Firefox has a noble goal of changing the world, one web surfer at a time. Makers of the popular open source web browser, responsible for giving the dominant Internet Explorer a swift kick in the butt, are at it again with a new viral marketing effort. The video below features a plethora of Internet stars singing a song to Fight The Boredom. They’re mocking those over-dramatic public service infomercials asking for money to stop world hunger, adopt a child, or save the birds. The video is fairly amusing and there was a website to go along with it at FightAgainstBoredom.org which now redirects to the Firefox download page.

The facts that scroll against the bottom are as follows:

Compared to Internet Explorer users, Firefox users are

• 21% less likely to be a sales representative or agent at their current place of business.
• 45% more likely to have gone on vacation in San Francisco within the last 2 years.
• 33% less likely to live with others suffering from high cholesterol.
• 6% less likely to have eaten any meal at Chick-fil-A within the last 7 days.
• 24% less likely to live with others suffering from heart disease.
• 66% more likely to have viewed or listened to audio or video about politics or public affairs news within the last 30 day.
• 89% more likely to have purchased database software for work in the last year.
• 38% less likely to live with others suffering from breast cancer.

Was that Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain fame?

Duncan Riley from Techcrunch talked to a Google employee at the annual Macworld conference who happened to slip up Picasa for Mac is in development. If anyone has used Picasa, which is currently only available for Windows and Linux, you know how easy it is to sort through your mounds of photos and do basic editing. By contrast iPhoto, which comes bundled with every new Mac, is clumsy and hard to use. I certainly welcome a new photo organizing competitor to the Mac. Hopefully it will force Apple to improve the long forgotten app.

Duncan couldn’t get a specific launch date for Picasa Mac, but the Google employee did mention it will be released this year. All I can say is the sooner the better. Then I might consider switching to a Mac for good.

Around the end of October my Creative Zen Vision:M suddenly died on me during my morning commute. It’s no surprise that the player finally pooped out after being with me every workday for 2+ hours a day since I got it on Christmas, 2006. It was a fine media player and I would have gotten another one except Creative wasn’t making them anymore. Besides, the new Zunes were out with better features at a much cheaper price. So naturally I decided to “join the social.”

One of my favorite features of the Zune is how it keeps your place in the song or video after powering down. This makes it a breeze to pick up where you left off without fuddling around with bookmarks and now I don’t even hesitate listening to a podcast for a short drive. With my Creative Zen Vision:M I would spend more time loading and saving my place than driving on short trips. This feature is not important if you listen to music most of the time, but a podcast junkie like myself is always starting and stopping episodes and it is a relief to have a player take care of marking the place in my audio and video files for me.

The physical design of the Zune 80 is compact and simple. The player consists of two buttons, a large 3.5″ screen and a squircle for navigating. The squircle is a combination of a touch surface and button interface. Using your thumb you can flick up or down to move through list items just like an iPhone or press up or down for more precise navigation. Holding one edge of the squircle down will gradually speed up the seeking of a list when you need to go through a lot of items. To help you stay oriented as songs scroll by, the player will show the first letter of the track in a big, easy to read font so you know when to slow down. Basic categorization like Artists and Genre is available along the top which is accessed by moving left to right. To the right of the squircle is a play/pause button which is also used as an on/off switch when held down. On the other side is a back button. Navigating around the Zune is a real pleasure and a big improvement over the Zen player I was previously using.

The dimensions are pretty much like any other hard-drive based media player on the market. The Zune 80 is thinner than my Zen Vision:M and is probably just as thin as an iPod but I don’t notice the difference during everyday use. The player fits in my backpack and in my jacket pocket and that is all I really need to carry it

A Zune 30 would have been sufficient for my needs at the discounted price and with the newer Zune 2.0 interface, but the newer Zune 80 packs better video hardware. Formerly left to transcode MP4 files for playback on my Zen, the Zune has no problem playing these processor intensive video formats natively. Lots of podcasters offer their video up in the iPod-friendly MP4 files and since I have a device that supports the codec, a bigger selection of content is available to me. With the latest firmware update, I can now unsubscribe from a podcast feed right inside the player on the go making it easy to sample new podcasts without the extra hassle of managing feeds. When I dock the Zune with my host computer, the Zune software automatically adds the new content and removes the media I watched or listened to as well as updates any podcast feeds I have marked ‘unsubscribe’.

