Free software isn’t really free

<soapbox>
If you're going to offer free software, just let me download it. If you want my email address to so you can make some money selling it to spammers, tell me, I'm likely to give you a throw away email address anyway. But when you want me to fill in my address, date of birth, income level, gender, and numerous other things that you obviously have no reason to have, you just piss me off and make me not want to try your software. If I like I'm going to pay. If I don't I won't. But
asking me all kinds of personal information will always make me lie or try something else.
</soapbox>

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I really wanted to try this recommended software program called Cmap. But just as I stated above, if you want too much information just to download a program you're going to give me for free then you're not really giving it to me for free. Information isn't cheap and personal information is very expensive. Try again my friends. And for anyone else out there requiring a large amount of personal data just to download, why don't you give Sourceforge.net a try. At least I know you really support an open source or free software model.

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Do you foos?

I was reminded about a great video on foosball. Here's the link.
There is one great line in this little commercial that says "The verocity of his beatdowns would be the stuff of legends." This is so great.

Had a great foosball match at work yesterday. Here are some photos.

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Get GmailThis

If you're an avid Gmail user like I am, you need to get your hands on this little ditty.

There have been numerous times where was reading a web page and thought I wanted to email someone about it. I had to stop reading, load up Gmail, find the address, copy the link and they send it off. It was just a hassle. Now you can send off email easily.

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Does RSS need a pundit?

My good friend Kip started a blog recently. His goal and or mission is to learn about and share information on how business could benefit from RSS and ATOM type content systems. I like the title RSSPundit. I'm not sure that RSS needs a pundit
but if it does Kip's your man. I think more companies should take a look at using RSS to distribute all kinds of data. With the advent of podcasting it's becoming easier and easier to distribute more than just text to anyone who wants to listen, read or interact.

Kip and I had a short discussion on RSS yesterday and how we thought our company could integrate the technology into our marketing and product offerings. He had recently visited the Blog Business Summit and I'm sure came away with some really great ideas.

According to Wikipedia a pundit is someone who is an expert on a subject. I'm sure Kip will work diligently to become an expert on RSS in the corporate world. Please take some time to read Kip's blog. Oh and Kip, seeing how your blog is focused on RSS feeds, I thought I would help you get a feed on your site so others can read your awesome blog.

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Real time flight info

This is so cool. My wife was flying back from New York and I wanted to know if JetBlue had updates on their web site about flights. Sure enough, there is a place to enter the flight number and up pops a ton of information, like current air speed, altitude, departure time, arrival time, and the best part, a real time graphic that shows you the flight pattern and the current location.

This technology would be great for things like buses, trains, and even your own vehicles (which I know already exist.)

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