Ah yes your friendly neighborhood blogger is coming to you from 35,000', courtesy of Virgin America, as I make my way to Washington DC.  This WiFi + power + snacks + sufficient room equation means flying to the East Coast is five hours of productive work, instead of five hours wasted.  Of course, it could be argued that blogging is not productive work :)

Wow am I going to be using this: GazoPa, "similar image search".  I selected my ZooBorn of the day from Monday, the Harpy Eagle chick, and got a reasonably similar collection of animal pictures...  Then I tried using a picture of me, wearing a cycling helmet, and got a reasonably similar collection of people standing outside, including some on bikes.  Not bad, not bad at all...  not only fun to play with, but could be quite useful.  While blogging! 

Oh and yeah, there is a Firefox plug-in for GazoPa (of course), so you can right-click any image and use it as the predicate for a search.  How cool is that?

I'm sitting here thinking, how astonishingly cool is it that I can do this at 35,000', and that the tools with which I can do it are FREE.  Say you built GazoPa, you had the idea for "similar image search", and you figured out how to spider websites and compare images and present results and do all that; at no time are you thinking "I'll charge people $x to use this".  Your only thought as far as a business model is "I'll give this away FREE and make money on advertising".  That's the default expectation online.  Weird and wonderful. 

Important news!  Trizilla aka BOR90 aka BMW Oracle Racing team with the awesome giant trimaran now have a blog.  Subscribed! 

McSweeney's anticipates Halloween: It's decorative gourd season, motherf**kers.  You bet your ass it is. 

Wow, cool!  Chicken finds a new Roost, Rasmussen says he's found a European team.  Cannot wait to see him back in the peloton again; someone has to challenge Alberto Contador on those mountaintop finishes, right?  And he's proven he can do it... 

This is classic: Arnold gives California legislature the finger.  I'd love to believe he did this himself, but more likely it was a staffer; still, you have to figure he knew about it and didn't object.  Classic. 

Brad Feld on scaling businesses: add another zero.  A metric-free measure, as in "for this business, what will it take to add another zero".  I like it. 

Speaking of adding another zero, consider the University of Phoenix.  Forget state schools and the Ivy League, they are the 800lb gorilla of higher education, with 443,000 students.  Wow.  What a great model, they are the Wal-Mart of college education, and you have to think this is crucial for our economy as more and more people are pushed out of unskilled jobs by outsourcing and automation...  [ via Instapundit ] 

This looks pretty sweet: Google GPS Navigation app for Android.  You have to figure dedicated GPS units are toast.  I've loved my Sprint Nav app on the Palm Pre, it has completely replaced the use of my [really expensive] car's navigation system. 

BTW, interesting how "app" has instantly entered common parlance.  We needed a word like this, "program" and "application" just didn't do it, and now we have one.  Thanks, Apple :)

And so the latest 'iPhone killer" is out, the Motorola Druid, and Billshrink have a helpful comparison...  It is useful to compare "capabilities", but there are two things this analysis misses; first, "the experience", which is a combination of the hardware design, software UI, speed, bugs (or lack thereof), etc.  I don't think the iPhone can be "killed" without a great experience.  The second thing of course is the platform; the network effect of applications available on the iPhone is going to be nearly impossible for anyone to overcome.  The only mitigating factor is that these phones pretty much do everything you want out of the box anyway - assuming you use them as phones, rather than as handheld computers... 

Mark Sigal: there is an unfortunate tendency to confuse delivering a bunch of chicken parts with producing an actual live, breathing chicken.  I love it. 

Speaking of Android leads us to observe the strategy of new Motorola chief appears poised to take off.

Daring Fireball on the iPhone platform: "You know who thinks the iPhone 3GS stinks?  Steve Jobs.  No one is working harder on an 'iPhone 3GS killer' than Apple."  Dead on. 

This is so excellent: Artist turns Swiss village into optical illusion.  What would make someone think of this?  And what would make them think they could actually do it? 

... onward to Washington, see you there!