Hey, who's that guy with all the chicks!?

Asynchrony gadfly Dan King is on the prowl again, this time getting some attention at the DD Lounge in Brentwood. Hey, Dan, take your satchel off and have a beer -- or five!

This strikes a little too close to home for my taste, living as I do about 500 feet from the DD...

Watch the earth move for Dan

This is a must-see for all internet users (QuickTime required): Dan's Thanksgiving-weekend kite-flying adventure (file also available at: \\geonosis\public\dan\video\DanJump.mov). Your indifferent narrator is Mike Gaffney. Dan is "flying" a 20' x 6' foil kite.

He's thankful to be alive.

If you can't get enough from that footage, download the post-flight trauma coverage (\\geonosis\public\dan\video\DanJumpFull.mp4).

Disclaimer: Not suitable for audiences who are easily frightened. Rated PG-13 for some language and on-screen violence.

Backwards Bowler Takes Baton Rouge By Storm

Specifically for those of you who like an oddity, this story may just "strike" a chord: http://www.bowl.com/articleView.aspx?i=10669&f=1

IF you look deeper into this, you can actually view a news report which shows this guy, who actually averages better than 180 and has recorded a 279 game.

Aaron Gets It On

All of us here at Asynchrony have unique talents (some more desirable than others), but few of us are gifted -- and courageous -- enough to share them with an live audience full of strangers, including television viewers. That's what makes Aaron "Marvin" Molitor's recent performance of Let's Get It On in Harrah’s Lucky Break impressive -- and he won!

Aaron was one of 32 weekly winners who will go on to compete for one of eight semi-finalist spots. Those are eventually narrowed to three finalists and then one winner. As a weekly winner, he received two cardinal tickets, a one-night stay and dinner for two at Harrah’s St. Louis, a $50 gift certificate to Michael Genovese Jewelers and to top all that off $50 in gift certificates to Dairy Queen. I guess we know who's buying lunch.

So Aaron, we know it's much more than the glorified karaoke contest you claimed it was, it's a chance for your co-workers to privately make fun of you while viewing your performance on our desktops. We salute, you, Mister Casino-Talent-Search-Contest Winner!

(Seriously, though, Aaron's quite a singer -- check out the video.)

Great Moments in Asynchrony History

On this date, 2002:

PDA Defense support specialist Darren "Radar" Ruotolo responds to an urgent customer email, replying "We apologize for any incontinence you may have experienced."

This Great Moment in Asynchrony History has been brought to you by Microsoft Spellchecker: "Transforming your mistakes into bigger ones."

Agile Documentation

Our XP mentor Brian Button recently published an article about how to use tests to make API documentation for outside developers that's a lot more useful than a bunch of words in a manual. It's not far from the way we're doing things anyway, but puts some formalities and best practices behind it. Good stuff.

Hey Mom, I'm on MTV!

Wes Ehrlichman, georgeous Software Support Specialist working at the St. Louis Asynchrony office, works on an independant Video Game Magazine on the side called The Gamer's Quarter. His magazine has recently been featured in an MTV News story. Be sure to check them both out!

Favicon maker

I stumbled upon this site a few weeks back -- it convert an image into a favicon in seconds! Pretty cool, especially for web designers.

Star Wars: The Day After

All right, so most of us were so consumed yesterday with our mad Demo Ball skills that we didn't have much time to chat about the movie. What did everyone think? I'll get us started with a review from the Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams. Now I'm not a big fan of Williams's, but I think it's hard to disagree with his comments.

Also, from the WSJ review today:

• "Lucas goes to the dull side"
• "Still, all of the visual inventions in all of the worlds of that far-off galaxy can't hide the clumsiness of the film's stab at profundity. "My powers have doubled since the last time we met," Anakin boasts to an adversary, but Mr. Christensen's acting powers have not."

I'm not sure whom they're talking about, but could it be that they thought Peter Frampton was in reality Hayden Christensen, the wooden actor who played Anakin in Episode II?

Needed: Help converting Baseball Encyclopedia code

Lee Sinins, the creator of the highly popular (well, among baseball stat-geeks, anyway) Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, is looking for someone who could help him convert the encyclopedia's code from Windows to Mac. I know we're increasingly getting Mac experience (or is it simply ownership experience?), so maybe someone could lend him a hand.

