JedFonner.com

Ok so maybe this is a little old, but I just discovered the Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (see video below). First of all, it’s not only hilarious but extremely well done. It’s a three-part, comedic, superhero musical starring everyone’s favorite Neil Patrick Harris and assorted other less-well known TV stars (including Nathan Fillion from Firefly).

The amazing thing is that this wasn’t done for television. It was made specifically for the web by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy and Firefly). So unlike SNL’s “Digital Shorts” which are made as much for the Saturday night’s show as for the web, this was made to be aired on Hulu.com for free. Joss seems to totally have bought into the new internet business plan: build up a loyal following by giving away your content for free, then make money by providing fans with added value (merchandising, higher-quality downloads, DVD sales, exclusives, etc). As TechDirt would say, the content is advertising for the things that really provide revenue.

I don’t know if this represents the beginning of a new effort by actors and writers to expand aggressively into online video, or if this was just a one-time project dreamed up and implemented during the writers’ strike. I hope it’s the former. What better way for an actor to build their “brand” while also having much more creative license with their work. Plus, if you’re trying to go viral, online video, not TV, is where it all starts.

Either way, I love it:

To get more control over the size of the video or to get the embed code yourself, head over to the Dr. Horrible page on Hulu.

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I realize not everyone listens to as many podcasts or scours the blogs as fervently as I do, so I figured I’d highlight some of the recent news items I thought interesting:

US Customs & Border Control can steal your gadgets without needing a good reason. This is really scary; not only can they confiscate, but they can keep it as long as they want, look at everything on the device and even share your data with other private companies. And they don’t need reasonable cause to do any of it.

Comcast gets hand smacked by the FCC, wallet not affected. The FCC ruled that Comcast violated federal policy when they degraded users’ bittorrent traffic. The commission, however, chose not to impose any fine or other penalty. Basically, they just said, “Hey, cut it out”. I’m sure Comcast is quaking in their boots.

Amazon Web Services experiences massive outage. The loss of Amazon’s various web services, like it’s S3 storage service, EC2 cloud computing platform, and various other cloud computing services, sends shockwaves through the SaaS world. Maybe building your whole business on the back of Amazon’s services without any uptime guarantee isn’t so smart after all.

Delicious finally gets a facelift and an easier URL. The webpage is pretty slick now and you can use http://delicious.com instead of their old url, http://del.icio.us (I could never remember where the dots went). If you’re not already using Delicious for bookmarks and web clippings, now you have no reason not to start (you can find my Delicious profile here).

System administrator in SF goes “rogue” and refuses to relinquish control. Sorting out all the facts about the Terry Childs vs City of San Francisco case has been tricky. Some say he was holding the system hostage, others hail him as a hero who refused to let management mess up the perfectly tuned and well-running system.

Security researchers discover major internet vulnerability. The problem involves the internet’s DNS servers which are the backbone of the ‘net. DNS servers translate URLs (like “jedfonner.com”) into IP addresses that computers understand. The vulnerability allows hackers to cause a corruption on a DNS server, so that an end user would be rerouted to an arbitrary site. For example, a user could type in Google.com but end up at a location of the attacker’s choosing. DNS server operators are rushing to patch their boxes to close this vulnerability. Click here to see if you are vulnerable.

As the Republicans push for more oil drilling, the NRDC took out a full page ad in the Washington Post (pdf) to further explain the danger and futility of additional undersea drilling. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and America’s coastlines to oil drilling will have no real effect on gas prices. It will only boost profits for the oil giants and put our coasts and national forests in danger. If you feel as strongly about this as I do, please help by acting now.

And of course, this bizarre news piece from Santorini, where Nicole and I just vacationed: Santorini “butcher” beheads his girlfriend, steals a police car, runs over some doctors, and then gets gunned down. Oh yea, and he tried to behead a cop and killed his girlfriend’s dog too. But I swear, normally Santorini is a lovely place to visit.

Any other big news items worthy of mention? Please link to them in the comments.

If you like Twitter and you like LOLCats, check out Lol.ianloic.com which lets you create a LOLCat feed from any RSS source, most notably Twitter.

Here’s my Twitter LOLCat feed: http://lol.ianloic.com/twitter/jedfonner.

If Twitter isn’t your thing, take a look the LOLcat feed for CNN or the BBC.
Here’s a particularly funny example from CNN:

About a year ago I wrote a blog post about why I thought restaurant pagers were dumb. The main point of the post was that everyone has cell phones nowadays, so why not use those instead of limited-range, bulky pagers. This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. So imagine how excited I was to be alerted (by a comment on that post) to a new company that is trying to do exactly that.

Qless (pronounced, I assume, “Queue-Less”… very clever) sells a hosted software service (SaaS is so hot right now) which lets companies notify customers via their cell phone when it’s their turn in line. The system even supports text messages if cell coverage is not great in the area of use.

Originally pitched as a way to reduce long airport lines (see 1 and 2) it looks like they’re reaching out to more places where lines are common - theme parks, restaurants, even casinos (does the hot Blackjack table automatically call you when a seat opens?).

I think this is a great idea. Imagine being able to walk to your local super-hip restaurant, get in the queue, and then go shopping or even go home and watch a quick show. Ah, the future is glorious.

The website doesn’t explain how their hosted, web-based system will integrate with companies’ POS systems. But hopefully they’ve worked all that out and it we’ll see something like this at a restaurant near us soon.

I pretty much have my whole life online. One of the major problems with this is that I have to remember like a million passwords. Instead of relying on the same password for everything, which is a big security no-no, I use software to help me.

1Password (for Mac) and Roboform (for Windows) are password managers that integrate directly into your browser, remember passwords for you, and even offer to fill in usernames and passwords when a site asks for them. This makes logging into sites a breeze. You can even have the tools auto-generate complex passwords for you to prevent hackers from guessing your passwords (if you have a simple password, they can do this very quickly using special software programs nowadays).

One thing I’ve noticed is that these tools have encouraged me to log out of sites when I’m done using them since it’s so easy to log back in. This is important because when you don’t log out, even of sites like Gmail and Facebook, you open yourself up to security holes. If a site you’re logged in to has a XSS vulnerability, hackers on a different site you browse to can do nasty things, like steal your personal information or snoop on your email. Scary stuff.

Both programs allow you to secure your list of usernames/passwords with a master password. Roboform even allows you to store your list anywhere you want, which means you can store it on a USB drive and take it with you. 1Password is slowly rolling out their My 1Password website which promises to make your 1Password data accessible from any modern web browser, regardless of platform.

Both programs also allow you to store other commonly used information, like your address, phone number, etc. This comes in very handy when filling in all those account signup forms.

Overall, if you spend a lot of time on the internet (and who doesn’t nowadays), buying one of these programs is well worth it. It will improve your online security and save you tons of time to boot!