Okay. So Apple released a new Mac Mini. Its up to 4x fast. It plugs into your TV. It has Front Row. And you can stream content from your PC to it. Okay, fine. But why am I not running out to buy one? I can't see why I need to spend $400 for pleasure of streaming QVGA content to my 30" LCD where it will look like total shit. Where's the High Def? Where's VOD? Where's movies for god's sake?

Good news is, Apple has most of the hardware and infrastructure stuff there now to do digital delivery to your TV. Bad news is, they don't have the content yet. My guess is all this will get worked out this year, but for now, we're waiting....

Also, the iPod Hi Fi. I'll make a judgement when I see it. But it doesn't seem all that special to me. The real news is that Apple has spawned a $1B market in accessories that they can't just sit on the sidelines of. So now they are making cases and speaker docs. That's neat, but not game changing.

Cinematical has an article talking about how there will be no new Trek TV or Movies for the foreseeable future. I am telling you people, a private equity company should buy Trek out. Its a huge idea.

John C Dvorak has said so many stupid things over the years about Apple, that its even hard to remember them all, and if I did I'd probably be stupider for it. Now he's claiming that Apple is going to dump the Mac OS for Windows. His evidence for this, I guess, is that Apple switched to USB on the iPod and that they keep suing bloggers.

John, I know you live in a bubble of your own arrogance, but what the fuck? How does this remotely sound like evidence that Apple is dumping Mac OS? Mac OS is in the best shape its ever been. Its so much better than Windows XP right now, it isn't funny. And the next version of the OS will put Vista to shame. Apple is poised to take a serious chunk out of Intel's ass this year. If anything, you are going to see Windows PC makers like Dell open it up and start offering Mac OS.

EA is feeling the pain recently, so they are cutting the price on new games to $39.99. That's still a tall bill if you ask me. DVD prices had to go down too to expand the market.

Joss Whedon's Serenity did disappointing box office despite the hype, but its done 2M units on DVD ($40M retail) and $9M in rentals. Browncoats can't stop touching themselves thinking that maybe this will convince Universal to make a direct-to-video sequel, but Universal execs are telling them to not get their hopes up. Frankly, I think Whedon screwed himself by doing all those free premieres all over the country. Everyone who want to see the movie had seen it, and I bet a lot of them didn't see it in the theater again. You can take this whole love the blogger community thing too far. Its one thing to show it to Harry Knowles so he will write a great review or to leak preview stills, but its quite another to screen the movie for free and expect people to pay you to see it again.

Back when I worked at Apple in the '90s, the rumor was that Disney was going to buy Apple. Now Barron's is spreading the rumor that Apple is going to buy Disney.

Come on folks, how does that make sense? Think about it. What do either company have to gain from one another that they don't already have? If Steve saw the need to have an entertainment division as part of Apple, he had many chances to integrate Pixar as opposed to say, going public or selling it to Disney.

All a combined Disney/Apple would create is a bigger, harder to run company with conflicted priorities and a personality complex. "Are we an entertainment company? A computer company? A software company? Or a consumer electronics company?"

Nice speculation, but it ain't going to happen. This Barron's guy has no info and is just talking out his ass.

Ain't It Cool News has some shots of the fictional opening "James Cameron's Aquaman" on HBO's Entourage.

A little article about how to copy your movies to your Mac's hard drive and save power on the road.

Inside how Disney lost and re-gained Oswald. I missed Oswald's homecoming party on the lot and I am still bummed about it.

Cereality is a cereal restaurant in Philly. All they serve is cereal. You can get toppings and make your own mix. They even invented a special to-go container that won't leak. They are open from 7 am to 7 pm. But what do they do after breakfast? It must be dead. They are franchising now, but come on, like you're really gonna pay them to license the idea of buying cereal from General Mills and Kellogg's.

On my DRM 101 for Coob, Cottie says:

"Not to get all Cory Doctorow up in here, but it's copyright violation, not theft, as I'm sure proto-lawyer Coob could attest."

Pot–A–to. Po-TA–to. As Apple would say, its all bad karma.

This is why people are fat. Dreyers is putting out a line of ice creams using those delicious Girl Scout cookies: Thin Mints, Samoas, and Tagalongs. But get them fast. When the Girl Scouts disappear from your grocery stores' entryway, so too will the ice creams be only a fatty memory and a clog in your arteries.

According to Google, 20% of searches from mobile phones are for porn compared to 8.5% on PCs. Where are people doing all this cell phone porn surfing? Maybe I don't want to know.

