Regurge

Here's the stuff I've been saving up all week, waiting for a chance to post (in addition to the last two below):

+ Hobbit in waiting. Wonder if this thing will actually come to pass...

+ I first saw over on Tom's weblog that Amazon is now searching 'statistically improbable phrases' for certain books and linking them. kottke linked a post on this, too. Interesting.

+ Did you hear the one about the Google employee who was putting her underwear in the washer at work (which is totally in-bounds at Google. It's a perk.) and got walked in on by Colin Powell. He played it pretty cool...

+ There was an article in The Economist on March 10th called 'A spiritual connection' (you have to subscribe to get it online :-( about the ways cell phones are used relative to spirituality. The important takeaway, to me, is that cellphone usage (not the phone itself (which, to be clear, the article does not suggest), is very personal to people. Very few people fetishize their phone, but they're very attached to using it. This tells us something about the deployment of technology - eg, that cell phones will continue to sport new features much faster than, say PDAs, at a lower price-point, because of the demand and volume. Myself, I'd rather have a PDA with phone-like functions, but it's clear to me that the trend is phones morphing slowly toward some PDA functionality. Maybe with the way mp3 players are selling we'll get some decent instances of phones merging with mp3 players. That'd be a place to start. I'd want to see at least 512MB of storage (iPod Shuffle level) for starters.

+ Steven Johnson writes that he doesn't weblog when he's writing (via kottke). That's fine. Neal Stephenson obviously wouldn't either. Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, does. And after that brief survey of the people I have linked recently we draw a simple conclusion: different writers have different working styles. Anyone who proposes a universal is full of baloney.

+ Speaking of cell phones and mp3 convergence, I'd like to request a website where I can go in and pre-select podcasts or radio that I want to subscribe to, then I can call in and listen to them on my cell phone, especially with night and weekend minutes.

+ Speaking of cellphones again, here's a concept I'd love to have. It's not on the drawing board, just someone's idea of a good idea: a cell phone i Pod. Awfully close to earning the name 'cephaloPod', no? Maybe 'celphoPod'...

+ Favorite Southern Expression of the Week: 'Do what?' I was talking to a customer on the phone today and he said 'I'll be by tomorrow to pick it up.' and I said 'No don't because we're off for Easter.' and he said 'Do what?'. I have heard this phrase used similarly in different contexts, usually those of great shock. Future installment: 'or either'.