The super bowl ads

You can see all the Super Bowl ads on Hulu. Here are a few gems:

So don't piss away your time here, go over there. Unless of course you just want to check them out here:

Proximity sensing shirt

Are you a geek in need of keeping tabs on your loved ones? Check out this shirt from Think Geek

The sidewinder missile launched an era of military weapons with auto-targeting capabilities. Why worry about aiming, when "fire and forget" technology can take out a concealed bunker from thousands of miles away? Now ThinkGeek makes auto-targeting personal with the Locked ON Proximity Sensing T-Shirt. Buy one of these glowing shirts for yourself, and gift one to a friend or enemy (co-worker, boyfriend, girlfriend, fembot 2000...). During your normal activities the radar screen on the shirt will be scanning constantly. But get within a few meters of your counterpart wearing the matching shirt and suddenly the radar on both of your shirts lock on and detect each other. It's the perfect early warning system to defend against an imminent attack.

Pair this up the the social media shirt and you'll be a hit at parties (and by hit I mean they won't ask you back).

Your porn addiction on youtube

Wow! Wouldn't this suck:

A red-faced banker has been caught looking at racy near-nude photographs on his computer, with his actions broadcast live on Australian television.

The Macquarie Private Wealth employee clicked up the images of Australian model Miranda Kerr, unaware a colleague nearby was doing a live television interview about the Australian economy.

Australia's Seven Network broadcast the news item on Tuesday, with the photographs clearly showing on a computer screen in the background.

At one stage, the man turns and looks directly at the television camera and realizes his actions have been caught on camera.

Evidently this was bigger news than I thought. I saw it on failblog - twice - before I saw it in the news.

And this guy has some cajones! Surfing for this in full view of all his co-workers. Perhaps he will make Stephen Colbert's Alpha Dog of the Week.

Internet explorer losing market share

Internet Explorer continues to lose market share to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and not gain market share over Apple Safari. Good.

When Microsoft had no competition they didn't even try to do anything to improve their crappy 6.0 version of I.E., and being a web developer making everything work in I.E. 6.0 is a pain.

Yesterday, browser market share figures came out from Net Applications, and the big news is how Chrome is moving up the ranks at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and even Firefox, compared to December. But you have to look further back to get a sense of what is really happening.

The various flavors of Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7, and IE8) together have 62.1 percent market share, down from 68.5 percent last March. That is a 6.4 percent drop in about a year. During the same period Chrome went from 1.6 percent share to 5.2 percent. Firefox and Safari each gained about a percentage point each over the same period to 24.4 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. (Although Firefox is a tiny bit down since November, when it peaked at 24.7 percent). If you add up the gains from those three—Chrome, Firefox, and Safari—that is where most of IE’s share went.

But even that doesn’t tell the whole story because if you look at share of individual versions of the different browsers, you can see another dynamic in play. Namely, a big part of the share shift can also be explained by the uneven rate at which people abandon older browsers like IE6 for newer ones like IE8 or Chrome. Let’s look at the share shifts just among IE6, IE7, and IE8. The pitchforks are out for IE6, people hate it and Websites (especially those run by Google) think the sooner it dies, the better. Even Microsoft wants people to move away from IE6.

Google Apps (a more full-featured version of G-Mail) recently sent out a note to users detailing their plans to discontinue support for I.E. 6.0. This is a bit tough to do since I.E. 6.0 still accounts for about 20% of web traffic. Still here are their plans in black and white:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team


Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Anything that gets the world away from I.E. 6.0 - I'm all for it!

Harry potter theme park

It's hard to tell from the ad, or the article, whether this is a resort, a ride, or a theme park, but the scaled down Harry Potter theme park is coming to Universal Studios:

Just in time for the big game, Universal Studios Orlando is launching a first-look commercial at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, that squee-worthy theme park opening this spring based on the movies based on J.K. Rowling's books.

Set atop his Nimbus-branded broomstick, Daniel Radcliffe leads a pair of kids twisting and turning through Hogsmeade, being chased by a dragon—if you look closely, you can tell that part is totally a hanging roller coaster!—and into Hogwarts Castle.

According to Wallet Pop, the studio is keeping mum about the ride tucked into the dark structure, called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. It's supposedly super technologically advanced and features especially shot footage of Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

Earlier J.K Rowling had thrown out a few details:

With the final chapter in the teen wizard saga fast approaching, J.K. Rowling announced Thursday that she has signed a deal with Universal Orlando Resort to build a massive Potter-based amusement park.

The author gave her blessing to the project, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment, the studio behind the hit Potter flicks, and Universal Orlando, NBC Universal's theme park division.

"The plans I've seen look incredibly exciting, and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed," says Rowling in a statement.

"Over the years we've received thousands of letters from fans around the world wishing they could visit Hogwarts and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories," says Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer. "Working with Universal Orlando Resort, we are confident that we'll be able to provide Harry Potter fans with an incredible experience that upholds the richness of J.K. Rowling's books and delivers on the authentic detail portrayed in our films."

This will definitely beat out Disney's ride you build yourself, and MSNBC is even offering a chance to win a trip there. Sounds like a blast.

Check it out on the Harry Potter Theme Park web site.

Oh to be like stephen colbert

It must be nice to be so popular that when you ask for something... anything - even products that aren't yet on the market - you get it.

Apparently, Stephen Colbert is in that bucket. Here he is at the Grammies with his iPad. And not long after he made his plea for it:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Intro - 01/27/10
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sign Off - Give Stephen an iPad
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Driving too cold? set your car on fire.

Okay, this German fellow wasn't as bad with his car as the dorks above, but... no, actually he was worse. The AP had the story:

A 76-year-old German man trying to thaw out his car incinerated it instead when he decided to speed things up by putting a blow heater under the hood.

"He burned the vehicle out completely," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Hildesheim. Police said the man left the heater on next to the frozen windshield washer tank and returned indoors. Shortly afterwards he heard two explosions and returned to find the car ablaze.

He alerted fire services, who arrived in time to prevent the flames from destroying his house. Including charring of the building, total damages were estimated at 40,000 euros ($56,240).

The guy knows how to throw down the cash. He could have bought nearly 110 iPads with that money.

Sometimes heat is just too expensive.