Okay, now it's all happening.  After yesterday I was worried...

You can't even believe how windy it is here.  (Northwest of Los Angeles.)  Probably gusting to 50.  Seriously.  It wreaks havoc with the reindeer.  I hope my dog doesn't blow away. 

The NYTimes: A New Forum (Blogging) Inspires the Old (Books).  Sigh.  All I want for Christmas is a year of 40-hour days. 

Dave Winer on Trusting Google.  Or rather on not trusting Google.  I think this is important; big companies like Microsoft and Google need user trust to be successful.  I know a lot of people who are staying away from Google's Desktop Toolbar (and Microsoft's MSN Toolbar) for exactly this reason; they don't want these big companies messing around with their hard drives.  Among biggish software companies who do we trust?  Intuit comes to mind.  As does Norton (Symantec).  And eBay... 

This is cool: Proud France Inaugurates World's Highest Bridge.  "The highest of the bridge's seven concrete pillars stands at 343 meters (1,125 ft), 19 meters (62 ft) higher than the Eiffel Tower.  At almost 2.5 km (1.5 miles), it is longer than the Champs Elysees and slightly curved to afford drivers a dramatic view of the surrounding countryside and the ancient town of Millau with its medieval bell tower."  Beautiful, form following function.  [ via Ann Althouse ] 

Here's a great parody of the Apple store.  "Inexplicable brushed titanium box with a single tiny green flashing light.  Does nothing but looks great."  I love it.  [ via Cult of Mac ] 

Something you might find in the Apple store: an analog dashboard for digital data.  Perfect for monitoring blog hits :)  [ via Doc Searles, who wonders, "does it use RSS?" ] 

Camels and Rubber Duckies.  Joel Spolsky has posted another in his infrequent series of musings on life and software, and you know what that means: you have to read it!  Truly of all the mysteries of marketing, pricing is the most opaque. 

Yahoo Video Search.  Of course.  Search is the new black, and video is the newest search.  As with pictures, the limiting factor in video search is the inability to canvass content directly, you have to rely on metadata. 

Wired reports Hollywood wants Bittorrent Dead.  Sorry boys, this genie isn't going back in the bottle, any more than Napster did.  See iTunes Music Store if you want to understand the answer.  (They just reported their 200 millionth download!) 

Here we have Me-TV.  "On me-tv, you can easily watch the videos that your friends post on their blogs.  You subscribe to channels (RSS feeds of your friends), and me-tv lets you watch them all in one place.  It's a feedreader for video." 

Wonder if it will use the Media RSS extension proposed by Yahoo.  "Q. How is Media RSS different from RSS enclosures?  A. Media RSS adds functionality to RSS that improves the handling of multimedia content, such as encoded video files."  Okay.  I think the functionality of having a media client for enclosures - such as a Bittorrent receiver - makes sense. 

Ross Rubin thinks Tivo should skip ahead and kill subscription fees.  Essentially eliminate them by bundling a 'lifetime subscription' with each sale.  I think this makes sense; I bet a lot of people are threatened by the idea of yet another monthly fee.  And it is cash up front... 

Wow, this is cool; someone has figured out how to add WiFi to a Treo 650!  They've modified the driver for the Palm Tungsten T5.  Excellent.  Probably doesn't work with a Treo 600, through. 

NASA to fire projectile into comet.  Another NASA/JPL production, called Deep Impact, will launch in January 2004.  Objective: "To study the pristine interior of a comet by excavating a crater more than 25 m deep and 100 m in diameter."  Cool. 

I like CNet, but I hate the way they only ever link to themselves.  So you read about Deep Impact, why can't they just link to the site?  What do they think, we can't Google?  C'mon guys, this is 2004.  The walled garden is a chimera. 

From Gerard Van der Leun comes this dysfunctional gift suggestion: these missile balloons.  "Do you know someone who has trouble with tailgaters and lane changers?"  I can see a whole genre of products in this area, balloons to tow with your car.  I'd like a nice pirate ship, myself.  Or perhaps a giant iPod :)