Thursday’s StudioBriefing includes this nugget:

In one of numerous lawsuits filed on Wednesday, the MPAA referred to the Georgia Tech students only as “John Does,” but, the [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] said, another lawsuit charged that John Struna, of Sugar Hill, GA had downloaded three movies: Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid; Exorcist: The Beginning; and Alien Vs. Predator.

‘Twould be a total bummer for the vipers at the MPAA to file a lawsuit against you. Only makes matters worse when a major newspaper publishes evidence that you have truly shitty taste in movies…

Mr. Struna, my friend, I feel for you on both counts. Good luck.

Well, I had a variety of scenarios in my head as to how the meeting would go, and it turned out to match none of them.

I’ll update this post when I have definitive word (in about 6 hours). For now, I’m off to the Apple Store to look at shiny things.

Update [7:22p EDT]: Just heard. They passed. Chief concern: liquidity. They said they think I’m smart and the idea could make money, but they don’t think they could flip the company and get a bidding war started. Fair enough. I’m actually relieved, for reasons I may cover later. For now, I’m hungry.

The Wi-Fi here is free. That’s good. All hotels should have free broadband. Those who don’t should be mocked and ostracized, like those who would charge for cable.

Oh, and they should put hot chocolate in the rooms. Not everybody drinks tea and coffee.

That’s all for now. Wish me luck.

Last night, I spent some time flying over the city of Chicago, then a few moments later I hovered over Manhattan for a bit.

No, I haven’t gotten heavy into the hallucinogens: I was admiring Google Maps, now enhanced with zoomable satellite images (via Keyhole.) Enter an address, flip to satellite mode, and (if the city is big enough to warrant it) zoom in, drag the image around, and just have some fun. Makes TerraServer seem sadly outdated.

The fact that you can sit in your chair and recreate every bad spy movie you’ve ever seen, for free, is great fun.

I wouldn’t recommend using it for actual surveillance work, however, as the images have been, ahem, altered. Take this cropped view of the Casa Blanca:

Note the oddly flat, uniform color on the roof of the two buildings, particularly the amateur edges. There’s something up there that the government has decided we shouldn’t see. Missiles, maybe? Snipers? Freaky-cool satellite dishes? Perhaps (shudder) a hot tub?

Who knows. Guess we’ll have to hold out for Yahoo! UAV…

…you’re a salesperson’s nightmare when you have a fat folder stuffed with glossy brochures from all the major manufacturers, you’ve contacted every dealer within a 30 mile radius, downloaded and studied the PDF manuals for the products, responded to quotes with pointed comments on what the Internet vendors offer, and had nearly every one of your questions met with a “Well, I’m not sure if you can even do that…”

…you’re a nerd when you bring in your laptop, plug in and immediately enable a packet sniffer, quickly reverse-engineer the product’s protocol, then discuss in detail how you’re going to re-implement some of the features provided by the manufacturer in your own custom application, which, naturally, will slice, dice, whiten your teeth, freshen your breath…

…you’re a coward when another salesperson notices you’re vertically gifted and asks you if you only date tall girls, and you instantly reflect that you’re in a town of 4,400 and even though everyone’s nice and you don’t want to lie, it’s just easier to avoid the whole team pink thing and parry by mentioning how your mother jokes about all her kids marrying short people…

…you don’t have enough to do when all of the above is for buying a photocopier.

I have a few domain names with GoDaddy.com (terrible site, terrible commercials, but cheap as hell) so I’m on their mailing list. On Wednesday, I received a message with an inflammatory subject: “Federal Agency Nixes Your Right to Privacy.” Seems they’re in a huff because someone recommended against allowing “private registrations” for .us domains. Y-a-w-n.

I’d be more impressed with their indignation were it not for three facts:

1. This applies only to .us domains, and it seems to me a fair requirement that they be able to verify said users are actually in the U.S.,
2. GoDaddy makes a bundle on private registrations, so big surprise they think everyone should have them, and
3. At the bottom of this message urging me to visit their electronic petition, they include this note:
   You are receiving this email [...] because our records indicate you are a Go Daddy customer. If you feel you have received this email in error, please notify us at 14455 N. Hayden Rd, Ste. 219, Scottsdale, AZ 85260

It’s that last that really steams me. It’s bad enough that they’re spamming me to say they want to protect my privacy — then they say if I want them to stop, I should write this completely online-based company a letter. Please.

So I’m watching that show I hate to admit I watch, and suddenly there’s this big fish:

Which instantly reminds me of Wally, the crazy fish from Hastings Reef:

And that makes me think: 1) damn, that’s right, I’m actually a certified SCUBA diver now, and 2) that seems like forever ago! Did it even really happen?

