One of my favorite bloggers is Joshua Newman.  We've never met - had one conversation over the 'phone, and several in email - but somehow I feel I know him.  Anyway Josh runs Cyan Pictures, an indie film producer, and he recently told me he'd send me some DVDs.  Of course I ragged him about not posting them online instead, and he pointed out the "living room problem"; how to get that MP4 from your PC to your TV.  And he's right; the movie watching experience in my office on my PC is 100% different than the movie watching experience in my family room on my TV.  And although I have every gadget known to man, the only way I currently have of solving the "living room problem" is to physically take my laptop into the family room and plug it into my receiver.  Which is just hard enough that I seldom do it.  So what's the answer?  Clearly someone has the solution to this problem? 

Floyd Landis won the stage 3 time trial of the Tour of California, taking the overall lead as well, and then held it through stage 4, and most observers think he's going to win.  Check out these awesome pictures of the Tour along the Big Sur coastline.  Excellent. 

We could call this "Pluto strikes back".  After seemingly daily discoveries of new Kuiper belt objects which cast doubt on Pluto's planetary status, Hubble confirms new moons of Pluto. 

Today's economic lesson, courtesy of Eric Raymond: Outsourcing breeds more jobs.  "Is there, like, some cosmic law that reporters have to be poisonously ignorant about economics?  Of course outsourcing stimulates domestic demand. Increases in efficiency and better exploitation of comparative advantage do that."  Indeed. 

Here's more economics, courtesy of Scott Adams Dilbert: 

[ via The Horses Mouth, who notes: "Sunday's Dilbert demonstrates more literacy about international energy markets than anything that the White House, NRDC, MoveOn, or Tom Friedman has ever published." ]

Apple's iTunes store sold its one billionth song yesterday.  Excellent.  Remember when it started?  I do.  Who would have thought it would be this successful?  I did. 

For more, see this post on Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin.

Here's some non-news: Dutch found to be most computer literate in world.  "Residents of the Netherlands, armed with a tax break for computer purchases and some of Europe's lowest broadband fees, lead the world in the use of personal computers and the Internet, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts released Tuesday."  Take that, Korea! 

Clive Thompson wonders Do iPods help Olympic athletes perform better?  Of course they do!  "The music, says snowboarder Dustin Majewski, helps him stay in the zone: 'It enables you to focus on what you're doing without actually focusing, if that makes any sense'."  Makes sense to me. 

Up until now I have resisted the urge to get a USB thumb drive.  I know they're cute and all, and possibly useful once in a while, but it just hasn't been compelling.  Up until now.  Here we have the HAL 9000 memory unit.  I am not making this up, and I want one.