Random Thoughts

Ever visit a Disney Resort, and after you got home wish you stole some more soap or shampoo…. or maybe a towel, the alarm clock…. heck even the bed? Well now your dreams are about to come true. Disney now has a web site where you can buy everything from the hand soap, lamps, bath items, sheets and even the beds used at it’s resorts.. Check it out! http://www.disneyresortcollection.com

If only they could go back to the simple non-flashy way of doing things on the show…. And had Gladiators like this:

So how do you improve Google’s Image Search?? Why, you turn it into a game. Thats right… it is Google’s new “Google Image Labeler” game. You and a random partner on the internet get shown the same photo. You both type in key words until you match a word. The better the word, the more points. It is a pretty interesting concept and it could just work. Go try it out! http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

The following article is basicly alot of what I learned in my 4 years in College. So many things go wrong and things get misunderstood because of the internet and it is truly sad. I hope who ever reads this (weather you are a Communcations Major or not) gets something out of this:
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It’s all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood
By Daniel Enemark | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
from the May 15, 2006 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p13s01-stct.html

Michael Morris and Jeff Lowenstein wouldn’t have recognized each other if they’d met on the street, but that didn’t stop them from getting into a shouting match. The professors had been working together on a research study when a technical glitch inconvenienced Mr. Lowenstein. He complained in an e-mail, raising Mr. Morris’s ire. Tempers flared.

“It became very embarrassing later,” says Morris, when it turned out there had been a miscommunication, “but we realized that we couldn’t blame each other for yelling about it because that’s what we were studying.”
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Wow…. someone out there gets it…. This quote comes from the parents of the 16 year old girl who went over seas to try to meet a boy:

“The problem is not technology, it’s not the telephone, it’s not the computers. The problem is communication between parents and children,” Katherine’s father, Terry Lester, told ABC12’s Bill Harris.

A lot of people are pointing to myspace.com as the culprit, the “bad guy.” “I don’t agree with that. I think that myspace.com, when used for its intended purpose, for people to keep in touch with each other, I think it’s a great tool,” said Katherine’s stepmother, Krista Lester.

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There is one thing I hate more then Biased news reporting (when its suppose to be unbiased), is when the news reporting is Biased and passes it off on the people they interviewed. There is a news article/interview on TheBostonChannel.com about the recent death involving Epcot’s Mission Space that just really sets me off (I will include the article at the end of this post so it can not just disappear, but here is a link to it http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/8690620/detail.html, a video of the story is also on that same page).
The story is about a retired couple who went on a vacation last year. During their vacati0n they went to Disney World and rode Mission Space at Epcot. After the ride the male had experienced some health issues,
When we got out, I said to her, ‘I need to sit down, I don’t feel that great,’” Dick Chalmers said.

Sweat poured from her husband’s face and body and Gail said she feared the worst.
Also stated in the story that I want to point out:
The warning signs Dick remembers did not mention anything about high blood pressure…. …”Going in to this ride, you don’t see what you’re getting in to,” Gail Chalmers said.
*Insert my yelling in frustration here*
First of all, if you ask anyone with more the average Disney knowledge (say a Disney Cast Member any wheres at Epcot, or almost anywheres else on property that you could run into before going on the ride, not to mention the 5 you pass by going in/in the attraction) they can tell you that Mission Space is a thrill ride. Though less intense then then most roller coasters only experiencing 2Gs (or two times the normally force of gravity) it is still a thrill ride none the less.
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At some Technology show recently, Yahoo! showed a demo of their new Yahoo! photos website. It is pretty cool looking and looks very user friendly. If they offer hotlinking to other websites for free, I might just have to try them out…. but for the moment, I am not giving up my Photobucket account just yet.

Check out the video demo of the new Yahoo! photos site here at demo.com:
Yahoo! Photos - Yahoo!

