My favorite books from the past six months...

I've been reading a ton lately, both fiction and non-fiction. While I haven't read anything that wasn't worth reading, I simply loved the following books. They are very well written and have insanely rich character development. As with any great book, I couldn't stand finishing these as each time I felt like a lost a friend. Enjoy :)

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel




The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao




Crazy for the Storm

USA vs. Algeria and ESPN3

I don't have cable, never have, never will...frankly, I just don't trust myself with a remote. While it's fine most of the time, live events like the World Cup are particularly painful.

However, I just realized that ESPN3 is streaming all of the games live...wow, cool! Unfortunately, you need to connect to your ISP and man, that can be harder that it sounds. It took me a while, but i finally figured out my ATT account username/password - not via my ATT account of course, that would be too simple...but, thru a customer service call. It's amazing how companies like ATT make it so hard to enjoy really cool benefits that they provide.

Oh well, at least ESPN3 is working and I'm set for tomorrow's game! Now if ESPN supported html5 video instead of flash, i'd be able to use my iPad as a TV...next time, i'm sure.

Testing the email posting feature in blogger

mud at the dead sea :)

Why does everyone think email is dying?

I like Sheryl a lot, but I completely disagree with the notion that email is dying. Email is owned by users and it's the lowest common denominator communication medium. Forget streams, email = sharing, period. Twitter, Facebook, etc will continue to grow in importance, but email will remain a critical part of the web and user behavior forever...

Via my iPad, so....

blogging vs. streaming...

i need to start blogging more and making it feel more like my casual twitter/flickr/youtube exhaust. right now, the bar is higher for a blog post, but it shouldn't be. so, here's my first simple little post...

what we did on vacation...

we just got back from a week in tahoe. while it seems like a month ago already, it was great...lots of hiking, swimming, bocce ball, and movie watching :)

hugo seemed to grow up overnight - he learned how to skip rocks (sort of), climb, catch!, and say over and over and over and over again - "big rock."

here's a vid from one of our hikes (too bad hugo didn't hike up on his own).



btw, we brought our roku to the cabin...worked perfectly :)

starting to think blogging will become cool again

it's bound to happen. the pendulum will swing back as folks yearn for a bit more - both former bloggers and users who just started writing (likely on twitter).  tweeting and all other forms of status updates will continue to happen, but more and more folks will simply tweet a link to their blog posts, turning twitter into an rss reader...it's already happening to some degree.

i just wish it was as simple to blog as it is to tweet...and, i'm not talking about the technology. it's all about expectations. people feel intimidated when they sit down to blog, but they don't when they tweet...

btw, because twitter, facebook, and other status update services have brought in a bunch of new people, i actually think blogging is going to take a leap forward...get ready mr. klau :)