A rare Friday night post, and I catch up after another busy week in Vista, coding and meetings and design and people and everything... much of it applied pattern recognition... and a couple of nice brisk rides in the dusk.  Getting ready for another century tomorrow, Ventura Velo's Tour du Green, but ...

...meanwhile, it's all happening...

The sneakiest. design. ever.  aka what to do if you're a tobacco company sponsoring a race car, and tobacco ads are banned from race cars.  I love it.  (Not that I love tobacco, mind you, but I love this clever solution.  And also I must say I do not love banning anything from anything.  Let the market do that...) 

Mike Arrington posts a fantastic rant: You're welcome, you bastards.  This illustrates the problems that big media have with little media so perfectly.  Big media want to control the message, and little media are all about corrupting the message and routing around control. 

ArsTechnica: Google fails to revolutionize cellphone market.  "Google has announced that it will soon bring an end to its online sales of its Nexus One handset. The company will still show off Android phones on its site, but purchases will be done the old-fashioned way: through mobile service providers."  Ars notes the problem - the cost of the phones was $529 - but missed its significance; this was the only reason that mattered why people didn't buy this way.  If the cost of each phone was $129 the approach would have worked, but that would have required Google to subsidize the handset costs, and why would they have done that?  Whereas cell providers have a business model which finds the subsidization... 

Adobe launches "we love Apple" campaign.  Nice. 

BTW have you noticed what a bloated pile of junk Adobe Reader has become?  Yeah, me too.  Remember when little ol' Acrobat launched immediately and "just worked".  Yeah, me too.

This weekend the Amgen Tour of California starts!  Are you ready?  I am... cannot wait.  Velonews posted a great set of interviews with some of the major contenders talking about each other - and themselves.  I think Levi is going to win, but I also think it will not be easy. 

The infancy of mobile video.  "There are two obvious things that everyone wants but just aren’t there yet on the devices we carry around.  First of all, video chat.  The second thing that’s not there yet is the world’s single most popular application of video technology: TV."  I think video chat would be cool, and I have no idea why we don't have it yet.  Pre app, anyone? 

Ottmar Liebert reports new album arrived.  "Petals on the Path".  Excellent! 

ZooBorn of the week: a rare white otter pup.