If you'd like a first-person account of the Hezbollah attacks on Israel, and the Israeli response, head over to David Dolan's site and subscribe to his e-mail list. David is a Christian pastor and author who has been resident in Israel for many years. Last year, David spoke at our church, and even for someone like me, who has followed the Mideast conflict, and the region's history, for many years, it was eye-opening.

Lee perfectly sums up my feelings on MySpace.

I love the build names for Ubuntu Linux: "Breezy Badger", "Dapper Drake". Are they all alliteral? [Via Paul.]

Though I don't do nearly enough of either, I love hiking and camping, and could see myself as a flashpacker.

Stephen H. Wildstrom has the latest idiotic move by the recording industry, which is suing XM Satellite Radio over its Inno portable receiver/recorder. Even though there's no way to get the XM-specific music files off the Inno (yet), and despite the millions and millions of dollars in royalties XM already pays the music industry, the Inno is obviously a threat to the future of music as we know it and it must be stopped. In other news, consumers welcomed more artists as the latter left the major music labels...

Entrepreneurs should check out the WSJ's StartupJournal.

Per Paul Stamatio, as if you needed thirty-six other reasons.

Guy mentions the web telephony service Jajah, which looks interesting, especially when compared to Skype. Unlike the latter, Jajah doesn't require you to download any software, and you use your own phone. This is just about as dead-simple telephony as you can get. You enter your phone number, then the number you're calling, then hit the Call button. Your phone rings, you answer, then it rings the number you're calling. That's it. So, like Skype, you can call internationally really cheap. Unlike Skype, you can dial Guadalajara, then chat on your mobile with the golf pro who took three strokes off your game, all while you drive to your local course. Personally, I've never had much use for Skype. I haven't called internationally in ten years, easy. Calls within the borders of the U.S. are covered adequately by my mobile phone plan. And if I were calling internationally, I may not want to be tied to the computer when doing so. Should I have the need, I can certainly see myself favoring Jajah.

Speaking of Tom, he's authored a great paper as part of the Master's program he's enrolled in. Titled "Weblogs, Pamphlets and Public Citizens: Changing Modern Media", in which he compares the citizen journalists of today's blogosphere to the pamphleteers of pre-Revolutionary War America. I got a sneak peek during the drafting and editing phase, and I think it's really good. Some choice quotes:

The effects of blogs in a new media environment are twofold: Weblogs cover stories that their mainstream media counterparts, for editorial reasons or other gatekeeping practices common in modern professional media, omit or miss entirely; and weblogs also bring to bear an ever-vigilant group of diverse problem solvers that fact-check the work of many reporters and journalists in the mass-media arena. This makes the blogosphere an excellent addendum to mass media, operating as both appendix and errata to the main compendium of stories that the mass media puts into the public sphere using trained reporters and journalists. and As technology had advanced further, producing Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a distribution method that allows for easy and automatic syndication of new additions to weblogs, it has become possible for a consumer of media to add weblogs to their daily news diet. This allows for readers to mix and match their media, creating a new media outlet that is personally tailored to their interests and to their pursuits. Using an RSS-reader application on a personal computer, a sports fan can have a forty-page sports section and a one page local section, or a political junkie can have page after page of differing commentary from a variety of sources. The reader becomes their own editor and gatekeeper, combining multiple weblogs and conventional media sources, which have also adopted RSS, into their own personal fountain of news and commentary. If you've read Dan Gillmor's We The Media and/or Hugh Hewitt's Blog, some of Tom's piece will sound familiar, especially in that he cites the former as a source, but I say the familiarity makes Tom's arguments stronger. Good work, my friend!

I know Lee will be interested in Anil's observations on web site comments.

Stop wandering aimlessly through that phone tree, and get a human on the line.

"This is hot." New fan-created Firefox ad that's really good.

Love coffee? Love cafes, but don't want to support the corporate monstrosity? Then use Delocator to find local shops near you. And please, if you know of a local cafe that's not listed on Delocator, add it!

[Waves of the phin to John, Paul, and John at FD.]

While I think it's probably the third-best browser for Mac OS X, I would have to say Firefox is the best browser for those who insist on using Windows. Some of the more rabid Firefox fans are making their own commercials for the browser. Give Me The Soap is my favorite. [With a wave of the phin to dealnews.]

It's too bad I have no design experience nor web programming skills. The guys at Firewheel Design sound fun to work with, and they're about fifteen minutes away in Southlake.

Dan needs some of this furniture in his pad.

Cableyoyo's new Pop is a good idea, but most folks I know with iPods keep them in some sort of case.

What happens when you shove an iPod Shuffle in to a NES controller?

[With waves of the phin to the Firewheel Design blog, and Macsimum News.]

To get back at phishers (as opposed to a phisch), use PhishFighting. It's certainly a much better use of CPU cycles than looking for aliens that don't exist. [Via IM from Lawson.]

Lee has no sense of adventure.

