A small group of us are heading out to see the Blue Angels practice today at 1pm for Seafair.  I know we can't get into the main grounds, but I'm looking for suggestions on where to stage for good pictures.  Here are some thoughts:

• Luther Burbank Park, Mercer Island
• NewCastle Beach Park, Factoria
• Seward Park, Seattle

Any suggestions on the location?  I know I90 will be shut down but it's been a few years and I'm a bit rusty on their flight path.  Thanks!

Update0: qna.live.com has the same question posted here - thanks Erik!  By the luck of the draw, we found Colman Park- right near the I90 bridge in Seattle, it's free, was less populated and got some really good shots straight ahead, and 180deg behind you for closer shots. There's swimming for the kids, and plenty of space for a throw-blanket. 

GearLive recently sat down with Jonathan Sasse, President of iRiver America at their offices about the development of the Clix.  You can see the framed signoff poster we gave them commemorating the effort and learn more about the experience here.  The audio quality leaves a bit to be desired but a good demo and interview overall.

Real + Mozilla + Google Toolbar. And I remember the days when you could just easily download the software you were intending to download.  We've reached a new tipping point when 2/3 of the download are products you didn't directly intend to download.

Chris Pirillo- how about a cartoon extolling the new software "box" - "Now includes 66% more stuff than you wanted asked for!" Party on the party plane!

Last night, I had the opportunity to have dinner with Jeremy Toeman, VP of Sling Media and a group of folks from the Windows Mobile team.  I had a fantastic time- this was the first time Jeremy and I had met in person and we clicked.  I've been a reader of his blog for some time at www.livedigitally.com which he does for fun on the side as I do this site.  We both use Shure headphones.  We both like to smoke... BBQ (gotcha!).  We both love Slingbox.  He set up my new HTC Breeze aka MTeoR aka Qtek 8600 with his own home account for testing (sustained 140kbps over EDGE in Bellevue WA).  I was getting 14fps which was truly watchable.  His wife called up shortly thereafter because he was fighting with her on the same TV for control.  Uhoh- glad he was at the controls :).  No marital tiff here, he just apologized and said he was doing a demo.

I forgot to take a picture, but as an owner and fan of the iRiver Clix, I gave him my launch jacket as a thank you for all the good (Windows Media) work that went into the Slingbox.  I love my slingbox and with my new super fast cell phone, I'm sure to enjoy it on more wifely excursions.

Special thanks to Jonathan.  I've officially been out-gadgeted. Of course, now my boss wants a Slingbox as well. :)

I'm going to start a new segment, "HD-DVD Tuesdays" where I'll list the new DVDs coming out in HD-DVD.  I'm not going to include Blu-Ray here because frankly, I like my HD-DVD player and I'm not going to shell out the extra $$ for a Blu-Ray player that's not executing as well as HD-DVD. 

August 1 Releases

• Four Brothers (Paramount)
• The Manchurian Candidate (2004) (Paramount)
• We Were Soldiers (Paramount)

courtesy High-Def Digest

MSN Spaces is now Windows Live Spaces, offering blogging and more for mainstream Windows Live users.  I keep a family blog over at WL Spaces, and perhaps now will do more with it.  I was surprised to hear that WL Spaces is now the largest blogging service on the web with over 100 million unique monthly visitors, beating Google's Blogger.

Here's an interesting video at On10.net that explains some of the new features.  The "mistress" analogy is the most non-Microsoft I've heard in a while.  Something tells me this guy is going to get a call from PR to come up with another analogy... ;)

Top New features:

• New look and feel
• Support for Windows Live Gadgets
• Friends Module (heavily customizable - look out MySpace!)
• RSS feed embedding (include content from your favorite sites on your WL Space)

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has more here as well.  Personally I'd like to see more in the statistics features, more music and video integration (including simple hosting of videos on 3rd parties ala YouTube).  How about links to Urge music with freeplays? Perhaps we'll see more in the future.

Update0: Added RSS feature to list - thanks Erik!

Remember those annoying little tamagotchi keychain games that were all the rage in the last 90's?  The goal was to raise your little animal by hitting buttons to feed or train it.  Jeremy Toeman points to what I call "Analog Tamagotchi"- real plants and cactii on a keychain.  Just a little water every few days.  Eventually these can be moved to pots to become full-sized.  Or you could just kill it like I do most of my plants and carry around a plant corpse, noting you're too busy to water it.

Source: LIVEdigitally » Blog Archive » Who’da Think it? - 5

If you're like me, you know how infuriating it can be to have a layover between flights and no access to power to recharge your battery.  Airports are often stingy and attempt to hide their power outlets.

Jeff had a great idea- start a Wiki where users can post pictures and details on how to find AC power. Whether you want to watch a movie, surf, or get real work done, this is a great resource.

Sean's Travel Tip #28: Often times when you find the outlet, someone else will be using it.  Bring one of those dandy $3 3-outlet adapters with you to share with the other power user and potentially a third person such as a coworker. Worried about surges?  There's a solution here for you too.  Go ahead, recoup some of the "Airport usage fee" rolled into the cost of that ticket. ;)

Long Zheng from Australia was excited to win my little giveaway a few weeks back and finally recieved one of the first iRiver Clix players in his country.  His thoughts are posted here as well as pictures of the swank jacket we created for the launch team which I included as a bonus.

Now comes more good news for our friends down under. The Clix is now available officially at Dick Smith Electronics.

Sorry, I don't have any additional details on Clix availability in other markets- please contact iRiver and/or your favorite retailer directly for your region.

