of problems coming their way. Like competition, right because Yahoo! Messanger and AIM are not already established and have introduced and failed with voice? People just don't think. RRRRR....I like Skype, I would be a little frustrated if it went down but I think I could probably get over it, even if I had a business I would probably be ok, I mean there is still oh, email, other messaging programs, cell phones, landlines...ummm..fill in the _________ with some other piece of technology that communicates. Just one persons opinion

Strange!!!!

Ok, so I listen to too much radio. Today I was out and about listening to 105.1 The Buzz in Portland (KRSK 1051thebuzz.com) and Daria, Mitch and Producer Ted discuss spanking when they got one of those calls that you wonder why on earth A: they did the thing they did, B: they are willing to admit it. So this woman calls up and has a story to tell about her wedding day...and how she received a spanking from her father. It turns out that she was drunk after her bachelorette party and threw up all over his brand new car that was sitting in the driveway. The obvious question from Mitch was something akin to asking if she had been spanked on the wedding night as well as the wedding day. Her response was that she didn't remember that. OK, this makes no sense. The first time she was drunk I can kind of understand, although I'm really not sure what the draw to drinking so much alcohol that you can't remember what happened, but I digress. The second thing I don't get...WHY WOULD YOU GET DRUNK AT YOUR WEDDING? It's kind of an important event if you ask me. Just my opinion, or lack of understanding, take your pick.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Crazy?!

Ok, sometimes there is a story that just makes you go "you've got to be kidding me?" There are people out there who are so nuts and yet still being taken seriously. Take for example Jonathan Lee Riches, who claims that Micheal Vick (yes, that Michael Vick) stole two of his dogs and used them in dog fighting. Secondly he claims that Vick sold said dogs to buy Iranian missles. The courts of course have had to "recieve" the handwritten, poorly spelled and gramatarized document. There is a pdf file of the document in the Foxnews.com story (oh, don't give me that look...it's just Fox...they aren't all bad). This story is just nuts...oh and the amount of the lawsuit: "$63,000,000,000 billion dollars". That amount is deliverable to the front doors of the prison that Riches is currently housed in via "'UPS' United States Parcel Service" (for those of you who don't know UPS is United Parcel Service). Yet another reason for tort laws...If this sees the light of day I'm not sure what I'll do. That's all I've got for now.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Side-By-Side

Ok, so I'm avoiding homework right noww (it's summer people it's what I do). But I'm sitting here watching ABC which is currently airing IndyCar and they are doing something that I have never seen before but is an extremely cool idea. ESPN (on ABC) is running something they call side-by-side, which is basically the event on the left side of the screen and the commercials on the right. It means that while you can't hear the race you can still be watching it. What an idea for live events! Let's think ahead to what this could be used for. No more weird breaks during football, hockey, basketball, NASCAR, F-1, IndyCar or any other live event that it is hard to break from. I think it is a very cool idea. It means the commercials still run and they are heard but you can still watch the live event. Maybe ESPN has been doing this for a while, I don't get cable so I don't know. They are also only able to put it on during the network breaks, when they show local spots they can't do side-by-side but locals only occur once or twice an hour. I'm also thinking that this could come in very handy during the Olympics. How about side by side double events? So, NBC doesn't want to carry all the Olympic events well this is a way they can. They can run their normal programming on the right window and carry the Olympics live on the right side, or the other way around. There are some very cool implications in my opinion. What do you think? Comment, email, you know how!