Following the unexpected death of pop idol Michael Jackson, everyone is so concerned about his kids, his estate, and his family. But I’d suggest there’s a forgotten victim of this tragedy: Weird Al Yankovich.

Much of Al’s early career was built on parodies of Jackson’s popular songs. For a time, he was known as a caricature of Jackson – that is, until Jackson became a caricature of himself. From then on, Al had to be content spoofing other artists.

Now that Michael is gone forever, has anyone thought about poor Al? Dear God, what about Al?

Anyway, here’s a couple of Al’s classic Jackson spoofs:

- Greg

It’s hard not to sound cliché when writing a post about Michael Jackson. Let’s be honest, on the freaky scale of 1 to 10, the dude was about a 14. Amid allegations of child molestation, the evolution of his bizarre appearance, and his eccentric behavior over the last 20 years, it’s almost hard to remember the “original” fresh-faced young entertainer that dominated the 80’s pop music scene. Nonetheless, his music and videos were a huge part of my childhood, and he not just influenced but defined entertainment for an entire generation.

When I first heard the news he’d passed away late Thursday (not on CNN but on Facebook, no less), I was shocked and saddened, though I still couldn’t put my finger on why exactly. After all, I didn’t know him personally, and his music hadn’t been remotely popular in more than a decade. But when a childhood idol dies, I think you lose a little bit of your past and realize that we’re all quite mortal.

Jackson’s untimely death was my generation’s Elvis moment, and like Elvis, there were 2 versions of him: the young, normal looking guy, and the thing that looked like a cross between a grey alien and Ari from Planet of the Apes.

One of the first things I did was to download Thriller again. When I was young, I loved that album with a passion. I originally had the LP when it was released in 1982; it was one of the few records in my collection that was “mine” and hadn’t been handed down to me by my older sister. I played it almost continuously, even the tracks I didn’t especially like, because to skip over a track, you had to physically move the needle. Maybe I’m looking through the prism of nostalgia, but after all this time, I’m surprised at how timeless it still seems.

I’ve previously mentioned that growing up, my family didn’t have cable TV (we lived out in the sticks), so most of my early MTV experience was gained from weekend sleepovers at my friends’ houses. And in those days, Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Billie Jean, and Say, Say, Say videos were in pretty heavy rotation. We also had a bootleg VHS tape with Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, a behind-the-scenes tour of the epic video’s production, which I digested weekly.

On August 9, 1984, my mom took me to my first rock concert (hey, I was 10), which was the Jackson 5’s Victory tour. They played three shows at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, and we attended the final night. I remember that I wore a knock-off version of the Beat It jacket, a Michael Jackson t-shirt, and some black nylon parachute pants. It wasn’t until several years later that I learned the unspoken rule about not wearing the band’s gear to a concert. Our seats were in the nosebleed section; in fact I had a better view of the Jacksons on the jumbo-tron screen than on the stage, but I didn’t care. Seeing Michael Jackson live in concert is a memory of my childhood I’ll always cherish.

Ginny, Logan, and I were visiting my parents this past weekend, and of course with every news channel covering Jackson’s death, our conversation naturally wandered into that territory. Lo and behold, my mom still had that old vinyl jacket, and she gave it to me to bring back home.

You know, I’m really glad we still have Jermaine Jackson just for comparison purposes. You can look at him and say, “that’s what Michael would’ve looked like without all of the plastic surgery.”

- Greg

I think the FCC needs to reprimand NBC regarding its use of the term “celebrity” in the title of its summer reality TV series, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

OK, that looks like Sanjaya with a Mohawk and maybe one the lesser Baldwins on the end. Does anyone know who the hell the rest of these people are? Maybe I just don’t watch enough TV, but I thought that being a “celebrity” means that you have fans and are to some extent recognizable to them. A better title might have been I’m Desperate for Money and Attention, Please Let Me Be on Your Show.

- Greg

How valuable is your online identity? It’s a question that I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. I’ve had the same email account about as long as I can remember, but over the past couple of years, I’ve begun to realize that your email address is only one small part of your “brand identity.” Oh yeah. I said it. You have a brand, just like Nike, Coca-Cola, or McDonald’s.

With the advent of Web 2.0 services like Twitter, Facebook, and Windows Live, it’s becoming just as critical to have a recognizable @username as it is to have an email address that your friends and followers can easily associate with you.

My first (personal) email address was valin@xtn.net (don’t bother trying to send anything to me there, XTN has been bought, sold, and closed since then). “Valin” was a character; a little in-reference that made sense to no one but me and a handful of friends. At the time, it was really cool to have an online persona, like I was a secret agent or something equally cloak and dagger. The Internet was such a new technology, and frankly, I wasn’t sure just how much I could trust it. Besides, it was an opportunity to create a barrier and remove myself from my online activity. As the old saying goes, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Now, it just seems like 180º from what I want: a simple straightforward identity that communicates my presence to my family, friends, and fans. These days, I’d feel more than a little silly promoting myself online as Valin.

Anyone who follows me on Windows Live should know that my email address is my name, as I’m pretty wide open about it. It’s listed on my Windows Live Space, in the signature line of my email messages, and in my Windows Live Profile. I also generally throw my space’s personalized URL (my so-called vanity URL, also my name) into most blog comments and other communications I send these days. I’ve found that it’s a great way to drive traffic to my content, and it promotes an atmosphere of “trust” (and I use that term loosely) between myself and my network.

I know that I’m much more inclined to communicate with jimpatterson@hotmail.com than hackerdude@hotmail.com (both addresses pulled completely out of the ether, so follow at your own discretion). Yes, I realize that it’s just as likely that Jim isn’t really Jim at all, but my point is that I prefer communicating with someone who at least seems like a real person and not someone hiding behind the wall of an invented persona.

