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It’s true.  My mom thought Latitude was the greatest thing.  Not that she’ll ever use it, but that she could load up the web page and see exactly where I was.  Very handy, so as to avoid multiple phone calls asking "have you arrived safely?"  (Yes, my parents love me.  Be jealous if you must.)

Back story: It wasn’t anything I had originally thought of when the Latitude service from Google was first announced earlier this month , but adding my parents and my sibling was probably the best thing I could have done.  The idea came to me as I was packing to leave for a 3 day vacation to snowy Truckee, CA.  (Which supposedly had more than 4 feet of snow in 4 days.)  The road conditions to and from were far less than ideal, and I figured if anything were to go wrong, at the very least my family would know where I was last registered by my cellphone.

New story: While I’m still not entirely sold on location-based advertising (only because I don’t like advertising, not because I don’t like efficiency), Latitude is a great idea for parents.  It won’t be long before children everywhere are hearing, "if I’m paying your cellphone bill son, you’re damn well going to load some form of tracking service so I can find you whenever I want."  Not that it should be looked at in a negative way.  Safety first.

Truckee, CA Photos:
Cabin —

Snow on Truck (one day of snow) —

I first started following Slashdot back in 1997, right around the time pop music was popping up on file servers across the US in college dorm rooms for thousands of audiophiles to download illegally.  Sure.  And ever since then the RIAA has appeared in many a topic and been the subject of many debates over on Slashdot for any and every step they’ve taken to combat/thwart such activities online.  Even in 2009, the RIAA continues to crawl the web looking for folks to fight, and they continue to show up in Slashdot conversations, which would almost be fine, except nothing has changed.  When it comes to talking about the RIAA, we’ve been having the same conversations for twelve years.  Why?

Of course we have to talk about it on Slashdot because the RIAA continues to make decisions that a lot of folks want to complain about, at least those of us who know the actions are taking place.  Which many of us probably wouldn’t know if we weren’t reading Slashdot, and I can guess with certainty that it’s why I stopped reading daily for a couple years.  (It’s in my feed reader now.)

I’m not really interested in collecting music because I can’t be bothered to make time for it, and I have SiriusXM subscriptions.  I have plenty of legal music.  (I did buy two CDs last year, which I wrote about here .)

How can we get the RIAA to spend its time plotting to help consumers rather than hunting them?  I don’t have the answer, but I sure wish someone would figure it out so we can stop having to hear all the negative chatter on Slashdot.  It’s only a matter of time, right?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take it anymore, and I’m disappointed that the music industry hasn’t found a whole bunch of ways to keep making money in the digital world.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep skipping those articles.

I’m not sure who exactly they’re aiming to target, and I don’t really care because it doesn’t change much for me one way or the other.  Still, there’s a ton of chatter coming across the line about the latest from Gates and Seinfeld.  I’m a fan of the two working together, and I’ve found the content to be more than mildly entertaining.  Still, not the point.

It’s not a very big secret, it’s no secret at all, when it comes to what computers/software people are using that it breaks down something like this:

• Only fanfolk are using Apple
• Only geeks are running Linux
• Everyone else is using some version of Windows and Internet Explorer
  • 99% with default settings and outdated software like IE6

The problem with this is that the 99% in the everyone else group isn’t interested in what computer or operating system they’re using.  They just want it to work when it’s time to check the email or surf the web, right?  So why, in their minds, do they need a new whatever from whomever?  They don’t, and so they continue to use things like IE6, even though we have Chrome and Firefox 3.

Which is to say that no matter how cool, great, and awesome the next Microsoft products are or aren’t, they’re still going to be out there and that 99% isn’t going to jump on board.  It will have to be forced on them like the latest OS coming bundled with a new computer.

What Microsoft is doing with Gates and Seinfeld is giving all the people a chance to start talking about what’s happening in the tech world.  People, regular and tech junkies alike, are walking around saying “I don’t understand what’s going on.  What are they doing?”  The regular people know they should be paying attention because “whoa, two of the most accomplished guys in their respective fields on Earth” are appearing together in front of them .  Might mean it’s time to start paying attention.  Meanwhile, the tech junkies know they need to pay attention because Microsoft has the resources to change, for better or worse, the computer world as they know it.  Change is scary.  Commercials are fun.  But whatever the case, regular or junkie, they now have a common ground to start from thanks to Microsoft.

Talking is a good thing.  Talking about Gates and Seinfeld is a great thing for Microsoft.  But enough talking.  Check out the clip.