Speaking of the software, the Zune 2.0 software is good enough for syncing media to your device but falls short in a lot of areas. For one, it is resource intensive causing my machine to slow down considerably when using it. To be fair, my 4 year old computer doesn’t meet the recommended requirements but I still didn’t think the software would be a big resource hog. If you don’t use the official Zune 2.0 syncing software then you are out of luck as any third party software is locked out from managing the Zune hardware. I would prefer to use the excellent Media Monkey software for organizing and syncing my media but since the Zune uses proprietary drivers, there looks to be little anyone can do to break the tie with Microsoft.

Once you have your media set-up, the software isn’t that difficult. At first there were issues with duplicate podcast episodes showing up but as I made my way through the unplayed media, the issue sorted itself out. The Zune does a great job at staying synced with my computer. I just have to plug the Zune to the USB connector and off it goes with little intervention for me. I haven’t tried using the wireless syncing yet. In face I have turned the wireless capabilities off for the time being because I have never found another Zune device nearby and I would rather save the battery power than send out messages to my non-existent Zune neighbors. But one powerful feature about the wireless capabilities in the Zune has gone unnoticed. Wireless sync only works when the player is charging. Since I only have the included USB cable which connects to my computer, it doesn’t make sense for me to use wireless sync. But if I had a the Zune dock that connects to your TV than what I basically have is an Apple TV that I can carry in my pocket. Think about it. The Zune 80 will sync wirelessly with your computer and can output video to a standard definition TV at full resolution. Anything you can watch in your pocket, you can easily enjoy on a larger TV parked in front of a comfy couch. What’s not to love about that?

My biggest complaint about the Zune is there is no obvious comfortable way to hold it, especially when watching videos. The rectangular design is simple and makes great use of the space, but there is no place to put your hands. The best way I found to handle the Zune 80 is to rest the bottom corners in the web between your thumb and the index finger of both hands. Similar to holding a book.

A must have accessory for the Zune is the leather case. Not only does it protect the player from outside abuse, but it gives you something to hold on to while watching videos. The squircle pokes through but the buttons are covered but usable through the brown leather case. A large flap goes over the device to protect the screen when not in use and is secured by a magnet. It’s easy to open and stays out of your way while using the Zune.

If Microsoft is listening, they really need an accessory that lets you control the device while it is tucked away in a backpack. Creative had a wired remote control that allowed you to play/pause, change tracks, and adjust the volume all by a little dongle that goes between your headphones and the player. This was a dream to have on morning commutes with my Zen in my backpack and the remote clipped to my shirt. A wireless version would be cool but dealing with a battery to keep it charged sounds like a big hassle.

After a month of using the Zune 80 and putting it through it’s paces, I am really happy with my purchase. Every morning I wake up with glee knowing that my commute will not be a dull, monotonous one-hour train ride thanks to my slick media player to keep me informed and entertained. If a digital media player is part of your daily life then you will know how important it is to compare what is on the market and find the best player for your needs. Apple vs. Microsoft politics aside, the Zune is a fantastic device that I could enthusiastically recommend to any media junkie I meet. Don’t let the trash talking sway you, as I truly believe the Zune 80 is the best portable media player out on the market right now.

Update: On January 8th, after writing the bulk of this review, my Zune suffered a software crash as I was walking home from work. The podcast that I was listening to suddenly stopped and the screen read “Could not play track”. Thinking it was a problem with just the MP3 file itself, I tried to play a song from my music library. When I selected play from an album view my player froze and became unresponsive to any button mashing I attempted. When I got in front of my computer I looked up the hard reset button combo which requires holding the back button and the top of the squircle. This Microsoft knowledge base article details everything you need to know. Upon reboot I was greeted with this lovely message, “To recover from an error, Zune must erase all content.” The only option was to hit “OK” by pressing the middle of the squircle. The media player would then reboot and this process continued forever in an endless loop.

After digging around on the net for a better solution, I decided my only course of action was to replace the firmware and completely wipe out my nearly 40GB collection. Following these arcane directions, I managed to get my Zune back to its factory default. It then took me all night to reload all of the songs from my library back onto my fresh Zune.

I suspect this crash was due to a hard drive glitch and I can’t really blame Microsoft for the fragile nature of hard drive based portable media players. Problems like this will eventually be a thing of the past once solid state flash memory, which has no moving parts, comes down in price. For now I thought it was important to add this addendum to the review of what problems can happen after normal use out in the wild.