Last week, at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Meeting, reporters poked fun at a demo bug with speech recognition, some going so far as to call it "Speech Wreckognition". Slashdot had it, Neowin had it,  Digg had it, Reuters had it.  

Clearly this was a bug in a test build of Vista and it made for a good chuckle (you don't hear about all the other demos that ran flawlessly of course).  There must be someone responsible, to hold accountable right?  That was probably a faceless, nameless developer somewhere in the "Echo Chamber" who would never admit it publicly right?  When these things happen, engineers tear the demo system apart to learn from it but then keep that to themselves and quietly fix the bug, right?

Wrong.  The owner of the issue, Larry Osterman is one of those developers I just admire the heck out of.  He fessed up.  "It was all my fault" he writes on his blog about the bug, noting what caused it, creating a shared learning with others. He could have said, "I spoke to the guy who owns the bug" but that would have been disingenuous.  He held himself accountable.  Kudos Larry.  Subscribed.

This past week, my aunt and uncle were visiting.  He's one of the top Pediatric Cardiologists in the nation and used to teach at Harvard Medical School.  My Aunt is Headmaster of a presigious school for children with special needs.  Neither has much time for geekery.  Self-professed near-luddites, they were Mac users for 10 years, and hated moving to XP from Win9x.  (I believe my Aunt said the UI was inspired by Fisher Price.) But this week, after they saw how easily I could pull up pictures from my son's 3rd Birthday Party last weekend and a recent family reunion they were floored.  They asked "Okay, what's this Vista thing?" and "Where and when can I get it?".  I've never seen this response before.

Tagging is super-simple in Vista. Insert a card, plug in a camera, add a few words and you'll save hours of searching through pictures by person, place, event, occasion and more.  Users of Flickr and Zooomr know this.

The Microsoft PhotoBlog has more on this feature and others in Windows Vista. They're posting pretty regularly and it's nice to see.

Update0: Fixed the missing "o" in Zooomr - thanks!

Nick White from the Vista team posts on their official blog more details on Vista changes coming in the Release Candidate or already seen in interim builds here on their official Vista Blog.  It's a good start but pretty wordy.  Thanks Nick - how about some shiny happy screenshots with John Madden-like chalk talk to detail the changes before/after?    :)

I can't believe I'm actually excited about this.  The iCup arrives at Microsoft and I can't wait to get some fresh joe at the office that doesn't cost me $5 a cup.  Be sure to check out their video.

(Courtesy Jeff Sandquist, Duncan, and Adam)

 Since moving to the outer 'burbs a few years ago, my wife and I have been making a try at agricultural gardening.  Our home came apportioned with a peach tree, a large cherry tree, pear tree, 3 varieties of apples, and 4 plots.  Our goal has been to not kill everything off at once (we actually saved the cherry tree thanks to smart fertilizing and water management).  Still, our garden patch may runneth over with tomatos, green beans, potatoes, our corn is looking pretty lame.  Many of the seeds were duds because I put them too deep in the soil or were eaten by the &@(#$ crows.  Our attempts at flash tape to scare them away didn't work either.

From the "Why didn't they think of this earlier?" files, check out Matchstick Garden.  It's a matchbook that holds 10 cardboard matches loaded with seeds and ready for planting.  They're doing wildflower and herb assortments right now as well as custom versions. Throw in that the sticks are made of bio-degradable, recycled waste and you have a cool solution for Sean-proof gardening.

(via Cool Hunting)

What if you could take all the pictures of a particular place on Flickr, taken at different angles, and without a 3D model, your computer could stitch the pictures together into a 3D, navigable model where you can zoom in or out, walk around and more?  Enter Microsoft Live Labs' project, "Photosynth"

Update0: On10.Net has a cool interview and more in-depth demo of Windows Live Labs' PhotoSynth here.

Todd Bishop of the Seattle P-I has updates on Zune and Vista from the Microsoft Financial Analysts Meeting (FAM).

Correction: Todd Bishop of the Seattle P-I. ;)

From the "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" file, Anything but iPod is reporting has been relaying a rumor that an iRiver Clix 4GB version is expected next week.  The apparent source of said rumor is an hourly-wage employee at a major retail chain.  I've helped to train said types of employees in a former life and I can tell you these guys are the last ones I would trust to have inside skinny on product releases or even how to market them. 

Case in point: I was recently forwarded pictures of a major retailer placing multiple Apple iPods in the PlaysforSure section of one of their stores, in demo stations with security wire and PlaysforSure logos, all of which was likely an honest mistake by a sales employee/manager type, but is highly deceptive to consumers.

So is a 4GB Clix coming next week?  I checked with our friends at iRiver and while they don't normally speak about future product plans, I can tell you a 4GB version is not expected to be released next week.  What about the week after?  Come on guys, I'm not going to do that to you.  If you're in the market for a Clix, now is a good time to buy.  If a 4GB comes out, you can always put your existing device up on eBay or Windows Live Expo (which just launched) and sell it there.

I've expressed my desire for a 4GB as have many customers via forums and contacting iRiver and Reigncom (their parent company) directly, but there is no news to communicate at this time.  If this changes, I will report it here from a confirmed source. :)

Xbox Live's Major Nelson interviewed my VP, Amir Majidimehr for his podcast while I was out on vacation.  This is a frank and highly informative look at HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and DVD.  Even if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I still recommend you listen to this interview to learn more about why Microsoft got behind HD-DVD, and continues to supply technology that will ship in both formats.