A new Spiderman 3 poster has Spidey in the black costume. Are alien symbiotes and and Venom in our immediate future. And if so, could this be the end of the Wallcrawler franchise. Sam Rami, our childhoods are in your hands.

Behold Ben and Jerry's new flavors for 2006:

• Black & Tan
• Neapolitan Dynamite
• Turtle Soup
• Vermonty Python
• Berried Treasure Sorbet
• Jamaican Me Crazy Sorbet
• Strawberry Kiwi Swirl Sorbet

(Thanks, Slashfood!)

Coob had a few questions about the iTunes post:

"Can you 'splain what this means to us non-tech-savy kids?

Also, I heard something earlier today about a suit filed against Apple...something about when someone buys a song from iTunes, s/he should be able to play that song on any player, not just iTunes. I think the arg is that s/he's buying rights to the song, not a slice of iTunes. I think I may have butchered what's going on, but have you heard anything about it? And if so, what's the dealio?"

Apple only lets you play music that you buy in the iTunes Music Store on 5 computers. You have to authorize each computer to play your music by entering your name and password. But if you don't de-authorize your computer before it dies or you sell it or otherwise get rid of it, then you are screwed because you can't de-authorize that computer except from the computer itself. Until now. Now Apple has added a feature to the iTunes account page that lets you de-authorize ALL computers and then you can re-authorized the ones you want one at a time.

I don't know about the specific suit you are talking about, but there are lots of individual legal actions popping up here and probably a class action suit in the works. Here's the dealio –

Hollywood and the record industry have a problem from piracy. When you copy a movie or song without paying for it, that's theft. People don't feel bad because of the nature of "copying" something as opposed to stealing a physical object. But the law treats unauthorized copying as theft. Despite this, lots of people steal music and movies and even games all over the world every day. And that comes at the expense of sales as evidenced by the downfall of the music business in recent years. So the industry has responded with something called Digital Rights Management or DRM. DRM puts limits on how content can be used with the goal of preventing piracy. Apple's DRM is called Fairplay and it is probably one of the most generous ones out there in terms of what you can do with your content. You can copy your content to five computers and to the iPod. Each iPod can be bound to one user account on one computer at a time. The rights are liberal enough that many people never notice that the music is protected.

But DRM create a lot of issues too. Music bought through the iTunes Music Store can only be played on iTunes or an iPod. So you are locked into Apple forever with that music. Consumer advocates argue that you should have the ability to play the music that you bought on any manufacturers device, just as you can with CD. Also unlike CD, you cannot sell your copy of a song to someone else. The song that you download from iTunes is bound to your iTunes user ID. Some people think that if you bought the song, you should be able to re-sell the song, as you can with CDs.

Behold. The Sixth and Final Season of The Sopranos. Any one can be whacked.

The other day my work laptop died and I had to get it replaced. Just yesterday, I realized it was eating up one of my iTunes authorizations. Well, Apple has fixed this problem, because now you can de-authorize all your computers from your account.

But is it any good?

Cool Hunting found something cool indeed. A flash newsmonitor which is a map that lights up where stuff is happening. Roll over an area and see all the hottest news. Try it out!

Trying to hack OS X to run on non-Apple hardware? Well, Apple has a little poetic justice for you:

"Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc."

Ars Technica points out that iSuppli did a teardown on the X-Box 360 a while back and that its BOM was $525 with hard drive. Its 3x core PowerPC CPU is cheaper, only $106, but its ATI GPU is more expensive at $141. All in, Microsoft is subsidizing the X-Box, up to $225 on the Premium package. Still, they are better off than Sony.

'Stador has some thoughts on my recent post about Sony and the new formats they are pushing:

"Expecting a $29 price point of new movies is retarded, much less on the back catalog. The studios are on some high-quality shit if they expect to resell the catalog for that kind of money.

It's not about reselling the back catalog, it's about people moving their archives from degradable media to more permanent stock. Vinyl/cassette to CD, VHS to DVD - that's it, it's not about new formats or special features. Director's commentaries are only for fanboys, most people never listen to them.

Let's think about the introduction of DVD. It was out for a couple years, and no one bought it. I'd actually bet that before The Matrix was released, more DVD-ROM drives had shipped than set-top DVD players. The Matrix was the reason half my friends bought their first DVD player/drive. That was the geek segment, the rest of the population came along because the film studios - trying to avoid the shitstorm the record labels were then facing with Napster - started selling the back catalog for $8-$10 per, and combined with sub-$100 players, the format took over. But it wasn't the golly-gee-whiz factor, it was cheap players and durable media at impulse-buy prices. (Readers will note where DVDs are sold at Target, et. al. I don't have to tell you these things - consumer electronics and media are your business.)

