Results tagged “internet”

Seattle, we're a little taken aback. We asked you yesterday whether it was okay for people to surf for porn in the library and, so far, almost 60 percent of said, "Sure." We even gave you a weasel way to pretend it would be too much of a hassle to implement a no-porn policy, but only fifteen percent chose that. The majority of yes-votes have been cast in favor of library porn. And almost none of you are THINKING OF THE CHILDREN! Personally we would not be thrilled to glimpse a little bukkake the next seat over, but fine, have it your way. We are so not going near those terminals without rubber gloves, though.

Our post earlier today about the new, Red-Bullish atmosphere the library is promoting got us thinking about other things that might be classified as "undesirable" in a public space. As we understand it, Seattle Public Library uses no-pr0n filters on kids' area computers, but leaves the adult section...adult. In fact, "All users are asked to respect the privacy of other users and not attempt to censor or comment upon what others are viewing." What do you think?

Attempting to compete with the wide world of Google search, this morning Microsoft introduced their newest (overhauled) search engine, Bing. The new engine has been designed as a "decision engine," to help navigate through the ridiculous amounts of trash we have cluttering the Internetz and provide a more productive and highly organized Internet search experience, as fast as computer-ly possible. The new search-a-roo, at www.bing.com is expected to be live on June 3.

If you really care about superfast internet or high definition TV service, don’t bother reading the rest of this post. It’ll only piss you off.

Over at TechFlash, John Cook reports that Alaska Airlines misspoke when representatives gave what many interpreted as an announcement that they'd be offering free wi-fi to Alaska travelers at SeaTac gates. The airline will be extending the offer to travelers in Oakland for the three-month promotion, but not here. Seriously? Seattle would be the perfect place to run that deal. This reminds us to ask why we don't already have free wi-fi available at our airport. Anyone have a compelling explanation for this pitiable situation?

Haven't you always wondered where your flour comes from? It could matter. (Remember the peanut scare?) Now you can go online, to Find the Farmer, and meet the people who grow the wheat and get connected with your food! The project is the brainchild of Josh Dorf, ceo of Stone-Buhr, a Spokane company that rejects the notion of wheat as an anonymous commodity. Stone-Buhr's suppliers are some three dozen family farmers who practice sustainable agriculture; they have a Seattle PR firm, Good Food Strategies, and an article in today's New York Times. A (slice of) toast is in order!

MY AVATAR: We're very fond of the internet and of books, and knowing you, you're fond of those things too. The Richard Hugo House's Literary Series comes to a close with an event tonight called My Avatar, featuring writers who explore identity, technology, and this beautiful wired world in which we live. The Maldives are playing, too, in case you missed them last weekend.

For some time, Qwest has been deluging us with those damn "Get in the Loop" TV ads touting the "quality, mobility, high-definition and high-speed that Qwest technology provides." All we're really after is the 12-20 Mbps speed from the new fiber optic lines, so we signed up for an email alert of when they'd go live. Last week we got that email. Huzzah! This week, we got this one: "Qwest is working hard to expand the availability of our higher Internet speeds. Unfortunately, we sent you an e-mail last week saying that our higher speeds were now available to you when, in fact, they are not. We sincerely apologize." Then there are some linguistic contortions about "confusion and inconvenience." The email doesn't include any ownership or explanation of Qwest's mistake in sending it or any estimation of when the service can be expected. Which just makes us wonder if Qwest could have more profitably spent all that ad money on speeding up the implementation of their faster service in the first place. Nothing advertises like word of mouth.

New rules promulgated by the French Health Ministry, so help us, read: "The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged." This on the heels of a study by French national cancer institute, which says the consumption of even a small amount of alcohol can increase the risk of mouth and throat cancer by 168%. "Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful," the study's chief scientist told the press."There is no amount, however small, which is good for you." All this from the government of right-wing, non-drinking Nicolas Sarkozy, who campaigned on a promise to reduce the previous administration's harrassment of wine producers...and of editors who print stories that cast wine in a favorable light. The world is upside down. French paradox indeed.

A new website, Foodista.com, Seattle-based and launched today, promises to do for food what Wikipedia has done for the rest of the universe.

Rudolph Valentino. Ray Charles. Jerry Lee Lewis dancing on pianos, for God's sake! Dance in Seattle had anything but a boring 20th century. We were prowling around the internet this morning and discovered that today is the anniversary of the date the city banned a really bizarre but popular 1920s and '30s fad called "dance marathons" within its city limits. That was enough to pique our interest, and we've spent the day researching what was happening in the world of dance during the 20th century. Here are some of the highlights, thanks in large part to our favorite local history website: HistoryLink.org.

You can download the beta 2 version of Microsoft's IE8 if you want. We are not that brave, but you should totally do it and tell us what it's like, maybe after the reinstall. While IE Ocho is supposed to be "quicker" than something slower, the new, counterintuitive feature that has previewing journalists in a lather is something called "InPrivate Browsing" (aka "porn mode"). We say counterintuitive, because Redmond has not established themselves as basecamp alpha of privacy concerns. Yet here they are with a browser that lets you selectively keep or delete cookies. Also, for the rest of today, up is down, black is white. [UPDATE:] Alert reader Bilco tips us off that XP service pack 3 may lock in IE8, so once it's installed, you're stuck with it. Now, that's more like the Microsoft we know and love. Of course a beta install should be permanent.

