Now, I’ve never had any problems with Dreamhost - I love them, in fact. And I would never want to simply make fun of them. But…. This testimonial ad on their homepage today made me laugh too much not to post it. Plus, the guy doing the testimonial shares my first name and last initial:

Apparently their tech support team consists of 8-year-old boys. Either that, or they’re marketing web hosting to 8-year-old boys… Hmm… Neither really fits, does it?

I love stock photos.

I was quite bored this afternoon, and decided to round up some of my favorite USB Flash Drive designs I’ve come across while web surfing. From food items to religious figures, these designs are certainly… Original, if nothing else. Click on the pictures for more info.

First up is a class food option: the donut. Brilliantly recreated here in all the chocolaty goodness of the real thing. Sure, it looks like a little bit of misplaced pressure might snap the darn thing, but let’s be honest here - you’re not buying one of these to store your classified Pentagon documents.

Next is on the more wacky side - it’s a USB stick in the shape of the Virgin Mary. Emblazoned with the the words “Oh Mary, Keep My Data Safe,” this flash drive will presumably answer your prayers and keep your illegal MP3s away from prying RIAA eyes. Complete with a built in red LED heart that “beats” when data is being accessed.

Third is from the [far too] long line of stuffed animal flash drives. But the designer of this drive felt the need to force the user to decapitate this teddy bear every time they want to use it. Because nothing says “High Speed Data Transfer” like a Teddy with his head stuck in a computer.

What’s more fun than bowling? Taking your bowling ball with you wherever you go and using it to store your spreadsheets, that’s what! Dubbed the “World’s heaviest flash drive,” it’s owner stuffed his flash drive into a sixteen pound bowling ball and called it a day. Have fun connecting it to your computer…

Another food-based design, this one isn’t recommended to be used after watching Sweeney Todd. It’s so poorly done, I can’t actually tell whether it’s Photoshopped or not, but I do like how ridiculous an idea it is.

For the dark side of you, there’s the “Devil Duckie” flash drive. Graced with a not-quite sportscar-red rubbery finish, this one’s perfect for that computer you keep in your bathroom. Pair with the Virgin Mary flash drive for added fun.

This is one I might actually consider using - a flash drive made from real Lego bricks! I’d be a bit worried about the sharp corners digging into my skin, but hey - it’s a working lego brick! You can actually build things out of them!!! I wouldn’t actually build a lego structure with this thing though, or you’re liable to lose it.

This one’s just downright disgusting. It’s a “Thumb” Drive. Insert your own joke here.

I love my sushi. I love my flash drive. Sushi+flash drive? Pretty good, I must admit. With Tuna, Avocado and more on the menu, you’ll be sure to find a roll to fit your tastes. Or your storage needs… Whichever is more important to you, I suppose.

My favorite: it’s a USB drive that’s been stuffed into a frayed USB cord. Basically, it looks like you left your USB cord a little too close to a hungry rodent, but SURPRISE!!! It’s actually 2GB of your favorite files. This one’s got my vote for innovative and fun (with the added bonus of not being overly obnoxious).

via Engadget, Gizmodo, DiskOnKey, etc.

Integrated Media Measurement Inc., or “IMMI” (no, I hadn’t heard of them either) just released a report that analyzed the growing trend of people watching their favorite TV shows online. According to the report, about 20% of viewers watch some sort of primetime content on their computers, either in addition to or in place of watching it on television; for some context, that number was at about 6% last fall.

Probably the biggest factor in this has been the sheer increase in availability of programs via websites such as Hulu over the past year. Networks are finally seeing that, yes: you can put the entire library of The Daily Show online and actually turn a profit from advertising. And for me, this couldn’t have come at a better time. I wouldn’t call myself addicted to my TiVo, but going off to college in a month means that I likely won’t be able to watch almost anything on TV - I won’t have one. But an internet connection? Definitely. So although the internet is marginally cutting into the audience for live TV, it’s also creating a new set of consumers to be attacked with ads who would otherwise not be able to watch the television programs anyway.

