ESPN Study: Most People Don't Want DVRs ? MarketingVOX

What this study doesn't tell us...
Were the 157 households viewers of ESPN? If they were, doesn't the immediacy of sporting events shown love trump the value brought by time-shifting with a DVR? Were electronics in general hard for these households to install? Is fashion sense really a valid reason to not want a technology? Of the 157 households, how much daily TV was watched...above the 4hr daily average of most thereby rendering them comatose? Was this group so passive that they didn't even want to fast forward?

Finally, do 90 households who watch ESPN, buy technology because of "how it looks", have no clue how to plug in 3 wires or program their VCR (an ancient form of DVR) and support rampant commercialism really have something to say to us about DVR adoption? Is MediaPost really a front for the MPAA?

Sci-Fi Synergy - New York Times

How about a history of the future? Take a walk through this museum.

? Bill Gates Unveils Google Maps Killer?? InsideMicrosoft

Check out some of the pictures from this forthcoming project. If it delivers what we see here, the race is on.

deviantART: powerdraw (via BoingBoing)

With the right skills, MS Paint is a powerful program. Oh, just a wee bit of Photoshop.

Let's Make a Deal Demonstration

On Friday, the TV show Numb3rs had the math professor Charlie teaching a "Math for Non-Mathematicians" class. He spelled out a statistical probability problem which is very basic but intuitively seems to give you an answer which is not correct. It took a little thinking on my part and then some convincing of my Dad for two of us to be on board. Both the Numb3rs blog and this University of Texas at Austin site help lay out the problem and solution. The link above actually demonstrates it.

Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV (via Slashdot)

This is a well thought through article proposing a new paradigm of "hypercasting" TV. It's a type of viral marketing which has a viable revenue stream though it would turn traditional media outlets on their head. Live broadcasting is the only real role for today's TV broadcasters in this new world model. Bring it on!

Review Your Star Wars History Before Seeing Episode III on May 19th

DELL : Tech Force

You have to see it to believe it. Retro-puppets in a marketing stunt for Dell. Thanks to Engadget.

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

I'm part of the Rebellion...Cuke would be happy to know.

Howstuffworks "How Lightsabers Work"

Watch Star Wars Episode III as an informed moviegoer.

Watch out for the jellyfish! 

and watch out for the loggerhead turtles 

Panorama looking out onto the beach at Kiawah Island 

An eagle's nest we saw on our dolphin watch. 

If you wondered why I didn't post last week, I was on vacation in Kiawah Island, SC. How was it you ask? It had it's highlights (like the pics from the dolphin watch above) but when you're a parent of young children, you don't really get a break. Wait a while till they're teens. 

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe Trailer Premiere

When I first saw this trailer, I could only say "WOW!" As a huge fan of the LOTR Movies, it's great to have such a masterpiece of the genre done with the same level of quality.

NY Times: Its Long Trek Over, the Enterprise Pulls Into Dry Dock

With no first-run Star Trek on the air after May 13th, I'm not going to be lonely. Fans are creating episodes, books are still being published and DVD collections enable me to relive the memories. So even the though the spin-meisters are wrong about the quality of the current Enterprise series, I'll keep on trekkin'.

Slate: May the Force Be With You, and You, and You?... - Why fans make better Star Wars movies than George Lucas. By Clive Thompson

Fan-made movies or shows are coming into their own. Friday I enjoyed Star Wars: Revelations with a small group of fans and was amazed at the quality that can be achieved with very little budget. The acting still needs a bit of work but it's not so terrible as to make it not worth watching. If you want to sample this movie, download it free here

And you might try other genre fan-based efforts.

Star Trek New Voyages continues the adventures of Kirk and Spock (the 2nd episode is a much better effort). This series has actually garnered the attention of original series cast and writers who will participate in future episodes.

Star Trek Hidden Frontier has been around for a while and has "aired" a number of seasons.

If Lord of the Rings is your genre, check out this project: Acanar. Watch the trailer. Be prepared to download sometime in the future.

These are very cool projects. They're free and entertaining. Powerful home PC's make all of this possible in our day. Maybe you'll get the bug one day.