Memo to Skip Bertman, Director of Athletics, Louisiana State University: in the future, Final Four-bound teams are not allowed to come back to Baton Rouge prior to the semi-final game. Apparently, there's something in the water that results in "chucking", better known as "the shooting of bricks". It was painful enough watching the men's team lose the game last night due to their inability to put the ball in the basket (as opposed to UCLA's winning by making it difficult for the Tigers to do so), but the ladies seemed to have the same problem tonight against Duke, a team which was making it difficult for the Tigers to put the ball in the basket. Two shots at a championship, two shots blown. Kudos to UCLA and Duke. There's always next year. And it's baseball season.

I'm sure some of you will respond to this revelation with a "Well, duh!", but CompuServe is still around. One of the ladies in our minichurch has a cs.com e-mail address, and suddenly curious as to what that domain was, I punched it in to Safari's address box. Lo and behold, it's CompuServe. Which is now owned by Netscape. Which is owned by AOL Time Warner. Weirdness.

"This is what Flickr has the power to do."

Given Ellyn's column this month on Wikipedia, I thought this Penny Arcade was apropos. [Wave of the phin to Dan.]

Guy Kawasaki has a new blog. [Via John.]

So the gang at 37signals have launched an affiliate program for Backpack, and, of course, I've signed up. You will note the link graphic in the side bar, under the "Support" heading. 37signals is doing something a bit differently with the Backpack affiliate program: you don't actually receive cash, but rather credit toward your own Backpack account. Theoretically, your own Backpack usage could be completely free if enough people sign up for a paid plan through your referral link. You can use this link to sign up for and use the Backpack web service. The default plan is free, so it doesn't cost you a thing to try the service out. Backpack affiliates don't make a dime unless you upgrade from the free plan to one of the paid plans, which start at a mere five dollars a month. (This is the plan I am currently on.) Continued use of Backpack is one more reason I will likely not renew my .Mac subscription next year. I just wish the affiliate program had been up and running last month, when I upgraded. Then Tom, who got me hooked on Backpack to begin with, could have earned some coin. Backpack won't be for everyone, just as with any other tool, but as with any other tool, you won't know if you'll like it unless you try it.

Do not leave your Gmail In box open in your browser window, as it inevitably will consume mass amounts of real and virtual memory. Get in, do what you have to do, and get out.

Adam Engst details the plan for retiring the Info-Mac Network, noting that it has outlived its usefulness given the Internet's current climate. The retirement will not be immediate, though the ceasing of new software acceptance will be. The Info-Mac server will remain online for a few months, as mirror sites make the necessary decisions regarding supporting the now-frozen archive. If you want your very own mirror of the Info-Mac archives, you'll need a mere seven gigabytes of storage and a simple Unix command.

You have to love the ode to Douglas Adams on Tim Berners-Lee's new blog. (Hint: bottom of the page.) [A wave of the phin to John.]

Now that Yahoo! has absorbed another social-software site, maybe del.icio.us's import feature will get fixed. I'm hesitant to really dive in to the service, or Furl, until one of them can import all of the bookmarks I have loaded in my browser.

Michael now has a dedicated blog for C-Command products. Since the illustrious Mr. Tsai has not yet posted feed links, allow me to help you out: RSS, or if you prefer, Atom. [Big wave of the phin to Lee for the pointers to the feed links.]

With thanks to John for the post title and link: Rich Siegel, of Bare Bones fame, is finally blogging. As if it weren't enough that Rich is responsible for two of the applications I use the most each day, he is a fellow scotch and peanut butter lover. Rich, drop me a line when you're in Dallas; there's 12-year Glenfiddich Special Reserve in the pantry.

If you care to get Retrophisch posts via e-mail, now you can, thanks to Bloglet. Scroll down, and look for the Bloglet subscription box in the right-side column. Enter your e-mail address, hit the subscribe button, and that's it. Enjoy!

Three years. One thousand, two hundred and eighty-seven posts. Yay.

Need to send an e-mail to a loved one's or friend's mobile phone, but can't remember the confusing phonenumber@anameotherthanthecompany.something e-mail address wireless services set up? Use Teleflip, a free service. You can use it from any e-mail client or web-based e-mail. Just send a message to phonenumber@teleflip.com, and that's it. Be sure to use all ten of the phone's numbers. (Note that any fees your wireless provider charges for receiving e-mail/text messages to your phone will still apply.)

Backpack and Writeboard, two excellent services by 37signals, both use Textile for text formatting. I have nothing against Textile; I used to use the plug-in for Movable Type on my blogs. When John Gruber released Markdown in to the wild, I was intrigued, and soon after, made the switch from Textile to Markdown, and I've used it for online formatting ever since. Like Merlin, I've found myself using Markdown syntax in other areas, but unlike Merlin, only while typing. Now I want to have my cake and eat it, too: Markdown for Backpack & Writeboard. After using the latter for a couple of days, I e-mailed 37signals with my request. I figured it would be something not-too-hard (I hesitate to use the phrase "fairly easy," because I am, for the most part, totally clueless about backend web server type stuff) for them to implement Markdown formatting for Writeboard. My suggestion was to make it a preference a user could select, leaving Textile as the default. The reply I received from 37signals honcho Jason Fried was encouraging. While he made no promise as to future implementation (not surprising, standard fare), it does sound like something they'll toss around the conference table. A whiff of hope is better than none at all.