Newsfire
NewsFire is not a web program, per se, in that it’s not run via some scripting language inside your web browser. But it is most definitely a program for the web. It’s an RSS newsreader for MacOSX and it is beautiful. It’s fast, intuitive, and just slick overall. If you’ve got a Mac, are interested in increasing the quality and quantity of your knowledge of the world around you, it’s highly recommended. (N.B.: It, too, has excellent keyboard shortcuts.) Don’t know what RSS is? This introductory article in CNET might help you on your way.

I took them off, the pill clattering across my desk.  I didn’t understand.  I still thought I was doing something wrong.  I unplugged them, and put them in my drawer.  “I’ll experiment again tomorrow.”  And I did.  Same result.  I put them back in the drawer and thought about it for a while.  I went through every possible variable.  I put them in all different sources:  iPods, computers, TV’s, a 1988-era Walkman that I found in my room.  All of them sounded like crap, though the Walkman did sound just like I remember it sounding.  I tried to see if any of the cords were loose.  I read through the instructions sheet a few times.  I even read the French version of the instructions, just to see if Phillips had hidden some secret recipe for good sound where only Quebecois and the French could find it.  I glanced at the Japanese version, as well, but, really, context is everything in that language. 

You know how it goes: you walk into a liquor store.  You know nothing about the specific wine grape that was requested of you to buy.  You see three bottles that sound and look like they’re the right thing.  The liquor store you’re in speaks English as a third language, and you think you’re both a man’s man and pretty damned smart, so you’re not about to ask for help.  So you look at the three bottles you’re trying to impress with and, assuming it’s not an egregious price difference, you get the most expensive one.  Higher price = higher quality, right?
Wrong.  There are some amazing wines (and apparently headphones) out there that are fractions of the cost of others in their category that blow them away in quality.  The rule of thumb, in terms of these items anyway, does not hold.

So, no, I didn’t return them.  By the time I really got up in arms about the whole thing (and despite some rumors to the contrary, I’m very difficult to actually make angry) Brown started back up again and there was the deluge of class-picking, parties and a surprisingly front-loaded semester of work.  I didn’t have time to listen to music on headphones, really.  I should have gone to the Rock and read while listening to headphones, but that really didn’t happen much last fall.  I took the time to both give my headphones one last (I thought) listen
and find my receipt.  “Yes, definitely, these are crap and I’m taking them back,” I thought as I went through my file cabinet for the receipt.  I checked the date, on a whim, and realized that that day was the 60th day after my purchase.  It was 11pm.  BestBuy was closed.  I had officially just wasted my money.

I can’t really explain in words how annoying this is.

In the 21st Century, your music is your soundtrack to life.  You can literally choose your own theme music.  What song really expresses the mood that mega-star Brian J. McGuirk is in as he walks to the library, a warm breeze flowing at him, his thoughts filled with thoughts of the pressing issues of the day, the week, the month, the year, the century and the whole human race?  Bohemian Like You, by the Dandy Warhols, of course.  He rocks out, he struts down the street.  The last few minutes, just as he’s feeling down and feeling the temptation of pessimism, he hears the voice of Winston Churchill:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…

And with that, that last touch of inspiration, he smiles, opens the door, and goes on.  The scene ends.  (And yes, I know a great speech isn’t exactly music, but it’s part of a soundtrack nonethless, and is on my iPod.)
Now, if your headphones (at LOW volume!) distort like crazy with every drumbeat in the first song, and the second crackles more than radio listeners in 1940 would have put up with, the scene is totally different.  The whole scene is one man walking down the street swearing and shaking his headphones as if they’ve personally offended him.

Do you want that to be the movie of your life?  Don’t buy these goddam headphones.

Google’s rapidly rising profits soared to new heights in the third quarter as its internet-leading search engine churned out a sevenfold earnings increase that blew past analyst expectations.

The Mountain View, California-based company said Thursday that it made $381.2 million, or $1.32 per share, during the three months ended in September. That compared with net income of $52 million, or 19 cents per share, a year ago. Last year’s results included a $201 million charge to account for a legal settlement with rival Yahoo. If not for charges related to a recent acquisition and employee stock options issued before the company went public 14 months ago, Google said it would have earned $1.51 per share.

That figure easily exceeded the consensus estimate of $1.36 per share among 31 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Even the most bullish analysts hadn’t expected Google to fare as well as it did; the highest earnings estimate had been $1.46 per share.

When was the last time you saw the Evil Empire post earnings like that? My uncle mentioned this in passing a while ago, but he’s totally right: Microsoft had to start issuing dividends to their shareholders because they were no longer really giving any return on equity. They’re a dying company, too locked into their comfy anti-competitive, non-impassioned corporate mindset to do anything of real world-shaking value. Thus they’re always playing catchup to something that Google thought up: search, quazi-GIS, increased storage space for e-mail, etc. There’s probably an exhaustive list out there somewhere, but there’s no point in wasting any more energy on it: Google is simply the best company in the world and shows no signs of stopping.

[Nature] can accomplish feats that engineers have only been able to dream of until now. But as scientists peer deeper into the cellular and molecular workings of nature, engineers are starting to find information they can apply to everything from advanced optics to robotics—even a mussel-inspired glue that could one day be used to repair shattered bones. The result is a new field called biomimicry, or biologically inspired design. And though nature’s innovations often need radical adaptation to suit human purposes, the new approach has the potential to improve the way we do everything, from desalinating water to streamlining cars. “If you have a design problem, nature’s probably solved it already,” says Janine Benyus, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild. “After all, it’s had 3.8 billion years to come up with solutions.

[Link to article]

I’d just about had it trying to unravel this problem involving something called a Karnaugh Map, and was going to take a break anyway, when I got an IM from the system administrator that Google Bought Us All Pizza. Sure enough, when I went to the back of the lab, there were four gorgeous Pizza Pie-er pizzas, Pepsis (a shame), and Google colored plastic glasses, plates, and paper napkins.

Yet more evidence that Google is the coolest company on the face of the planet.

Sidenote: there was much geeky joking about how, if Microsoft bought us pizza, only half of it would taste good, and only half the time. If we wanted something to eat it on, we had to buy Microsoft pizza-specific plates for which they’d charge us by the hour. If we wanted to save it and reheat it tomorrow, the pizza would refuse to reheat in anything but a Microsoft microwave. And the like…

UPDATE: Ha! It’s called the Google Pizza Ambassador program. Google is one of the few companies that would truly tempt me to want to work for them, long-term. Guess I’ll have to be content to just be a stockholder.