Sounds like a lot of hype for software that takes at most a day to write. Blogdex ranks popular links in weblogs. Something's definitely wrong with the software because after indexing 9000 weblogs there'd be way more than 4 instances of the top ranked link, which at this time, according to Blogdex, is www.humanforsale.com. I know this because I did this same experiment and came up with 10 links for that useless page on The Periodic Table for Men from a pool of several hundred weblogs. Plus, Blogdex seems to include weblogs into its list of popular links, which defeats it's purpose in gauging the popular memes of the day.

Someone jumped the gun here by telling the world about Blogdex before it's ready for primetime.

Update 7/31/01: I may have spoken too soon about the "4 link" thing. Checking again today, there's a new list of top ten links which leads me to believe "4 links" means 4 added links since the last time Blogdex updated. I guess other people are confused as to what "4 links" means also.

I got an email telling me my Budapest pages were linked to on Backwash.com under a column called Newthink. Backwash calls itself a web surfing community that organizes the web "according to personality", not subject matter. It looks like a collection of strictly structured weblogs: the entries are weekly columns and there's a separate listing for recommended links.

Interesting that someone is trying to impose some structure on something as amorphous as a weblog. I have a feeling non-webloggers don't really know what to make of weblogs. Is Backwash a format that's easier to understand, having the weekly (hence predictable, familiar and like print) publishing schedule and the separate list of links? Will this kind of idea bring the concept of the personal reputation manager to a wider audience?

The highlight of the day at the Mercedes Open was Taylor Dent serving Carlos Moya sixteen (!) aces in a game that would go to Dent 6-3, 6-4. There were a couple games which were all aces for Dent.

This picture was taken after a 130MPH serve.

This picture was taken right before...

...WHACK!... a 139MPH (the record for the day) serve straight at Moya who couldn't get out of the way.

I was reading about how the demise of Napster only means less vulnerable (to litigation) versions of file-sharing software will take its place. There was an interesting aside about Hotline, the precursor to Napster, which was software used by the underground warez crowd to swap cracked software and MP3s. And then, there was a link to another article on Salon about the music industry's declining sales this year, which corresponds with a decline in the use of Napster. There are plenty of Napster fans that argue the file sharing service actually boosts sales because songs get more exposure and music lovers are willing to pay for something they enjoy. The one time I used Napster, I did end up buying what I downloaded, but I still think this is the exception to the rule.

Or, perhaps people are listening to A LOT more music because of Napster, therefore there's a corresponding small increase in sales.

Is 29 the new 39? Are we all washed up? Is youth the key to innovation? Michael Lewis gives an interview on Salon where he talks about the ability of younger people to adapt, an important attribute in these fast changing times. But what seems most important to me (I'd rather not dwell on how we're all over the hill), is how the Internet is leading to fluid markets.

If a 15 year old can dispense legal advise, how does that make professional lawyers look? Lewis' point is that there are plenty of people out there that can help you with your legal needs that are not lawyers, just like nurses can handle 90% of all medical needs. And this extends into all professions. Stock brokers are already feeling the pressure, risking obsolescense, in the face of online trading. These services, in effect, become commodities.

In my quest to set up a corporation I discovered I could pay a lawyer $250/hour for 10 hours OR I could pay $390 to have a company that specializes in incorporation take care of all the paperwork for me. No doubt the lawyer would have some advice to give (S-corp vs. LLC, etc) but the point is you don't have to hire a lawyer. With the Internet, these "commodities" services will get more exposure and will ultimately go at market rate.

Oh yeah, as far as the examples of teenagers "adapting faster", I think it's more a matter of these kids getting more publicity because they're young.

Who would've thought watching baseball could be fun? William and Sandy and I went with Sandy's colleagues to last night's Dodgers/Brewers game. The feeling of space in Dodgers Stadium is amazing -- a pure green field in the valley created by thousands and thousands of seats rising up on all sides.

You know what always gets me? The Star Spangled Banner always bring a tear to my eye (no kidding).

And the first pitch from Chan Ho Park, a fast ball... daaaamn, was that for real?

It helped that we had perfect seats, eyeing the action from the middle level a little past third base. And it helped that Budweiser tastes so damn good from a paper cup. Top it off with cotton candy and Dodger Dogs -- what more could you want?

How about the six donuts that all ticket holders can pick up for free from Krispy Kreme if the Brewers are shut out? Don't know if it's for real, but just the possibility of it got me up on my feet to cheer on the Dodgers in the last inning. The final score: Dodgers 5 - Brewers 0.

Who wants to go to Krispy Kreme?

In an ongoing experiment in extracting the most popular memes from today's weblogs, I've discovered that my automated methods which use fancy computer al-go-rith-mmms, quantum physics, half a dozen muses, a full tank of premium unleaded and whole lot of luck must be supplemented with judicious editing.

In an extreme example: Is Blogger a popular meme since everyone links to it? Hmmmm.... No.

And on down the list, I hack and chop away the links that, in my opinion, are not current and topical. Sorry to all the Blog-this-and-Blog-thats that didn't make the cut.

I'll need to decide where to put this up permanently. For now, this is as good a place as any for the first ever: Top Memes of the Week.

Independents Day Celebrating independent content and design... OK then...

