iSawToday - The Coolest Thing I Saw Today on the Web

Several months ago my colleague Matt talked up the Lego Star Wars game that his kids had received for Christmas. Not being overly into video games I listened polietely and said… ‘very cool’. Fast forward to the previous Sunday at which time I discovered the Indiana Jones Flash Lego Game and since find myself using this amazingly fun game as another excuse to buy a Wii. For many of you out there video game systems are probably a way of life but my parents chose to buy me a Tandy 1000TL instead of a NES back in the 80’s. This meant I spent my days writing games in GW-BASIC instead of playing them. I suppose I have to credit my career in technology to my parents because of that move but I think much of my eagerness to buy the Wii comes from the fact that I’ve never owned a console game system. In the meantime hop on over to Lego.com and play this fun game.

I just found these great new demonstrations of Google’s Andriod OS. Some of the functionality looks great and although not earth-shattering more productive than the IPhone. Still no examples yet of how Android might accept user input which IMO is what will determine how this fairs in the market. Will the OS support tactile feedback? Will it function with and w/o the Blackberry-ish keyboard?

I was searching Amazon.com for a particular Beethoven album that I lost many years ago. It had a great presto piano concerto from Sonata No.7 (very fast piano playing) and I was jones-ing to listen. I found the cd I was looking for and examined the option to buy it used for $5 but paused to think; shouldn’t this music be public domain and basically free? After all Sug Knight wasn’t around to shake down Beethoven or Mozart. I did a quick search on public domain Beethoven music and found Musopen.com which has a large collection of freely downloadable classical music. True, the performances here aren’t by the London Pops but it’s not bad if you’re just looking for a few piano sonatas or a casual listener. Heck, you can even follow along and print the Beethoven sheet music. Here’s a link to a couple of my favorites:

Moonlight Sonata (also known as the theme song for the 1985 PC game Thexder)

Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10 No. 3

Enjoy!

KIVA is a social networking site dedicated to connecting lenders willing to contribute a few hundred dollars to entrepreneurs in under-developed countries. For example you can help Rosa Josefa Marquez De Limachi further her shoe sales business, or Lucila Malagon in Ecuador grow her pharmacy.

Through a network of partners Kiva screens loan recipients and provides a transparent view of the loan status to all of the parties involved.

Kiva very clearly lays out the risks involved with lending in this manner even though the amounts are relatively small; under $5,000. In most cases the average lender only contributes one-two hundred dollars and can monitor the progress of the investment via a personal online portfolio.

Furthermore, the folks at Kiva have done an excellent job of keeping the site design simple and accessible to many different audiences. If you’re thinking of giving to a charitable cause I HIGHLY recommend Kiva.

Problem:
I wear button down dress shirts every day but don’t like the look of a t-shirt collar underneath.

The options:

1. Constantly fight armpit stains

2. Buy tons of these AWESOME v-neck shirts from American Apparel

These great shirts let you look cool without worrying about sweat stains.

Thank you American Apparel!

Back in 1997 I sold ice cream all summer in order to afford a small MIDI sequencer to record my homemade music on. At the time a $500 Yamaha QY-8 was the rage one of several options.

Today, I found this story on Wired.com that details KORG’s plan to release an application for the Nintendo DS that will surpass the sequencing power of my little Yamaha QY-8.

Luckily, my girlfriend gave me a DS for Christmas to ‘train my brain” so I’m ready to go.

Funny, the first and only video game system I’ve ever owned and I still don’t own an actual play-game for it.

I’m sorry for two theater-related posts in one day but I felt compelled to promote the upcoming production of Les Miserables at the Lincolnshire Theater in Chicagoland.

Although this show is NOT a touring Broadway production it features a very solid Broadway cast and should be an interesting production.

I found very little information on this production so I wanted to link and promote the details I could find.

Broadway-esch Casting Notes:

Valjean - John Cudia (Has played both Valjean and the Phantom on Broadway)
Javert - Richard Todd Adams (Has played Roul in the touring Phantom)
Cosette - Leah Horowitz who just finished playing Cosette in the Broadway revival of Les Mis(closed in Jan)

Here are some additional resources I found:
- Another article talking about the show

Finally, here is the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie due out later this spring:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/indianajones.html?showVideo=1

Back in 2003 I approached my friend and go-to designer Scott about a cooking website and not just any cooking website but one aimed at helping men cook dinner for a woman  the site was called www.dinnerforher.com.  Scott crafted an amazing logo and I started doing some research.  Here are some of the great books I uncovered in the process:

Win Her With Dinner

Cooking to Hook Up

Well, at the end of the day there just wasn’t enough interest in the subject matter for me to continue and the project stands where it is today.  I’m writing on this topic because Techcrunch posted an article yesterday about a new site with a similar goal: Culinary Seductions

Hopefully I’m proved wrong and millions of women will have dinner made for them tonight.

For a long time I have had issues with portable music players.  I put off buying any thing ‘i’ relying instead on my Treo now Blackberry Curve to play music for me.  One problem that has always plagued me is easily controlling the music playing on my home stereo.  I partially resolved this with a D-Link DSM 320 Media Receiver which is OK but not amazing.

Today I read an article that gives me hope that the solution will soon arrive.  Blackberry is making a wireless stereo adapter for it’s phones.  This means that I will be able to plug a small box into my stereo input and control all the music playing right from my Blackberry Curve!  If the ipod had this feature I’d probably have shelled out the $400 for one already but alas.  Now one can only hope for the device to support streaming from other bluetooth 2.0 devices such as my laptop.

Read the full article here