So, recently I’ve found myself on something of a quest to stake my claim to my brand in a variety of locales ‘round the Internet. Comcast, Yahoo, Twitter, FriendFeed, WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, Yammer, Ping.fm, just to name a few…I got ‘em all. I even got my preferred Facebook URL this past weekend. So far, the only one that has really eluded me is Gmail. Oh, I have a Gmail account, but it’s not my name, at least not in quite the format I’d like it to be. I guess I’d also like to have my dotcom, but let's face it, having your own vanity dotcom (especially for an individual) isn’t nearly as relevant as it used to be.

I started by sending a courteous email to the owner of my coveted Gmail account and was promptly informed that he’s not interested in giving it up just yet. I have no idea whether he’s just squatting on it, or whether he’s really using it a lot. For the moment, it seems I’ve been thwarted. Where do I go from here? What do you think an email address is worth? Would you be willing to pay someone to get an email address you want? What would it take for you to sell your address, a piece of your brand, to someone else?

- Greg

Boy, those Redbox kiosks are everywhere these days. If you’ve never seen one, it’s essentially an automated vending machine that rents new-release DVDs for $1 per night. You commonly find them in front of Wal-mart stores, pharmacies, and fast food joints.

I saw this on the way to work this morning:

Things aren’t looking so good for ol’ Blockbuster Video.

- Greg

This weekend, my lovely wife and I ventured to our local Regal Cinemas, plunked down some $25 bucks for a pair of matinee tickets and snacks, and settled in to watch – neigh, absorb – Star Trek, the eagerly anticipated film in which director JJ Abrams supposedly “reboots” the original series. If you haven’t yet seen the film and don’t want to be inundated with major spoilers, then click here to read an interesting article about bunnies instead.

Still with me? Excellent. You might want to grab a cup of coffee.

Now, let me preface the rest of my lengthy synopsis by giving you a snapshot of my long and varied history with Trek. When I was a kid, living in the sticks of rural Tennessee, the TV in my house got exactly three channels: CBS, ABC, and PBS. Needless to say, I survived largely on the scraps of bootlegged VHS movies that my parents had scavenged here and there. Among those were the first three Star Trek movies, and I watched them religiously. As I grew older, I continued to follow the additional films and really came to admire the spin-off series, including The Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise (I never really got into DS9, but Ginny claims it’s the best of the bunch). I’ve also managed to catch most of the episodes of the original series, which let’s admit, seem a little cheesy by comparison to everything that has come along since. I’ve also read a couple of the Trek novels, but I’m not an big fan of anything that attempts to shoehorn itself into the existing canon of a series (which is why I’m still brooding over the Star Wars prequels). While I don’t have a Starfleet uniform hanging in my closet or anything, I do have a lot of respect for the foundations of the Trek universe, the rich tapestry of its characters, its history, and its reputation for weaving together a logical and intelligent storyline.

I was lucky enough to marry a woman who’s an even bigger Trekkie than I am. You know you’re with a good one if you can watch Trek with her, and you’re with the right one if you can discuss the finer points of the episode in bed after the movie is over. That’s Ginny. She’s a bit cautious by nature, so she already had some misgivings about the upcoming film, but I went into this movie with my signature plucky optimism intact. I wanted it to be good. I really did.

On paper (and in previews), it looked like a perfect storm: a great cast (especially Zachary Quinto as Spock), one of the hottest directors around, top-notch special effects, a very mysterious script, and characters (Kirk, et. al.) that even non-Trekkies actually seem to care about. There was a ton of buzz around the movie, and Rotten Tomatoes even gave it a 96%. They must have watched a different movie.

As a movie, it looks great. The acting is superb, the sets are vast, and the CGI is indeed beautiful (I’ve never before seen so many lens flares in single shot). It’s replete with little in-jokes and nods to the original series. The story, however, is a wreck from start to finish. When writing the Star Wars prequels, sci-fi god George Lucas went to very convoluted lengths not to trample on the canon of his beloved characters’ universe; Abrams went completely the other direction. It’s as if he said, “To hell with it, let’s just rip out the guts and start over.” Which wouldn’t have been so bad in and of itself (that worked exceptionally well with the recently-ended Battlestar Galactica series), but he chose to do it in a curious way…via yet another time-travel storyline (groan). This is what I saw (you can skip ahead if you want, but you’ll miss the rapier wit of my play-by-play commentary):

The story opens on the USS Kelvin, a curiously exotic-looking starship with a single warp nacelle (weird, since nacelles are supposed to be in groups of two or more to create a warp field between them). The Kelvin is commanded by Captain Redshirt, who is killed almost immediately by the rather obvious villain, the Romulan Captain Nero (BTW, Eric Bana is completely underutilized in this rather flat role that makes Malcolm McDowell’s Dr. Soren look deep and complex), leaving Kirk’s father in command as a much larger and better armed Romulan behemoth called the Narada proceeds to tear the tiny Federation ship apart. Papa Kirk manages to get all hands to shuttlecrafts, including his wife who is simultaneously giving birth to baby Kirk, before sacrificing himself in a vain effort to destroy the attackers with his crippled ship. This scene just oozes with drama, but it feels more than a little contrived. It’s like Abrams is beating the audience over the head, saying, “Hey, this guy was literally born in the thick of battle.”

Flash forward to Iowa several years later. Pre-teen Kirk is out for a joyride in his stepdad’s boosted Corvette (they’re not on the best terms), blasting Beastie Boys on a Nokia-branded all-in-one media player (along with Budweiser, one of the few companies to survive the nuclear holocaust and even thrive in a non-commercial future society). When he’s tailed by a motorcycle cop, he ditches the car in the deepest gorge I’ve ever seen in Iowa (seriously, it’s like the Grand Canyon). There was an old joke about how Kirk was better than Picard because he could almost drive a stick shift; I have to believe this scene was included as a subtle nod to that rather lame joke.

