If you’re thinking about sound software right now, you’re way off. Instead I’m talking about the literal words. VOIP (Voice Over IP) is a really hot technology right now because it makes phone calls much cheaper than using traditional telephone service. I’ve pondered whether IP network use is cheaper than maintaining traditional phone networks, or if the telco’s were simply sticking it to everyone. Considering recent more aggressive pricing by the telco’s, I’d suspect it was the latter. ...

I’m sorry I said what I did. You’re amazing and didn’t deserve that. I love you.

In another vain moment, I rechecked my PageRank at Google. I remembered it being 5/10. I was right. Take that, Mike and his rank of 6. Edit: Doh. Higher is better. I’m a moron.

Because Mike wrote today about how his site is ranked 690,887 at Alexa, I had to find out what this site was ranked. Cue up “You’re so Vain” please. Apparently, I’m much more popular than Mike, sitting pretty at 530,545. Booya.

I can’t help but feel like I’ve abused the good ranking I get with this blog on Google, but when I complained about the stress ball I had that squirted over my shirt (the Morf ball), I didn’t expect to get a response from the company. I certainly didn’t expect this kind of response. Jade Hansen wrote: We came across your web log regarding our Morf Ball. We are sorry to hear of the trouble you encountered with it leaking. As a result, we’d love to send you a complimentary Cyber Gel Squeeze Ball, our other popular stress reliever. Rest assured, this item will not explode or leak. Please provide us with your shipping address, and I will have them sent out to you ASAP. ...

A little while back, Google announced it was hosting San Jose City College’s email. Prior to that, rumors started circulating that Google would be licensing its Gmail technology to others due to clues in the code. Honestly, I could not see a downside to this arrangement (paranoid delusions are not considered). Most college students don’t want to fiddle with email client configuration. A webmail interface is perfect for campus wide availability. The over 2 gigabytes of storage space works great for students to send files back and forth on a regular basis. Because it’s maintained by Google, it also means it’ll be available to students even after they graduate. And yes, I am still a little bitter that U-Mass is too damn cheap to give lifetime email addresses to graduates. ...

Like any hardcore Netflix user, I read Hacking Netflix. One of the more repetitive, annoying themes is the dissatisfaction of Manuel. If you thought I was obsessive about Macs, well, it’s nothing compared to this guy and Netflix. And it has to be bad. In fact, he takes this quest so seriously that it has shades of a Don Quixote syndrome. Netflix is one mighty windmill. He’s pulled the AP in as his Sancho Panza. It even has a picture of him. Lovely. ...

Ever since Google released Gmail to the public, Yahoo and Microsoft have been watching the hipster geek crowd move away from their webmail systems (Yahoo Mail and Hotmail respectively). Gmail shows users that webmail doesn’t have to suck. It lit a fire under the ass of webmail providers. Ultimately, it prompted the two companies to actively develop their offerings, and adopting the Google model, release them as “beta”. “Beta” in this case can be read as “if something don’t work, you’re on your own.” ...

Because Mike still doesn’t have comments, I’m forced to respond over here to another of his posts. The gist of the article is that some punks at myspace were using his images on their profile pages, sucking up his bandwidth. I had the same thing happen with a punk at Xanga. The conversation I had with him was: “Hey, could you either attribute my photo or take it off your site?” (My site address was given.) ...

Dear Apple, If you’re going to publish calendars for your iCal users and advertise them, keep them up to date. A movie release calendar that ends late October of last year is useless. Your pal, Derik