Blinq

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http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-blinq/

It's the new url for Blinq, which is moving from Typepad to the Inquirer's publishing system.

I am in the process of moving some of my favorite posts over to the new blog.

If you go there, you'll find a moving version of the above image. You might even win a CD.

Podcasts Worth The Time?

Calling all podcasts: Can anyone recommend some portable audio worth the time?

I'm afraid I don't know where to start.

I wrote about them in their infancy, more than three years ago, when my fave was this lo-fi creation called the Dawn and Drew Show, which was put together in an old Wisconsin farmhouse by an invitingly twisted couple of ex-gutter punks. I'm guessing the genre has grown up since.

But it's passed me by. I haven't kept up at all.

What I'd like to do is figure out a way to load up the iPod with a good 45 minutes of stuff twice a day as a walk the dog -- you know, a sort of personalized NPR.

I want news, sports, weather. But more quirky stuff, too -- mondo interviews, exotic travel, dangerous adventure, forgotten music, great escape, fettuccine szechuan.

So, those who've got this figured out, what have you found to be keepers???

Streaming Media

Asked for advice, I always tell rookie bloggers to go narrow -- figure out what it is that you love and then dig deep. Provide something people won't be able to find anywhere else, and you've got a blog for the ages.

Let the record reflect that I never advised "The World is Your Urinal."

Love the Rolling Stones motif, but those troughs have teeth!

Persona non Ph'der

This week's New Yorker has a curious editor's note on page 10.

It sheds light on something that's become known to the magazine since its July 31 piece on Wikipedia -- mainly that the site administrator whose bio identifies him as a tenured professor with a Ph'd D in theology is really some dude from Kentucky who has never taught and holds no advanced degrees.

The magazine found out that EssJay, the Wikipedia mediator of contested facts, was really named Ryan Jordan. A BBC account reports that Jordan, 24, used such expert texts as "Catholicism For Dummies" to wrestle with theological disputes.

My favorite part of the editor's note is this line:

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay's invented persona, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it."

Way to go Jimmy. That is so whatever.

Wales has since asked for Jordan's resignation. Jordan has complied.

Tech Briefs

The CIA's rocking the Facebook to get recruits.

Microsoft hires blogger to tweak details about the company on its Wikipedia page.

Fox subpoenas YouTube to find out which fan of 24 and The Simpsons posted a bunch of episodes online.

Washington is killing the Internet Radio star.

Googling blogs made easier.

Searching For Sound

Here's a pretty shiny bit of Web tech - a site that will search through audio files to help you hear key portions of speeches, broadcasts or podcasts.

To illustrate its product, Pluggd has created the State of The Union Smackdown.

In the red corner is the president, in the blue corner is Sen. James Webb, D-Va.

Let's say you want to know what each said about health care last night. You click a topic (or create your own search) and the HearHere program scans each's speech, highlighting the most relevant portions in red-orange. You slid a bar to hear the portion you're interested in. I just tried it, and it was glitch-free - except that I had to listen to two political speeches.

The whole enterprise is in beta still. The searches of the State of the Union and rebuttal was a demonstration. Down the road Pluggd will offer the ability to search more audio files as well as video. A story in Forbes describes the concept and how a diet of ramen noodles brought it to market.

New Blogs!

Went far and wide for the two new local blogs we've got for you today - they're produced by people here at 400 N. Broad.

Dave Hiltbrand has created a cyber-version of Dave on Demand, his Saturday column at the Inquirer, and in it he goes deep on some pet subjects, like American Idol.

He writes of the Seattle auditions:

The hanging judge was in a foul mood. BTW, thanks for dressing up, sport. Simon showed up in an undershirt with hair that looked like it was cut with a cereal bowl.

But why waste one of your perfectly good black muscle-Ts on such a pack of losers. Every time the camera would flash to the holding room, it looked more like the crowd at the bus station in Cleveland than a group of aspiring pop stars.

Make no mistake about it: Seattle brought the crazy. Like peroxide Mischa and her bookend mother who seem to have escaped from R. Crumb’s worst nightmare. Mischa certainly gave a fresh reading to the Pussycat Dolls’ lyric: “Don’t you wish your girlfriend/Was a freak like me.”

Then there was Nick, swaying like a bugeyed metronome as he butchered “Unchained Melody.” Speaking of the Righteous Brothers did you catch insta-buddies Kenneth and Jonathan. Give these guys a series!

Kenneth is the glow worm that Simon referred to as a “bush baby”. (I think the creature you were going for there was ring-tailed lemur.) But you can’t fault his boy band choreography.

*

Second, we have Soft Pretzel Logic, a local college sports blog from Jonathan Tannenwald, a Philly.com producer whom we'd quoted in his past life as a Penn student who wrote the West End site. (The Penn part explains is why he quotes John Locke on round ball.) Soft Pretzel Logic is named after the comfort food that got him through many assignments at the Palestra.

His Locke-quoting post is about numbers. He writes:

I have a lot of friends around college basketball who make a huge deal out of stats and drawing conclusions from them. I agree that some of them are very good things to know. Offensive and defensive efficiency, tempo and ratio of three-pointers to field goals come to mind right away.

But stats aren't everything to me. I still think there's such a thing as clutch, and that a small, cramped gym with raucous students can get in a player's head and make him miss a shot he'd make in a 20,000-seat arena with sky boxes and a few jumbotrons.

I believe that a great player will step up when his team is faltering late on the road and hit a big shot to silence the home crowd, no matter what his usual offensive efficiency is. Randy Foye did it against Penn last season after the Quakers mounted a huge second-half run to cut 'Nova's lead from 21 points to four. With just over a minute to play, Foye pulled a crossover dribble and nailed a 13-foot jumper without flinching in the least. That's something that I don't think a page of stats can accurately represent.

Shiny

No, I don't need it.

Yes, I want it.

Time to ditch that phone, that Palm Pilot, the laptop, the digital camera and that 3rd generation iPod for an all-in-one pocket pal? Not me. Not yet.

But, so shiny...

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone today at the Macworld 2007 in San Francisco.

It's All About Us

Time Magazine picks YOU as the Person of the Year -- the podcasting, social-networking, YouTubing masses.

Captain's Quarters calls it a suck-up choice.

Jeff Jarvis asks, What took Time so long?

Nora Ephron writes a thank you speech:

Time might want to know how I manage to Do It All, which I do. They might want my favorite new recipe, for leek bread pudding (although they could copy it out of the December Martha Stewart, where I got it). They might want to know about my favorite new ice cream flavor (Haagen-Dazs caramel cone), although I already mentioned it in a recent blog, God forbid there should be any fact about me that isn't known to just about everyone. I mean, that's how it is here in the new digital democracy, we tell everyone everything.

Ms. Dewey

A friend over at WHYY sends this link to his favorite new search engine. Turn your speakers on. Don't forget to search for something.

I asked "Who is Ms. Dewey?" Found this.