Reader poll: how many blogs and RSS feeds do you check at least once a month?

My answer: I used to be over 100. I then trimmed down to 60, and now I’m back up to 80 again. I check them all probably twice a day. RSS makes that less time-consuming than it sounds, but it’s still quite a task. Part of me wants to cut that stack down to the bare essentials and almost stop consuming altogether (see my previous entry) while another part of me sees the consumption of new media and new input as a catalyst for new creation. So I’m stuck.

OK, I’ve got the RSS feed for comments mostly working for those who know what to do with it. This feed will make it much easier to follow discussion on any particular post without visiting the site or the entry multiple times to see who else has responded.

This feed may get a little spam in it occasionally, but that spam will just as quickly be removed and deleted from the RSS. My apologies if you see some. I’ll do my best to keep it clean.

Also, I don’t want to fuse my comments RSS to my entries RSS. I don’t like it when people do that. It forces me to think “Wait, did I read this entry yet? Oh, yes, I did, it’s just that there’s a new 6th comment down there below the first 5 I’ve also already read, which is why the entry appears to be new.” It’s not convenient.

One small nice touch (although this may be common for comments RSS): when you click on the title of a particular comment, you’re not just taken to that entry, but to the actual comment itself. So each comment has a sort of “permalink” of its own. w00t.

About 24 hours ago, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata unveiled something truly amazing about Nintendo’s upcoming game console. It wasn’t the name (they’re calling it the “Nintendo Revolution” for now). It wasn’t the look of the console (it’ll be about the size of three DVD movie cases stacked on top of each other). What he showed, and the thing that is causing all sorts of buzz in the gaming industry right now, was the Revolution’s controller. Leave it to Nintendo to not only innovate, but to be innovative in where they innovate. Most companies are pushing the boundaries of realism in graphics and sound. That’s fine. Personally, I don’t think that will be lastingly satisfying. We’ve been improving graphics since we had graphics, and the changes never really please you beyond the first 30 minutes you see them. But how the player interacts with the game… that hasn’t changed much lately, and when it changes, it changes the very roots of the player’s connection to the characters on the screen.

I won’t go into exactly why I think the controller is so cool. If you want to see a two-minute video about it (I know you do), just download it from IGN. You’ll get the idea pretty quickly. The central idea is that the Revolution knows exactly where the wireless controller is, how it’s moving, at what angle it is being held, how it’s being tilted, exactly how far it is from the TV. Everything.

If you want to understand the idea a bit more thoroughly, check out IGN’s 19-minute video, including the most important part of Iwata’s keynote. It begins with the same 2 minutes of the video above, so you don’t have to download both.

I’m extremely excited. Swashbuckling, gunplay, fishing, conducting… flashlight-wielding? I love it! I have no doubt this is going to be amazingly fun and refreshing. The only concern I have is that developers aren’t creative enough and won’t come up with games that truly utilize all the possibilities. But Nintendo is usually the only developer that fully utilizes their own console, so that’s nothing new.

Some coworkers and I were talking about Steven Hawking, famous physicist from Cambridge University (seen at right, photo not mine). Apparently he made some comments a few years back that he was concerned computers could some day take over and overpower mankind, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Matrix.

Since making those comments, it’s my understanding that he has lost some control of his hands due to the progression of his illness (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a.k.a Lou Gehrig’s disease). He previously used his hands to control the computer which allows him to speak, and possibly his wheelchair too. My understanding is that he’s currently controlling his systems through a series of eye blinks. Part of me is worried about what will happen when he loses control over even that ability, and essentially becomes silent and still, in spite of his brilliance.

But then another part of me sees an ironic opportunity. As we were talking, the idea came up that if he were unable to control his chair or speech computer, why not hook it up to some wifi and a web interface, and allow others to take a turn? Go to the website, drive Dr. Hawking around, say things to strangers passing by… what fun! And no one would be the wiser.

I’m not so worried anymore. I’m sure it’ll work out.

It’s actually slightly embarrassing that instead of blogging about all the significant or interesting or deeply-personal things that have happened to me in the last few weeks, I’m going to post a link to the iPod nano, but I just wanted to hear your comments.

It has a color screen. It has 14 hours of battery life per charge. It’s thinner than a standard “No. 2” pencil. Now you know what that secondary, tiny pocket nestled inside your front-right jeans pocket is really for.

I’m not personally planning on buying one since I just got a 60 GB iPod last week (my previous one was suffering from old age and abuse), but man, if I didn’t have an iPod, and if my music would fit in a 4 GB space, I’d be all over it.

Watch the keynote in QuickTime

I’d like to take a little informal survey. You can even leave comments anonymously if you’re freaked out by giving this information publicly. I’m fine with that. I have two questions, both of which I’ll also answer myself. Oh, and no stupid loopholes. That avoids the point of the questions.

1) If someone walked up to you and said, “I’ll give you any amount of money you want if you let me destroy all your data permanently and immediately,” what’s the lowest amount of money you would demand? $100? $1000? $1,000,000? Seriously, think about this. All your data. Digital photos. Music. Everything you’ve got on your computers. Including all your backups of that data. It’s all gone. What’s it worth to you?

2) If you suddenly lost all your data in a horrible hard drive crash (the same data from question #1), but you knew there was one person in the world who could get it back for you (hard drive surgeon of some kind… works miracles, etc) how much would you be willing to pay to get it back?

Don’t let my answers affect yours. Think yours through first. I’ll put mine in the comments.

Recently the Henrico County School District sold about 1000 iBooks for $50 each because they decided they liked Dell laptops better. The sale created a riot and several people got hurt. You can get an idea of the carnage in some videos.

What kind of idiots would sell these iBooks for $50 when they could’ve gotten many times that? (12,000 people showed up. I’m guessing they teach their kids about supply and demand?) Probably the same kind that wouldn’t prepare properly for an event like this, allowing people to get crushed and hurt when it would’ve been easy to give a little order to the horde instead of throwing open the gates carelessly. Then again, they are selling iBooks in favor of Dell laptops. What can we expect of them?

Oh well. Next year they’ll have a bunch of kids asking why their school laptop has viruses and spyware on it, but they won’t have any time to fix it because they’re too busy with their physical rehabilitation appointments.