Of course, if I'm going to throw rocks at NEC for using itsy-bitsy font sizes that I can't manually override with IE's View/Text Size feature, then I must also throw rocks at Weblogs like Dori Smith's Backup Brain for doing the same thing. (There are others, too, but figured I'd start with Dori since she was a speaker at the recent Web Builder conference). Dori, what's your defense for your font size? It hurts my eyes. I'm 37 and need glasses, I guess.

It's a good time to post my standard disclaimer. This is a personal weblog. I work for NEC, but my views here don't reflect anything official at NEC or anyone else's opinion other than mine. I used to work at UserLand, but no longer do and am completely independent now of UserLand. If you don't like my opinions there's a little button on your browser marked "back." Please use it if you feel uncomfortable here.

On the other hand I see Macromedia executive Jeremy Allaire playing around with video on his weblog. This is a dangerous idea. I'd love to do this, but why don't I? Because I know that UserLand can't afford the bandwidth hit. Keep in mind, that if the 15 of you come and visit twice a day and download my text, it costs UserLand about 750kb of bandwidth. That's not much. But, look at the video that Jeremy is doing. It's probably 500kb or more. Now we're talking about a far larger bandwidth issue. And, what happens if Jeremy's weblog got Slashdotted? 10,000 viewers trying to watch a half-megabyte video? You wanna watch UserLand's servers crawl to a halt? Using video on your weblog is unfair to the rest of us. All of us Radio users are served out of the same box and same 10megabit lines. I think that if you wanna use large files on your weblog you should only run them on your own servers. But that's just my opinion. I guess if things get out of hand UserLand would be forced to put throttling mechanisms in place (or they'd ask popular weblogs to pull down video files). Anyway, my point is, that the $40 a year with free hosting Radio UserLand model just won't support everyone using video and audio every day on their weblogs. If video and audio weblogs become popular, we'll need to find a different model.

Ahh, Internet video sex (er, sorry, dating). You all are acting like this is something new (yeah, Marc Canter, I'm talking about you. Phhhhbbbttt! ). It's not. We had this back in the early 1990s. It was called CUSeeMe which I see has now been turned into some sort of corporate videoconferencing product. They shoulda stuck with sex. Yahoo just reported higher profits than expected. Their personal site (more sex) is drawing in thousands of people who'll pay $20 a month to meet other people who've paid $20 a month. Heh. Sex, sex, sex. That's where it is.

Hey, all us old timers know that ICUII is the way to go -- this was started by a guy who produces TV shows for ABC. But, I'm glad to see Macromedia focusing on this stuff. I always thought it was a mistake for Microsoft to ignore its NetMeeting product.

Now, Macromedia needs to turn a corner. There's only a few potential sex sites out there, but there are a ton of eCommerce sites out there. Can Macromedia convince sites like Amazon and eBay to put in their FlashComm server? If they can, then we'll know we're well on the way to the interactive multimedia world that Marc is talking about.

More: What is new about these services is that they now run in the Web browser (no need to download, setup, and learn some other app). What else is new is that the eCommerce facility now exists to charge you $20 a month to join services like these. Macromedia deserves credit for pushing the Flash player out to a large number of people, which is what will enable us to do more in the browser. I still wish Microsoft would get with it and build its Windows Media features more into the browser. But, Microsoft can't do that because it would be seen as anti-competitive with Real and Apple. Unfortunately, neither Real or Apple get it either, so that leaves a door open for Macromedia to walk into.

NEC Solutions America just turned on their new Web site design today. Since I know their design team reads my weblog, why don't you all tell me what you think in my comment area? I won't say what I think -- my boss reads this -- but I will note that it doesn't validate, it doesn't have a background color defined, and the font is locked at a small size on my screen (they say they did that for cross-browser compatibility reasons). On the other hand, it's a big improvement over what we used to have. No, I didn't have anything to do with it, although I hear I'm getting assigned the Mobile Solutions site soon (that's the division where I work).

Jeffery Zeldman says that one reason not to include referer data on your weblog is you might embarrass people who link to you (what, your site only gets two visitors?) Heh. That's funny. I'm always shocked when I find out that more than my mom, my brother, and my future wife are reading here. I think my readership is up to about 15 people now. Will you all please go away? I have work to do.

