Don Marti

Sat 10 Jun 2006 05:40:38 PM PDT

MLP: phones, Googlemind, music business, Ubuntu

PhoneGnome adds a partner deal that lets customers order incoming "virtual" phone numbers. The device has always been set up to let you take incoming calls on your regular land line—this just gives you more numbers.

TechCrunch covers a Google system that "uses a home computer’s internal microphone to listen to the ambient audio in a room, determine what is being watched on TV and offer web-based supplemental information, services and shopping contextual to each program being watched." Next step: detect the sounds of family fights and start showing ads for Dr. Phil books? Tim O'Reilly connects this project to George Dyson's Google AI theory.

Goofus bundles client software with music. Gallant offers a web service and leaves the client software up to you.

Ubuntu bug 44925 points out the old "commercial software" misnomer in the update tool. Meanwhile, real commercial support for Ubuntu is blanketing the planet. Ubuntu: solving the Free Software terminology flame wars one civil, constructive bug page at a time.

Safeway cashiers call me Mr. Cockerham. The real Mr. Cockerham's latest project on cockeyed.com is a "100 friends on MySpace" auction, which this dude named Nick just won. So go be his friend or something.

Just found out, too late for my signature to count towards the needed total for the November 2006 election, about an initiative to limit Eminent Domain in California. Basically, people seem to think that seizing people's houses for politically connected developers bears a certain resemblance to a Dukes of Hazzard episode about Boss Hogg trying to get his hands on Uncle Jesse's farm.