Mirror Project The website formerly known as FOJM: Friends of Jezebel's Mirror. "The Mirror Project is a growing community of like-minded individuals who have snapped their likenesses in a variety of reflective surfaces. You are more than welcome to join us in our reckless pursuit of what some consider narcissism. But, if you think it's narcissistic, you're missing the point." Cool. Greggman and I are both in here.

Ageless "We're sending the message that the personal, creative side of the web is diverse and ageless and if each of you personal website builders out there will openly share your date of birth with us, we'll be on our way to proving it!" Half the people are born in the 1970s. I guess we've got nothing better to do.

Exploding Dog "hi my name is sam, i draw pictures, from your titles." Excellent!

Weblog Hipness Quiz Here is a popular link that makes me wonder: in what context was this linked? It's pretty useless. We all know that to get a high score you'd probably choose: Zeldman, Tableless, Your own CMS, Yes, More and Yes. But those of us in the know know that "image and table intensive web design" is more fun, and waaaay more hip.

Google Zeitgeist The World Wide Web according to Google. "For both breaking news and obscure information alike, people around the world search on Google at www.google.com. With a bit of analysis, this flurry of searches often exposes interesting trends, patterns, and surprises."

Why I Log Why do you weblog? Have you forgotten your roots?

Reach Out and Touch Someone: How Bob and His Binoculars Found More Bandwidth and Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bond Can't get DSL because you're too far from the C.O.? Then find someone living close enough to the C.O. that you have a line of sight to. Next, convince him you'll buy DSL for him as long as you can tap into the DSL with a wireless connection from your home!

Is Dick Cheney Dead Yet Check this regularly to see if Dick Cheney is still alive.

A.I. and A.I. What's the big deal with this movie?

Death of a Dot-Com The press is to blame for the Dot-Com-Bust! Don't Stop Believin'!

Universal Chat Is this really the ultimate chat program? Will this software, in one fell swoop, unite the entire chatting community?

20 Things "twenty people made twenty things each in twenty days. then we swapped. we had two groups for the first swap, and we'll be having more, soon. sign up below to be notified of the site launch and upcoming swaps."

Hands Off My Dot Org ICANN wants to revert dot-orgs "to its originally intended function as a registry operated by and for non-profit organizations."

Photographica upload/share/review your pictures. A community photo-blog.

The Smoking Gun "The Smoking Gun brings you exclusive documents -- cool, confidential, quirky -- that can't be found elsewhere on the Web."

Hey Let's Be Cool and Rock! Whatever...

Typographic Voices "In order to gain insight into typographic approaches currently in use, we contacted a group of designers from around the country who are using typography in innovative ways and asked them about the role it plays in their work, their influences and their creative processes."

Other Sunday rituals can prove to be stiff competition for churches Church needs to be more like Barnes and Noble to keep up with the times. Hehe.

The Periodic Table for Men And after spending all that time memorizing the other Periodic Table...

Confidential Movie News Just like the title.

So You Want to be an Interaction Designer Why would you? Haha.

Don't know if this is a good idea, but I need some beta-testers and you guys have to keep this hush-hush, mum's the word, lips are sealed, cause I'd hate for the general public to try this out and discover bugs and getted pissed off and never return. Warning: at any time, it could just stop working because 1) I'm in the process of changing something or 2) I do something real stupid like delete all the data (it happened to me a couple days ago already...). Lots of stuff to work out still but here's the beginning of Daypop, a search engine for current events. It covers news sites and weblogs.

Use it to search for the recent shark attack or Final Fantasy reviews or whatever.

I've been looking for a song called "Skydive" by Freefall on and off since late 1999. The only online record store (I'm talkin' vinyl 12") that I knew of back then was Satellite Records. They didn't have it, so I figured it was out of print and promptly forgot about trying to find it.

But I never forgot the song.

So a couple months ago I searched again and found a music mail order portal which lead me to an online record store in the UK that stocked it. "Skydive" had since been re-released on Renaissance! Order it from the UK? Did I really want it that badly? Naw...

A couple nights ago I was on Satellite Records checking out their Real Audio clips and just for kicks I searched for "Skydive" and there it was. But before I could order it, my machine crashed. I called it a night and decided to place my order the next day.

Of course, the next day the song doesn't show up in the database. Sold out?

Now, I MUST HAVE THIS SONG! And while I'm at it I might as well order some others as well...

So I scour the net and find two other cool mail order record stores. Groovetech is a nice looking (record cover thumbnails!), slow loading site that seems to be out of stock for most of the singles that I wanted. But, it has a track breakdown of each item and it's got streaming video of DJ sets so you can see how they work (DJ Dan). I ordered the bulk of my vinyl from DJMR, which seemed to have a couple more of the older favs. Keep open both sites (and Satellite too, might as well) and cross-reference the Real Audio to sample the most of each track...

Oh, and "Skydive" is available as a CD single from Amazon now.

Only for people who've already seen Memento, which I think is an excellent movie:

Everything you wanted to know about "Memento"

Less an analysis and more of a chronological telling of Leonard's story.

Plot Holes: Memento

Points out "flaws" that you either don't notice or don't mind.

I checked out the review links on Memento at Rotten Tomatoes and the few bad reviews all seem to miss the point when they state "Nolan uses the structure simply as a gimmick..." (or something to that effect) I think the reverse structure is integral in creating a sort of empathy for Leonard's character and his condition. He can't remember the past, so we haven't viewed it yet.