So, to sum up, the back catalog bonanza only happens when you move to a significantly more durable format, not just to a 'better' format, and people expect to pay the same amount or less. Break the formula, lose the format. It's that simple."

Coke may have its problems in the US, but its business in booming in China. But its not red bottles driving the business. Its non-carbonized fruit drinks under its Qoo and Meizhiyuan brands grew 64% last year. The cute Sanrio-esque character above is the spokes-character for Qoo. Qoo is also sold in Japan, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, and of all places, Germany, the land of sprudel. Check out the English language Qoo site for Singapore here.

Its been rumored for a while, but Nvidia had to admit it on their earnings call - The PS3 is delayed. I saw one call it Kutaragi's Folly, and that may turn out to be the case. Now we know why Steve Jobs skipped Cell.

In other bad PS3 news, the BOM for the thing is $900 according to a Merrill Lynch report, and that's without a hard drive. Even after 3 years, they still see the hardware cost at $320. So Sony will have subsidize the thing $625 to compete with the X-Box 360 Core System. No one they can make that back on games. No way. Its out of control. I bet they drop the Blu-Ray drive and ship a version with DVD or something. But what about the developers who are counting on 25GB of capacity? And what of Sony's plans to Trojan Horse Blu-Ray with PS3?

And in still other news, the PSP is sucking. The big problem is movies. They aren't selling and studios and retailers are losing interest in the format. This is a huge blow to the PSP since movies were an early surprise success when PSP games weren't selling. Movies were 50% of the titles sold on PSP early on. No word on how games are doing now, but it don't sound good folks.

And in the bad news of the future, the Studios are talking pricing for Blu-Ray and its high. Expect to see a $23 to $39 price point. And they will be charging more for new movies. So I can pay you 40 bucks to re-buy a DVD I already own. I dunno.

Everyone is missing the trend. All these new optical formats are too expensive and unnecessary. The biggest news in video last year was not HD, it was video on the 2.5" iPod. People want convenience and a la carte pricing. Online is future because it eliminates the materials costs (that are substantial in these new formats), potentially disintermediates the middleman, or at least makes him work tighter since the shelf space costs nothing, and you don't even have to leave your home.

The Washington Post break down what you need to know about steak. In summary, Prime is the best, but Choice is generally what you find at the store. Select is the worst. Look out for fancy certifications beyond this. Its mostly marketing for lower quality meats. Enhanced is with chemicals, Natural is without after the cow is dead, and Organic is without ever. And Boneless Rib Eye is the butcher's choice of cut.

For her science project this year, 7th grade student Jasmine Robert decided to find out which is grosser - the ice at a fast food restaurant or the water in their toilets. You guessed it, the ice machine had a higher bacteria count. Hey, dogs have known this stuff for years folks. We "intelligent" lifeforms are just catching up.

In other burger news, the 23-yr old heir to In-N-Out Lynsi Martinez, is in a battle against her 86-yr old grandma for control of the burger chain. Martinez doesn't get her grippers on the secret sauce until she's 30 per daddy's will, but she wants to accelerate the process so she can expand the franchise across the country.

Via A Hamburger Today, the best burger joint in Shanghai - Rendezvous Cafe.

Their CEO lied about his degrees and now they're closing 700 stores, about 10% of the chain. But even with this move and the potential loss of their CEO, they are in big trouble. The issues are many - too many stores, poor locations, bad shopping environments, a losing store format, high costs, margin demands that steer them to a private label assortment and away from the brands people want, and the only traffic driver - sales, sales, sales. I think their format is dead and it would take a genius to fix them. They screwed up the one good thing they still had - mobile. Being America's cable and battery store clearly isn't enough. But what can their future?

The one advantage I feel they have is that they are in your neighborhood. It will take you 15-20 minutes to get to Best Buy. It will take you 5 to get to The Shack. They need things that drive store frequency and take advantage of their location. Pre-paid wireless is one idea. Another is to do what Tcibo and Aldi have been so successful at in Europe, aggressive short term promotions. Do an incredible deal on LCD TVs for example. Bring in two palettes per store. Advertise the hell our it on TV and in circulars, and sell it for a few hours. Basically, Black Friday every day. That would drive store traffic, but not profit. Its a tough nut to crack.

