I just had to highlight this latest Joy of Tech that just came out, which looks at the claims that Facebook is worth $15 billion. (Should YouTube be getting jealous?) However, what I like about the comic is the representation of Facebook in the middle of the strip about the annoying high school friends. Not that I think that any of my friends at high school are annoying, quite the contrary in fact, but I do think that Facebook is weird with the pokes and the wall and the werewolf stuff and all that crazy nonsense, and this comic represents that rather well. Given my, erm, uncanny experiences with Facebook, I really got a kick out of this comic.

Update: Fixed bad link. Thanks Skoker!

Tags: comic, experiences, Facebook, funny, Joy of Tech, money, sale, Web 2.0

My goal for September 2007 was to clean up and restore my room, and now after a lot of hard work, I can say that for the most part, I succeeded. A month ago, my room was a huge exploding mess of junk everywhere, but after spending a LONG Labor Day weekend cleaning up and reorganizing all of the stuff that I’ve accumulated from PTA (you should have seen all of the stuff that was recycled that weekend!), and then later this month replacing our really old bookshelf with a brand new work desk and chair, my room now looks like a million bucks.

Photos after the jump.
Continue reading »

Tags: clean, desk, Personal, room

Today is my 16th birthday, which basically means it’s the last day that I can say that I’m 15 years old. Not that I would though, because that would confuse people. However, in reality, I don’t actually turn 16 until 8:33 PM Pacific time tonight, so I’m theoretically still 15 for the next fourteen hours after I post this. WHATEVER. I’M 16 NOW, OKAY?

But just so you can get in on it, I thought I’d highlight some funny birthday eCards for you to enjoy. These come from the wonderful folks at AmericanGreetings.com, the creators of the singing turkey eCards that come out every Thanksgiving. I really liked Midieval Birthday Wish, Old Guy’s Pick-up Lines, and Do Birthdays Suck? Quiz.

There’s some exciting stuff happening this weekend. Not only will I have a long long long to-do list to tackle, but tomorrow, David Lewis and I will be interviewing Eric Faerber (wGEric) on phpBB Weekly, and then on Sunday, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to record a great episode of PreviewCast, featuring a number of reviews of new things! (Subject to change depending on if certain people show up.)

I’m certainly hoping/planning to have a better birthday this year than I did last year!

Tags: 16th, birthday, eCards, funny, interview, phpBB Weekly, Podcasts, PreviewCast

New York Times columnist (and one of my favorite tech reviewers of all time) David Pogue recently filed a report on CBS News about the upcoming comeback of electric cars, as he interviews the creators of the upcoming Tesla Electric Roadster and Chevy Volt, and then even interviews the director of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which is one of my favorite movies from 2006. Even though I’m turning sixteen tomorrow, I’m not planning to start driving for a few more years, however it’d be nice to be behind the wheel of one of those babies.

Check out the article, and be sure to watch the video on that page.

Tags: cars, CBS News, Chevy, David Pogue, electric, future, Tesla, Video

Yes, that’s right–this Friday (September 28th) will be my sixteenth birthday, and hopefully it will be a much better one than my fifteenth birthday (which means that there hopefully WON’T be a budget crisis school board meeting where all heck breaks loose, and I hopefully won’t get sick during the weekend of my birthday, especially considering I just got sick two weeks ago.

However, it is going to be my birthday, and so I thought I’d put up a completely self-serving note that if you would like to send me a little birthday gift, there’s a Donate box right over there on the sidebar to your left. I don’t have a real job due to the fact that I do so much volunteering, and the work that I do on this blog, my two podcasts, and also articles that I’ve guest blogged over the past few months are done completely for free. (The occasional advertisement is really only enough to pay for the hosting and software for these projects, and not much else.) Not to mention a full-time school commitment and my participation in a number of volunteer organizations, and you see where I’m coming from.

My birthday is this Friday, and I do have my eyes on a couple of things, so if you are interested, please feel free to send me a little gift via PayPal. I’d really appreciate it!

Tags: begging, birthday, donation, gift, PayPal, Personal, self-serving, shameless

Remember back in 2004, when Apple said that they were not going to put photos in an iPod, instead opting to release the iPod photo? Well, in July 2005, The Joy of Tech released this comic which was just a prediction then, but now looks totally accurate, now that every single iPod has video in it (except for the shuffle, of course). It’s interesting to look back at it now, 2-3 years later.

