I went to the effort to copy/paste nice album art for Windows Media player for each of the mixed tapes (they only come with Adobe Reader art for printing) so I thought I might as well share them:
Download and use with AV Soft Album Art Checker.
And for those of you who are curious… the Mercedes-Benz mixed tapes work just fine in a Volvo station wagon (or other car of your choice).
… you just keep yours.
A free upgrade to business class for my flight back from New York.
This is a great specialty to look for in your podiatrist.
I love this quote from an interview with Richard Pryor on NPR’s Fresh Aire. Mr. Pryor was talking about dealing with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), he said that his disease was a blessing and joked about it in his routines. In the interview he said:
Life to me was like… not supposed to make sense, ’cause, hey, it’s I don’t care how you slice it, you ain’t getting out alive, so enjoy as much as you can.
Richard Pryor died this month at the age of 65, his wife said he was joking right up until the and and died with a smile on his face.
Once again I’m humbled by the strength of others. A tip of the hat to you Mr. Pryor, I’m sure you watching us and still laughing.
When I made the choice between smugmug and Phanfare one thing I found I missed was the ability to filter my pictures by year taken. To my delight, smugmug added this feature shortly after I joined. The feature is currently hidden and considered beta, but it works quite well – the only bug I’ve found is it got confused about a picture I stamped as being taken in 1959 (seems they weren’t expecting dates that old… shocker).
If you want a nifty timeline on your smugmug page, here’s how to do it:
That’s it, now you have a nifty timeline on your homepage.
Do your children like to wait in line and get hassled by disgruntled minimum-wage government employees? The perfect toy has arrived just in time for this holiday season: the Playmobile security check-in play set.
This toy comes with an x-ray machine, metal detector, scanning wand, guards, a passenger and, of course, two guns. Rookie traveler with Texas-sized belt-buckle, pocket knife, cell phone, nail clippers and briefcase (with laptop and boarding pass still inside) sold separately.
The oft-romanticized Christmas truce of 1914 has lost its final witness. Alfred Anderson was thought to be the last living veteran of the famed yule truce when German and British soldiers sang carols, exchanged gifts and, according to some reports, played a game of soccer.
Alfred Anderson was 109 years old.
British and German soldiers fraternize – Christmas 1914
I had no idea who this man was before today, but his association with the legendary truce makes me a bit sad at his passing.
From BBC News:
Prince Charles has paid tribute to Scotland’s oldest man and the country’s longest serving veteran of World War I, who has died at the age of 109.
Alfred Anderson, who served with the 5th Battalion the Black Watch, died in a nursing home in Angus.
Mercedes-Benz Mixed Tape 9 is out along with some other interesting news: MB is branching out from the music business into the spoken word. Early December Mercedes will publish its first volume of text tracks for download. Billed as “Challenging literature for mobile people, young authors read by well known voices” it should provide a bit of variety to your morning commute. We can only hope the right type of people download these audio tracks… plenty of people in California have enough trouble driving as it is… throwing challenging literature into the mix could create a tremendous road hazard.
Mercedes-Benz text tracks, think of it as Mercedes-Benz Mixed Audio Books.
Addendum: Small print on the back of the cover for MBMT9 indicates that volume 10 will be available on 12/13/2005 at http://www.mercedes-benz.com/mixedtape/ … mark your calendars.
Over a year ago I started trying to find a photo sharing site. Now, many moons later, I have finally narrowed down my search and chosen the perfect service… all three of them.
My criteria:
After years of running my own server off my DSL line at home I finally came to the realization that it would be cheaper to pay a web hosting service and my site would be tremendously faster. Outsourcing had one big negative: I no longer had unlimited photo storage (and I love to upload photos).
Here’s what I needed from a photo sharing service:
I also was hoping for the following features:
The added bonus:
I harp on this a lot… BACK UP YOUR CRAP!!!!!
By picking a photosharing site with unlimited storage you are protecting yourself from the inevitable time when your computer will crash. Think about it: you don’t have negatives anymore. If your computer crashes, you will loose all your pictures. That’s a terrible risk to take with your best memories.
The site:
Well, there isn’t just one site, there are three. The one that will work best for you will depend upon your personality, preferences and, quite likely, your friends. For ease of selection I have arbitrarily divided the world into three groups:
The best social site:
The coolest features in Flickr revolve around tagging and sharing of pictures. You can add comments to friend’s pictures and even annotate specific regions of a picture (this is great for labeling people in a picture or pointing out that a friend’s fly is open). A strong social bent makes this service perfect for the high school/college crowd, at $25 a year for unlimited pictures (upload bandwidth is throttled) Flickr is also the least expensive (so it won’t cut to deep into Pablo’s beer budget).
The best everyman site:
My absolute favorite feature of Phanfare is how quickly a gallery is uploaded and posted to your site. The trick is they use the desktop application to resize the picture before it’s uploaded to the web site, and later they upload the full-sized image in the background. Phanfare also has the best support for videos and the largest range of image formats. For $50 a year you get unlimited storage and a fast, easy interface.
The best power-user site:
I love the annotation features in Flickr and the ease of use of Phanfare… but when push came to shove I really wanted to have more customization than either of the two other services offered. Smugmug is also great for professional photographers as it allows users with a pro account to completely re-brand the site and charge for prints of their pictures. Adding more wood to the fire was Smugmug’s exposed APIs that allow third-party developers to expand the Smugmug functionality. There are three plans, all with unlimited storage: $39.95, $59.95 and $149.95 (note: use this coupon code and get $5 off – btqOt6mLHMm4Y).
Top Feature comparison:
| Feature | | | |
| Unlimited Storage | Yes (metered upload) | Yes | Yes |
| Custom UI | No | Preset Templates | Templates or CSS |
| Custom Domain | No | Yes | Yes (for pro only) |
| Per-gallery password | Yes (per picture) | Yes | Yes |
| Comments | Yes | No | Yes |
| RSS feeds | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Video clip support | No | QuickTime, MPEG and AVI | MPEG-1 only |
| Upload via e-mail | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Published API | Yes | No | Yes |
| What’s special | Annotating photos | Uploads in the background | Pros can sell pictures and set prices |
| Awards |
| ||
| Press/news | Flickr | Phanfare | Smugmug |
| Yearly cost | $24.95 | $54.95 | $39.95 to $149.95 |
But wait, there’s more:
If you go with either Flickr or Smugmug, be sure to go looking for software which uses the published APIs. Omar has created some handy tools for Smugmug and there are also nifty tools for Flickr.
As a bonus, both Flickr and Smugmug support geotagged pictures… take note travelers, this is a killer feature.
My personal verdict:
What’d I pick? I was torn between Phanfare and Smugmug. Phanfare supports many more image and video formats but is just not as customizable as Smugmug. I elected to miss out on the variety of file formats in favor of the customizability (it’s really all about looking good ;)).
Editor’s choice for 2004 & 2005
Top rated site for 2005