The energy business is more profitable than ever. They need a little corporate welfare, don't you think? This is the serious thinking of the corrupt Republican oil syndicate that we today call the legislative and executive branches.

According to the NYT, oil companies will soon be able to pump $65B worth of oil out of federal lands ROYALTY FREE for the next five years. Uncle Sam's cut would have been $7B, but hey, why not cut those poor oil guys a break. They've had a rough year.

Oh, by the way, these "incentives" that we are supposedly offering to keep oil prices low, will not achieve that because the Bush Administration is still projecting that oil will be over $50 a barrel.

Now don't forget boys and girls that all this is happening 1) at a time of way - a very expensive war, 2) after a major disaster, the recovery of which needs to be funded, 3) when the US deficit is out of control threatening the economic security of the country and undermining our position with our largest investors like Communist China, 4) when the AMT will shortly destroy the middle class whose lobby isn't nearly as effective as the mega-rich, and 4) when the Republican congress is seriously trying to REDUCE funding for education.

We live in strange times indeed. When a Vice President of the United States can shoot his friend in the face for kicks and get off with a "warning" and when the richest guy in the room refuses to pay his bar tab, the Republic has surely gone to hell. Soon there will be Caligulian orgies at The White House and a horse in the Senate.

Cirque Du Soleil has got merchandising fever. They are launching a women's clothing like followed by men's and children's clothes. They are also working on a fragrance, kid's toys, and home furnishings. When I told my wife this, she said "What, like a trapeze?" Exactly.

Piece of advise from a guy in the licensing biz - Do stuff your proud of that truly extends your brand and don't be a whore.

Lenovo is spending $30M to market the Thinkpad brand. As I said, they want to push their brands. They already made their acquistion. I don't see a Gateway merger here, but I could be wrong.

Disney spin-off Moviebeam re-launched today offering HD movie rentals and an improved business model. Rather than paying a subscription fee plus rental fees, its now like Tivo. You pay $199 after rebate for the box. $29.99 to "activate". And between $1.99 and $4.99 to rent a title, depending on whether its a New Release or a "Popular" Release and whether its in HD or SD.

What is cool about this is that Moviebeam has cracked the code on reliable HD on-demand delivery. They are datacasting over the TV broadcast spectrum, not sending video over the Internet where QOS is an issue. Also, they have day-and-date on some releases with DVD. But the problem is that you are only renting. There is no option to own, to burn, or to move to a portable media player, even at an extra price. So for $1.99 you can buy video on iTunes albeit in QVGA, but for the same price at Moviebeam you can rent in SD.

Its sad because if the rights weren't so restrictive, this might be a must-have it.

Not content with waging his endless quest for death and destruction through others, Dick Cheney has taken matters into his own hands and has started shooting people, starting with his own friend Harry Whittington. Alledgedly, this was a hunting accident, but I say all this is a cover story for Cheney's Nosferateau activities. Here's what I think really happened. Cheney just couldn't stand the taste of pig's blood any more. Whittington accidently cut his finger or something and Cheney went all fucking nuts and bit the guys head off and then shot him to make it look like an accident.

Proving my theory, the White House covered up the so-called accident for 24 hours while they confered an emergency meeting of the Skull and Bones to figure out what to do. But Scott McClellan caught all the shit for it in this exchange with the media as captured by The Washington Post –

The most heated moment occurred during McClellan's off-camera gaggle, featuring NBC's David Gregory, one of McClellan's most persistent inquisitors during the past year. As Gregory raised his voice while asking a question about the incident, McClellan told him to "hold on" and pointed out that "the cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later."

"Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras," Gregory replied, his voice rising. "Don't be a jerk to me personally when I'm asking you a serious question."

"You don't have to yell," McClellan said.

"I will yell," said Gregory, jabbing his finger in McClellan's direction. "If you want to use that podium to try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong."

"Calm down, Dave, calm down," said McClellan, evenly.

Thanks to Boing Boing for linking to the sweet picture above!

Boing Boing is living up to its claim to be a "dictionary of wonderful things" today. They link to this super cool little wonder, a laser LP turntable. It uses a laser rather than a needle to read your wax, so you never scratch the surface, and it can scan forward and back like a CD. Alledgedly it can read "virgin" surfaces even the needle never touches. How much is this little wonder? $19 grand.

Super Cool. A Beatles and Beastie Boys mash-up. Download it now before the IP cops stop it.

(Thanks, Boing Boing!)

UPDATE: The cops already busted 'em. Shucks!