John Robb writes about home media systems. I've been thinking about this a lot. Of course, I'm a bad one to aim at now. I just spent $1,500 to $2,000 on a home theater system ($500 receiver, $650 speaker system, $300 DVD player, hooked to a $900 TV, all with about $250 worth of cables).

Some other data: I just got DSL in my home. Always on. 128kbps up and 300+kbps down. I have Wi-Fi in my house. I have a telephone line in my house and AT&T Cable.

Now, what's the problem, you say? Well, for one, none of these things talks to each other. They are completely stupid about each other. My DVD player doesn't know that I have a Denon Reciever (which is important, cause my Denon surround sound receiver has DTS but not Audio CD encoders). My Receiver doesn't know what kind of speakers I have (I had to manually input these things). My computer can't talk to any of this stuff. And, of course, my TV has no clue about any of these devices.

My first dream is to have one remote control that talked to everything. But to do that would take a PocketPC-style device with WiFi card built in. Right now that's running about $500. My second dream is to put Firewire in all AV components so that we can run high-quality digital audio and video with one cable. Now, my DVD player is close -- it has an optical cable for sending the audio signals over. The problem is, I still needed six audio cables because I care about the new DVD Audio format and my receiver can't decode DVD Audio formatted DVDs. Geesh.

If Microsoft or someone could offer a system with one remote control, one cable between all the various components, some smarts about each other, plus some new features (read Tivo-style things), along with connectivity to the Internet (so that I can share my camcorder videos when I get a camcorder) then I think we'll have a paradigm shift in the home entertainment market. Until then, I note that 2002 system isn't noticeably different from the one I bought in 1985 (well, except I have surround sound and DVD instead of two channel and VCR). You'd think that in 15 years we'd have made more progress.

I just got the first visit from the New Advanced Search Agent that I remember seeing in my referer logs. This engine is pretty interesting for the groupings it presents. All that said and done, though, I don't think I'm giving up Google anytime soon. I see a lot more spam on this engine than on Google.

For the three of you who don't know why traditional radio sucks, here's a good Salon primer on what Clear Channel has done to this industry. I wish we had laws against owning more than 10 radio stations in the entire country. Oh well. Maybe that's why I spend a lot of time reading weblogs and very little listening to the radio.

Speaking of radio, the religious wackos are pushing NPR off of the air in places. Sigh.

http://www.wdvx.com/main.html WDVX is a grass roots radio station broadcasting from a fourteen-foot camper in the Fox Inn Campground in Clinton, Tennessee. My kind of radio station! I got this from my friend Karl Peterson, who also sends along these cool radio streams:
http://www.wfuv.org/wfuvlive.asx
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wncw/ppr/wncw.asx
http://acw.activate.net/knba/live.asx
http://kumdmediasrv.d.umn.edu/KUMDLIVE
http://wdvx.microcerv.net:80/wdvx
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kplu/ppr/kplu-blues.asx
Who said radio is dead?

Scott Johnson says that XDocs are a bad idea (among other things).

Heh, now I can encode secret messages in my weblog like this one:
0100100100100000011011000110111101110110011
00101001000000100110101100001011100100111100
1011000010110110100000000.
Yeah, there's a decoder. Thanks to Chris Pirillo for this one.
0100001101101000011100100110100101110011001000000
10100000110100101110010011010010110110001101
10001101111001000000110100101110011001
00000011000010010000001100111011001010
11001010110101100000000

Alwin says I have a Microsoft chip implanted in my brain. Heh. Maybe so, maybe so.

I met Aaron Swartz in Hawaii in April. I can't think of someone who's under 20 who is smarter and better prepared to meet the world. His visit to the Supreme Court and subsequent writings demonstrate that. He writes better than most 40-year-olds I know (and is better connected to boot!) Congrats Aaron -- I can't wait to see what else you do with your gifts.

Every morning I look at my referer logs (these show how many hits I've gotten from sites that link to me). Today my top referer is Matthew over at O'Reilly who is talking about Clogging. I guess I helped to introduce a new term to the blogosphere yesterday. My CLOG for this week: meet me at FleetWeek this Saturday at the Ferry Building in San Francisco at 10 a.m. -- my angel and son and dad will be there. Hmmm. Total Scobleization. Heh.

Update: Matt has a Radio weblog here too.

Good morning Tivo fans! Speaking of which, I sure hope this Salon article turns out to be wrong. I want a Tivo. Especially now that I'm living with two other people. I definitely need the ability to record programs now, even though I have two TVs.