Monthly Archives: September 2004

Wanna Buy a Submarine?

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Neiman Marcus, best known for its $50 t-shirts and other miscellaneous overpriced items, unveiled its 2005 holiday catalog on Tuesday. Among the wares for sale are a zeppelin, bowling alley (yes, the entire alley), suit of armor, and my personal favorite – a submarine for only $1.7 million.

Seeing that the Navy’s Virginia-class submarines are going for $1.5 billion a pop, that $1.7 seems paltry by comparison. Heck, Bill Gates could buy a his-and-her matching set, and have plenty left over.

Seeing what a bargain the Neiman Marcus model is, we can probably stop calling them “Needless Markup”, right?

Bible Gateway Relases New Beta

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Bible Gateway has released a new beta version of their online Bible service. The site features a new layout, an RSS feed and web service for the verse of the day, the ability to save search preferences, and more.

After a cursory look, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. I know that a lot of people were really hoping for a web service that allows open Bible searches, like the English Standard Version provides.

They still have one of the most complete selections of translations on the Internet, but that’s where my excitement ends. Sorry, guys.

Oops…?

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KITV is reporting that the Hawai’i state flag that flies over our state capitol is sewn incorrectly, with the union stripes on the bottom incorrectly placed.

The flag was originally designed by Kamehameha I. According to the story:

The exact placement of the lines on the flag is significant because when Kamehameha the Great designed the flag, he purposely put the British Union Jack together with the stripes similar to the United States to show respect for the two great superpowers of the era.

The picture on the page isn’t too clear. To me, it looks like if you flip the flag on the left side over, it’ll be correct. If this is what the people-in-charge have to look at when they check, I can’t really blame them for missing it. It’s certainly a more minor mistake than, say, flying it upside down, which Burger King has done in the past.

There’s a Wikipedia article that adds to the mystery.

Hmm…

My Yahoo! Gets a Facelift

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One of the first portals on the Internet got a face lift today.

My Yahoo! began offering its users the chance to upgrade to their new version. Once you click the link, all of your current pages and modules carry over to the new version. The conversion process seems very robust – it handled all of my modules seamlessly.

The most significant new feature, in my opinion, is the tight integration of RSS and Atom feeds. Rather than being a single module, each feed gets its own module – an idea I mentioned back in March:

I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t adopt Netscape’s old model of one module = one site, but this is really a step ahead of the competition.

There are a few lasting problems with My Yahoo!, mainly interface-related. For example, I haven’t been able to figure out if it’s possible to move modules between pages or to re-order pages. I also wish you could put the same module with different settings on more than one page; this doesn’t work for things like the Yahoo! Photos module. Finally, now that there’s millions of new My Yahoo! channels, it’s hard to find the ones Yahoo! provides – things like comics and weather, which you can’t generate using RSS.

All in all, it’s a nice upgrade, but they still have more work to do.

Jeremy Zawodny, a Yahoo! employee, has more at his blog.

“Fahrenheit” Has Competition

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In the most media-centric presidential election in my memory, we’ve seen lots of talk of swift boats, the war on terror, and bickering as to whether or not U.S. domestic issues have been discarded at the wayside in favor of chasing bin Laden and Saddam.

And of course, there was Fahrenheit 9/11.

I’m really hoping for a television broadcast of the film because I don’t know if it’s worth paying for, but I may rent the DVD to examine it.

But Moore may no longer be king of 9/11 documentaries. A group of prominent celebrities, including Zell Miller and Ed Koch, have rebutted the filmmaker in FahrenHYPE 9/11 (what an original title :D), which is set to release in stores October 5th. The trailer looks pretty solid visually. Hopefully, it will be a good check against Fahrenheit 9/11’s widespread success.

May the most famous celebrity win.