Sunday, August 27, 2006

Google Apps for Your domain

John Battelle got the email:

On Monday August 28th we are announcing Google Apps for Your Domain. This brand new Google service allows everyone in an organization to collaborate and stay up-to-date through e-mail, calendar and instant messaging - anywhere, anytime.

Everything is hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware to buy and maintain or software to manage, deploy and patch. The applications are fast, reliable, work from anywhere, anytime and have the elegant simplicity everyone has come to expect from Google. And they’re free. The applications we’re releasing at this time represent only the beginning; we’re working hard to add more. We know you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

CNet:

The new service is an extension of Gmail for Your Domain, a service that Google launched in beta version in February. It allows organizations to use Gmail applications with their own e-mail address, instead of the “@gmail.com” domain.

The Gmail for Your Domain test service has tens of thousands of active domains, hundreds of thousands of users and hundreds of universities registered to use it, said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google’s enterprise business.

Sign up.

GOP kid bloggers

They’re the real reason they passed DOPA!

The TimesOnline on the curse of the kids’ blogging:

AS the leader of the Republican party in the US Senate and a possible presidential candidate, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee has a reputation for sober rectitude. The same cannot be said of his son Jonathan, a Vanderbilt University student who recently appeared on the internet wearing six cans of beer strapped to his belt.
Nor has Jonathan’s brother Bryan done much to help his father’s attempts to strike a reasonable note about US involvement in Iraq. “I was born an American by God’s amazing grace,” wrote Bryan Frist in an online profile. “Let’s bomb some people.” [...]

The popularity of teenage networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is proving a goldmine for political bloggers keen to compare the pious proclamations of candidates running for office with the blogs and picture-sharing websites maintained by their children.

No sooner had Congressman Louie Gohmert, a conservative Republican from Texas, unleashed a tirade against the moral inadequacies of Democrats opposed to the war in Iraq, than someone found internet pictures of his daughter Caroline dancing on a bartop and posing with a man in his underpants.[...]

Errant children have long been a fact of Washington political life, but have rarely caused any lasting scandal. Bush was untroubled by the underage drinking exploits of his twin daughters Jenna and Barbara. The president’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, was not seriously damaged when his daughter Noelle was arrested on drug charges. His son John was arrested for having sex in a car in a shopping centre car park.

That’s a smear?

RI Senate candidate Stephen Laffey wrote anti-gay columns in college. When someone pointed that out to the press he called it a smear. He’s been smeared???

Oh, and he “apologized.” Yeah right:

“Do I regret some of these things? Sure,” he said. “But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.”

Uh, fag-bashing for fun?

In one column, Laffey said he has never seen a happy homosexual.

“This is not to say there aren’t any; I simply haven’t seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet,” he wrote. “All the homosexuals I’ve seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life.”

In another column he wrote that pop music was turning the children of America into sissies, and criticized the singer Boy George, referring to him as “it.”

“It wears girl’s clothes and puts on makeup,” he wrote. “When I hear it sing, ‘Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,’ I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs.”

The articles were in a paper published by College Republicans. Did someone say chickenhawk?

Freeload’s textbooks

Offering free e-versions of textbooks with ads raises all kinds of concerns, but it looks like I don’t have to weigh them too thoughtfully yet:

Freeload Press seems unlikely to be the company that will succeed in adding commercial messages to the typical college textbook. Its problems begin with that unfortunate name, which conjures an image of party crashers cadging free beer, not a publishing concern striving for the highest intellectual standards. It was founded two years ago and has found the going slow.

Excluding study aids, it offers 15 textbook titles, most of them in math and business, and relies on an even smaller base of authors who contribute to multiple books. This summer, the company announced that the University of Michigan was the 100th college to assign one of its textbooks, but this number exaggerates the popularity because it includes those that have tried it once and have not opted for a second trial.

The number of universities that will be using any of its free textbooks as a required text this fall is only 38.

Laurel & Hardy at the soda fountain

As it happens, I live off Oliver Hardy Lake. No one knows anymore because college kids stole the sign. I can’t say I’m a Hardy fan, but Joe Gandelman is. He dug up this video from the short Men ‘O War. Says Joe:

It’s their famous Soda Fountain Skit. Notice:

--That this is one of the more verbal of their routines.

--Their adept use of slapstick.

--The guy at the soda fountain, supporting player Jimmy Finlayson, who often played their foil. He originated the “DOH!” expression now used by Homer Simpson.

--Abbott and Costello later did their own version of this skit - a lot rougher and meaner in tone but equally funny.

Read more about Laurel and Hardy here.

Here are more Laurel & Hardy clips posted on YouTube.