Next, flash to Vulcan (not a specific place, just the planet, ‘cause nobody would know where K’Plahr province is anyway), and we get to see some “Vulcan bullies” (yep, that’s actually how they’re credited) teasing a young Spock for being a half-breed and calling his mom a whore. They’re just trying to get a rise out of him to see if it’s possible, like it’s a science experiment or something. Anyway, we get to see what a green bloody lip looks like, and Sarek counsels Spock about the importance of controlling his emotions and embracing logic. We also get to see a couple of brief scenes of Winona Ryder as Spock’s human mother; some years later, she counsels him on the importance of making your own choices and being true to yourself, emotions and everything. No wonder the guy is so conflicted. He blows off his acceptance to the prestigious Vulcan Science Academy in favor of joining Starfleet.

Back to Iowa, a twentysomething Kirk hits on Uhuru in a bar (proving there’s still no cure for alcoholism or pick-up lines in the 22nd century) and gets his ass handed to him by some Starfleet cadet meatheads. Enter Captain Pike, who knows Kirk’s family history and sees potential in the misguided young man. He urges Kirk to join Starfleet and turn his life around. During a motorcycle ride down by the old shipyard (cause they build all the starships on Earth, in Iowa cornfields, within easy driving distance of Kirk's childhood home), he looks wistfully at the Enterprise under construction and decides to take Pike up on his offer.

In one of the best scenes in the entire film, we get to see Kirk meet the crotchety Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (a character who, because of his sardonic demeanor, always seemed much older than he probably was supposed to be). I always loved Bones, because he was such a contrast to both the daring, hotheaded Kirk and cold, logical Spock, and in this film, he’s adeptly portrayed with that same attitude that made him so popular in the original series. We find out that he’s phobic of space travel, which perhaps makes for an odd career choice, he’s divorced, and his wife took everything but his bones. Ok, a couple of problems here: how do you take everything from someone in a non-materialistic society (can’t you just replicate another couch?), and I always thought he was called Bones because, you know, country doctors were often called “sawbones” back in the day. But I digress. It’s the start of their lifelong “bromance.”

Jump ahead a couple more years, and Cadet Kirk (totally channeling the Shat) aces the supposedly unwinnable Kobiyashi Maru training scenario that Spock has devised by hotwiring the computer, which doesn’t sit well with the emotionally constipated Vulcan. As Kirk is on the verge of getting expelled from Starfleet, a mysterious distress call is received from Vulcan. The bulk of the fleet is in a remote sector at the annual Starfleet picnic and beach volleyball tournament, so it’s up to the cadets to saddle up and head out. Bones infects Kirk with an alien flu virus that makes him instantly sick and allows him to stow away on Pike’s ship, the USS Enterprise, as his patient (and hilarity ensues). We get to meet the more of the original crew, including Sulu, who humorously forgets to take off the parking brake (and probably saves everyone on board from being killed in the surprise attack), and 17-year-old wunderkind Chekov, who manages a slightly more annoying accent than the original. The Enterprise has a state of the art voice recognition system, but it’s baffled by his thickly Slavic enunciation of “Wictor, Wictor.” Uhuru has a little thing going on the side with Spock, reducing her previously strong female role as communications officer to “Spock’s girlfriend” for the rest of the film. Nice.

En route from Earth to Vulcan, which seems to take about 10 minutes at warp speed, Kirk realizes that the fleet is flying into the same trap that destroyed his father’s ship, and he persuades Pike to drop the ship out of warp ready for the fight. Of course he’s right, as Nero and his Narada have decimated all but the late-arriving Enterprise and left a battlefield that makes Wolf 359 look like a slap fight. And now they’re drilling a hole into the core of the planet. The Enterprise is no match, but because Nero recognizes the ship’s designation, he decides to spare them (he’s got his motives). Pike promotes Spock to acting captain and, much to the chagrin of all the other hard-working cadets down the chain of command, appoints Kirk as his first officer (WTF?). Then with Kirk, Sulu, and Cadet Redshirt secretly in tow, Pike takes a shuttlecraft over to the Narada to negotiate surrender terms. The cadets base jump from the low-orbit shuttlecraft with the intent of landing on the suspended drilling platform to disable it. Guess what happens to Chief Engineer Redshirt. Sadly (and somewhat stupidly), he was the only one with charges.

Kirk and Sulu face-off against some burly Romulans who are defending the platform. One of them has a sword, but luckily, so does Sulu (a standard-issue Starfleet sword?). It’s a shame he didn’t bring a phaser instead, cause he could’ve just shot the guy. They manage to dispatch the guards and disable the drill, but it’s too late. The Narada injects its payload into the planet’s core, and all hell breaks loose. The planet starts to rip itself apart.

Thanks to some mad video game skills of one Chekov, Kirk and Sulu manage to beam back the the Enterprise seconds before smacking into the planet’s surface. Spock beams down to the planet to save the Vulcan High Council from the impending disaster. He manages to get most of them, except the really old, slow ones that get flattened by some toppling statues, and surprisingly his mother, who falls off a rocky precupice (note to Vulcan architects: handrails). Back on the ship, Spock and team watch helplessly as Vulcan is consumed from within by an artificial black hole. OMG, they actually destroyed Vulcan! Not some backwater planet like Veridian 3, but Vulcan. That’s kind of an important planet.

