SilverStripe: People ask us how we make money if we give away our software.  Our CEO Brian Calhoun shares a key secret in a 30 second video...

First, there was HOT or NOT where you could rate the pictures of men and women. A great site to visit if you're single and don't have a date on a lonely Friday night. But life changes and now you have a family. Do what do you do if you're married with nothing to do on a Saturday night?

Yes, you can always watch Curious George with the family, but how do you get back to your old life in a responsible manner? Well, now you have an alternative, Web Hot or Not?

David Sifry (Technorati) explains how webhotornot.com came to exist.

How did it come to exist? When I was in Madrid visiting my friend and investor Martin Varsavsky
late last year, we had a fun time brainstorming ideas to help find and
rate interesting web sites, and we came up with the idea. Who knows,
perhaps the ratings might even be useful if people start using the site
- sort of a "prediction market" for web sites. Most of all, we just wanted to create a simple site that was fast-loading and fun to use. We both love Hotornot, so we figured we'd do an homage.

This YouTube video was too hilarious to pass up. I do wonder though, how much did the video cost?

"When did software get annoying? There was a time when a new release of
a popular program was so exciting and useful that we couldn't wait to
try it out. Now, some software seems like it's deliberately designed to
irritate you, with everything from persistent update and registration
requests to sunset policies that cripple perfectly good applications.
Marketers have taken over product design, and the products are the
worse for it."

Complete Story

"Has Facebook replaced government?

This is the sort of outlandish speculation I've come to know and love from an industry that thrives on hype. As far as I can tell, no one has actually said it yet, but let's give it time: It's not even lunchtime, and any number of theories are bound to pop up before the end of the day."

 

Complete Story

This story from InfoWorld shows that crime doesn't pay.

After a thief stole a printer for making driver's licenses, his call to the manufacturer's tech support line requesting driver software lead to his arrest.

The story then goes on to say that although the thief had stolen the computer connected to the printer, the computer "was locked with a key".  I wonder if that was a key for a physical lock on the case which prevented the computer to boot up or an authentication key card?  The latter, of course, would have been much more difficult to bypass.

 

I wonder how OnStar could have made my 4-door 1976 Chevy Nova any slower than it already was?

Will a new anti-theft tool from General Motors and OnStar be enough to make your car not worth the hassle of stealing?

The Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, a new feature added to OnStar, takes away the ability to use a car's gas pedal, while allowing braking and steering controls to work.  More...

By the time my Dad gave me the Nova for college during the second half of the 1980's...the car had already it earned it's nickname, The Rustmobile.  I miss that car...

I'm always amazed how Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, always remains tuned to the geeky side of life.  This time Adams uses the "What is Web 2.0?" question as a "powerful anti-meeting" spell.  You gotta love it.

Due to copyright laws, I can't show the Dilbert comic strip here.  However, if you click on the thumbnail in this post...you'll magically arrive to the correct page at Dilbert.com.