Like some other well known schools, we shouldn’t be too depressed about our results this season – we are playing a tough schedule.

OK this guy spammed me with his blog articles but they turned out to be pretty interesting – Your Idea Isn’t Good Enough To Keep Secret, The Myth Of The Great Idea.  Good stuff.  I’ve always been puzzled by entrepreneurs who aren’t willing to be open with their ideas.  The smart guys I know are generally very open, they have new ideas every day, they know they can give away their ideas because they will always have new ones.  And they know it is all about execution, not ideas.

Phil points to Alan Steele:

Imagine the situation in which the release bucket is actually half-empty of features, that there is actually “spare time” in the release. … what would you do?

Naturally, you’d scramble to fill the release bucket with enough work from the 1700 programmer-decade queue to keep those developers busy for the next little while. Wrong. The correct answer is: Do Nothing. A half-empty release bucket is a golden opportunity for innovation….

I’m sure I’ll get one of both, but I have to agree – I have to have HD downloads or I won’t bother with the video service.  And I don’t have a subway ride to allow me to watch videos (though I admire the use of [removed site] to fill up the ipod).

Can I just download the FrontRow software for my mac mini?  Doesn’t seem like I can.  Bummer.

Per ABCNews.  Seems like the blood is in the water around AOL, something is going to happen with some partner.

Man wish I lived in Keller TX and could try out Verizon’s Fiber TV service.  Wonder when Qwest will get its act together, if ever.  And Comcast, well, their HD service sucks – lots of signal dropouts, a/v synch problems, etc.

This set of observers feels like Texas is just about ready to jump SC in the polls.

• Web2.0 mashup matrix.  OK i don’t really know what web2.0 is and I sure don’t know that all the tools and services in this matrix make it any clearer – but this is a way cool matrix of tools and services.  Found elicit via this matrix
• PC Mag free software review.  Haven’t read yet but usually some gems in here
• Tried out copilot over the weekend.  OK if you absolutely have no other way to remotely debug a machine, I guess this is OK.  And I admire their pricing model, it aligns exactly with users – a daily fee that is not outrageous.  But this thing is so sssssslllllllooooowwwww.  Use the built-in RDP tools in XP if you can, they are much faster.
• Myprogs.net – tagging applied to software.  Great way to find yet more crap to install on your system.
• Thread on using greasemonkey to mine microformats from web pages.  I watch this with anticipation.  Would be highly useful to be able to suck phone nums, addresses, events, etc from web pages.
• Phil on some new ambitious ajax apps – zimbro and meeba.  I don’t think the vast majority of people here at ignition would mind if we moved to an ajax mail client.  Everyone already uses OWA from home/the road – people rarely VPN in to use email anymore.  Airset worth looking at too.
• Free terabyte mail service.  Wow.

Testing out yet another blog posting tool – elicit from bingobangosoftware.  A very unique take on blog posting – very focused on helping semipro bloggers manage their posting rate and their affiliate income.  Easy to add affiliate links, easy to manage your stream of posts thru a calendaring interface.  I don’t know yet if I like the tool but I admire the inventiveness.

UPDATE: OK on initial testing some goods and bads:

* Good: the scheduler worked perfectly. You can create posts for arbitrary times and they will be posted at that time. I realize there are many other tools to do this, but the outlook-like calendar interface is very nice. * So-so: doesn’t respect mt text processing plugins like textile 2 – but has a full wysiwyg editor and html editor so maybe that is ok * Bad: doesn’t seem to post keywords correctly. Wraps the entry in tags. and most strangely, enters the post body in both the entry body and extended entry fields – not helpful!!

* via jkontherun. print your own graph paper. Nice for generating that odd piece of graph paper. * via tipmonkies, numsum – a hosted spreadsheet. * zipcode overlay mashup. Very handy.

I’m not a huge user of USB keys tho a lot of people are – lots of excitement about these keys evolving to contain your entire personalized computing environment.

I’d be more compelled to try using a key this way if a key was integrated into something I already have to carry – my blackberry/cellphone, my car key fob, my ipod.

Haven’t read much recently due to work, Halloween, football – but “The Kite Runner”:amazon grabbed me and held on.  Great great story with classic themes.  And great for a US citizen to read – really humanizes people in a part of the world that we need to learn more about.

* Jason on the future of the online job market. Right or wrong, it is smart to have some view of the future of your market. * Mark Maunder, another jobster blogger * Livemarks from Sourcelabs’ Alex Bosworth. Great great view of what content people are tagging. A great way to stay on top of hot content. * Phil keeps on expanding Berry 411 – now restaurant referals. Seems like the Judy’s Book folks should collaborate with Phil. * Also Phil has yoked Berry 411 to the google mobile reformatter. Amazing how Phil is making Berry 411 the best browser for the blackberry – all in his spare time. * johnza’s analysis of newsgator – newsgator seems to be doing a great job – great investment by brad feld * Hooper playing coy about MVNO investment.

Deployed all my audio systems this weekend – the 4 speaker thunder and lightning system near the door way, the greetings/music systems at each driveway entrance, the graveyard annex system, and the talking tree with voice mod box.  Tested all, sound all ok.

Deployed fog tubing as well.  Didn’t test fogger but it is ready to test tonight perhaps.

Next up – lighting and control cabling deployment.  By this weekend should have all the infrastructure deployed.

Good links from MOM (membership reqd)on hacking inexpensive motion sensors:

* How-to from Cowlacious (pdf) * Almost as good and not pdf – hacking a motion sensor * And from hauntedillinois