JeffHester.net

From Rhymes with Orange, May 10, 2006 (and thanks to danah for sharing this gem).

Blogfinder is a new “service” that will analyze your blog and provide a list of recommendations for other blogs that you might be interested in — based on the content and style of your recent posts. Check it out, and if you don’t have a blog, feel free to analyze mine. And smile.

Why am I always the last to know? Perhaps I’m not… did you know that today was National Goof-Off Day?

So tell me, how do you plan to honor this auspicious holiday?

With all the buzz surrounding the value of the social network and how Web 2.0 companies are positioning themselves to help connect people, where do you turn when it’s time to call bull****? Feeling a little too connected? Too accessible? Jason Calcanis found the answer… it’s the new isolatr, currently in beta.

Website testimonial: “People always used to approach me to try to talk about this or that. I wanted to punch them in the throat. Now they leave me the hell alone. Thanks isolatr!”

And being an IM freak, I really enjoyed their v0.01.4 preview of the IMolatr, their inflexable instant messaging client. “With IMolatr you are always listed as away, and if people try to contact you IMolatr will actually set their hands on fire!”

isolatr: helping you find where other people aren’t.

technorati tags: humor, web 2.0, IM

Greg Yardley scooped everyone on this one.

Yahoo! Announces Acquisition of Company Before Its Foundation

SUNNYVALE, CA, Jan 11, 2006 (YARDLEYPRESS) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YAHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the acquisition of an unnamed Web 2.0 company three days before it was to be founded. “Yahoo! is committed to generating mass quantities of free public relations by acquiring more pre-revenue, pre-business plan companies than any other global Internet company,” said Chris P. Bacon, Director of Hype Production.

“We’ve been acquiring companies earlier and earlier - before VC funding, before revenue, and in some cases before the completion of their products,” explained Hugh Jorgan, newly-appointed Vice President of Pre-Business Development. “By buying companies before they’re founded, we move directly to the natural conclusion of the trend.”

Read the complete story. It wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t so close to reality.

According to Wikipedia, the seven deadly sins were introduced by St. Gregory the Great. He ranked them from least serious to most: lust, gluttony, sadness (later replaced by sloth), avarice (greed), anger, envy and pride.

If we assume the blogosphere to be a microcosm of the world at large (which we can’t really, since it reflects those geeky and vain enough to bother creating a blog in the first place)… but IF we assume so, could we use the blogoshpere as a prediction market for the seven deadly sins? What sins or hot (or not)?

Fortunately, Intelliseek’s BlogPulse tools reveal the answer. As you can see from the report, pride and anger compete for the top spot, with lust surprisingly a distant third. Presumably, bloggers as a whole are an angry, proud lot with an occasional lusty desire.

Sloth and gluttony fall at the bottom of the heap. Maybe bloggers by the very fact that they bother to blog at all are less inclined toward sloth. I suspect gluttony would be ranked much higher if the keyword and it’s variants were replaced with more commonly used synonyms.

Check out more amusing trends at BlogPulse.

Being active and highly visible in the world of instant messaging, I get some interesting and sometimes amusing messages from complete strangers (with an emphasis on “strange”). Today I had the following conversation with an Ingrid who seemed to think I was impersonating some actor:

Ingrid says:
    happy new year
Jeff says:
    hello and happy new year to you too
Ingrid says:
    hi, ….sorry im asking but why you use that photo? inst (sp) you
Jeff says:
    yes, that’s me
Ingrid says:
    no!. is an actor!
Ingrid says:
    well im have dinner, bye!
Jeff says:
    no, it’s me

In the words of William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage…” I’m curious though; what actor does she think my display picture looks like?

technorati tags: humor chat IM

For the first time in many years, we’re not hosting Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll be traveling to my brother-in-law’s home in Fallbrook my fill of turkey, football and family.

I know that many of you are engineers (or think an engineer), so I’ll offer help for today’s culinary projects: Michael Chu’s Cooking for Engineers. Chu is a hardware application engineer for a semiconductor manufacturer who brings an analytical touch to the kitchen.

You might think Cooking for Engineers is just a gimmick, but Chu takes it very seriously. He even features a patent-pending tabular recipe card format that actually makes pretty good sense to me.

I’m going to try the Garlic Mashed Potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a nephew who is the most serious kid I’ve met. He is planning to attend a culinary school and training to become a chef. So in honor of his 14th birthday, I’ve put together a “music to cook by” playlist.

1. Matchbox 20 - Breakfast at Tiffany’s

2. Dean Martin - How Do You Like Your Eggs In The Morning
3. Supertramp - Breakfast in America
4. Spike Jones - Yes, We Have No Bananas
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Aeroplane
6. Bread - Guitar Man
7. REO Speedwagon - The Unidentified Flying Tuna
8. Jimmy Buffet - Cheeseburger in Paradise
9. Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell
10. Don McLean - American Pie
11. Cake - Love You Madly
12. Reverend Horton Heat - Eat Steak
13. Weird Al Yankovic - Girls Just Wanna Eat Lunch
14. Blind Melon - Soup
15. The Wiseguys - Root Beer Rag
16. Snow Patrol - Chocolate
17. THX - Jurassic Lunch (not really a song, but fun nonetheless)

There were a few songs that didn’t make the cut due to lyrical “issues” (he has four younger, impressionable siblings). What favorite food-related band or song did I miss?

Wikipedia is a tremendous resource and a pretty cool way for people to collaborate on documentation. In just a couple years, it’s grown to become one of the largest encyclopedias available, with over 30 million entries and arguable the most up-to-date information of any encyclopedic resource.

One of the attractions of Wikipedia is that it’s built on a free, open-source solution: Wikimedia. It makes it easy for any group to create their own repository of knowledge and information — even mis-information.

Let me introduce you to Wikipedia’s evil twin: The Uncyclopedia. Think of it as The Onion meets a Wiki. Rather than informing, the Uncyclopedia’s goal is to amuse and annoy. Consider a few Uncyclopedia entries, such as France (”The French are also known to run in terror at the slightest hint of danger and surrender instantly to any threat…”); New Orleans (”Although the American Emperor has told everyone that New New Orleans will be even better and bigger than it was before, there are serious doubts as the Americans have proven they are pretty terrible at rebuilding cities that rely on oil…”); or knowledge (”A rare and tragic disease, not recognized as such by the many trash collectors claiming to be professors. Knowledge is 100% fatal, with recent studies showing 4 1/2 out of 7 people died when they were imbued with it…”).

Now you know why I’m in a handbasket.