If you're interested, you can contact me or Lee directly.

Game Developers using XP

I was checking an indie game development web site and came across an article by someone who is using ExtremeProgramming techinques to create their game engine. Here's the link, and here's a quote:

I started using XP (ExtremeProgramming) today for the first time, on the first class of the LudiEngine and within the first 15 minutes I think I have already become hooked.

Essentially what I am starting off with under the XP principles is the TestFirstDesign which means that you program your tests first and you use these tests to determine what you want your class to do.

The immediate advantages I see and felt here are that I am only designing for functionality, so the class ends up being simpler than if I designed it’s code and data structures first. I may have been tempted to code more cases than I really need, but since I am only programming to satisfy the tests I have written, then I don’t do this.

This comes after getting back from the Game Developer's Conference where I heard several people speak on how messed up the project scheduling and business practices in game development really are. Maybe they could learn a bit from Asynchrony!

Impress Your Date with the Postmodern Essay Generator

You can use this Random Postmodern Essay Generator to create a randomly generated essay that uses so many big words that no matter how educated your date is, she probably won't realize that what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. She'll want those "smart genes" in her kids and you may just get lucky. Check out this quote from one of the essays I found/created:

"Society is intrinsically responsible for sexism," says Baudrillard; however, according to Geoffrey[2] , it is not so much society that is intrinsically responsible for sexism, but rather the fatal flaw, and some would say the absurdity, of society. Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a conceptual narrative that includes sexuality as a paradox. Scuglia[3] holds that we have to choose between precultural nihilism and the dialectic paradigm of narrative.

Pure gold right there buddy.

A random find

Something interesting I happened to come across just now. Check out the id and avatar of the first post on the page.

Share video from your PC with Olivelink

Olivelink allows you to stream video to anyone in the world from your PC. They're in beta at the moment. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a pretty simple way to share personal video without either sending huge files or using an outside service.

Google updates desktop search

Despite some performance issues reported by some of our co-workers, I thought it worth noting that a new non-beta version of Google Desktop Search was released yesterday. Very interesting is the upcoming release of api's that will allow the inclusion of both desktop and internet searches from applications.

		New!
		Netscape Mail / Thunderbird
		Netscape / Firefox / Mozilla
		PDF
		Music
		Images
		Video

Creative marketing opportunity for Asynchrony: Produce an Irish Film!

It only seems logical that Asynchrony should want to tap into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. And, of course, I have just the plan to do it.

What better way to get our name out than to produce a movie? An Irish filmmaker is offering on eBay a spot to appear in a documentary about Irish baseball. According to the listing:

The producers of "The Emerald Diamond" invite you to put your name and face on the big screen. High bidder is guaranteed a spot in the film and the title of "Executive Producer" with number one billing in the credits of the film.

As of this posting, the bid was at a reasonable $1,000. I can't imagine a better return on investment. So here's my proposal: The company pays the auction bid, and I'll assume all costs to travel overseas and fulfill the obligations for the film. I'll wear my Asynchrony "Join the revolution!" t-shirt on-camera, and my black "Code for love and money" one when I'm kicking back on the set or in the trailer. I would be happy to share the screen credit as "Asynchro Philip."

Better yet: We're in the process of promoting our new HUBzone company -- let's kick it off with a major-motion picture credit and a simple name change: O'Synchrony. Bidding ends in eight days!

Travel back to web sites of the past

The Wayback Machine is an archive of web pages as they were on specific dates in the past, all the way back to 1996. For instance, you can see the evolution of www.asynchrony.com.
.

Bellevegan to speak at "Who owns culture?" forum

Thought this might be interesting to a few of you (I really was thinking of you, Dave), though I'm not really sure how to enjoy it other than to buy a plane ticket to The Big Apple and attend it yourself (perhaps Wired will have a transcript afterward).

I've never met Jeff Tweedy, a fellow Bellevegan (or Bellevillian, as some would have it), but my good friend's older brother went to high school with him and he was pretty cool. I just like his music (particularly the old UT days).

