* Mitch Ratcliffe points to NY Times article on borrowing billions to allow private SS investments. This does just seem nutty, we are already incredibly underfunded on SS commitments, borrowing even more doesn’t seem to be the path to fixing SS. * From gadgetopia, the velocity of wikipedia. Fascinating display of the power of openness and community. Competing against efforts like this must be painful. * Outsourcing to rural america. * How to pitch into the long tail of bloggers * Oprah’s favorite things list. I always find this show fascinating. The mania of the audience, the business behind the placements. Great theater and great business.

* Software I’ve tried – from Scoble, the cleartype tuner, I had no idea I needed this; ID3-TagIt, hugely useful for cleaning up mp3s; Hector Protector – just plain odd, MSFT clearly has too much time on its collective hands. * Software I mean to try – Evernote -- looks nice, will it sync with my bberry or blog?; converting windows movie maker files to DV2; via thoughtsonthinking, a whole list of great software; Sanmelody – a better way to network files at home? * Interesting -- it’s almost 2005 and we are still using the fat filesystem on consumer devices.

Hey at least they had power and hot water at their hotel – Michigan upset at dog sniffing. If this is the worst stunt they had to endure, it was a pretty good welcome I’d say.

Wow I didn’t know the Buckeyes were so dominant…“Ohio State is 26-3-1 against Big 12 teams and 4-0 against the Big 12 in bowl games. OSU defeated Oklahoma in the 1977 Cotton Bowl, Texas A &M in the 1987 Cotton and 1998 Sugar Bowls and Kansas State in the 2004 Fiesta Bowl.”…from the Dispatch (sub reqd).

* “But then they went and wiped out a whole season’s worth of disappointment in one glorious afternoon by spanking the Ugly Hats, 37-21.” * “But there really is only one game on Ohio State’s schedule and that’s the Michigan Game. There are 10 scheduled pre-season games before the actual season starts.”

UPDATE: OSU officially headed to the Alamo Bowl. Possible opponents – Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Texas (longshot). Hard to believe that OSU has never played Texas, tho that will be remedied next year with the start of a home and away series.

* Rich is trying to convert WMAs to MP3s… * … when he is not busy synching files… * … or jamming apps onto his new phone… * … or decompressing files. A digital renaissance man. * Andy is appealing us all to eke out a few more MPG while Martin is looking hard at biodiesel cars and starter kits. * The book gets another nice review and he provides another great, simple lesson about marketing – heck it is a general business and design lesson, not just a marketing lesson. * Cloudmark has a new anti-phishing effort and a trade-up program * And finally, stretching the definition of the Ignition family, Jerry has some great counsel for entrepreneurs seeking funding.

Look at my choices for TV watching:

* Akimbo service now available for MCE boxes, and Akimbo itself aggregates a lot of content. * How to stick rss and bittorrent together. Great tutorial to how to bind these together to find the content you want * An example use of bittorrent to find very targetted content of interest * Then I have the DVR/service choice – a comparison chart of many of the options; a claim that people are moving from tivo to comcast/msft. God forbid you have multiple pvr/service variants in your house (as I do), figuring out where Fox Sports Northwest is on any given box is hard. * Then of course there is game content. Xbox and xbox live; pc games on win mce with all their live components; and for extra fun phil has pointed me towards the mameox emulator for the xbox. * And finally DVDs and ripped DVDs.

How do I find what I want to watch or do at any given time? I am tired to hell of learning all the different program guides, search interfaces, etc. And it seems like the complexity is only going to grow for people as video downloads over IP (ala bittorrent) become easier and easier to do.

No answers here, just whining.

Despite my glow from the weekend’s results, I still have deep misgivings about the morality of college football. And I’ve gotten some nice email feedback from people – the hypocrisy in the game is so apparent – adults making nice livings off the back of young men’s efforts, young men who have few alternatives, no voice, and ultimately no power.