I’ve had my T-Mobile Dash for just over a year and it was starting to show it’s age. The Windows Mobile operating system was dragging to a crawl. Applications were taking 30 seconds to load and the overall experience just started to feel muddy. It’s horrible when a device can’t keep up with you.

I then found SKTools Lite for smartphones which cleans up temporary files and frees up storage space. After running the program it found 542 files that could safely be removed and my phone felt new again. Apps would open up right away, there was no lag when typing, and the Internet even seemed a bit speedier. So if you are frustrated with your Windows Mobile phone because it’s as slow as a rainy weekend then give SKTools a try. And if you are looking for other great WinMo apps, check out this thread.

Four local area DC Developers (Doug, Gabe, Jason, and Min) got together and created two excellent Twitter mashups that were released this week.

Twittertale.com weeds out public tweets that have swear words and then highlights them on their school room inspired site. It also keeps track of the top 5 naughty words as well as the users who indulge in the most sailor talk. As of this posting, @bumblebunny looks to be an interesting person to follow. As an extra twist, I think the swear words should be censored with *’s leaving the audience to guess what swear words were being used.

Politweets.com takes the same concept from Twittertale but applied to U.S. Presidential candidates. The two major political parties are seperated out and the political candidates are ranked in the middle based on the number of mentions on Twitter. This is a neat way to extract data from such a large body of political commentary and the guys certainly nailed the design with a gorgeous yet simple layout.

I decided to contribute a tweet to both sites at the exact same time…

Walked past a large crate of sprig leaves in the middle of Georgetown. Add to the fact that it is going to be 70 degrees today and I’m seeing a very weird day ahead of me.

With every New Year comes new resolutions. Jonas Buntenbruch is a designer with a pretty hefty goal for 2008. Jonas will complete and post a new design everyday for 366 days straight (remember it’s a leap year). He set a time limit of 30 – 60 minutes for each day’s design and mediums can range from “scrap and sketches to photos, typographic experiments and random creative masturbation.” It is pretty much like an online sketchbook, open for all to see and comment on. I especially like his January 5th photomanipulation pictured below.

Good luck Jonas, I hope you make it through the whole year!

If you want to raise a kid that can’t become a functioning member of society then follow these simple steps:

1. Wait on them all the time
2. Never say no to them
3. Keep a Christmas tree up year ’round because you need to give them gifts every day
4. Do their homework and shelter them from any kind of work

Now those points might sound absolutely ridiculous to normal people like you and me, but these two parents in the clip below actual follow these guidelines.

I’m speechless.

(via Huffington Post)

Engadget is reporting on a digital camera with super slow motion capabilities from Casio. The EX-F1, which was announced at the annual Consumer Electronics Show today, is a typical 6 megapixel still camera but with some serious frame-burst technology. The video modes on the camera offer three settings for slow motion: 300 frames per second (fps) at 512 × 384 resolution, 600fps at 432 × 192, and 1200fps at 336 × 96. To put things into perspective, 1200fps is about 40 times more frames than real time which is 30 fps. The more frames that need to be played back the longer the clip duration will be resulting in slow motion. It’s a drag the frame size drops to a web video size for the slowest of slow motion, but at least it is there. Before this camera, the closest thing to getting slow motion footage of this caliber would require an investment of at least 5 figures. Now this specialized camera can be yours for just over 3 digits at $1,000!

Not to say that the video is only good for slow motion, the Casio EX-F1 can also shoot 1080i HD video as well as 60 fps at the full 6 megapixel resolution in still mode. First hand reports claim this thing sounds like a machine gun when you release the shutter like InfoSyncWorld.com who said “The shutter release sounds more like a machine gun or a whirring fan than a camera shutter.”

Engadget posted some sample video from the press conference:

This camera has some power to drool over, especially for those specifically interested in slow motion video. I always wanted to explore slow motion video but I never had access to any cameras that could do it. I am always weary about camera that try to do both video and still photos in the same device because they usually end up suffering in both areas. But each year we keep seeing the two mediums come closer together with acceptable results. If I were in highschool right now I would be saving up to get a camera like this especially with social networking and YouTube being so big. I wish I had all of this stuff when I was a kid when I had the time to play around with it.

You can see the full specs of this beast over at DPreview.com but oyu won’t be able to get your grubby little hands on one until March.

Puck was lapping it up between Kristina and I. Just another lazy Caturday here.