Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

The “EFF”:http://www.eff.org has an action alert out to oppose the reintroduction of the digital television broadcast flag. Please “use their easy web form”:http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=129 to join the fight! There are “other alerts”:http://action.eff.org, too.

[via “BoingBoing”:http://www.boingboing.net]

“Apple”:http://store.apple.com. After much soul-searching, I finally decided to pass on the most lucrative offer in exchange for getting to work for a company whose products I admire and for the opportunity to work from home (and thus see more of the kids). All of the opportunties were compelling, so it was very hard to pick. But I can’t be in multiple places at once!

Anyway, my ability to get Microsoft software on the cheap will be expiring Thursday, so if you know me personally, get those orders in soon!

Motorola have apparently developed a “method for making flat panel displays”:http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=e3257f4f9199a4b38eea7d97ecd19fa0&threadid=538019 that should significantly drop the cost of production and thus the cost of big-screen plasma displays. I’ve often wished I had the funds to drop on one of those pretty big-screen displays. If things go well for Moto, they might be within my budget in a year or two!

I found a new Wordpress Theme called “Blix” and liked it so much that I’ve adopted it in its entirety. I’ll probably make a few changes here and there, but I really like the readability of this theme. Let me know what you think!

Everybody I know knows that “DP Review”:http://www.dpreview.com is _the_ site for digital photography hardware reviews and news. However, look for a site that does this for camcorders and you’ll be searching for a while. Well, I finally found one that does a very good job: “camcorderinfo.com”:http://www.camcorderinfo.com

Our Sony camcorder’s digital video export functionality is busted, and Sony wants over $200 to fix it. Time for a new camcorder!

I’ve promised answers to a few folks by the end of next week, so everything should be all decided by then. I’ve got it narrowed down to four choices:

* MSN Spaces — this is the stay-at-Microsoft option. My former manager and test lead from my Encarta days are working here, trying to bring blogging to the “rest of us.”
* Apple’s Web Store — adding features to their existing store and helping to create a world class experience for Mac users from start to finish. I’d be working with college buddies James and Nick as well as ex-Amazonian Katie. This would be a remote development position, and thus a more solitary choice.
* Amazon.com personalization — going “home” to my old team at Amazon is also a possibility. Some recent management changes there suggest that it might be more fun now, and I certainly know the ins and outs there. Plus, getting to work again with Andrej, Brent, and the rest of the crew there would be cool.
* The Robot Coop — A bunch of ex-personalization guys now working on 43things.com. This would be a small, tight-knit group working on very cool web community applications.

Anyway, those are the places under consideration. I’ll let you know what I decide next week!