Confessions of an Undercover Geek

As you all know, I am a writer for the Godbit Project. Well they have recently joined the 9rules Network. The 9rules Network is a blogging network that highlights some of the world’s premier blogging content. 9rules has recently written a really nice article introducing the Godbit Project and what it is all about. My recent piece on web accessibility, “A Web for Everyone,” is highlighted in the article.

The 9rules Network was founded by three guys, one of whom is Mike Rundle. Mike just happened to also attend the Rochester Institute of Technology and graduate from the Information Technology Department. I have never met Mike but maybe some day.

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The blogosphere seems to be pretty quiet about President Bush’s State of the Union Address tonight. I looked on Technorati and Memeorandum and I didn’t see any good discussion threads brewing. Maybe the State of the Union is being overshadowed by the movie Brokeback Mountain getting 8 Oscar nominations or Samuel Alito getting confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

Maybe people are finally starting to realize that the State of the Union is nothing but rhetoric and pandering. I know that Bush is really counting on this State of the Union to give him a bump in the polls. He wants to layout his agenda of 2006.

I unfortunately will not able to watch the address live. I have my Intro to XML class tonite from 6-10 and it will probably go the full 4 hours tonite. For those of you watching the event, you may want to try out the State of the Union drinking game. We could take bets on how many billions of dollars in new programs will be proposed…post a comment with your best guess. I am guessing $10 billion (uneducated guess).

I will probably sit back with a Sam Adams White Ale tonite, after class, and watch the post-game coverage. It shall be fun.

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I was glad to see that Judge Samuel Alito, after a 58-42 vote is now, Associate Justice Samuel Alito. He was confirmed to be the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Now I just hope that he lives up to what everyone speculated he is going to be.

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Some bored programmer has put together an iTunes visualization of Steve Jobs dancing to the music that is playing. I don’t use visualizations in iTunes that often but it is really funny for someone like me who is easily amused. Thanks to TUAW for doing a post on this.

I just read the article in Business Week about Steve Jobs and his new relationship with Disney. I wonder how this new found role at Disney will affect Steve Jobs’ role at Apple. Is he going to lead from the middle of the Board of Directors? Will he move to take over the company or the board? I think there is a lot he could do with Disney but there is SOOO much he still has to do with Apple. I guess we shall see.

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This morning I finally got around to listening to last weeks Inside the Net podcast where they talked in with the CEO of Newsvine. My friend Nathan from the Godbit Project had sent me an invite to the public beta of Newsvine but I hadn’t gotten around to signing up for that yet before this morning. Newsvine uses the distributive journalism idea (Digg.com) mixed in with citizen journalism and the AP news wire. It’s pretty cool.

Digg.com really pushed the web into the idea of taking a whole new look at the way people get and interact with their news but since Digg.com’s inception they have been predominantly a tech news site. I think what Newsvine is doing is pretty cool and could potentially take a lot of the market share away from Digg.com. It does more than just technology news. It touches all the areas of my life.

I wouldn’t be able to get my mom to use Digg.com but I could see her potentially using Newsvine. I would think that if Digg.com wants be a successful business model it would need to move out of the “long tail” of the market. It looks like Newsvine is positioning itself to do that.

Don’t worry Kevin Rose! I am not jumping ship on Digg.com. I am a geek and you guys give me geek news better than anyone else. I am just saying that I can see Newsvine starting to compete for more of my attention.

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McDonald’s has recently dived into the world of coporate blogging. As Shel Israel notes, they don’t seem to be understanding really the gist of what blogging is all about. They seem to want to use this medium as another avenue of corporate speak. I would urge McDonald’s to heed the advice that Shel is giving. He is right on. I think when your growing up these days McDonald’s plays an important part of your life. As someone who is a little bit older know, I would love to better understand this huge fast food enterprise.

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I recently updated my resume. If you were curious to know exactly what kind of skills, work experience, and education that I have, check out my resume. There is and always will be a link in the right side bar of my page.

If you work for a company that does things on the web (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo to name the biggies) and might be looking for a web developer, user interface designer, or an idea man in the next 6 months, you should especially check out my resume. :-p

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I was excited to see yesterday that the new vidcast (video blog/online tv show) MacBreak was added to the lineup of the This Week In Tech (TWIT) Network. TWIT is a podcast that was started by Leo Laporte but has spawned all kinds of other podcasts. This is the newest addition. MacBreak is going to cover all the different realms of things related to Apple computers.

It is really well done. It is fun in this show because Leo Laporte gets to step from behind the TWIT roundtable and you get to see a little more of his personality come through. I don’t know as much about Alex Lindsay but he is also really fun to watch. Amber MacArthur (I still have a crush on her :-p. ) is also on the show, along with Emery Wells. So…go download the show, it’s good.

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Last night I went to go see the movie Match Point with my good friends Sam and Derek. Sam proposed seeing it at the Little Theatre. The Little Theatre is this small independent movie theatre downtown Rochester. I hadn’t been there in a couple years so I jumped at the opportunity to go.

Match Point is also Woody Allen’s new movie. We watched the movie Annie Hall by Woody Allen in film class in the fall. It was really a fantasitc movie so I was anxious to see another Woody Allen movie.

This movie was fantastic. The gist of the movie is that there is this guy (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who moves to London. He falls in love with this really well off girl but finds out that her brother in law is engaged to this poor seductive actress(Scarlett Johansson). He ends up marrying the rich girl but has an affair with the poor actress. The poor actress gets pregnant and thats where things get a little more intense.

The major themes of the movie are that of luck, the effects of infidelity, and the effect of wealth on someone’s choices. The color in the movie is brilliant. The acting is first rate. Go see this movie. I was concerned that movie was going to be overly sexed up but it wasn’t.

The quality of this movie sets the bar high for the rest of the movies that I see this year. Check out the reviews of Match Point on Rotten Tomatoes.

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