And on an almost completely unrelated note: take a look at how IMMI collects its data (page 14). It gives the panelists cell phones that sporadically monitor the ambient noise, scanning for audio signatures that can be pinpointed to specific TV shows, radio programs, etc. Now, Nielsen’s been using this type of audio analysis for years on TV sets to find out what shows we watch and videogames we play, but incorporating it into a cell phone is taking it to a whole new level.

Upon further research, I learned that this type of monitoring has been around since before 2002. Arbitron makes something called a “Portable People Meter.” I’m not sure whether to call it a brilliant technology or just downright creepy. Your thoughts?

via LA Times

Also, I like how the report, which is obviously a selling-point for their services and is linked to from IMMI’s homepage, has the word “CONFIDENTIAL” printed in all caps on every page. Reminds me of a Daily Show excerpt: (starts at 1:30)

This is one that got me smiling: The government of Italy has set up a text messaging service for consumers to check the wholesale prices of various foods on-the-fly. With soaring gas prices, the cost of food has also been on the rise, making consumers a lot more weary of what they’re shelling out for those gallons of milk. Or tomatoes. Or arugula leaves (you get the idea). The idea is that by making information about foot prices easily accessible, consumers will be able to make more educated decisions about where they buy and what they’re paying for their food.

Let’s say Bob’s Vegetable Cart charges 2 Euros for a head of lettuce, but you think that sounds a little high. Well, now our dear Italian friends can simply send a text message “lettuce” and get the wholesale prices sent right to their phone. Presumably if our tech-savvy shopper seems to think he’s getting ripped off by Bob, he can go see if Randy’s Produce Trolley across the street will give him a better deal.

I think the basic concept of educating consumers about how the free market does (and should) work is a great idea, but I ask this: If our shopper is familiar enough with technology to shop via text message, would it not be easier for them to access such a service online at home? Isn’t this a bit like texting your husband to see whether there’s anything he needs picked up at the store, rather than picking up the shopping list he made before you leave the house?

Admittedly, the cell phone culture is probably very different in Europe than it is here in the United States - and I certainly applaud the use of SMS - but it still seems a little silly to me.

Your thoughts?

via BBC

As you probably know by now, ex-Google employee Anna Patterson + husband Tom Costello and some guy named Russel Power launched a new search engine this morning. It’s called “Cuil” (pronounced “Cool”) from the old Irish word for knowledge - leave it to a search engine to come up with a name that’s only interesting because they say so (and gosh darnit, we believe them).

A big selling point for Cuil is it’s large index: 120 billion pages, according to their homepage; a number they also claim makes it the biggest search index in the world. Some people refute that with Google’s recent claim at 1 trillion web pages crawled. Yet it’s worth noting that Google doesn’t actually index each of those trillion web pages, as Michael Arrington recently pointed out. Apparently, Google’s true index size is only about 40 billion, since it doesn’t bother indexing pages with duplicate info. Unfortunately, statistics are often misleading, as a quick search for this blog shows:

Somehow, I doubt there are 9,373,214 pages that mention my full url (when it looks like the only page of this blog they actually have indexed is, well, the index).

And the shove-it-Google’s-face sales pitch is that is doesn’t provide results based on popularity (as Google’s PageRank setup dictates), but rather on relevance. Yet I think a simple search for “cuil.com” illustrates the basic problem with that philosophy: no computer algorithm for relevancy will ever be as accurate as actual people. That’s what Google did right.

I’ll give it a few weeks to for things to settle out, then check back and see if the results are any more relevant. It’s a good concept, and I am rooting for them.

Admittedly however, there are some things that are catching my eye with Cuil. As much as I may love being able to go back in time and see all the embarrassing Google searches I made on August 24th, 2007 (for example), having all of that information saved is a little unnerving. Cuil doesn’t save any user history.

It also uses the same predictive typing technology Firefox has in it’s search bar - a reason I still use Firefox’s QuickSearch, even if I’m already on Google’s homepage:

Unfortunately, about 40% of my page requests result in some sort of non-fatal server error, but that’s probably just first-day jitters. I’d wait until the rabid tech bloggers have stopped overloading their servers before putting it to a real test yourself.

P.S. - Looks like the entire search engine is actually offline for the moment while they add more capacity.

P.P.S. - They’re back, check it out!