Reminscent of the 1982 movie Tron or later video game movies such as the 1994 cult classic Brainscan, Stan literally "got sucked in to Facebook" in Episode 14.04 of South Park.  The much anticipated episode featured such classic quotes as

Randy: Oh okay. So we're, we're not friends, then?

Stan: Fuck off, Dad.

and

Randy: Stan, poke your Grandma.

Have you ever wondered what the world’s longest domain name is?  Or how long can a domain name actually be? Well, it’s limited.  It seems that a domain can be no longer than 63 characters minus the top level domain suffix.  Which makes the 5-letter, 7-character suffix domain name:
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.org.uk
technically the longest valid single word domain name in the world.

The word is the name of a Welsh village on the Isle of Anglesey, North Wales.  The village retains its original name on sign posts, but it is locally known in Wales as Llanfairpwll or Llanfair-PG.  Thousands of tourists visit the small village of llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch each year made internationally famous through is tongue-twister of a name.  The url itself represents the upper village and has the suffix -uchaf means “upper” in Welsh.  It is believed that the name was invented by a unknown cobbler from Menai Bridge; little did he know that he had implemented one of the most successful tourist marketing plans of all time.

There are also multiple words phrases like:
thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com
thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com
iamtheproudownerofthelongestlongestlongestdomainnameinthisworld.com

The longest alphabetical domain name:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com

And then there's
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com
which is actually 63 character with a 3 subdomain.

So when you think about it, my favorite domain name ever, from the December 5 broadcast of Saturday Night Live, isn't really all that lengthy.  On the "Pimp Chat" sketch, White Chocolate (Vince Vaughn's character) tells Bishop Don "Mack" Donald (Tracy Morgan's character) that his new website is called "www.bitchbetterhavemymoney.com"

A new study by Zogby International shows that 36% of 35- to 54-year-olds are disappointed with the current level of technological advancement.  However, 34% of those 70 and older are most likely to say we are more advanced than they thought we would be by 2010

Check out what the band We Were Promised Jetpacks has to say about that.  And us... Freeing the future since 2002.

The world's most popular URL shortener bit.ly will be receiving some competition in the new year.  Google will be launching its own service called goo.gl.   This will be directly integrated with FeedBurner's Socialize tool which allows you to connect RSS feeds to Twitter.  Facebook's fb.me will also challenge in the arena and is currently being tested on Facebook's mobile site.

This is the Google Phone.  It was handed out to Google employees at a meeting on December 10th.  Though the phone doesn't yet officially have a name, its being referred to as the Nexus One.  The phone will likely be sold directly to consumers by Google, ship unlocked, and work on either T-Mobile or AT&T.  T-Mobile will handle the customer support, however the handset will not require a carrier.  The phone is made by HTC and appears to run an unreleased 2.1 version of Android.  It is rumored that Google is planning an invite-only launch on January 5th, however there is no further information about how to go about obtaining one of these invites.

• Android 2.1
• 1GHz processor
• 11.5mm thick, 800x480 display
  
• 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB microSD in-box expandable to 32GB
• 5 megapixel camera with mechanical AF and LED flash
• HSPA 900 / 1700 / 2100, 7.2Mbps down and 2Mbps up -- in other words, yes to T-Mobile 3G and no to AT&T 3G, though you'll still be fine on EDGE
• 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display
• WiFi and Bluetooth

On November 12th this year I experienced Christmas Morning, as I opened up my email to find a Google Wave invite. Things have never been the same. After passing out the 8 invitations I received to share with friends and family (instead of selling the invites on ebay link needed), our first Wave took off. The following is some of what we learned.

If you're unfamiliar with Wave, here is a good preview of some of the features it has to offer. Watching this will help you get a grasp on how to use this "killer" (Facebook-killer, MySpace-killer, Office-killer) application.

When we began, our first inclination was to write in a style that was conducive to instant message. We soon found that the disorganization of our rapid back and forth was creating too many new threads. It was confusing that only replies to your own messages indented, not replies to others. I spent more time deleting exploratory chatter than on composition, mostly because it was unclear how to delete more than one conversation statement at a time. The playback function was helpful in looking back to figure out it took us 85 steps before we began an actual "document" for this article. And the Ping function was neat in that it opens up a new wave which is "always on top" until the person replies.

I found it strange that the person who started this wave wasn't immediately added to my contacts, much in the way someone who I correspond with in GMail, is added to my Contacts automagically. I can understand that on a large wave you may not want 100 new people in your contacts, but there should be some kind of option to choose what new friends from each wave you want to add. I had to manually add the @googlewave.com address to my contacts later on, as there was no convenient "add friend" button next to their name.

