WizbangTech

New hopeful for this year's official Wizbang Spring Picnic and Softball Tournament band

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:15:59 -0500

See previous winner here.

Internet People

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:12:37 -0500

A song about internet memes. Sadly, I know almost all of these.

Introducing the zunePhone

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:55:31 -0500

[via]

Minesweeper: the movie

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:09:35 -0500

This video game to movies trend has just got to stop

Vimeo is so much better than YouTube

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:28:03 -0500

Reggie Watts: Lost in the Options from Jakob Lodwick and Vimeo.

Other than the dumb video on the home page, it's a much nicer experience. Plus, Vimeo is a home for videos made by the users, not just stolen from somebody else. Or videos timeshifted from television. Plus, the video quality appears far better than that on YouTube.

And, I've heard the workplace environment doesn't suck. Well, not all the time.

Now, if only I had a video camera or something. Like, talent.

[video via]

Movable Type 4.0 Release Candidate 2

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:12:28 -0500

We've covered this quite a bit, as we're really excited about the impending un-beta-ing of the latest version of Movable Type (the content management system that powers this site). Now those wacky Six Apart folks give us Movable Type 4.0 Release Candidate 2, with the requisite list of fixed stuff, and…okay, that's pretty much it.

So what? All I want is me some movably–typed goodness, and I want it now.

Who says Apple spends too much time on stuff that doesn't really matter?

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:46:40 -0500

Somebody got paid good money to think this up.

Read the instruction at Flickr.

This is the package for the paperclip to get the SIM card out for your iPhone.

This is completely real.

UPDATE: Now people are starting to rebel, and the hacker community has started an open source version. While it sounds promising, early on there's still some issues.

Slashdot launches Firehose

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:45:28 -0500

Slashdot gets into the social news scene with the public launch of Firehose:

The Slashdot Firehose is a collaborative system designed to allow users to assist our editors in the story selection process. The hose contains submissions, RSS Feeds, journals and Slashdot stories, each color-coded along the color spectrum to indicate popularity. Red is hot, violet is not. Try tagging and voting on the entries below, and by using the 'feedback' menus.

The news for nerds now has user–generated content like some of the other, much younger sites (*cough*Digg*cough*reddit*cough*). Pete Cashmore at Mashable! says bloggers drive traffic, but when did /. not bleed traffic?

It'll be interesting to see what goes on with this within the Slashdot users. The best part of the site isn't the stories, or even commentary, it's the users and their explanations. Lots of good old fashioned Digg–bashing down in the announcement story, such as this, and just plain old really funny, such as this.

This one's for you, Elton

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:57:11 -0500

This is what happens when you get the internet CLOSED DOWN.

Sir Elton John, internet idiot.

Hard times befall a once great cover band

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:07:09 -0500

Sad to see The Rock-afire Explosion lowering itself to doing Fergie songs. I guess it's 'cause times is tight, and we gots to do for me and mine.

The explanation video of this video is even better than the London Bridge video. They are really playing those instruments.

YouTube to begin filtering copyrighted material

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:37:40 -0500

This news from the Times Online. The timeline given by Google says they're on pace to start implementing the technology in September. What that means for you is that you'll lose that ability to post your "Lazy Sunday" videos faster than ever before. The MPAA and RIAA must be licking their chops.

Only a matter of time before we find out what'll happen to the underground videos that could come under the fire of overly–litigious lawyer types. It could spell the end for the very videos that made the site popular in the first place. Even with fair use, videos like this one could be gone by September (well, from YouTube, anyways).

Microsoft Works to become a free, ad-funded product

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:49:10 -0500

So says Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet.com:

Microsoft’s next version of its small-business/home productivity suite, due imminently, will be free and ad-funded.

That seems unequivocal, huh? It seems they can still make enough money just from ads to continue development of the product. That's probably how Google can afford to give away it's online office suite, Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Quick show of hands, how many of you actually knew Microsoft still make Works?

Anybody?

Apple sells 270,000 iPhones

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:11:58 -0500

Unlike some wild estimates that had the numbers up to 1,000,000 units sold, it appears Apple only sold 270,000 of the next–generation cell phone in the first weekend of sales. This is not, however, a bad thing, as Apple expected to sell its 1,000,000th unit in the next year. It still appears that they will meet that expectation.

What nobody was expecting was the other, non–iPhone news. During the Apple Financial Results conference call, they reported record revenue and profit. This in a period when iPhone sales wouldn't even register (as they only sold in three reporting days of the quarter). The big news of the day was that they shipped 1,764,000 Macintosh computers — the most in a quarter, ever.

They also sold 9,815,000 iPods in the quarter. Compare that to the relative poor market penetration of the Zune, only recently selling 1,000,000 units. Both sales of Macs and iPods are well over the sales from this time last year.

The goods elsewhere:

Apple - Quarter 3 - 2007 Financial Results [Apple]
Apple Reports Third Quarter Results [Apple]
Liveblogging the Apple earnings call [TUAW]

Movable Tweak: Movable Type 3 vs. Movable Type 4: A Modular Site Approach

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:35:41 -0500

It's no secret I'm a bit of news hound for all things Movable Type. So to say finding this from Movable Tweak would be a huge understatement. I can't tell you how many times I've been working in a template, and hated the fact that I was going to have to change 4 different other pages with the same information.

That's what made me interested in Movable Type 3 vs. Movable Type 4: A Modular Site Approach. The modular approach is what makes it simpler to design WordPress templates, and it looks like the Six Apart folks learned the lesson. For people looking to upgrade or make the switch, this is a good primer on the change in Movable Type philosophy.

Philippine prison does Thiller

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:41:38 -0500

This is what happens when you run out of blogging steam. Video posts. Thus, um, pretty much this whole week, then?

From YouTube, the home of all time–wasting.