There’s some obligatory exposition between Nero and Pike, who he’s torturing for tactical information (turns out that Khan isn’t the only villain who knows how to use space bugs to get prisoners to spill the beans). We learn that the Narada is indeed from the post-Next Generation future, but it’s actually a simple mining ship (albeit rather well-armed for such a mundane task). After Romulus was destroyed and he lost everything, Nero and crew decided to exact a little revenge in the past by picking off Federation planets, and Earth is next on his list.

Back on the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock have a spirited disagreement about their next move. Spock wants to regroup with the fleet, while Kirk thinks a full on assault is the way to go, and he ends up on the receiving end of a Vulcan nerve pinch. Apparently, Spock decided that the brig was too good for the likes of the mutinous Kirk, who wakes up in an escape pod on Delta Vega, a nearby ice planet and all around knock-off of Hoth. There’s a Federation outpost nearby, so Kirk decides to hoof it amid some truly remarkable and frightening GCI creatures that are completely unsuited for life on an ice planet. There’s even a bit where one ginormous beast chasing Kirk gets clobbered by an even more ginormous beast, which in turn, starts chasing Kirk. Didn’t we already get to see this same bit in The Phantom Menace?

Kirk is saved from certain death by none other than…Spock (what in the hell are the odds?). But this isn’t young Spock; this is really old Spock (who shall be known henceforth as “Spock Prime” to avoid confusion, and because it sounds like an awesome Transformer). Spock Prime has recently found himself marooned on the ice planet as well and just witnessed the destruction of his nearby homeworld of Vulcan. It’s just so amazingly fortunate that the one guy in the galaxy who could explain it all to Kirk happened to be right there at the right time. He mind-melds with Kirk to bring him up to speed: in the future, Spock Prime was trying to save Romulus (what, no love for nearby Remus?) from a supernova using an exotic substance called “Red Matter.” He was too late to save the planet, but managed to create a rift in space-time that sucked the Narada and his own ship back in time, although he arrived 25 years later than Nero and company (you know how temperamental those rifts can be). Nero was waiting for him when he emerged (hopefully, he hadn’t just be flying around in circles all that time), promptly captured his wee little science vessel, and used a tiny portion of the Red Matter on board to destroy Vulcan and teach Spock Prime a hard lesson (never try to help out Romulans).

The pair make their way to the isolated outpost and find none other than Montgomery Scott. Because he vaporized an Admiral’s dog in a transporter accident, Scotty has been relegated there to babysit a rocky Oopma-Loompa creature (who, despite being a sentient being, gets treated rather like a pet). Spock Prime immediately begins calibrating the station’s transporter to beam Kirk and Scotty back to the Enterprise, which is zipping along at warp to a rendezvous with the fleet (no easy task, even in the future). Apparently, Scotty Prime developed the trans-warp beaming technique at some point down the road, and since Spock Prime feels he hasn’t done enough already to pollute the timeline, he shares this information with young Scotty. I wish they’d hung around on Delta Vega a bit longer, because who knows what other amazing plot holes they might have found there.

Back on the ship, Kirk and Spock exchange more blows, but Kirk finally gets the acting captain to admit he’s frazzled and relinquish command. Finally in control of his ship and crew, Kirk sets out to stop Nero and save Earth. I still can’t help but wonder if there’s not someone on the entire ship who outranks a cadet with a field commission, but that’s beside the point. Kirk still looks like a kid who’s sitting in the driver’s seat of his dad’s car.

From there the movie unfolds like a run-of-the-mill action flick. Off they race to confront Nero, who is already busy drilling a hole into the San Francisco Bay. Equipped with his newly acquired teleportation skills, Scotty (BTW, when Kirk calls him that, it comes off a bit smug, especially considering they just met) drops the dynamic duo directly onto the Narada’s bridge. The bridge consists of vast platforms, separated by bottomless chasms and lots of smoke. Romulans must not have an equivalent of OSHA, or somebody would’ve at least installed handrails. Some really exaggerated fight sequences ensue, and Spock boosts his future self’s vessel (Red Matter still in tow). He proceeds to launch his own counterattack against the Narada and even the odds a bit. In the end, Earth is saved, Pike is rescued, the Narada is destroyed. Captain Kirk gets a shiny medal, a formal commission, and command of the Enterprise. Roll credits.

When the film was over, Ginny and I exchanged a look of disbelief. What the hell just happened here? Did they just shred the timeline of the original series, dance on its grave, make out with its widow, and send its kids away to boarding school? Let’s forget about all of the plot holes for a second.

Time travel is always a tricky concept, especially in a sci-fi universe like Trek, which is typically pretty heavy on the “sci.” It can be a great storytelling tool, to be sure, but it’s like playing with wildfire. To be effective, you have to decide early on about the rules and then stick to them. One popular school of thought says that you can’t change the past, because the past determines the future (otherwise known as the Novikov self-consistency principle). The other says any trivial change in the past instantly creates a new branch in an ever expanding multiverse. The former is apparently the path that Abrams and team chose to follow, starting with the arrival of the Narada and the destruction of the Kelvin. From that point on, it’s a distinctly different timeline than that experienced by the original series, all of its spin-off series (excluding Enterprise), and the first ten movies.

If you want to create an alternate history so your characters can have different adventures, that’s fine, but don’t do it at the expense of 40 years worth of Trek history. By bringing Nimoy’s Spock into this universe, Abrams attempted to link his movie to the original series and overwrite some of its key elements. Also, it’s curious how it’s still basically the same Trek universe we all know; despite experiencing extremely different circumstances (for instance Kirk growing up without a strong father figure), all of the core characters still end up on the same Enterprise in basically the same roles. If the story elects to subscribe to a branching multiverse, then every small change creates a ripple (the so-called butterfly effect), which ultimately produces a vastly different outcome. It would have been more realistic (and I use that term loosely) to end up with a completely different crew on the Enterprise.