Now is a time of breaking up and coming together. Jen and Brad becomes Brangelena. And so in world of technology, we all continue to wonder, when are those two crazy kids in Austin going to shack up?

It looked like they were going to a few months ago, and then Intel threw some money at Dell to make it all go away. For a while at least. Now rumors are that Dell has a wondering eye again. Rahul Sood, the President and CTO of Voodoo PC, says that its only a matter of when not if. He says that AMD is too successful now for Dell to continue to ignore them, that they have the best technology, and that is Dell doesn't use this technology, it will loose customers.

But The Inquirer disagrees. It points to the chart above which shows AMD's production capacity topping out in the 70-100M unit range. It says that AMD's 2005 run of 50M units was sold out. And that brought AMD to 25% share of the total market. But since Dell has around 30% market share yet is currently closed to AMD, that means that AMD actually has around 35% share of their available market. The Inquirer reasons then that AMD could have a similar share of Dell's business and they argue that would put AMD in a situation where they don't have enough love to go around.

Maybe my math is faulty, but if AMD has 25% of the market with 50M chips then the market is 200M chips a year, meaning Dell's consumes 60M chips a year, meaning 35% of their pie would be 21M chips. So isn't the whole point of the graph that AMD canmeet Dell's needs? Obviously, AMD is planning for share growth because the PC industry sure ain't growing at 50% over the next two years. So they are planning capacity increases to supply somebody on one of those somebodies is Dell.

I think The Inquirer's reasoning is faulty in that they assume that AMD has to get to 35% Dell's output on day one. Its going to take AMD some time to get there with Dell's customer base, so I think Dell is looking for only half that number is 2006 or 10M units. The other issue I see with The Inquirer's thinking is that it thinks that AMD can't scale up further and faster for some reason. I think this is a matter or capital and that if AMD lands a Dell deal that it can get the capital to expand from the market because its shares will shoot up and it will issue more.

So I'm with Raul. I think its going to happen and I think it will happen this year.

Raul and The Inquirer have made a bet on this. The terms are not clear. But there is mention of a chicken suit.

Watch this trailer and learn the meaning of the word "anticipation".

LA Times has a good story here. And BusinessWeek has one here.

It is obvious by now that Wayne was fired. And Snyder's rhetoric about the professional and direct channels supports my speculation that Wayne was fired because he had destroyed the heart and soul of Gateway - direct. But wasn't eMachines purchased and Wayne put in the job in the first place to close the stores, cut costs, and get them into CE retail? I think some of this is the revenge of the Ted Waitt camp. My guess is that Waitt didn't leave under his own steam and that Wayne wanted someone else in the role. The Waitt-ers probably held out until they could pounce on Wayne and crew.

But what will happen next? Professional aka enterprise is a wet dream, as is government, as is small business. All of them want to buy big and that means Lenovo, HP, or Dell. Gateway is not really setup to compete here. They may try to rebuild direct, but I think that ship has sailed. Gateway never stopped selling direct, it just stopped pushing it, and the customers went elsewhere. Getting them back will be VERY costly and it will fuck up their numbers more. At the same time, they will lose their retail customers since part of the deal with Gateway getting into the retail channel was that they would close the stores and stop pushing the direct business. But I think they are fucked in retail anyway. The only thing that company has right now is the eMachines team that came with Wayne and with all this talk to returning to direct, chances are, they are moving on. Plus, all of them got screwed by the acquisition. They thought they were millionaires. Now the stock is at $2.

The old eMachines guys, particularly Bob Davidson and Chuck May, are considered gods in the retail channel. Once they leave, there will be nothing left. Those guys will move to someone else who ACTUALLY wants to be in the retail business and all the business that Gateway had will transition to them within a matter of months.

Everyone is speculating that Lenovo or Acer may buy them. I can see the rationale and have said for a long time that this was the only sensible end game. But without the key retail guys from eMachines, I'm not sure what they would be buying. Plus, I think they could recruit the right people away for a lot less. I see the Gateway name as valuable only to Acer or a Taiwanese ODM like Foxconn. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think Lenovo would want it. After all, they had their chance to get a long term license on a far better brand - IBM - and didn't take it. They wanted the product brand "Thinkpad". Remember that Legend became Lenovo in anticipation of building the first global Chinese tech brand. That is very important to the Chinese. While multi-brand strategies are all the rage with Chinese companies these days – TCL and Thomson/RCA, Haier's attempted buyout of Maytag - I think Lenovo wants to build the Lenovo brand.

In any case, this solidifies the end of American dominance of the US PC business and opens a new chapter in which the factories sell directly to retailers and Dell becomes the middleman. Interesting times.

