Xbox and 802.11. More info on Broadband Reportsforums. Thanks Adrian.

Windows Movie Maker Beta. Finally downloaded this and started playing with. The pros – lots easier to use and less buggy than a lot of the shovelware you find with vidcap cards and with systems. A huge con– it is impossible to discern what codecs it is using, or to force it to use a particular codec. I want to share a move with some folks over the web, and they are using unknown systems. How can I pick the exact codec I want, how can I pick the most compatible cross platform codec? If I want to force it to use DivX, how do I do that?

Sandy and Dave’s Report on the Broadband Home. This is a worthwhile read – http://BroadbandHomeCentral.com/report. Good articles this month on ip transport vs mpeg transport, msft smart displays, digital radio, etc.

Java and .Net both a disaster. Edwin discusses this on the Collaxa site. I agree with the tenor of his thoughts – people need to do smaller, more incremental development. I also think the platforms are just too complex – we need a simpler platform for the next generation of apps, one that a developer can get their head around in a day with minimum expense.

Ohio State “Fans”. Kevin is upset about the amoral and dangerous actions of some people in Columbus celebrating the Ohio State win. It upsets me too. The university has spoken out, Coach Tressel should speak out against if he hasn’t, and the players should as well.

I don’t think this behaviour is unique to Columbus – I am sure that, had Michigan won, some people would have taken the opportunity to misbehave in Detroit – some of the citizenry there have proven themselves to be adept at misbehaving every year around Halloween. And I note that of the 49 arrests so far, only 7 are students, and hopefully the bulk of the misdeeds will be seen to have been done by people not associated with the University.

But everyone should be made accountable for their actions, and the University and the members of the football program should be very vocal in denouncing this behaviour.

Outward Bound Auction. Went to the Outward Bound “Black Tie and Tennies” event last nite. What a hoot! Standard men’s attire – jacket and tie up top, shorts and hiking boots below. As soon as we got there, we all got harnesses and helmets. And for the first two hours, we were flying through the Convention Center on the zipline, rapelling down the walls, navigating rope bridges above the dining room, etc. Just great fun – it is hard to be stuffy when you are wearing a harness and helment, and people are flying over your head on the zipline screaming. Following the fun we had the standard silent auction, dinner, and live auction, proceeds to beneift the Outward Bound scholarship program. Just a great time, highly recommended. L. and I scored some great gear in the grab bag portion of the auction and we met great people of course.

Xbox Live and 802.11a. I’m trying to figure out if this combo will work well. My xbox is in one of the few rooms in my house without a cat5 tap and so I want to use 802.11a to bridge the xbox onto the lan. I can find little info about this config on the net. Officially, Microsoft says it won’t support wireless connections. But on the xbox forums, many people have said they made it work. Many of them recommend the Linksys WET11 bridge. I’ll probably try that.

VCs and Blogs. I am pretty proud of the fact that Ignition has to be the leading VC when it comes to blog usage. Between my main site, my Halloween site, Tong’s personal site and geek site, and soon to come Zagula, Adrian, Steve, and Michelle, we have to be the most aggressive users of blogs in the VC community.

Probably goes back to our Microsoft training with its “dogfooding” mentality – if you expect customers to use this stuff, you better be willing to use it yourself. Tho Adrian is not a ‘soft alum and he has the same mentality – he led half of Ignition in building their own 802.11 cantennas!

I am proud of the fact that we are hands on and experimental. Shows through in the kinds of companies we invest in and how we work with them. And makes us much more able to do our job – Tong and I can do a much better job on software due diligence, having screwed around with PHP and Perl and MySQL and ASP ourselves.

Ohio State 14, Michigan 9. The Bucks find a way to win again. The defense gave up a lot of plays to Michigan, but no points in the second half. And the offense yet again did just enough to win. If Clarett was truly healthy, the Bucks might have dominated, but he did enough to help.

I’ve had email from my friend Bill congratulating already, and a call from the relatives in Ohio. Woo Hoo!

Scoop. Looks like Tong is taking an interest in Scoop. Might be the codebase to use for a school’s blog, good multiuser features. I’ll intro to some students next week…

Andy Seybold Award to Wildseed. Nice recognition for Wildseed -- Press Release

WildSeed, for the most innovative way to deliver content to a handset: Wildseed?s innovative smart skin concept enables customers to easily change their phones from one profile to another. For example, a customer can remove a ?Star Trek? smart skin and replace it with one that features content and services designed for business users. Smart skin will find its way into the market, complete with specific personalities, on phones built by Kyocera.

MyLifeBits. Kind of where I am trying to head with my blog – EVHEAD: it’s sharp!. Makes you think really hard about the format you store things in and how you name things.

BCS Calcs. Chris’s view on the math of the BCS. Which I totally get, that is the right mathematical explanation. But it just points out to me what a dumb system it is – it is just not sensible for a team to be “penalized” for playing and winning, relative to a team that is idle. Maybe Ohio State was too high last week, and are at their “right” level now, but the system is just goofy. It doesn’t really matter if Ohio State wins out but I am sure there are situations in which it would matter.

Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World. I’m enjoying this book and am just a chapter in. A good argument to start that the US has been far more active in foreign policy, and to far better effect, than we generally recognize. My favorite quote: “The United States, on such a view, is the Mr. Magoo of the world community.”

Seattle Blog Community. Lots of interesting blogs up here – eatonweb portal :: the original weblog directory. I see there is an attempt to have a meet tonight. Can’t do this one because of L’s birthday but will try to get to the next one. Or organize one.