Think about it for a second. If a Romulan ship blatantly destroyed a Federation vessel during a time of peace (and left survivors to tell the harrowing tale), then the Federation would’ve likely evolved along a more militaristic path over the next 25 years. There would’ve been increased focus on the development of defensive technology, and it’s likely that there would’ve been a lot of tension with the Romulan Empire. Maybe the Federation would’ve even negotiated an allegiance with the Klingons against this formidable foe. By the time Kirk got around to enlisting in Starfleet, he might just as likely have ended up as a space marine on some defensive outpost in the Neutral Zone instead of the captain of the Federation’s flagship.

The multiverse (especially considering the destruction of Vulcan) also precludes the likelihood that many of our other favorite Trek events will ever happen, including the events of Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, V’ger’s homecoming, Khan, Spock’s death and resurrection, Planet Genesis, the whales, and so on. Forget about Picard and company, Q, and the Borg. Then again, I suppose we also get to lose Spock’s Brain and Sybok. Maybe that’s not such a bad trade after all.

With this film, Abrams has essentially laid the groundwork for the Mirror Universe. Maybe in the next sequel, Spock will have a goatee.

- Greg

Redmond, WA – Following the recent trend of integration between social networking technologies, Windows Live announced a partnership with the popular life-streaming service FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is a unique tool that aggregates updates from over 50 popular social networking services, including Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, Digg, LinkedIn, and many others. Once you join and configure the service, your updates to any of the associated networks are automatically pulled into a single view, which your friends can easily follow. For instance, when you share a link on Delicious, update your Twitter status, or join a new group on LinkedIn, FriendFeed neatly summarizes that activity in one consolidated list.

Windows Live’s “web activities” feature aims to do something very similar. While Microsoft’s burgeoning social network doesn’t sport nearly as many services as FriendFeed (the current list includes about 30 partners), it has recently expanded its offering to include Facebook and Digg, among others. Web activities provide a similar “life-streaming” strategy, automatically posting updates to your central “what’s new feed” and notifying network friends and RSS subscribers whenever an associated service is used.

Until today, the developers of these competing platforms had been very careful not to mix the two. This morning, Windows Live developers tentatively rolled out FriendFeed as a new web activity, with disastrous results.

“Everything was running smoothly for the first five minutes or so,” said senior Windows Live team member, Richard Astley. “Then, all hell broke loose.”

Uber-connected Windows Live user Greg Edwards, who also happens to be an avid FriendFeed user, added the new web activity to his profile. Seconds later, he sent a tweet from the TweetDeck desktop program, which was picked up by Facebook almost instantly. Both Windows Live and FriendFeed saw the updates and began propagating them across both networks with blinding speed. FriendFeed updated Windows Live, and vice versa. Within 2.3*10^-43 seconds, all global Internet traffic was brought to a grinding halt.

“We pulled the plug as fast as we could,” explained Astley. “But it was too late, the cascade had already started.”

As the fabric of space-time ripped, a pinpoint singularity formed over Microsoft’s campus and immediately engulfed the known universe. Microsoft engineers have spent the better part of the day working to restore reality to affected users.

“In retrospect, we probably should have spent more time working out the logistics to avoid this kind of loop,” admitted Astley. “We'll do our best to avoid it in the next release. We just didn’t anticipate that anyone could be that connected.”

When asked about the offending tweet, Edwards reported that it simply said, “Looking forward to the new Star Trek movie.”

- Greg

I know I usually blog about Windows Live, but this Facebook tip is too good not to share. Besides, now that Windows Live and Facebook are feeling the love, it seems totally apropos to have some fun.

You may be aware that, like a number of sites and services, you can customize the language that Facebook uses to display your content. These settings don’t affect posted content, such as comments, but rather the text that the platform uses to build the interface, including links, button captions, and labels. Most of us English speakers think nothing of it, but to the international community, it’s a pretty big deal to be able to match the service’s language to your locale.

If you’re just bored and have absolutely nothing to do, then you can change Facebook’s language to "pirate." No kidding. Take a look at the transformation of my Facebook Home page:

A Pirate Looks at Facebook

How’d I manage this? Actually, it’s quite simple, if you know where to look. To change your Facebook language, click Settings > Language, and set Primary Language to English (Pirate). It's toward the bottom of the list, so you may need to scroll to find it. When you navigate back to your Facebook home page, you’ll be treated to a heap o’ swashbuckling lingo!

Note:    If you make the change, only to find out that you’re really a land lubber, you can easily return to your original language settings; however, the landmarks to get there may look a little different. Click Settins > Tongue, and set Yer Native Tongue to English. Wuss.

Other sites speak pirate, most notably Google (which also speaks Klingon, Elmer Fudd, and Pig Swedish, by the way). Where else have you seen fun and goofy settings like this? Sound off, you salty sea dogs!

- Greg

Following yesterday’s dissertation on Word macros, here’s a short one, just to keep it real. From Weird Al’s album Straight Outta Lynwood, here’s the video for “White and Nerdy” (apologies to Chamillionaire’s original video for “Ridin’”, but it’s better if you’re familiar with the original first).

White and Nerdy

This kind of fast-paced rap and sharp, self-effacing humor proves why Al always will be one of the most creative artists out there. To wit, about 90% of this song applies to yours truly.

- Greg

I’m quite interested in Windows Live lately, but I’m actually a Microsoft Office junkie from way back. Yes, Office is a bloated hog of a software suite for most casual users’ needs (akin to using a sledgehammer to swat a fly). The new ribbon interface makes us all feel like we have to learn how to perform even the most basic tasks all over again. Microsoft seems intent on hiding or disabling all of the rich features that made Office worthwhile for most power users. People are just plain annoyed by the inconsistencies among Office programs for common tasks. Hell, some people are still brooding over the Office Assistant. But if you can get past all of that, Office also has a ton of horsepower and functionality under the hood.