Tags: Apple, comic, flashback, iPod, Joy of Tech, Steve Jobs, Video

Many of my readers know friend and PreviewCast regular Caitlyn Imburgo. She just got a brand new design up on her blog, which is great to see her blogging again. Today she posted a guest blog article that I wrote for her blog about a month ago which talks about how iWork ‘08 completely changes the game for Microsoft Office for Mac, and calls into question just how many people will be upgrading to Office 2008 when it comes out next year. Check out the article.

Tags: 2008, Apple, Caitlyn Imburgo, guest blogging, iWork, Microsoft Office, productivity

Now, I’m sure that many of you have probably seen this video before, on the web, on TV, you name it. Now, I know that I tend to not put political comments on this blog, but this is one case that I have a number of comments about. But then, today during my English class, my teacher brought up this event because we’re in the middle of a unit focusing on the theme of “rebellion,” and she even showed the video off to the class. I didn’t watch the video with the class because I had seen it the night before. We were then asked to comment on the video, in particular to respond to was it necessary for this guy to get tased, however I didn’t write anything on there to turn in, because many more opinions about the incident began to form in my brain than could be written down on a small scrap of paper in 2 minutes.
Continue reading »

Tags: article, brutality, English, human rights, injustice, opinion, police, political, School, taser, UCLA, University of Florida

The title is a pun on the classic joke “Why does a fireman wear red suspenders? To hold his pants up!”. Except that the only problem with the joke, “Why does WordPress.com wear red suspenders?” is that I don’t know the punch line, and it’s apparently going to take me awhile to find out.

I woke up this morning, about a half hour ago, actually, wanting to update one of the blogs that I host on WordPress.com, when to my surprise, I wasn’t logged in. I went to try to login, and got a thing saying “Error: Account suspended.”

WHAT? WHY?!?

Now, I’m trying to figure out on my own why on earth my account on WordPress.com could have been suspended. The only blogs that I have on WordPress.com are Aragon Peace Club, which hasn’t been updated since August 30th (I was about to update it this morning, actually) and The Neglected Former Existence of Webmacster87 which hasn’t been updated since July 2nd! I’m also an admin on the Don Havis 4 SMUHSD Board site since I function as the webmaster, although the blog actually “belongs” to another user. Even then, that hasn’t had much updating in awhile. The only other blogs accredited to my WordPress.com username are my self-hosted blogs that plug into the WordPress.com Stats plugin.

Frankly, the only real recent activity that I’ve had on my WordPress.com username are the couple of guest blog articles that I’ve done recently on Lorelle on WordPress. I’ve even read all of the legalese on the fascinating terms of service and haven’t seen anything listed there that I’ve done that could prompt me to be suspended. Did someone hack into my account and do bad things? I haven’t seen any evidence of that, especially considering that all of my blogs are still intact. What is going on?

Well, I’d just love to send an e-mail to WordPress.com’s support to find out what the heck is going on around here, but check out their lovely support page which says that “Support is currently closed.” Now forgive me folks, but almost every website keeps a website contact form open 24/7 (as opposed to having limited hours for, say, telephone support). Is there anything wrong with keeping a contact form available, and then when support “opens up” on Monday, you can go through the queue of support requests that have been piling up through the weekend?

Apparently not. But do you know how inconvenient Monday-Friday, 9 AM-5 PM is for me? I have a little, minor activity I do every Monday-Friday called school which makes it really difficult for me to have to try to send in a support request during your limited hours. And I can only imagine what it must be like for people in other areas of the globe to try to get support, if they can only fill out the form during a working hours in the Pacific time zone. There’s 168 hours in the week, and WordPress.com only lets you TYPE in the contact support box during 40 of them–that’s less than 1/4 of the week!

So here’s my current situation. My account on WordPress.com has been mysteriously suspended. I can’t find out why it has been suspended for a few days at the least. And now I’m unable to post important, time-sensitive information on one of my WordPress.com blogs, which is going to be very bad news for something that I’m trying to get organized within my school this week. So, what does that mean that I’m doing about it? What any good WordPress blogger would do if he was cut off from any other means of action. Blog and rant about it! Which I’ve just done.

Please WordPress.com people, why is my account suspended, and could you please allow people to leave a message in your contact support box 24/7?

Tags: Automattic, Blogging, contact, Personal, rants, support, suspended, WordPress, WordPress.com

Jon Stewart is awesome. I will never understand why a silly show like this can actually find and report the actual news of what’s going on while the rest of the US media acts like a big propaganda machine, but this clip of Jon Stewart covering Dave Petraeus’ Iraq Report has to be the best Daily Show clip I’ve ever seen.

Check out the video.

Tags: Daily Show, Dave Petraeus, funny, Iraq, Jon Stewart, media, News, Video, YouTube