By way of Gizmodo’s Shuffle Swimsuit Models for Charity article, I have learned of the “iPose” competition for, of all things, tsunami relief.

Now, I wouldn’t dare make generalizations about greeks, or undergrads, or even the fine academic traditions of Arizona universities. (I’m sure they’re wonderful.) I’m even willing to look past this weird fetishization of iPods shuffle.

Still, one small piece of advice: if your likeness is going to be placed on the Web for votes (see girls, guys) perhaps you might first want to make sure you don’t have any, um, unfortunate wetness in the crotch region:

Several years ago, I remember discovering a little shop at Oakbrook Center displaying cell phones by a company called PrimeCo. The phones weren’t particularly special, but one feature really caught my eye: at any time, you could select a command on the phone and be shown your current account balance.

Fast-forward to the present. PrimeCo is no more, and its domain name forwards to U.S. Cellular. They offer a similar balance feature: just dial #BAL, then choose 1 for English, then enter your 10-digit account number, then please hold while your account is being accessed, then… who the hell knows. I hung up.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Carriers are supposed to be able to provide a superior experience because they control every device that connects to their network. In fact, here in the U.S. their power is even greater because of the huge popularity of “free” phones provided with contracts.

Yet rather than use the power to demand better, more integrated hardware, they’re actually reducing functionality¹. That’s gotta stop, and then maybe they can take a look at how to actually improve the phone experience. There are plenty of obvious ones (standardized phone books that can be easily synched, menus that actually make sense, ringtones that don’t annoy the room) but let me also float my own idea: integrated voicemail.

What if your phone connected directly to your voice mailbox, using your screen to provide the information normally read to you? With a voice mail menu, you could see call information merged with your in-phone phonebook. Rather than hearing “Your callback number is 3..1..2..” you could see a list:

=Thursday 2:12p
Mom, Work  -  42s
=Wednesday 11:12a
Neff Cell - 1m12s

You could scroll up and down, highlight any message and choose “play” or “delete”. No need to navigate through voice-prompts and touchtones. See at a glance what it takes RoboGirl precious seconds to read out.

And, you know, make the carriers’ iron-fisted control actually work for you for a change.

¹ Multiple carriers are disabling Bluetooth wireless support in an effort to force users to transfer files (for a fee) over the cellular networks.

Awhile ago, I mentioned reading an article by Paul Graham called “How to Start a Startup.” After publishing the article a few weeks ago, Mr. Graham and others started a group to provide early-stage seed money to people who might want to create startups of their own. The initiative is called the Summer Founders Program, and for its inaugural summer the group received 223 applicants for 6-10 slots. (The announcements page helpfully notes “This means the SFP’s acceptance rate will be slightly lower than Harvard Medical School’s, so please don’t be discouraged if your proposal isn’t accepted.”)

The team of B-don and myself was one of those applicants, and I was thrilled to learn an hour ago that we’ve advanced to the next stage. This means that our chances have improved from 1 in 25 to even money. It also means I get a ticket to Boston for the interview process next weekend. I love Boston, so I’m trying to focus on the fact that a trip is reward enough (“It’s an honor just to be nominated.”) And it is, really, because the application process has really helped me to crystallize my thinking.

If we make the cut, it means a summer in Cambridge trying to turn the proposal into a product. If we don’t, well, I’m still pretty pleased we tried.

Last week Slashdot mentioned an X Windows upgrade that would allow for some OS X-level “eye candy” features for Linux. In describing one of the effects, the author wrote:

The wobbly window effect is mildly addictive. Kristian hasn’t gotten much work done since he wrote it. He (and now I) spends all day moving windows around and watching them settle.

(See link for video.)

This is a good thing? I understand that it’s a demo, and therefore devoid of any actual usefulness. I’m okay with that. But I’m not wild about the section later in the post that covers button styles. Do we really need buttons with swirls around them, or buttons that appear to be hand-drawn?

At least one Microsoft cheerleader seems to think so. After first pointing out the standard button that Windows users have come to expect (shown here in the 1.0, 3.0, ’95, and XP iterations):

…this dude gushes over the ability to create “a Flippin’ CD Button!”:

Now, I hate to sound like a curmudgeon here, but I don’t want my buttons to bounce, swirl, or dance. I don’t want my windows to wiggle. I don’t want to have to click odd, walking diskettes to select folders. I just want to do whatever I set out to do with the program, and be done with it.

Is that too much to ask?

