It’s rude.

You see an image on someone’s web server that you’d like to use, and rather than make a copy of the image and host it on your own site (which may in and of itself be not-so-nice), you simply hotlink it – that is, make your <img> tag point directly to the site you found the image on, rather than hosting it yourself.

I found someone doing this with one of my images earlier this evening.

Suffice it to say, there’s an interesting image now being served up to the viewers of the other site:

Ok, so everyone’s been up in arms about Don Imus this past week. In case you live in a cave and didn’t hear, early in the morning several days ago, while talking about the women’s NCAA championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee, he made a remark about the lady Knights. Specifically, referring to them as “nappy-headed ho’s”. Eh? Yeah, he said it.

First things first, Don Imus is a jerk, always has been. I remember my mom listening to Imus in the Morning 30 years ago, and Imus always played this song making fun of Christians. Something about driving at insane speeds because of the almighty power of the plastic Jesus on the dashboard. Was Imus dragged from the mic, fired, drawn, quartered, or whatever? Nope. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, EMI announced that their entire catalog will be made available on the iTunes store without DRM. So, you want to just know the deal, rather than read the whole release, eh? Ok, here it is.

• 128k AAC with DRM – $0.99 | € 0.99 | £ 0.79
• 256k AAC without DRM – $1.29 | € 1.29 | £ 0.99

Looks like the Euro folks are still getting a bit hosed, but not too badly.

Yes, that second one is a higher bit rate too. Why? Lots of folks have complained about low bit rates on the iTunes store. Personally speaking, I don’t care about the higher bit rates, but I’m jazzed about freedom to move my music around to devices other than my iPod. Speaking as someone who’s got a Nokia N95 in his future, this will be a big win.

Yes, the price has increase by $0.30, but I’m willing to pay a small premium for keeping all of my fair use rights intact.

Update: I updated the post to reflect the proper bit rate – 256k instead of 224k.

Currently playing in iTunes: (Nothing But) Flowers by Talking Heads

Forget about Mactomster. While it was donationware, it was great, but now that it’s just another overpriced solution, there’s moving on to be done.

Enter super-nice guys from s60themes.co.uk with their brandy-new and free iSync 2.4 plugins. There’s also iSync 2.3 plugins as well for a variety of S60 (mostly N and E series) and even some S40 devices.

Say thanks to the guys there and be thankful!

Tech Crunch is reporting that Yahoo! is about to announce unlimited storage space for webmail users.

Personally, I prefer Gmail, but lots of other folks love Yahoo! mail.

What’s the big deal? It’s been an ever-escalating storage race ever since Gmail came onto the scene with a gig of space per user… Then everyone else gave out a gig of space. Then Gmail went to 2 gigs, followed shortly by lots of other players, followed by the Gmail ever-increasing mailbox size. You can’t out-do unlimited space. The best you can do is match it.

In the end, we’ll all benefit, but it looks like Yahoo! gets to say, “we did it first!”

You have a child, the hospital sends you home with a gift. It’s a diaper bag filled with formula coupons, formula, bottles, nipples, etc. It’s also got a leaflet on breast-feeding that says something clever like, “breast feeding is best!” They call it something fun like a “Breast Feeding Kit”.

So, if you gave someone a bag filled with Twinkies with a business card for the local gym, does that make it a “Weight Loss Kit”?

Yikes.

I just read this unbelievable tale about a Mom & daughter’s experience at the American Girl store in NY.

Wow. That’s just unbelievable. I won’t be spending any of my $$ there, that’s for sure. And having a newborn girl, I’d have reason to do so even.

Born this morning, 1:49 am, meet Elizabeth Rose.

Yes, that’s right, Daylight Savings Time starts tomorrow. Prepare for Armageddon! As usual, The Daily Show nailed it.

So last night, I was setting up Heather’s new MacBook, migrating her data from her old PowerBook. It came time to pair her Nokia E50 with the system and setup iSync to sync her phonebook, calendar, etc. Naturally, I went over to the Mactomster website to grab the latest iSync plugin for the E-series devices.

I found that the download links now point to a Store page that offers the plugins for sale for 7.49€ each. Each plugin only seems to serve a single device, rather than the previous model of a plugin serving multiple devices. That’s almost $10 per device.

Suddenly, 9.95€ for the Novamedia plugin doesn’t sound so bad. On the Novamedia side, you pay once for the plugin that works for all supported devices. You don’t have to pay again for a second device.

The only thing I find a bit insulting is the fact that on the Mactomster site, the PayPal button requesting donations is still there. If you’re asking for donations, you shouldn’t be asking people to pay for the plugins. Now that both Heather & I are using the Mactomster plugins, I was planning to donate to support the work. Now, my money will be going to Novamedia to purchase licenses for their plugins, giving greater flexibility.