Tag: Links

Nothing too graphic, but disturbing to think of the randomness of this. (No embed, sorry, follow the link if you want to watch the video.)

kare11.com – KARE 11 Television

[Irma] Ortiz, 44, is among a group of California food-flavoring workers recently diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening form of fixed obstructive lung disease. Also known as popcorn workers lung, because it has turned up in workers at microwave-popcorn factories, the disease destroys the lungs. A transplant is the only cure.

Cripes. Time to stop buying microwave popcorn. We prefer the old-fashioned, artery-clogging version anyway.

Flavoring Suspected in Illness – washingtonpost.com [via digg]

You are the CEO of an online service, say in the media sharing space. One of your competitors is completing the final stages of merging into the larger company that purchased them over a year ago. Some customers (many of whom receive the service for free) are complaining about new limitations placed on the service. These limitations do not significantly impact the service provided, although the one the does was detailed long ago. This limitation is that users must use the existing, easy to obtain, authentication system of the acquiring company. Opting into this authentication system has been available for over a year and was detailed as eventually becoming the only method for signing into the service.

Now, all this said, if you’re the CEO of the competitor, what’s the best way to exploit this situation? That’s right, make it seem far, far worse than it is. Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zoomr, has done a brilliant job of generating a ton of traffic to his blog by detailign the woes of a small subset of Flickr users as they complete the integration into Yahoo. I’m not linking to his post because, frankly, he’s link baiting. Yes, some Flickr users are upset over the changes. But, with a major move like this, there are going to be some upset people. I personnally integrated my account into my existing Yahoo account (which I use for nothing but Flickr and a couple Yahoo groups) and it was dead easy; took under a minute.

Hawk’s getting more press because Scoble linked to him, further stirring the tempest in this teapot. The digg thread on this swings in both directions, but the fact that this is being driven by a direct competitor isn’t getting very much attention. The submission is at least questionable, possibly spam.

Digg – Flickr Users Are Mad as Hell About Today’s Yahoo News

I put a new button in the Links section on the right of the page (so if you’re reading via RSS, you don’t see it, except for this post).

It’s for WOXY, an internet radio station. They play a pretty cool mix of modern rock (not Creed). Stuff like Camper Van Beethoven, The Decemberists, and well, lots of stuff I hadn’t ever heard. I can stream it at work and it has, amazingly, taken over the iPod’s duties for background distraction while I’m at work.

So, check ’em out. Good stuff. (Click the graphic to go to their site.)

I really don’t do a lot with BitTorrent. I know it’s the new, big way to get downloads (musics, movies, etc.) but I just don’t have that big of an appetite for that kind of thing. Well, music maybe, but finding a)trustworthy links that are b) free can be a challenge, and who has that kind of time, right?

Enter legal torrent tracker sites. Thanks to Slashot, I now have a bigger list of sites to get legal downloads (well, legal in the eyes of arcane business models).

torrentocracy
Prodigem
bt.etree
CommonBits
And, the already mentioned LegalTorrents

Go forth and download! Oh, but not yet; since all these sites are on the front page of Slashdot, they’re pretty much screwed for the day.

Wow, this is one hell of list of links.

[via Alice and Bill.com]