If any world leader of recent times has deserved to die for crimes against humanity, Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq, topped the list. And now he’s been executed by hanging. A fitting end. This is the best news out of Iraq in 2006.
And the party begins:
The New York Times has released an application called the Times Reader. This application attempts to emulate the look and easy accessibility of an actual newspaper. It’s available for download now.
Though it’s just in beta, I found the experience quite pleasant. After registering for the free service, I downloaded the application (requires Windows XP and it installs Microsoft .NET 3.0 software) and read a few of the Times’ articles for the day including a detailed story about China’s leaders and their stance on the nation becoming a global power, an article about a new type of keyboard, and an article covering the pros and cons of cell phone insurance.
The New York Times Reader viewing the Technology section
It has several benefits compared to a standard news site or aggregator. The application enables the paper to maintain its typical look, feel, and layout on a computer screen. It does this while also providing enhanced abilities such as adjustable font sizes, links to external websites, and easy navigation to any section of the paper. Of benefit to the NYT is their ability to control the layout and sizing of the advertisements which obviously fund the service.
Another nice feature for the user is the ability to schedule updates. You can have it sync to the server and download the latest articles once a day. In addition to this, it can grab new stores on an interval you set (30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes).
If you’re able to run this application and our looking for a bit more news and depth than the Drudge Report can give you, or perhaps you can’t afford a real newspaper, this would be a great application for you to give a try.
Tower Records exists no more. The well-known music and record store has met its demise. It’s been in bankruptcy for quite a while, has now been auctioned off for $134.3 million, and will be liquidated immediately. (Source: AP.net)
This sucks.
I haven’t bought many albums from Tower Records because I don’t have any locations near me, but the few times I’ve been to Tower Records are quite memorable.
The first time was when I was in London, England, in the summer of 2000. My family and I were at a Tower store there. I didn’t have any cash on me, so I used an ATM machine to withdraw some British pounds (which actually took my account balance negative I found out later). I went inside and bought the brilliant green’s self-titled album. This was a huge deal for me because it was my first Japanese music purchase. Also, it’s a good album that I listened to many, many times over the next three years. I’ve still got the album now.
My second memorable visit to Tower Records was at its store in Utsunomiya, Japan, during the summer of 2002. I listened to many CDs at its kiosks on that day. Listening to American music helped remind me of home and my life during the two months I was in the country. I ended up buying MxPx’s compilation album “Ten Years and Running” featuring the best hits from their 10 years as a band. I rocked out to “GSF,” “Chick Magnet,” and “Move to Bremerton” all summer long.
Those are the two big memories. I believe we also drove by Tower Records when I was in L.A. for Spring Break in 2005 with Phil and Varv. It may have even been the store they in West Hollywood, California, that’s featured in the Wikipedia article (the image also attached to this post).
It is unfortunate this has happened, but this is the state of the modern recording industry. The good parts die, yet the record labels remain the same.
Tower Records, you will be missed.
If you haven’t heard yet, a man has been arrested in Thailand in connection to the JonBenet case. You know it has to be a big deal if it has a 60 point font on the Drudge Report. Wait a sec… Drudge always has huge headlines.
The AP has the story. There’s going to be a press conference in the morning, but you can expect all sorts of coverage. The press will be obsessing over this for a few weeks at least.
Honestly, hearing this news shocked me. I didn’t think I was being lied to, but I didn’t believe it at first either. I’m curious to see what details come out.
From another AP article:
“He killed the girl by accident,” Immigration Police chief Lieutenant-General Suwat Tumroungsiskul told reporters after primary school teacher John Mark Karr, 41, was interrogated a day after his arrest in Bangkok.“They fell in love with each other. She was very beautiful. So he kidnapped her and killed her by accident,” Suwat said.
Totally messed up. In any case, he’s going to be charged with with murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault.
If he’s guilty, he should fry.
For those of you who use Blogger, you may be interested to know that there’s a new beta version available. I don’t know what all the features are (the beta page lists them all), but it looks like there’s some new AJAX code running parts of the site in addition to other features meant to make it easier to edit the appearance of your site, add tags to your posts, and control who can read your posts. Not a bad upgrade at all.
However, if you use Safari (Jake, I’m talking to you), it won’t work. Yet.
