Category: Interesting

We used to always get a small-ish phone book from other companies, but I always used the big ol’ Dex phone book as it was more complete, had more local info, etc … . The small ones I’d either throw away or put in the trunk of my car in case I needed it.

Now I get my Qwest/Dex/Whatever phone book today, and now they’re bundling a small phone book with it. (I also noticed that they printed an advertisement directly on the bottom side of the book, on to the side of the pages — I’m sure that ad was cheap.) I wondered if this was some sort of supplemental phone book with more info, but no: It’s just another phone book for people to keep around that has less extraneous stuff in it and Bend is just the latest market to get one.

Apparently the radio frequency used by garage door openers is owned by the U.S. Military and always has been. The Military has long allowed garage door opener manufacturers to use it without problems, but the FCC says the Military may be taking the frequency back. Full Story with link to FCC letter. Thanks Greg for the link.

An interesting theory how former HP/Compaq CEO Carly Fiorina was done in by her inability to understand branding.

I personally haven’t used Bloglines, but have heard from a lot of people who do and like it. I wonder how this news will affect them?

Well, sort of. Great story, just the same.

Thanks Barney for the link.

We all know this has probably happened in other Presidential administrations, but here’s the latest example:

The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is “committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers.” It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as “bringing the conservative message to America.”

Thanks Barn for the link.

Update on 2/13: This sums up the whole situation pretty well.

I mentioned earlier how the U.S.’s new education secretary denounced PBS spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters. The producers of the show at WGBH, thanks to a great deal of public support, have decided that, despite PBS not distributing it, they’re going to release the show to any public TV station that wants it. OPB plans on broadcasting it.

I greatly respect OPB for airing this, however, they’ve decided to run the episodes on Sunday February 6 at 10:30pm and Tuesday, February 8 at 4:30am — two of the worst times imaginable for a kid’s show (the usual episodes of “Postcards From Buster” run weekdays at 3:30pm and Saturdays at 8am). I commend them for running the episodes, but it’s pointless if you’re not doing it at a time where a kid won’t even see it. Even with its brief exploration into lesbianism, it’s still a children’s show, folks.

Just a note: I saw this link last week, had it sent to me by a dozen folks, but really didn’t feel motivated to post it because I didn’t want to give Nazi’s any more publicity than necessery. If they want to clean up roads around Salem, that’s fine, just don’t expect me to publicize their good deed.

But since I’ve gotten that link a hundred times, there you go. The signs saying that the “American Nazi Party” is in charge of cleaning up that road have since disappeared, but not before someone put up a sign that says “only picks up white trash.” I also heard some folks saying they were going to dump all their garbage on that street if the Nazis were going to be in charge of cleaning it up.

Link from everybody, but I first saw it on Rob’s site.