I don’t expect the system to change. Certainly not dramatically. But it’d be nice to see some gentle progress:

* I’d start with getting a baseline of data. The NCAA should do a random survey of players 5/10/15/20 years out of school and find out what help these players need or could have used. If we are going to direct more funds to these players we should have an idea about what they need. Absent this data tho… * I’d set up a pension plan for the players so that they and their kids can get a little something later in life. Might be as little today as a tuition plan for their kids. * I’d give a player lifetime tuition credit. The player can come back to the U at any time and take classes towards a bachelor’s degree. The cost is minimal and it could be a huge benefit. * The players need some representation in the decision process about the spending of the proceeds. Not sure how to do this but I don’t think it is right that the players have no voice at all today in how proceeds are spent. The fact that OSU can fund a huge number of varsity sports is nice and maybe that is the right thing, but maybe not – maybe the football players would vote not to fund the fencing, pistol, and riflery teams (real teams). * Certainly they should be allowed to leave school early like NBA players and play pro ball. It is ridiculous to force a young adult to go through the hoops of college if they have no interest or aptitude for college.

And a good point raised by a friend, the NFL should help fund these programs as well. The NFL has been getting a free farm system for years, there is no reason for this.

37-21.

Big 10 standings:

* S5 continues to improve – I love the idea of this, a completely hosted presentation app. I never know which machine I am using has which document, this would solve that for me. * What’s your phishing IQ – I test out a little too paranoid but I guess that is the right way to err. * Detecting digital image manipulation – great article, I am a little surprised that photographic evidence hasn’t come under full scale legal attack given the ease with which it can be manipulated. * DxO optics pro. It will be interesting to see if there is a way to separate image forgery from legitmate optics enhancement like this software.

* Via Furrygoat, a MAME emulator for MCE. Seems like MCE could become an interesting platform. * A review of BeyondTV in case MCE isn’t your cup of tea. My bet is every home ends up with a PC next to their TV. * Siemens sell Skype adapter for their cordless handsets. Once consumers can use mainstream handsets for VOIP calling, this market will explode. * Another way to bridge VOIP and mainstream handsets.

The home is just getting more complex…

Been thinking about cabin life…

* Two good coffee table books – The Getaway Home, Living Outside Inside. * Embedding solar power into roof tiles – fascinating development, every house should have this. * Kitchen Composters – great product for septic-system based houses.

OK the comcast dude dropped by and installed today. (A moment of hilarity as he insisted checking to see if my cable was properly grounded or not – a 10 minute tour of my wiring closet with both DirecTV and Comcast feeds in, and many feeds out, convinced him that he didn’t really want to dig into the grounding issue.)

First reactions – the UI is slightly cleaner than the older Comcast box I had. It is nice that they have hoisted HDTV content upto the main menu, it is way easier finding that content now. That is probably the biggest plus I’ve noticed so far. I can’t comment yet on season pass and other record functionality as I am waiting for the program guide to populate – why does it take so much longer than DirecTV.

The UI style is not very exciting – my 3 year old Tivo box still has a more compelling UI. Is this Comcast’s or Microsoft’s hand?

Setting the TV/Audio out settings requires you to enter a weird bios-like mode, totally outside of the normal ui and control environment, that is weird, and I had to do this as the box didn’t seem to default to reasonable HDTV settings.

Of course the huge feature is going to be recording of HD content.

* Will the iPod be the reason that cars finally get aux audio jacks or the equivalent open interface to their audio systems? The Monster iCruze looks like a good start. * The Griffin iPod voice recorder. I’ve liked everything I’ve gotten from Griffin. * PPT presentations on the iPod photo. Pretty straightforward, I’ll try at my next presentation.

* Despair Inc. OK I can’t imagine ever actually ordering any of these posters but they do crack me up. * The Air Force Pain Beam. OK I am not sure why I find this funny, says something sad about me. * Danny reminds me of the Paul is Dead mania. * Room Defender Sentry Turret. Man I would have loved one of these as a kid.

My sense of humour is pretty dark and aggressive this week.