We just got this message after logging in to Scrabulous on Facebook: "Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here." To which we say: KHAAAAAAN! We've also just had to switch back to Firefox 2.0. Any page with Ajax was giving Firefox 3 fits--since we usually have at least three Ajax-heavy Google and Gmail pages open at one time, we were constantly getting error messages, having to resend, and having to log back in to accounts. Firefox 3's tendency to bonk on Ajax and its javascripts is kind of a huge oopsie, but we haven't heard anything from Mozilla about how they missed noticing the problem. Maybe they don't use Gmail.

When even a convent in Olympia began to seem expensive (egads), Seattlest settled for a trip to the mysterious region called "unincorporated Snohomish County," also known as "our parents' house." We would take a vacation, damnit, even if that meant a weekend of sitting in our high school bedroom-turned-guest-room, noshing on Trader Joe's brie, and contemplating the tiny nature reserve just beyond the rows of strawberry plants in the back yard.

But one day, one day...the -est will triumph! And we will store the Webby proudly in our non-existent imaginary headquarters, and it will be magnificent.

Could there be a way to make internet dating in Seattle even more anonymous? A new site, CrazyBlindDate.com, might be coming to our city to do just that. The site's creators explain, "There are no profiles, pictures, winks, or instant messages. Instead, users simply enter the basics of what they're looking for in a date (age, gender, orientation, etc.) and when they're free." Then you get an email or text message with a place (one of several "approved bars and coffeeshops") and a time. Bingo! You’ve got a date!

Until about 30 minutes ago, we were excited about our switch to Clearwire, a provider we'd never tried before. But as we were signing up for their ~$35/mo. Premium (1.5 Mb/s) plan, we discovered whoops some extra costs not mentioned before: the modem was either $99 to buy or $5/mo. to lease. And of course there was a $50 installation fee. (You know, for the service you just plug into a outlet.)

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a pretty cool new online service that will take the Google Documents concept to the next level: users of Live Mesh will be able to sync content from their computers, handhelds, cell phones, and potentially even their Zunes with that of other users in the same mesh, via the internet. As we understand it, the service is like an inter-office computer network, but users can upload/download content at any time and anywhere they have access to one of the "enmeshed" devices.

Remember when The Crocodile Cafe closed unexpectedly in December? Remember how up in arms everyone got, yelling about how likely it was that yet more new condos would be the result?

We here at Seattlest like to provide our readers with valuable advice when we think it’s necessary. Two blog posts we’ve seen today make us think it’s important to advise that you stay the hell away from Denver.

Economic downturn? Recession? Job losses? Really? Sure, Seattle's housing market finally cooled a bit, but listening to business news this morning you'd be excused for thinking all this talk about a bad economy is a crock of shit, at least here in Seattle.

The Seattle Weekly's Rick Anderson pointed us to what may be the greatest unintentional comedy festival in Internet history.

Fremont's own Getty Images wants to auction itself off and could sell for up to $1.5 billion, reports the NY Times. The stock photo agency has had a rough go of it lately:

But the rise of digital photography and the Web created a host of competitors that charged as little as a dollar for an image. Recent events — from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister, to the latest foibles of the entertainer Britney Spears — have led to a surging popularity of low-quality but on-the-scene photos, many taken by cellphone cameras.

Continue reading "For Sale: Getty Images"

We here at Seattlest use the internet a lot, so when a website we visit strikes us as exceptionally useful, we think it deserves some props, even if doing so makes us look a little dorky. We'll warn you in advance, it’s going to be hard to swallow what we're about to say, so brace yourself.

Tony Harris was a star basketball player at Garfield High School and Washington State University. After college, he played in a variety of international pro leagues: The Philippines, South Korea, Brazil.

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs

We're not sure how to recommend a 7-hour movie, except to agree with Roger Ebert that it does "take the enormous bulk of Leo Tolstoy's novel and somehow transform it into this great chunk of film without losing control along the way," and to point out that the seven hours includes intermissions. SIFF is showing War & Peace at their McCaw Hall theater in two parts (Part 1: almost 4 hours, with intermission; Part 2: 3 hours with intermission).

Today John Cook mentioned a new, locally based social networking site in his Venture Blog: ListenToYourWife.com. Howard Ro, the husband in the husband-and-wife team behind the site, explains: Ro, an IT consultant, says that many married women feel as if they are not "being heard." "It's not due to abuse or neglect, but just due to the nature of male dominance in a marriage," he said. "We wanted to create a forum for wives to...

"On October 1, when tickets went on sale for the Seattle premiere of Jersey Boys," the press release solemnly informs us, "all 5th Avenue Theatre box office records were broken."

So Danny Westneat is musing on the future of email, on the occasion of the announcement that spam volume has doubled this year, to 120 billion emails per day. Remember the Spam King, he asks? Remember the drop in spam we were promised? Well, it's been more of spike.