JEFF TWEEDY AND LAWRENCE LESSIG AT NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ON APRIL 7 Jeff Tweedy and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig offer up their opinions regarding Napster, free culture, and the arts. Lessig wrote the 2004 book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate, will moderate the discussion. Tickets on sale Thursday, March 17 at 10 a.m via Smarttix.com. Additional Ticket info to follow.

WHO OWNS CULTURE?
LIVE from the NYPL in conjunction with Wired magazine
Jeff Tweedy
Lawrence Lessig
Steven Johnson
Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m.
Celeste Bartos Forum

Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 Beta Available

I've tried a number of desktop search engines and my favorite at the moment is Copernic. One of the best features is its ability to index network drives, which is pretty important to many people here. It also seems to be very stable and doesn't obviously slow down the computer even when indexing.

The new beta has a number of enhancements including Mozilla Thunderbird support.

Firefox Upgrade available

All Firefox users are encouraged to download security update at mozilla.org

February 24, 2005, (Mountain View, CA). The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today released an update to its award-winning Firefox 1.0 browser. The Firefox security update is available for the 27 million users who have already downloaded the free browser. The Mozilla Foundation encourages all users to download the update, which is available now on all platforms at www.mozilla.org.

Here's the download page.

Gmail invites available

If you'd like a gmail (google mail) account and haven't been able to snag an invite, your wait is over. isnoop.net has a gmail spooler with scores of donated gmail invites for the taking.

Google Maps in beta

Check out Google's answer to MapQuest. It's a pretty nice interface, although it was unable to find my parents' house accurately...

Mozilla Sunbird Calendar Just Released

Mozilla has just released Sunbird, the new alternative to Outlook's calendar.

From the site:

The Sunbird Project is a redesign of the Mozilla Calendar component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform standalone calendar application based on Mozilla's XUL user interface language. At the moment the Sunbird name is a project name. It is not official and may change in the future.

Our intended user is someone who uses Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird and wants a calendar application based on Mozilla.

Spam Costs 2.2 Billion Annually in lost time!

Asynchrony Community Blog




Deleting spam costs nearly $22 billion each year, study says
Associated Press
Story continues below ad

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time wasted deleting junk e-mail costs American businesses nearly $22 billion a year, according to a new study from the University of Maryland.

A telephone-based survey of adults who use the Internet found that more than three-quarters receive spam daily. The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.

The loss in productivity is equivalent to $21.6 billion per year at average U.S. wages, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey produced by Rockbridge Associates, Inc., and the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland's business school.

The study, to be released Thursday, also found that 14 percent of spam recipients actually read messages to see what they say, and 4 percent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year.

The random survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted in November and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

a9 adds yellow pages search

Although they haven't hit St. Louis yet for storefront images, A9.com (an Amazon venture, offers a great new yellow pages search engine that plots hits on a street map, and adds images of the buildings when available.

From their site: "The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street."

"The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country."

I think it's time for an Asynchrony company car

And in my opinion, this one is ideal. Just read the reviews!

Woot.com makes the front page of CNN.com

Dave Rutledge's new affiliation, woot.com, is linked on the home page of cnn.com today, just barely (you have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see it). The article featured is called The Wonders of Woot.

Baseball blog renamed (VANITY)

Just wanted to let all you baseball fans know that we've renamed our baseball blog from Fallclassic (name connoted only an interest in post-season activity) to Fungoes. You can now read all the best news, analysis and witty observations about our national pastime at:

http://fungoes.blogspot.com/

Nate and I are frequent contributors. Come observe our baseball blogging prowess! Fungoes: Learn it, know it, live it.

Yahoo Desktop Search

Choices, choices and more choices. Yahoo has just released their flavor of desktop search in beta. It's power by X1 Technologies, which has had a well-reviewed commercial desktop search product for quite some time.

Who's watching your webcam

This post on Boing Boing describes Google searches that find unsecured webcams.

Wikipedia critique by founder focuses on anti-elitist culture

Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger posted an article arguing that the site's anti-elitist culture needed to be changed. For anyone following collaboration technologies, the article and related thread makes for fascinating and useful reading. This article is also being discussed on slashdot.