Two things for the idea file this evening. For the first, let me quote from The 9/11 Commission Report:

29. Calls to American’s reservations office are routed to the first open line at one of several facilities, among them the center at Cary, N.C. … The call from Ong was received initially by Vanessa Minter and then taken over by Winston Sadler; realizing the urgency of the situation, he pushed an emergency button the simultaneously initiated a tape recording of the call and sent an alarm notifying Nydia Gonzalez, a supervisor, to pick up the line. Gonzalez was paged to respond to the alarm and joined the call a short time later. Only the first four minutes of the phone call between Ong and the reservations center (Minter, Sadler, and Gonzalez) was recorded because of the time limit of the recently installed system. [footnote 29, page 453 of printed edition (emphasis added)]

So the first idea is to fire whomever approved this ridiculous system. Is it not bizarre that your entire conversation with sales staff could be monitored (even when you’re on hold) but only 4 minutes of a bona fide emergency would be saved? This on a new system? The technology to do more is certainly available, and with digital phone systems is really quite cheap. I think it would be much smarter to just record all calls transferred to a supervisor as a matter of course. We make stockbrokers do it!

I’ve mentioned before that I think we should consider solutions to record cockpit chatter remotely, and if it’s done appropriately I think it’s still a good idea. A related idea would be to have planes send their GPS coordinates back at a set interval automatically.

Take, for example, any plane outfitted with Boeing’s Connexion wireless internet service. That plane maintains an Internet connection, so why not have it send GPS coordinates every 15 seconds (or other rate, as appropriate for minimizing search radius based upon speed)? True, it would be almost never used, but for those times a plane went missing, wouldn’t it be great to go to the server and pull up the last known location?

In both cases, the amount of data (and cost!) involved is truly negligible, but the insight gained could be life-saving.

From the “I wish I’d thought of that,” and, more importantly, the “I wish I could buy that” categories, may I present the SplashPad:

This is a mousepad-sized device which allows you to charge phones, PDAs, and the like wirelessly. Just plop your device on the pad, and it starts charging. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, I first heard about it some time ago and there appears to be no progress since (note how this image, from Splashpower.com, features the rather old Palm V.) I also predict that even when the product is viable, all sorts of OEMs will balk at paying a licensing fee.

Which is where my idea comes in: I think Splashpower should provide the pads to hotels at cost. That way, when people come visit and ask “what’s this plugged-in mousepad thingy in my room?” The staff can respond: “that’s a Splashpad, and it means you don’t have to pack all the transformers for your phone, digital camera, PDA…” Bam, watch how fast people look for phones that support it. Since phones have a roughly 18 mos. refresh cycle, you could be in serious business.

But whatever. I want one!

I figured I might see some creativity in response to my subject lines post, and I was not disappointed. Jesse opted for a subject of read this! there are words in it., and brother Jeff had fun with [eom].

But the lovely Cath deserves a special prize, because she just sent me a message where the entire text — all 1,884 characters — was in the subject line.

I didn’t even know you could do that.

I’ve just discovered that there’s a film listed in IMDb that’s called The Fuck Up. The discussion board predicts the title will be changed, but I’d love it if they don’t. (It’s not entirely unprecedented: in Ireland I saw a Danish film called Fucking Åmål, though in the UK/USA/Can. it became Show Me Love.)

Anyway, the IMDb post includes a rough plot outline, but I’m going to suggest some current events which would be adequately summarized with the same title.

There’s the Guns N’ Roses album that’s cost $13m and gets no closer to completion:

The process was drawn out even further after Mr. Rose hired two new musicians – the guitarist Buckethead, a virtuoso who wore a mannequin-like face mask and a KFC bucket on his head (picture)…

…He accompanied Buckethead on a jaunt to Disneyland when the guitarist was drifting toward quitting, several people involved recalled; then Buckethead announced he would be more comfortable working inside a chicken coop, so one was built for him in the studio, from wood planks and chicken wire.

That’s clearly a fuck-up. Another contender would have to be Congress, which is back to its old naming tricks with the PIRATE Act:

The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to 10 years for file sharing.

Ooh, Congress is often a tough act to follow in the fuck-up department. But hold the phone, we have a winner!

A federal lawsuit filed by several Navy SEALs and the wife of a special forces member claims the Associated Press violated copyright and privacy laws and endangered the servicemen’s lives by publishing photographs of them with Iraqi prisoners. …

The photos, distributed worldwide with a Dec. 3 story, appear to show the servicemen in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees and also what appear to be bloodied prisoners — one with a gun to his head.

Suing the Associated Press for copyright infringement for newsworthy photos obtained legitimately. Now, that, friends, is a masterful fuck-up!

Will the plaintiffs prevail? Have to wait for the film to find out, but I’m betting the AP will get off. If only they’d distributed the photos with P2P… Or perhaps if the SEALs had worn KFC bucket disguises…