Bye Fake Steve, er, Real Dan. Dan Lyons had a wonderful run as Fake Steve Jobs. He never made it work as "Real Dan Lyons," so it's no great loss that he's closing down his blog after his new Newsweek bosses apparently didn't like some of his recent language. From his email to the AP on the shutdown, "The bottom line is I don't want to jeopardize a job I like (and which feeds my hungry 3-year-old twins) over some blog that's just a funny little thing I'm doing in my spare time. Or, to translate this into Fake Steve speak: I'm a coward and a whore who has totally sold out to The Man." Yeah, pretty much.
Zune 3.1 available. Did you upgrade yet, Skippy? Here's the Zune Insider summary. New games and more social enhancements.
Put your hands together for the Trian Woodburns! I haven't listened to a collection of songs so much since the remastered Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack was released in 2006. These three guys from Texas are a cross between Rush and Widespread Panic. A huge sound for only three rockers. The Trian Woodburns!!!
The Contact Form is Elementary. A solid contact form is essential if you're doing any business through your website, so this "What if your contact form fails?" post is worth noting.
Social Networking registration tip. Good idea from Go2Web20 on adding social networking links like Twitter usernames to site registration forms.
Copyblogger on working smarter not harder. The longer I read Copyblogger the more I'm impressed with their marketing savvy, here on collaborating to focus on monetizing attention instead of getting caught up in the basics with a do-it-yourself work ethic. "Is Blogging Keeping You Poor?"
Popacular is Digg without the dirt. Popacular lists the most popular delicious bookmarks over the last hour, 8 hours, day, week, month and all time. Very informative. It's much like Digg except you don't have to route through dirty Digg.com with all of its slow loading banners and other crap to get to the source.
XAML/Blend designers in demand. ScottGu with his typical superlative blogging demonstrating styling a Silverlight app with Expression Blend. What stood out to me were the number of comments discussing how difficult it was finding XAML and Blend designers. I'm trying to get my 10-year-old daughter to learn Expression so she can make some bucks in her teen years doing my design work. I installed Expression on her PC and she did some animations, but that's about it. Maybe if I up the RAM on her PC...
Google chat for pervs. I had to Everyman this TechCrunch post on Gmail's [cool] video service because of the comments on the screenshot of Dan Farber and Steve Gillmor video chatting. "Hey, tell Gillmor to put some clothes on!" "LOL, I thought the same thing. The picture totally makes me think of 'Dateline - To Catch a Predator.'”
Tracking User Activity through ASPNET Membership. Scott Mitchell teaches me something every time I read him. Here he describes ASPNET Membership's User Tracking implementation.
I live in America's healthiest city! Burlington, Vermont is America's healthiest city, according to a recent CDC study. I first read the article on Huntington, West Virginia being the fattest city and saw a sidebar, "And then there's Burlington, Vermont..." I thought it was some ad based on my IP, but then I read how Burlington is indeed America's healthiest city. So that's why I spend 60 minutes a day on my Nordic Track. It's some kind of local ordinance that someone must have told me about.
Real Time season-ending New Rules. Bill Maher was at his best in the last New Rules for this season's Real Time on HBO (which I listened to...ON MY ZUNE!!!) Here's an excerpt. "New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black President, something no other democracy has ever done. I feel like a hockey mom at the State Fair getting felt up by Hank Williams, Jr. while fireworks go off and Jesus appears in my cotton candy. It would be stupid to not be stupid about it. I'd like to take this moment, when we finally got one right, to bask in a little unwarranted, unapologetic, irrational faux patriotism, or as Fox News calls it, regular programming. Now I might regret this, as it's kind of like going grocery shopping when you're high, but here goes, World. [Queue the patriotic music.] We're Americans and we look at a sandwich made of ice cream and cookies and covered in fudge and say, "can we fry that?" And you know what? Yes we can! Do you know what our favorite burger topping is? Another burger! Not only did we create the Internet, we're the ones who filled it up with porn. I ask you, in what other country would they tax young people to make sure old people could have erections. Yes, America is like Jessica Simpson. Sometimes it's so stupid it embarrasses you, but on the other hand, how about them titties!"