For instance, I was recently asked by my corporate HR department to find a quick way to append a new standard disclaimer to all of their job descriptions, which happen to be maintained as a folder tree of several hundred Word documents. To complicate matters, some of the descriptions already had the new disclaimer applied, so I’d need to step over those to avoid duplication.

Instead of opening each file, looking for the text, and pasting it at the end of the document manually, I whipped up a good ol’ Word macro to do the trick. The VBA for such a task isn’t terribly complex or difficult to write, but Word’s object model has many idiosyncrasies to consider. It also doesn’t help that Microsoft decided to drop support for my tried and true Application.FileSearch method in Office 2007 (thanks a heap, Microsoft), which was central to my original strategy and made the recursive aspects of discovering files that might be buried in subfolders a bit more challenging.

Anyway, for all you VBA enthusiasts out there, here's my project code:

Let’s see OpenOffice.org Writer or Google Docs do that.

- Greg

When Windows Live “wave 3” launched in December, its popular photo-sharing service was relocated from the flagging Spaces service to a shiny new home within SkyDrive. It was definitely a good move, considering that SkyDrive offers each user a whopping 25 GB of online storage space, p rovides a myriad of permission configuration options, and supports blog-like discussion comments. There were a handful of other enhancements, including the ability to “tag” people’s faces within your pictures, as well as a really slick slide-show feature that dynamically generates color-matched backgrounds and a really nice photo scatter effect.

However, with every step forward, it seems that the fledgling services of Windows Live take another step back. In this case, WL Photos lost the ability to control the order of photos within albums. However your photos were uploaded to the album, that’s how they were arranged. And people complained. A lot.

The backlash was almost instantaneous. The plucky Windows Live team reassured us from day one that they were feverishly working on restoring this critical functionality as quickly as possible, but disgusted users furiously commented that they’d bail on Windows Live if photo ordering wasn’t restored at once.

I’m sure that Windows Live lost a few casual users to Flickr or Photobucket, but most of us Live-lovers hung in there, hoping against hope that one sweet day, it would be back and better than ever. Well, mere seconds ago – thanks mostly to the power of Twitter – I learned that Windows Live Photos once again supports drag-and-drop functionality. And how.

Rearrange Windows Live Photos

Yep, that’s Silverlight-powered drag-and-drop goodness, fresh from the oven. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; as I understand it from sources at LiveSide and the SkyDrive team blog, we’ll soon see even more socially-oriented updates to Photos. More and more frequently, it seems that Windows Live is going for vast long-term improvements to their services in the form of small, staggered updates.

I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel very vindicated being a Live-lover. Nice work, SkyDrive team.

- Greg

By now, you’ve probably all heard about Microsoft’s plans to drag us all kicking and screaming into cloud computing. Every aspect of our digital lives is moving ever closer to their massive array of super-computers and amorphous online storage. We exchange email using web-based accounts, store our cherished photos online, share our favorite websites on other websites, and soon we’ll even have online versions of popular productivity tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Online application services and storage are nothing new, but with the advent of Windows Live, Windows Mobile, and Windows Azure platforms, the software giant finally has all of the pieces in place to revolutionize the way we share and communicate.

The infrastructure is there, now all they need is a better brand to tie it all together. And according to industry experts and company insiders, that new brand is Microsoft “Sky.”

The first leg of the framework is already live. You’ve probably heard of (and maybe even use) SkyDrive. It’s an online file storage platform that provides 25 GB of storage to anyone with a free Live ID. Other cutting-edge sync technologies, including Live Mesh and Live Sync, are expected to fold into SkyDrive platform within the next few months.

Next comes SkyMarket, SkyLine, and SkyBox. These revolutionary services are designed to bring your mobile device into the cloud by offering an online application store, online storage for businesses, and online storage for consumers, respectively. If you need a new app for your phone, you’ll be able to get it instantly from Microsoft. And instead of relying on your mobile carrier or a media card to back up your phone’s data, it’ll just live in the cloud.

The last component of their unified vision is to move all of our critical computing and security tasks to the cloud. Of course, this will be the most challenging feat for the often-maligned software company. Security hasn’t always been Microsoft’s strong suit (you need to look no further than the current Conficker worm crisis). But according to top executives within the organization, the weakness is due to the “human factor” that is inherent in the current security process.

“Despite our best efforts, average users just don’t install security updates as they should, exposing their critical computing devices to untold hordes of hackers, viruses, worms, and malware,” said Microsoft Chief Security Officer Council chairman, Richard Astley. “We’re planning to change all that in a big way.”

This radical new security paradigm, developed in conjunction with California-based security firm Cyberdyne Systems, actually allows Microsoft’s cloud computing architecture to tap into the vast resources of the Internet, including the US Department of Defense, and take control of our devices to better automate the process of finding and eliminating security threats instantly.

Microsoft’s name for this revolutionary new service? SkyNet.

What could possibly go wrong?

- Greg

PS: Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone.

Blackhole (n): A Blackberry™ user who acts like a complete asshole by incessantly fiddling with his or her device at inopportune moments, including meetings, seminars, weddings, funerals, and intimate relations. Blackholes are characterized by near-sightedness, sensitivity to vibration, callused thumbs, and a complete disregard for people around them. See also, Crackberry addict.

This word may be part of the modern vernacular already, but I’ve never heard it, so I’m laying my claim. Feel free to incorporate it into your vocabulary as your own.

