WriteLarge.com

My friend Ryanne from The Watertown Daily Times.

An observation: I realized what it is that's different about the Wii and the PS3. It's the controllers. The controller on the Wii sucks. Yeah, that's right. I _hate_ the Wiimote. In Nintendo's rush to break into the mainstream -- which they seem poised to do, if they could ever put enough consoles in the stores-- they developed and embraced a new paradigm in human/console interface devices. And I don't think the new Paradigm was warranted.
The Sixaxis controller, (Read: Dualshock 3) is a friendly, familiar pal that, with the exception of the pointing features of the Wiimote, does everything that the Wiimote does.
When I sit down with the Wiimote, I'm holding a 'mote. I'm preparing to interact with a console. Keeping it pointed and configured toward the screen is often a big part of what I'm doing with it. Don't get me started on the awkward mess that is the numb-chuck. I don't need a remote that I can't run one-handed.
The fundamental problem with the remote is one of responsiveness. When the wiimote controls are based on arbitrary arm movements, there is going to be a certain degree of vagueness in the interaction because of the variation in rooms, sizes, and arms. Whereas, pressing "triangle" to swing high and "square" to swing low is pretty concrete.
It's that concreteness that makes the Sixaxis a better controller. It's not vague, it's a "precision tool." My controller should be part of my hand, not something I'm holding on to. The Wiimote hasn't made the leap to intuitive friendly extension of my hand yet. It's gimmicky and unnecessarily imprecise.

Sometimes it amazes me that spam works, but I covered a local police beat long enough to know that it works pretty well. People almost seem energetic to fritter away their money and personal data on some kind of too-good-to-be true email promising easy riches with minimal investment.

Case in point:

If you think that the IRS is sending you this email, you've not really dealt with the IRS, have you? But let's dissect some of the telltale signs that this might not be a legitimate

1. The IRS does not ask for personal identifying or financial information via unsolicited e-mail.

2. The IRS probably doesn't need a special URL like "Scooby.co.uk" to improve its viability in search engine results. I think "IRS.GOV" probably serves its needs just fine. Dot-GOV sites tend to have mad Google juice.

3. Think about it. Dot-Co.UK is a UNITED KINGDOM address. I mean, I know the Airforce does most of it's business in Euros now, but I think the IRS probably keeps most of it's data farms on US soil, and in the hands of a US domain.

4. See the little copyright statement at the bottom? Not only is it totally unnecessary, (you don't need to state a copyright to have one), but the U.S. government doesn't _have_ a copyright.

5. The authors are missing a Comma between "activity" and "we" in the second line. That's just being picky, sure, but we've seen a good number of IRS forms. Most of them are grammatically accurate.

Bottom line is this, friends. Don't read your spam. Just throw it out. Don't read it, don't click it, and don't respond to it. Nothing good has ever just wandered into your inbox. Think of your email address as a coiled snake, ready to bite you at any second.

One of the great cool things about outsourcing webhosting to third parties the way I do is that when my own hosting takes a dump, as happened to me in December, you don't necessarily lose all your organic web presence because the original, 3rd-party host service that I was using still maintains it's data.

And Since most, if not all, of my 3-rd party hosting services have a social component, they also generate referrals. (Up until my old blog died, Scribd was like my No. 4 referrer.)

Scribd, the document storage hand hosting social network, also includes a fantastic amount of meta data with it's hosting services.

My "Origins of Shame" story, the one about Super-anti-hero Gordy McPharpenstien, has been up there since March 24, 2007, and has quietly been garnering a rather entertaining collection of organic search results, which I've listed here behind the cut.

I mean, if some of these hits don't make you want to read the story, I don't know what will.

Over the weekend, I had a heated discussion with some young fellows about the nature and character of Johnny Cash. I thought it would be important to set the record straight.  I do not dislike Johnny Cash, nor do I consider him a minor deity who graced us with a gravely magic voice. He was a man. Like Elvis. Who recorded a few great songs and a lot of mediocre ones. Like Elvis.

I hung my Head is one of my favorites at the moment. Even though it's technically a Police song, I Hung my Head is pure Cash. It's a story about a regretful incident bringing a sad end to an otherwise regretful life. Like Elvis'.

Cash was at his best when he was singing like a palpable answer to Tex Ritter, case in point, the folk ballad "Same Hall." Imagine if all of  Blood in the Saddle had been performed by Johnny Cash? Awesome, that's what you're Imagining-- pure awesome.

Today is a very special day on Nintendo's Virtual Console, as Bubble Bobble has been released to the awaiting masses.

I can't tell you the fond memories I have of playing Bubble Bobble with my brother, mostly because he told me over Christmas that he does not/will not authorize the use of his likeness for use on the Internet. So Instead, I'll tell you about the fond memories I have of playing Bubble Bobble with my imaginary brother whose name happens to be Red No. 5.

Red No. 5 and I played Bubble Bobble so much that Red No. 5's cockatiel learned the theme song. So that when the game was on or off, it would sing that catchy little ditty. Over and over again. Through all 112 levels. and again through the next 112.

Years later, I would program my first polytonal cell phone to play the Bubble Bobble theme whenever Red No. 5 would call. And When I showed it to my sister, she screamed and told me, "Stop. Don't play that song! Oh! That song!" The she fell to the floor and started shaking and a flood of water wooshed from the sky and swept her out of the frame and set her at the top of the screen. Talk about surreal. Then she ate the last Zen-chan and all our leftover bubbles became pickles. It was awesome.

Anyway, Red No. 5 and I had a great time playing Bubble Bobble as kids. We played it a lot. He was pretty good at it, and I think it was more than just because he played with the NES advantage. That kid played with power.

The recent upgrade/merge of Google reader/ Google talk has Google back in the anti-privacy spotlight.

You can smell it in the air: The technoratti are starting to turn on Google. It's been happening for a long time. The tinfoil hat crowd has long decried Google as a major threat to privacy and sneakiness. People have been hating on G-mail since before it was publicly available.  Fake Steve Jobs is calling out Google's bumbling PR tactics.

But here's the thing: Google offers great products in exchange for the ability to spy on us. There is no RSS reader that compares to Google Reader. Gmail's freedom with non-web access makes it the best free email on the market. Have you used Anaylitics? It's freaking incredible. In fact, one of Google's weakest products is it's search, but it remains the one of the best in the industry.  (For the 17 subjects they have indexed right now, I'm digging Mahalo, FYI. (And I couldn't be less of a fan of Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis-- But I digress.)

But watch. Like Microsoft before it, as the Tech Elite start to turn from Google, so too will the masses of angry 15-year-olds who make up the bulk of the mainstream internet. What happens then?

Today I'm going to stream the birdcage via Ustream.tv.
Please Enjoy BeepCam!

Update:
The WebCam has been relocated to writelarge.com/webcam. Look at the Navigation Links in the top of the right column and click: WebCam.
You Livejournalers probably couldn't see the embedded movie player anyhoo. Head over to writelarge.

Stolen from the Best Week Ever.

This is fantastic. It's part of a "workplace safety ad campaign in Canada. Oh, those awesome Canadians. You must visit http://prevent-it.ca/ and enjoy the cartoon drawing of a man with a bloody stump instead of a hand.