Lovers, strangers, like you

THE BEGINNING! YAY! THE BEGINNING!

Good one.

The estimated price to build the Freedom Towers has now increased to a whopping $3 billion!

Hehe, this is Herman Yung [too]. Oh, and this one as well. Coincidentally, this is Herman Yung and Grace. But not this Grace.

The new album from The Shins, Wincing The Night Away, is a real work of musical art.

Opaline, from Dishwalla is also an equally notable album.

Lily Allen’s Alright, Still album is also a fantastic treat to my ears. Maybe yours too! Go listen!

Here is the video for Alfie. It’s a pretty funny song when you listen to the lyrics. Not to mention also that the song itself sounds like it’s from a circus routine.

I went to the Apple site today to look at prices of Mac mini units only to get distracted by an article on the front page from Steve Jobs talking about the situation of DRM-laden music (and the iTunes Music Store). Jobs says:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.

There are some interesting statistics towards the end of the article that say something along the lines of how music companies really aren’t having any sort of advantage or profit in selling DRM-laden music as opposed to DRM-free music.

Anyway…as I was originally saying, I think having a Mac mini around would be fun.

Brilliant! The entire cast of The Office as Mii characters! Some of these are just uncanny!

Whee! Just in time for me! Lifehacker does a great job at detailing some of the lesser-known keyboard shortcuts for Google Reader. This link probably doesn’t matter to most of you since I don’t get the sense that many of you who read this site even know what RSS is. But that’s ok. This is for me.

Hahahaha, this is great. Go ahead and create a Useless Account. What for? Oh, you know, just so you can log in and edit your profile as many times as you’d like! What a great idea, no? Hehehe, more about it here.

WTF HAPPENED TO ALL OF J.CREW’S SCARVES?! THEY DON’T SELL ANY AT ALL ANYMORE! >:[

Anybody know who this model is? She can currently be seen on the Gap website in their RED section. She's real pretty, that's for sure. :) Click on the image to see a larger version.

Pirating the 2007 Oscars is an incredibly interesting read because it speaks (and shows) of the effectiveness, or rather, the ineffectiveness, of the Academy's attempts to thwart movie piracy up until this point. Some films were directly affected by such anti-piracy attempts as you'll see in the article's "case studies".

In 2004, a company named Cinea spent $5 million distributing custom DVD players to Academy and BAFTA members with very mixed results. Lately, it seems the new strategy is to stop trying. Maybe the industry is finally realizing that the best way to get recognized is for people to see your movie, despite the risk of piracy.

What's even more interesting (to me at least) is the list of the 34 nominated films that were being considered and how quickly they came online in the various forms of video piracy (cam, telesync, telecine, screener, DVD-rip, ISO, etc.). In some cases one who wasn't in the Academy wouldn't have to wait long at all to theoretically download a version of one of the listed movies to view on his/her own computer. Fascinating, to say the least.

Speaking of piracy...The Sims: Life Stories game is already appearing [in cracked and ready-to-play form] on torrent sites the same day that it got officially released.

This new Sims game is NOT part of the highly successful (and crazy addicting) game series although it shares a similar name. Instead, the game focuses on the life of only several Sims characters while letting you still have the ability to completely control their life outcomes (it still sorta sounds the same to me — I guess I’ll have to play it to really get it). Anyway, the game is supposed to be “laptop-friendly” and “communication friendly”, meaning that you can use your own IM and email programs while playing the game. [I have no idea how this works yet though.]
You can check out the “diary” site for more info on the characters or you can go to The Sims Life Stories official site for more info.

Somebody at Master Foods/Snickers must have guessed that this would happen: The Superbowl Snickers ad that showed two guys accidentally kissing is being pulled from TV rotation for being homophobic. -_-

Ha! Who is Ford kidding? Renaming the Five Hundred sedan to the Taurus probably isn’t going to help boost sales of already crappy and ugly looking cars.

Ford Motor Co. might hope resurrecting the once-mighty Taurus name will help reverse lackluster sales and a lack of desirable cars. One analyst says it’s a good start but the automaker has a long way to go. Ford will rename its slow-selling Five Hundred model the Taurus, a name Ford previously had used for a car that became the nation’s top-seller, two company officials said Tuesday.

The Taurus, considered by some the car that saved Ford, revolutionized the way autos look and feel when it was introduced in 1985.

The Dearborn-based automaker ceased production of the Taurus in October after 21 years and sales of nearly 7 million, perplexing many industry analysts and former Ford executives who said the brand name had great value.

Ford, left with few desirable cars, was caught flat-footed this year when consumer tastes shifted away from trucks. Its sales dropped 8 percent last year as buyers went to more fuel-efficient models made mainly by Asian brands.

I really don’t know anything, actually. This could be a smart move for Ford.

THE END! YAY! THE END!