I had the displeasure of observing a pair of blackholes in the wild during a seminar that I attended yesterday. They could scarcely put down their beloved Blackberries long enough to pay attention to an hour-long presentation. At one point, they actually held their Blackberries up to each other to compare incoming messages and shared a chuckle.

Blackberries weren’t mainstream when I taught on a daily basis. Before I start to sound like a complete curmudgeon, let me say that I’m all for technology and taking meeting notes on a laptop or PDA, but these guys push the boundaries of good taste. Can’t you keep it in your pants for an hour?

- Greg

It’s St. Patrick’s Day (at least for a few more hours), so you get an Irish-themed top 5 list to help remind us why we love to celebrate this glorious holiday. Enjoy!

1. Vomiting in a public toilet is far less humiliating when everyone is doing it too.

2. College kids have so few opportunities to binge drink.

3. You get to say famous Irish slogans, such as “top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” “Erin go Bragh,” and “sorry I vomited on your shoes.”

4. The thrill of blowing 0.08 at a sobriety check point while wearing a plastic green Leprechaun hat.

5. Every gold-hoarding midget deserves a day of appreciation.

- Greg

I have a dream. It’s not a big world-changing kind of dream but one that hopefully will make my life a bit simpler. My dream is to ditch DivX-encoded AVI in favor of something that Vista Media Center hates slightly less, namely Windows Media Video. Please don’t judge me, I'm just tired of fighting with Media Center, and I'd like to be able to fast-forward and rewind properly. WMV seems to be my best bet.

Thus far, I have tried the following tools, with mixed success:

• Windows Media Encoder 9 Series. Once you get it configured, it works pretty well (most of the time), but it’s way too heavy on the setup and options, and it takes forever to convert larger files.

• Roxio Creator 2009. The Drag and Drop Converter is simple to use (almost too simple, actually), but it doesn’t handle the unique aspect ratio of some videos properly, and it still takes a while to convert larger files.

So, I’m looking for a better tool to convert my library over to WMV, with comparable quality and file size to the DivX files that presently compose the majority of my collection. Based on my research with the aforementioned tools, I know it can be done, but I’ve got a slew to convert, and I’m looking for the path of least resistance. I’d like a tool that doesn’t require me to have an advanced degree in cinematography, but one that doesn’t assume I’m a complete moron, either. Something that can even convert videos in batch, with minimal configuration but enough control to ensure a reasonable match to the original AVI, would be perfect.

Down the road, I might even like an option to rip my remaining DVDs directly to WMV, as VOB files are still just too big to host on my home network. Bonus points if your suggested tool can handle that task as well.

Please leave your best ideas in the comments, and I’ll let you know how I get along with them. Thanks!

- Greg

This is my open letter to Redmond, my Jerry Maguire, if you will. I’ve been a huge Microsoft fan and advocate for the past 15 years, and I’ve seen their product line evolve from the early days of DOS, through various incarnations of Windows and Office, and now onward to software+services. I’ve taught  people to use countless Microsoft products, and I continue to use Microsoft products and services on a daily basis. I’m not a hardcore programmer, but I can find my way around Visual Studio well enough to do some casual coding (is there such a thing?) once in a while. If you’ve read my Windows Live Spaces blog lately (you’re probably there now), you know that I’ve also adopted Windows Live in a big way as my social networking platform of choice. I run multiple Windows Media Centers in my home, and I carry a Smartphone powered by Windows Mobile. Unless Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie, and Steve Ballmer need a fourth for a round of golf sometime, I’m not sure how I can be much more saturated in Microsoft than I am at present.

Along the way, I’ve endured the Microsoft Home series of early 90’s software titles (including Cinemania and even the much-maligned Bob), the early days of MSN, played a few of the better Microsoft Games (the Midtown/Motocross Madness and Age of Empires series still rank among the best, period), and managed to acclimate to the “fluent” interface of Office 2007. I was the first kid on my block to sport a Microsoft Natural ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and I’m not ashamed to say that I bought a Sidewinder joystick. Hell, I even thought the Gates/Seinfeld ads were cute.

It may be bordering on pathological, but the fact is if there’s a Microsoft tool for the job, then I’m automatically inclined to give it a try, even if it’s not quite the best-of-breed. You might say I’ve been programmed (pathetic pun intended, sadly).

That said, my eyes are wide open to the competition out there. Time and again, Microsoft’s reputation has come under assault by the barbarians at the gate. Apple continues to chip away at their dominance of the desktop OS market. Firefox is the cool browser that all of the hip kids use these days. Google and Yahoo! kill them in the search arena. Facebook has it all over them in the social networking milieu. And while a Windows Mobile phone used to be the epitome of mobile geekdom, today it frankly pales in comparison to Blackberry, iPhone (which I’ve taken to calling the “Jesus phone”), or even most standard-issue media phones. It’s getting tough to be a die-hard Microsoft evangelist when the masses already have way cooler shit than you do.

What’s the issue? It could be that Microsoft’s scope has grown too much, and the organization has become spread too thinly. You’ve heard the expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” I saw it happen when I worked with Gateway; when they started dabbling with home electronics, Internet services, and accessories, instead of just focusing on selling great computers, it all went to crap.

Maybe Microsoft just has a reputation problem. If the “Mojave Experiment” ads showed us anything, it’s that lots of people are sheep who just follow the herd because it’s cool to hate Vista, and by proxy, Microsoft (or maybe it’s the other way ‘round). There’s also the perception that only complete newbies, old folks, and Europeans would actually use something as clunky as MSN/Windows Live to drive their online experience. I’m not sure exactly why that’s supposed to be insulting, but it probably is nonetheless.

