I recently created a photo lightbox out of cardboard and tissue paper using this Strobist How-to guide. Grand total for out-of-pocket expenses: $2.49. Photos coming soon.

Well, that didn’t take long. The folks over at Gizmodo have already set free the new iPhone 3G. This occurs seemingly just a few hours after some new owners actually got their iPhone’s activated. I’m not sure if this is a comment on the hacking skills of the folks at Gizmodo, the security Apple placed on the new iPhone, or a combination of the two.

Not long ago (July 3rd actually), Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California ruled that President George W. Bush lacks the authority to disregard FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). This means the Bush administration’s warrantless electronic surveillance program–for which Congress wants to grant retroactive immunity–was illegal. It seems to me that illegal surveillance conducted against the American people is far worse than illegal surveillance conducted against a rival political party.

Update: For which Congress has granted immunity and allowed (encouraged) to continue. Yet the top story on CNN is not about our eroding freedoms; it is instead about DNA evidence clearing JonBenet Ramsey’s family of her slaying.

Mircosoft announced a delay in the release of Vista. Many theories as to why.

But, according to this video demo, Vista looks like an exact replica of the Mac OS.

And why not? When Apple’s machines will fully be able to run Window’s after the intel switch, Microsoft will be competing with the Mac OS directly. Then everyone will see just how terrible Windows is.

Is Apple about to release a new Video iPod? Or is this just someone’s wish?

I’m talking about this iPod.

It appears to have a screen that covers the entire front, and the wheel is part of a touch-screen system.

It’s a cool concept, real or not. Just when I was about to drop a few bucks on one, it’ll be obsolete before I open the box.

Why do I feel like I’m in a life-long struggle with email.

With all the possibilities of technology, email applications just aren’t very smart. It seems like once a year, whatever application I use, it takes a poop on my hard drive and I have to reinstall. What are those account passwords again?

So what’s the best email application? I’m not talking about Gmail either. I’m talking pop3.

Outlook
Outlook Express
The Bat!
Thunderbird
Eudora

You tell me.

Ebay buys Skype.

Gizmo outclasses Skype.

Ebay wastes a billion?

The folks over at Adaptive Path have invited me into their private alpha testing of Measure Map. The setup was extremely easy. They have prepared specific walkthroughs for several different blogging platforms complete with screenshots that are clear and concise. I had my WordPress blog setup in less than five minutes.

It seems that Measure Map is currently focused on providing stats which are important to bloggers, but their proposed feature list will certainly include more and more robust (read: enterprise) type statistics. RSS feed management is coming soon and as it is an alpha, there are sure to be tons more features.

I only spent about 15 minutes with the app, so these are just initial impressions, but like most everything from Adaptive Path, it looks great. It seems to be fast right now; scaling will be something to keep our eyes on. I have not personally used Mint, but I can certainly say that setup is much easier with Measure Map mostly because it’s a hosted app and not something running on your own server.

I hope to post more insight both here and to the Measure Map folks after Thanksgiving. Heading to the folks for a few days and won’t be online, but I like what I see so far.

When are Cable companies going to start offering a menu option? With the number of entertainment choices continually increasing, we have less time and fewer reasons to watch cable; particularly when most of us (at least the people I know) regularly watch only five to 10 channels. Thus, we are quickly becoming a world where cable isn’t delivering the return on investment it should. Plus, the entertainment options that continually evolve put us in control, which is exactly what cable doesn’t do. I’m certainly reconsidering its worth.