More on the Glif

Update on the Glif
[Via Daring Fireball]

Nice report by Glenn Fleishman on the status of the Glif, the upcoming Kickstarter-funded iPhone 4 tripod adapter from Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt.

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I’ve talked about the Glif before. What is interesting is that something that started out as a small scale project for $10,000 was hit with becoming a much larger project of almost $14,000. Reading about how these guys adapted to the huge success they achieved is marvelous.

How repeatable is this sort of thing? Hard to know but it demonstrates an entirely new way for innovations to get out there – no venture capital, no borrowing, no real capital expenditures until they know they have a success. It wlll be fascinating to see how this sort of approach takes off.

Some people take their TV programs way to seriously

by Nuno Duarte

‘Not a Good Dancer’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Todd Richmond, reporting for the AP:

Prosecutors say a rural Wisconsin man blasted his TV with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin’s “Dancing With the Stars” routine, sparking an all-night standoff with a SWAT team.

According to court documents, 67-year-old Steven Cowan became enraged while watching Palin dance on Monday evening. He felt Palin was not a good dancer.

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Luckily it was only his TV and not someone he was having a discussion with. As with most reality shows, the goal is not to find the best dancer or the best singer or the person with the most talent. It is create a program people will watch.

The producers of Dancing with the Stars have done just that. Good for them. But some people seem to fall into the belief that these programs actually strive to have the best win. In my experience, the best are almost never the ones who win. As with most popularity contests, the ones who win are the most popular, not necessarily the best.

Information has a big effect on the TSA

Isaac Z. Schlueter’s TSA Success Story
[Via Daring Fireball]

This might be my favorite TSA-related story of the week. Nothing sensational about it. Just a story about using and sharing information, and having the fortitude to act on your beliefs.

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When 4 scientists at UCSF bring up their concerns about the new devices, I tend to listen. As this post shows, so do other people.

I’d feel more comfortable about these new machines with a lot more hard science behind their health effects, especially on the elderly, the young, cancer survivors and pregnant women.

Good to know if you have any Google account

What Google knows about you and how to tweak it
[Via Ars Technica]

“Everyone who has a Google account should visit their Dashboard once a year,” Google product manager Jonathan McPhie told me in a meeting room at Google’s Chicago office. “It’s like Google’s way of showing you our hand—let you see what info we have on you—and allow you to change it.”

As the holidays draw near and people turn to the Internet to do their gift research and shopping, Google is on a renewed push to make users aware of the plethora of privacy settings available to them. But even when they’re not trying to hide their jewelry purchases from their spouses, much of the general population is blissfully unaware of what can be done to keep their personal information in check. “We want it to be something that your grandma can understand,” McPhie said.

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Google has so many different accounts – YouTube, SItes, Docs, etc. – where you can leave information. The dashboard is a nice way to see all of them and make any corrections you want.

Four Loko sounds disgusting

by magoexperto

‘It Tastes Like Regret’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Paul Kafasis drinks a can of Four Loko:

In the end, I bought a can each of Blue Raspberry and Watermelon because that’s what the liquor store had. While ringing up the purchase, the store owner glanced at the cans of Four Loko before stating “that’s the closest I come to selling real poison”. I couldn’t make that up.

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Read the whole thing. I liked this at the start of his experience drinking Blue Raspberry Four Loko:

The taste was another matter entirely. When the first drop of Four Loko touched my tongue, I immediately regretted my decision to run this little test. Blue Raspberry definitely does not taste like raspberry. Hell, it doesn’t even taste like anything blue, with the possible exception of 2000 Flushes. Put simply, Four Loko Blue Raspberry is abhorrent and I can only imagine that these cans are filled by a long assembly line of Smurfs vomiting.

Drinking Smurf vomit. What an image. Sounds like a South Park episode.

Rapid response to TSA

Fly With Dignity
[Via Daring Fireball]

Seems like a great site from the Reddit community.

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An interesting approach to all the TSA shenanigans recently. Here is an example. The reason men were flogged in public was not for their humiliation but to intimidate the rest of the men. Similarly, this appears to be an intimidation effort by the TSA. I wonder if they were the ones who released his name or not.

Fly with Dignity is pretty impressive site put together by an ad hoc group of people. It will be interesting to see what this grass roots group will accomplish. I think all of us would like to fly with dignity.

If you want to read some discussions by people at the front lines here, check out FlyerTalk.