Perhaps their products just aren’t what they used to be, but it’s more likely they’ve just become top-heavy beasts that are loaded with way too many extraneous features that average people don’t know about or care about. The bottom line is that while Microsoft Office programs can do a lot of different things, the tasks that should be simple and straightforward just aren’t. People care less about having a monolithic program that does it all; they’d rather use several tools, provided that those tools are simple and consistent.

Regardless, Microsoft finds themselves in the same old quagmire again and again. If they tinker with the established standard too much, then it’s a fail. If the next version doesn’t do everything that the previous version did and then some, then it’s a fail. If they add too much bloat, then it’s a fail. If they don’t build customization and user choice into absolutely every aspect of the product, then it’s a fail (and a possible target for legal action, as in Opera's current case regarding Internet Explorer). If it’s not as sleek and sexy as a Mac and simultaneously as light as Twitter, then it’s a fail. How is any company supposed to measure success against such extreme demands? Put simply, start over. Press CTRL + ALT + DEL and reboot.

A reset would allow Microsoft 2.0 to emerge as a leaner, meaner organization with “startup” mentality. They could build smaller-scope products that function the way the yearning masses actually want. Cut the clutter and confusion about multiple platforms. Move everything to the cloud, including the OS, and damn the consequences. Weave social networking and collaboration into the foundation of every application. Build simpler, lightweight applications that each do one simple and distinct task, but do it so well that each becomes the de facto standard for newbies and power users alike. Finally create that all-in-one device that one-ups the iPhone. Build a search engine that turns Google into yesterday’s news. Do it for cheap, maybe even free (for consumers at least, they can continue to fleece businesses all they want). In short, make Microsoft cool again, and call it Microsoft “One.” One platform, one service, one Microsoft for us all.

- Greg

I recently had the honor of participating with Microsoft’s own Marcus in my first-ever podcast. For those of you who don’t know Marcus, he’s the community manager for Windows Live, and he keeps all of us WL enthusiasts connected and sharing our experiences, ideas, and occasional gripes surrounding the burgeoning social networking platform.

In addition to his regular blog, Marcus hosts a podcast series (WMA and MP3 RSS feeds available), and he occasionally chooses to spotlight a member of the Windows Live community. I’ve been pretty active in Windows Live, especially since the wave 3 roll-out, and I was thrilled when he invited me to share my thoughts with him and his listeners.

We spoke about my family and work, my interest in technology and Windows Live, how I like to keep in touch with my network of friends, and some of my other pastimes. If you have a few minutes, perhaps you’d like to give it a listen. The podcast is available in both WMA and MP3 format, courtesy of Marcus’ SkyDrive.

Thanks again, Marcus, for the invitation and for making Windows Live a better community for all of us to share.

- Greg

Short one today, cause I have lots to do. Here’s a clip of the always hilarious Louis CK chatting last fall with Conan O’Brien, and it pretty much summarizes my attitude toward chronic complainers. Enjoy the rant.

Whew, that feels better. It should give us all some much needed perspective for the day.

- Greg

Say what you will about Microsoft, but they do occasionally blow off the doors, innovation-wise. In this 5-minute video montage called “2019,” the software company paints a picture of a world where technology is literally a functional extension of ourselves. It’s melded into our everyday lives in ways that we’re just beginning to realize.

The future seems like a pretty cool place to live.

I read Bill Gates’ manifesto, The Road Ahead, when it was first published in 1995. Back then, Uncle Bill was espousing ideas like “always-on” networking and integration between our everyday (non-PC) devices and the Internet. I read it again about 2 years ago (the original edition, not the updated one) and was astounded by the number of his prophesies which had since come to pass, and several that just never quite materialized (even gurus don’t always bat 1000).

One of the things I fondly remember is the book’s accompanying CD-ROM (a common gimmick in the early days of multimedia), which contained an electronic version of the text, as well as several videos of Bill discussing his future vision and “what-if” clips like the one above. I actually had a hard time finding a compatible media player that could still decode them, but they were pretty entertaining nonetheless.

Watch the video and see if you can spot the references to Microsoft tools that we’re already using today.

- Greg

Windows Vista has a slew of little features that make file management much easier than ever before. In this article, I’ll show you how to create a link for quick access to your important files. If you routinely need to access content on a deeply buried network folder, for instance, then you could easily spend the bulk of your time just navigating to the right location.

To simplify your file management tasks, why not just make create a link to that folder? Using Windows Vista, it’s a lot easier than ever before. Amid your personal folders (and there are a lot of them), there’s a folder called Links. No, it’s not the same as Favorites, but the two folders do share a lot of similarities.

Favorites is more commonly associated with Internet shortcuts (a.k.a. bookmarks). While it’s technically true that any shortcut can be added as a favorite, they are primarily visible within Internet Explorer instead of Windows Explorer, so it can be rather awkward to incorporate these favorites into your file management routine.

Links is a special folder designed to hold, well, links to commonly used file locations. Any shortcuts that you place into this folder become instantly accessible to all of your Windows Explorer windows via the Favorite Links pane, including the standard Open and Save As windows in most of your favorite programs.

To create a link, simply navigate to your Links folder create a shortcut to the desired location in your Links folder.

Here’s a tip that makes creating links even easier: simply open Windows Explorer, navigate to the parent folder, and drag the target folder across the separator and into the Favorite Links folder.

Voila! Windows automatically creates the necessary shortcut in the Links folder, and the link appears in the Favorite Links pane in every Explorer window, giving you quick and easy access to the folder anywhere you need it. You can easily right-click and rename the link, just like any other shortcut. Items can also be reordered within the pane via drag-and-drop or automatic sorting (right-click on a link to see the options).

When you no longer need a favorite link, you can simply delete the shortcut. Finally, you can right-click the Favorite Links pane to open the Links folder or restore the original set of shortcuts, just in case you go a little crazy.

- Greg