Keep in mind that Wave is not even Beta. Its Preview (which Google mistakenly must think is the first letter of the Greek alphabet). Even the settings section is under construction and there was no apparent way to add a profile picture. How do we export this to google docs? How do we integrate this with a blog? How do we center this embedded video? How do we get out of the WYSIWYG editor to see the HTML source? These questions and more remain unanswered, but as an alpha-tester, consider me impressed.

Remember how to get 30 extra lives?  Good.  If you're in Google Reader press "up up down down left right left right B A" and the ninjas will reward you with an Easter egg.

Processor    Intel® Atom™ Processor 330 (1M Cache, 1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB)
Chipset    MCP7A-ION
Memory    2x DDR2 800 DIMM slots (up to 8 GB)
Graphics    Onboard NVIDIA® ION (NVIDIA® GeForce 9400M) with NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD, CUDA™, PhysX™ and nView™ support (up to 2 monitors)

Deliverance, allows you to inject plone into an existing design.

Sample designs at http://www.oswd.org also combine themes

rule to replace items with content from plone site

logo <replace content="" theme="logo.h1" />

to call elements of navigation
    children:#portal-globalnav children:#links ul

drop theme elements with drop

if there is different ie <div> <p> replace with tag:

runs as wsgi middleware

zine - python blogging tool can be themed as plone edit paste/rules

collective.xdv define template locatoin w/o running deliverance separately

deliverance as proxy runs another python process

Writing tests forces clear requirements up front

Test-Code Cycle - write, if test fails, write new test until it passes

Unit tests gauge individual behavior in product, use Python unittest module

Functional tests, what goes in and out, use PloneTestCase

UI tests - act as an end-user would, use zope.testbrowser

http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/manipulation-plone-objects-programattically

bin/instance -s (specify which module to load)

roadrunner is a tool that preloads Plone to make running your integration tests much faster

if fail use -D to drop you into Pdb

Use plone.reload to try out these changes live

Dont overtest, tests are software too and must be maintained

Bringing JavaScript (JS) into Plone via portal_javascripts

New in Plone 3.3 pull in JS from external sites

Using Javascript libraries can reuse existing code and save time

Kinetic Style Sheets (KSS) make changes without reloading page

KSS rules contain selector, action type, action, action parameters

If JS is disabled, KSS recognizes, runs action, and doesn't break

KSS failes silently, but by turning on debugging in portal_javascript messages will appear in firebug

Documentation at http://kssproject.org

Plone 4 won't ship with KSS but can be used as an add-on project

Making jQuery calls :first :last :nth :not

http://plugins.jquery.com

If uses the plugin uses $ replace with JQ and insert it in resource registries between jquery.js and jquery-integration.js

Examples collaspable content, sortable tables, Deco (in Plone 5)

check out more at http://bit.ly/plone-interactivity

Allows you to save Plone customizations for repeatability

Creating profiles in GenericSetup

What's in a profile?  profile-<package_name>:<profile_name>

Controlled through the portal_setup tool

Ability to take a snapshot of the site and compare changes

metadata.xml gives profile a version # and define dependencies

profiles allow a uninstall path for themes that wont go away

portal_setup vs portal_quickinstaller, cant unquickinstall profile

Godaddy recommends against purchasing .tv domain names.

The island is sinking.

Their lease agreement runs out in 2012.

Maybe they know something about the end of the world.

Parties, parties, everwhere.  Ubuntu 9.04 final release hit the planet today.  Check out the worldwide list of events!  Including a Revolution OS movie screening on May 8th at 8pm at our offices in Lilly, Pa.  Stop by!  We'd love to have ya!

Today, the four founders of The Pirate Bay, each received a one year jail sentence for violating Sweedish copyright laws.  Defendants Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström were accused of making copyrighted material easily searchable and accessable to the public.  TPB was started in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyran (The Piracy Bureau).  The founders, who have made a splash over the years by laughing in the face of companies who send them legal notices.  However, this day in court was very real, as real as any orchestrated media circus can be.

The trial of TPG began on February 16th, by the second day half of the charges had been dropped.  The trial, seen as a very real and landmark case for internet freedom, turned into a modern day big-media driven public lynching.  TPB gang, never short to entertain, provided colorful commentary as they tried to explain the technology behind BitTorrent.  The decision hurts all private citizens everywhere.