Technorati tags: yahoo, photos, beta, tag, ajax,

A few months ago I made a post about Dream on Silly Dreamer. Now today you can own your own copy of the movie with lots of bonus features. You can get your copy right from the Dreamer website. Also you can get it from Amazon, but amazon does take a major cut from the sales though… Here is the info about the DVD:
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On March 25, 2002, more than 200 Disney artists working at the studio’s legendary Feature Animation department in Burbank were told that their services were no longer needed by the company. It took one uncomfortable gathering with the President of Feature Animation, now dubbed “The Tom Meeting”, to kill 75 years of a beloved animated tradition. The company, best known for its hand-drawn animated features, no longer wanted artists to draw for them.

DREAM ON SILLY DREAMER is the new animated documentary, from Director Dan Lund and Producer Tony West, that tells this tale. It features interviews recorded only seconds after the now infamous “Tom Meeting”. In this documentary, you will meet a handful of these artists, hear their side of the story and share in their recollections of “the good old days”.

Told as a modern day fairy tale, Dreamer pays homage to the classic Winnie The Pooh shorts. An artist’s sketch book becomes the viewer’s window into this documentary realm with original, animated vignettes helping to tell a side of the story that the world has never heard. This film will touch anyone who has ever dreamed, believed in fairy tales, wished upon a star or shared in a special Disney moment.

Packed with more than two and a half hours of extras, this DVD will entertain, enlighten and hold tight the memories of a place in time that is no more.

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE

Super Sized Sequences

Dan’s Original Pitch Artwork

Still Art Gallery

Early Animation Tests

News Scrapbook Pages

Poster Concept Art

Original Score

Radio Interviews

Department Goodbyes

Premieres & Festivals Slide Show

Bonus Hidden Features

And Much, Much More!

Technorati tags: disney, Cartoons, Film, animation, independent film, Dreamer, artwork,

Found this over on the Technology part of google news. A company has found out a way to broadcast broadband connection over radio/television towers.

http://p2pnet.net/story/5446

New Wi-Fi broadband system

p2pnet.net News:- A new Wi-Fi broadband broadcast technique will give mobile Wi-Fi devices Net access in locations where an online connection is impossible, says its Dutch inventor, Joe Bobier.

Called xMax and owned by XG Technology in the US, it’s a “relatively silent communications method, despite the fact it uses a broadcasting channel that is already crowded with pager or TV signals,” says Softpedia News. “This solution poses no threat of interference with other signals, but allows the breach of other frequencies, in order to obtain an optimum broadcasting channel.”

The system allows signals that would normally be too weak to be received by normal antennas to be broadcast, says the story. With the help of specially-designed receivers, “these signals can be tracked, because they are specially calibrated in order to be detected in certain pre-established conditions.”

xMax is, “trespassing radio frequencies, although trespassing is not the right word, because we’re allowed to transmit a signal if it doesn’t interfere with other, stronger signals,” Reuters quotes Bobier as saying.

It isn’t an efficient way to transport data through the airwaves, Princeton University electrical engineering professor states, “but it is doing it in a benign way. You won’t even know it’s there. It’s very clever.”

xMax could interest telecoms or Net operators with no radio spectrum because they can begin wireless broadband services with, “very few base stations and add more stations and increase density as demand rises,” says Reuters. “It is also appealing for rural areas which operators find too costly to cover with the current third generation mobile phone networks which need base stations every few miles.”

Radio chips for devices should be in the $5-$6 range, “when built in volume while base stations will be around $350,000,” it adds.

So the biggest Forth of July firework is not going to be in the United States this year, or the world…. But in outter Space… Check this out, your tax dollars at work ($333 million):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_sc/comet_buster_3

Fireworks Likely When NASA Blows Up Comet

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer Sun Jun 26, 7:27 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Not all dazzling fireworks displays will be on Earth this Independence Day.
NASA hopes to shoot off its own celestial sparks in an audacious mission that will blast a stadium-sized hole in a comet half the size of Manhattan. It would give astronomers their first peek at the inside of one of these heavenly bodies.
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