I'll say it again. Gateway is screwed.

Jim Hill, the Matt Drudge of The Walt Disney Company, is running low on material lately now that Bob Iger is doing such a great job and TWDC has some wind in its sails. So he's getting a little nostalgic for Disney's darker days. In this piece, which is actually very interesting, Jim Hill tells the behind the scenes story of The Black Cauldron, the breakthrough animation hit that should have been. One thing it does mention is that Disney bought the rights to "The Prydain Chronicles". I wonder if we still own them? Maybe Disney could do a live action version when they've run out of Narnias. Or maybe even Lasseter can make the movie that should have been into the movie it should have been. Something tells me, he has a lot of other stuff on his hands.

UPDATE: According to Wikipedia, Disney still owns the film rights but has no plans.

Lou Ferrigno has been sworn in as an LA County Sheriff reserve. He wants to work in SVU. Says Sheriff Lee Baca...

"Lou Ferrigno was an outstanding trainee and I know that he'll be an outstanding reserve deputy sheriff. Reserve deputies serve without compensation, receiving only the great satisfaction of being of service to their community."

I never knew about this one. Danny's Blog has a post of "The Yippie Invasion" of Disneyland in 1970. Here's what happened:

"Hippies were encouraged to attend this non-sponsored event "to liberate Minnie Mouse, have free rein of the park and infiltrate Tom Sawyer's Island." Warned that Disneyland would not allow the Yippies admission to the park without a ticket, the coordinators encouraged people to "tear down the walls." The LA Free Press warned its readers to prepare for a confrontation, advising that Anaheim Police Officers were under going riot training and may be heavily armed. With this information, the Anaheim police Department prepared for a major confrontation, working with their strategy for the unauthorized visitation of an anticipated crowd of 20,000 plus Yippies to the Magic Kingdom.

Officials with the Anaheim Police Department and other Orange County police agencies began training their officers in crowd control. On the morning of August 6, 1970, Anaheim Police and Disneyland personnel were prepared for the Yippie take-over. As the gates opened, 300 Yippies made their entrance into the park. Anaheim Police waited in riot formation behind Main Street while Disneyland administrators and cast members dealt with the small group of unruly hippies. Once inside the park, the Yippies received an unexpected confrontation from regular park guests. Disneyland personnel handled these minor confrontations as hundreds of police officers remained in the back lot. It appeared that Disneyland personnel had things well in hand and the day would remain relatively peaceful. As the day wore on, so did the emotions and tempers of the paying park guests and Yippies. The Yippies assembled on Main Street and tried to gain unity in an attempt to disrupt park activity and cause damage to the park. As security officers attempted to gain order, one of Disneyland's security officers was assaulted. At that point the police were called upon to evict the Yippies from the park. As park guests watched and cheered, hundreds of police officers marched onto Main Street in formation and began their slow and deliberate sweep to clear the unruly crowd."

Yippies are stupid.

Boing Boing points to the NSA's kids site which features a group of superhero cryptographer animal characters called the Crypto Kids, which BB calls "the Power Rangers for warrantless wiretaps". Talk about waste of tax payer dollars. The NSA doesn't need a kids outreach site!

Cartoon Brew points out that Oswald merchandise is all the rage in Japan as zakka or character merchandise. Interestingly all that merch is TM and © Walter Lantz. Well, not any more. Now it will be © Disney as it should be.

One of Disney's podcasts, The Gears Behind the Ears, has had Marty Sklar, Vice chairman and Principal Creative Executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, for the last few weeks. This week, Marty talks about "Mickey's Ten Commandments", a set of do's and don'ts for creating the theme parks that can be applied to any creative process:

1. Know your audience - Don't bore people, talk down to them or lose them by assuming that they know what you know.

2. Wear your guest's shoes - Insist that designers, staff and your board members experience your facility as visitors as often as possible.

3. Organize the flow of people and ideas - Use good story telling techniques, tell good stories not lectures, lay out your exhibit with a clear logic.

4. Create a weenie - Lead visitors from one area to another by creating visual magnets and giving visitors rewards for making the journey

5. Communicate with visual literacy - Make good use of all the non-verbal ways of communication - color, shape, form, texture.

6. Avoid overload - Resist the temptation to tell too much, to have too many objects, don't force people to swallow more than they can digest, try to stimulate and provide guidance to those who want more.

7. Tell one story at a time - If you have a lot of information divide it into distinct, logical, organized stories, people can absorb and retain information more clearly if the path to the next concept is clear and logical.

