Pushbutton Disaster Relief

It’s really hard for most of us, sitting in our cozy homes, in our ergonomic task chairs, bloated from the holidays, to wrap our craniums around what just happened in southeast Asia. Tens upon tens of thousands of people dead in an instant and an equal number likely to die from the taint of death left in their wake. I saw a guy on the news last night who lives here in Maryland but is from Sumatra. He lost *30* members of his immediate and extended family! Siblings, parents, grandparents, nieces, nephews, cousins — all gone.

One thing we have no trouble doing is clicking buttons and spending money. I just found myself (through a typical morning serendipity search) on the Red Cross’s donation page on Amazon. If you have an account on Amazon, you can send mullah at the click of a button.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of excellent and well-meaning blog activity. One thing I found is a quick summary/ratings of some relief charities (which led me to the pushing buttons and transfering of invisible cash via Amazon.

Also, check out the Google Tsunami Relief page and The Tsunami Blog.

Sci Fi’s Tech Toys Column

Check out the latest issue of Sci Fi magazine (Feb 2005). I am the new “Tech Toys” columnist. The column looks at technologies that are fifteen minutes into the future (to steal a phrase from Max Headroom). In this issue, I cover the latest concept vehicle from Segway, human-skin band-aids, cellphone signal jammers, solar-power clothing, and more.

“Egosurfing” on Jeopardy

“Egosurfing” was one of the answers on Jeopardy tonight. This term was coined by Street Tech co-founder Sean Carton. The rather embarassing thing about it is that it was sorta coined in reference to ME! Years ago (1997?) Sean called me up and asked: “What are you doing?” I told him I was on a search engine looking up my own name. He laughed and said he did that all the time too and that there should be a word for the practice. He called back later and had come up with “egosurfing.'” A few months later, I used it in Jargon Watch. I usually don’t use made up words like this, but egosurfing was just too good to pass up. It has proven to be extremely viral, finding its way into the OED of Slang, and other places, and now, Jeopardy.

Hysterical Ashlee Simpson iPod Spoof

The laughter continues at the expense of corporate pop confection Ashlee Simpson with this hysterical riff on Apple’s U2 special edition iPod. It even comes with enough money to use a payphone to call your daddy when you get caught lipsyncing live on national television. Talk about getting caught with your ultra-low-rise jeans around your ankles. Yikes!

Cyborg-in-Chief’s New TiVo Book

My latest book is called Leo Laporte’s Guide to TiVo (part of Leo’s new LeoVille imprint for Que). Unlike other TiVo books, mine is designed to appeal to users of all levels, from beginners shopping for TiVo to those wishing to do hardware upgrades and peak under the hood of their box. The book includes a CD-ROM with a number of the best TiVo open source apps (for both S1 and S2 TiVos), the indespensible MFS Tools 2.0 (for hard drive backup and restore), and a mini-distro of Linux you can boot into from your PC.

The book was somewhat of a Street Tech community effort, with ST staff photographer Jay Townsend snapping the pics, my son Blake doing some of the illustrations, ST patron saint Mark Frauenfelder providing awesome cartoons/icons, and ST webmaster Tim Tate offering some tech backup. Tech editing for the book was done by our good pals at Weaknees.com.

Dumb, Yet Addictive

In the past three weeks, I’ve been attacked by an undead can of tomatoes, completed the quest of the Deep-Fat Friars, and stormed the lair of the Ninja Snowmen with my trusty balloon monkey by my side. It’s the only online RPG populated by black-and-white stick figures, but I’ve become hooked on the Kingdom of Loathing.