JD on EP

Sony discontinues Aibo, the robotic dog.

Chris Seibold at AppleMatters has a great history of how the elements of Pixar were put together over the years, and how business needs affected creative output.

A Korean game called "Audition" is a different way for people to get together online.

Lots of people really like the iRiver U10 device.

Debate over whether we should carry multiple small devices, or one larger uberdevice.

Chris Pirillo has a way with words when he's talking them, more than just writing them.

Online learning may have increased realworld absenteeism.

"You can write, people like your style and enjoy your work. But you can't make enough money from advertising to pay your bills. What can you do? Have you considered blogging for hire?"

Google analyzes the markup of a subset of the web. The requirement for a particular browser version to view charts sparks debate. (More at Slashdot.)

An interview with Sean Stewart about producing website games which reach out into the real world. Mike Masnick pulls out this quote: "What people do on the web is they look for things and they gossip. We found a way of storytelling that has a lot to do with looking for things and gossiping about them."

Tactics for dealing with requests for your (US) Social Security Number.

Brad Fuller: "Why don't we have an aural web? Can web-sounds be a new paradigm for professional sound designers? Will new web technologies enable the web to make it past the silent-era?"

Jeffrey Zeldman dissects some of the bluster behind the loudest talkers in "Web 2.0"... Dion Hinchcliffe responds, with followup conversation here.

Jeff Jarvis dissects the sections of a modern newspaper, to figure how to sanely re-create them in today's world.

Luar has a bunch of photos of the "Thank you, Macromedia" essay in Japan's Web Designing magazine.

Jered from Razorfish has a different view of Microsoft's Sparkle than what we read in the newspapers: "Do I think that Interactive Designer is the Flash killer? No. Do I think that it is a direct competitor? Only somewhat. Unlike Flash, WPF is a true platform. Interactive Designer is built on and made to build content for that platform. Flash can actually be one of many pieces of content that is served on the WPF platform. There are similarities in what they do as far as vectors and animation but Interactive Designer is built to serve a very complex, robust and highly integrated platform of which UX is only one element."

"Bill Gates Runs Like a Girl", while politically incorrect, made me laugh out loud more than a few times.

Back in September, Mark Niemann-Ross summarized the public record on ports of Adobe software to the new Macintosh/Intel platform.

The FreeBSD advocacy list has a new petition for Flash Player port, but I didn't see that they've yet linked to Tinic's backgrounder on the subject.

Jason Kottke analyzed the maintainence costs of open comments at a high-volume weblog.

Microsoft spends $328,767 a day to be perceived as a small company.

"Java Champion" Yakov Fain looks around for matching client-side interactivity, and starts to look into Flash Platform technology.

Sergey Brin of Google has a great op/ed about growing up in the USSR, and finding a way to stay engaged with China.

Business 2.0 lists out 2005's "101 Dumbest Business Moves", and this page focuses on tech companies.

In Paris, Sunny Ripert lists out "Flash isn't a browser" objections and closes, "I beg you, please stop asking me to make sites in Flash!" (Sounds like he's got more work than he can handle, if you're local and can help him out.... ;-)

The markup used on the IEEE "Social Implications of Technology" website does not please a member, who unfortunately doesn't quite specify the elements to which she objects.