8. Avoid contradiction - Clear institutional identity helps give you the competitive edge. Public needs to know who you are and what differentiates you from other institutions they may have seen.

9. For every ounce of treatment , provide a ton of fun - How do you woo people from all other temptations? Give people plenty of opportunity to enjoy themselves by emphasizing ways that let people participate in the experience and by making your environment rich and appealing to all senses.

10. Keep it up - Never underestimate the importance of cleanliness and routine maintenance, people expect to get a good show every time, people will comment more on broken and dirty stuff.

According to Starbucks Gossip, Kellogg's is creating a special granola cereal for Starbucks in a single serving container to which the barista will add steamed milk and other goodies like carmel. "Can I have a skinny granola carmel-ato with whip, please?"

Thanks, SlashFood!

Continuing its patronage of America's favorite sport, Sprint Nextel is introducing FanView, a little gadget that let watch video of the race they are watching (???), get stats, and listen in on their drivers during the race. It uses the 2.5 Ghz spectrum and is powered by Kanagroo.TV.

Wayne Inouye just stepped down as CEO of Gateway. Wayne is not commenting and they put the Chairman of the Board, an old Gateway hand, in charge while they look for a new CEO. That means one thing - Wayne was fired. But why? He turned the company around and was on the way to eek out a slight profit? The only thing I can think of is his incompetent destruction of the direct channel. But too late Gateway board, that ain't coming back.

Gateway is really fucked now. Waitt is gone. Inouye is gone. If the rest of the eMachines crew (which doesn't really have a lot of love for Wayne anymore) leave, Gateway is done. Those guys are rocket scientists when it comes to the value equation, but they could never fix the fundamental problem for Gateway - Its a shitty investment. Why should I put my kids college money in Gateway, a company that at best will only ever generate a few percentage points of profit, when I can put it into to something else that will grow. Even if you are stupid enough to invest into PC companies, why wouldn't you invest in Apple or Dell before Gateway?

I have said it before and will say it again - Gateway can't go on as a public company. They need to sell to Foxconn or Quanta or some other Taiwanese ODM. Its the only way they can survive.

Expect Gateway products to start disappearing from store shelves within 6 months. Expect a Gateway bankruptcy in a year.

Clever. NBC has posted an iTunes playlist by Michael Scott from The Office.

Scooter Libby has revealed that his was authorized by his "superiors" to leak Valerie Plame's name to the press. So there was a politically-motivated conspiracy coming from the Veeps office. But was it legal for Cheney to declassify this info. God, I hope not. How delicious!

After "The Alice Comedies", Walt created his first cartoon character, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. Oswald was a hit, but Walt didn't realize until its was too late that Universal, the distributor of his shorts, owned all the rights to Oswald. Walt didn't get a penny from merchandising and at one point, Universal tried to get another animator to do Oswald. Walt re-invented Oswald as a mouse he wanted to call Mortimer, but his wife Lilly insisted he call "Mickey".

But in a weird turn of events, Bob Iger has re-claimed the rights to Oswald for Disney as part of a trade of Al Michaels from ESPN to NBC. A quote from Walt's daughter, Diane Disney Miller...

"When Bob was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word. Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun."

The refurbished Lily Belle is back at Disneyland. I never knew it had this luxury car. Anyone with any info? Lemme know.

Time says the Pentagon keeps scaring people....

"The Pentagon, which is calling for the largest defense budget since the cold war, has been floating scary threats lately. TIME has obtained a copy of a PowerPoint presentation that senior officers have been showing to groups around the U.S. warning that failure to stop Osama bin Laden and his ilk would have the same "consequences" as Europe's appeasement of the Nazis before World War II. Bullet points describe possible U.S. economic depression and Washington being forced into an "accommodation" with terrorists. Skeptics question the timing of such predictions. Says security analyst John Pike: "The Pentagon has a long tradition of dialing up the threat to get more dollars at budget time."

This one's making the rounds but I couldn't resist. Its a vending machine that scoops you ice cream. 12 flavors to chose from!

Chris Anderson at The Long Tail thinks the Blockbuster is dead. He has charts to prove it.

Mike Pusateri over at Cruft has a review of the Gillette Fusion razor with six blades. He likes it! Personally, I'm holding out for the 10 blade model with power sander.

Coke is replacing its familiar 12-ounce cans with these little mini plastic bottles. Stubby is the new chic.

Interesting.

TUAW has another alleged Apple Special Event invite that says "There's been a mix up".

But it can't be about iPod Shuffle or Nano. They just announced a 1GB Nano at $149 and moved the 1GB Shuffle to $99 and the 512MB Shuffle to $69.

To mark the centennial of 1906 earthquake that shook San Francisco to its foundations, a local artist and the Exploratorium has joined together to build a Jell-O scale model of the city. What would Cosby say about this?

CNN has a story of a New Yorker who wanted to see if a message in a bottle could make it all the way to Britian. It did and here's the "hello, how are 'ya" that he got in return –

"I recently found your bottle while taking a scenic walk on the beach by Poole Harbour. While you may consider this some 'profound experiment on the path and speed of oceanic currents', I have another name for it, litter. You Americans don't seem to be happy unless you are mucking about somewhere."

Apple has a special event planned for Feb 22nd, two days after my birthday. Speculation is that this image from the invitation is of an Airport Express suggesting that what we will be seeing is a faster (802.11n?) unit with video and Front Row.

Boing Boing points to a special find from South Korea...Power Black Condoms. Hilarious yet moderately offensive.

A photo essay of TVs in Cuba. Very cool. Here's an explanation from the intro....

"In Cuba, television is the most important communication medium and a national pastime. No matter that the TV sets themselves are outdated, pre-revolution relics imported from America or sets from Russia over fifteen years old; green-hued beasts jimmy-rigged with ancient computer parts and fantastically adorned like religious altars.

In Cuba the government controls all media, including the three main newspapers as well as the two television stations. They broadcast news reports, baseball, educational programs, soap operas, and Hollywood movies. Whether used for information or as a background for socializing and drinking rum, during broadcast hours, all TVs in Cuba are ON."

Check it out...

I have seen this movie and its rocks!!! Fear not, Cinematical. Pixar will not let you down.

Bruce Vaughn and my pals at Imagineering R&D have cooked up a new venture for Parks & Resorts - Adventures by Disney. What is it? Professionally guided family tours to global destinations such as London, Paris, Costa Rica, the Canadian Rockies, Italy, Wyoming, and the Hawaiian Islands.

Apple has filed a whole bunch of patents pertaining to gestural interface for controlling a tablet device. This is definitely where the future of interface is going and a huge leap in usability over the pen interface on Tablet PC that has never really taken off. Steve Jobs once said he didn't think people wanted a Newton because they didn't want a "little scribbly thing". Now they get a little rubby thing, and I can't wait to see it.

I know what you are thinking. "I want to get my wife flowers for Valentine's Day, but it just seems so obvious." Well, Engadget points out a solution for you, personalized flowers. Yes, for only $1250, you too can have a four color flower printer for making thousands of personal and special greetings. But wait, that's not all...

Sony may be putting Aibo and Qrio to sleep, but Asahi is giving away 5000 units of this robot designed to store and pour beer. I need one!!! Meanwhile, I'm sure the guys at Wow Wee Robotics reign supreme in the new era of consumer robotics....

That is, unless the new super cool Lego Mindstorms NXT has anything to say about it.

Burke Design accidentally posted a concept for the redesign of Disneyland's monorail then took it down.

Thanks Disney Blog!

From Joy of Tech...

I'm going to Hong Kong again in a few weeks and every time I start anticipating a trip there I start hankering for a hunk of Woo. John Woo that is. So last night I watched Woo's Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun Fat. Its still as awesome as ever. But it made me realize why John Woo's post-HK film work has been so poor. It would be like taking Woody Allen out of New York. HK is Woo's muse and without it, he is nothing.

Its the Year of the Dog. According to Wikipedia's account of the Chinese zodiac, "People born in this year are loyal, honest, and trustworthy, but can also be stubborn and selfish."

Hong Kong Disneyland was a sell-out this Chinese New Year. Normally, that's a good thing, but not in China. People who bought flexible six month passes - which do not guarantee admission on any given day - were outraged and attempted to storm the Magic Kingdom. Many tried lifting their kids over the gates to get them in.

Anyone who has been to Hong Kong or the PRC knows how pushy and shovy the Chinese can be in public spaces. Its very different culturally. Disney has had its share of challenges with HKD because of the cultural differences. The Chinese people are very demanding and the press is very sensational and critical whenever something goes wrong. Minor things that would pass without incident in the US are front page news in Hong Kong. A lot of this stems from the resentment the Hong Kong people have over the tax that they paid for many years to finance the Hong Kong government's investment in the park. The Hong Kong people feel its their park and don't understand things like sell-outs.