I’ve been meaning to write up a summary of my recent VOIP experiences (I was a SunRocket customer until the company disappeared in a puff of smoke a couple of weeks back), but I’ve had a flareup of my inner ear infection problems the past couple of days, and I have vertigo in a bad way at times. More to come on the VOIP stuff soon…short of it, I’ve landed at ViaTalk, and it looks pretty good so far!

I finally got around to signing up for BookMooch earlier this week, and I just sent out my first books today! BookMooch is a site to match up book lovers…like many bibliophiles, I have a great deal of trouble in throwing away books, or even giving them away in a situation where I feel like they may end up in thre trash (at book fairs and such). BookMooch lets you put up an inventory of books you’re willing to give away, and gives you points for both putting up books (0.1 each), and for giving them away (1 pt each). You can then use those points to mooch books yourself! Pretty clever idea, really, and from the same guy (John Buckman) who runs Magnatune Records (another site I’m very fond of). He’s quite the creative dude.

So thanks to John for BookMooch, and I hope the folks who have books on the way enjoy them!

Um, this is just flat out excellent: God disproven by the fact of skepticism: …God is of necessity too large and imposing to get lost in the sock-drawer. If you look around carefully and don’t see any God, there isn’t one. God isn’t like a ring of keys that might still show up. …

Thanks to Ken MacLeod for the link!

Robot air attack squadron bound for Iraq — The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada…With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home, [air commander] North said.

Sounds like someone didn’t watch The Phantom Menace…

Richard Bartle’s recent interview on the state of virtual worlds was a good read all on it’s own, but one line stands out for me (and no, it’s not the close WoW one): [Aside: how much faster will you be able to get through your email-reading chores at the start of the day when you have 3D Mailbox? When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was a parody.].

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: 3D Mailbox — oh, please tell me it’s for real…I need a good mockery target for this week!

JungleDisk looks to be a REALLY nice backup tool that uses Amazon S3 as it’s backend. Runs on WinX, Max, Linux…currently about to come out of beta with a really reasonable price point ($20/lifetime, or $1/month…plus the separate S3 storage pricing, of course).

Fascinating. An ecosystem is being born on the back of S3…really interesting stuff.

Wow. I saw it with my own eyes last night…I was out about 11:30pm, and drove by one of our local Borders bookstores, and there was a party going on inside! Potter mania is alive and well…I tried to get a photo, but I only had my phonecam with me (shame!), and it was just too dark for it. But it was impressive nonetheless. I didn’t pre-order, but I expect I’ll buy it before too long…it’s a good series. And while it’s always sad when something you enjoy ends, I like it when an author is willing to end a series when the story is told, rather than grind it out forever for the very last dollar, destroying good will in the name of profit. Hopefully, that won’t happen here…we’ll see!

*sigh*…I got sucked in. But it’s funny!

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Citizen Media: A Progress Report: An excellent overview of the state of citizen media today, as well as a set of suggestions for moving forward. I consider the concept of citizen media/ubiquitous collaboration/etc. to be pivotal for our future, so presentations like Dan’s are really important. He groks this, he walks the walk, and he’s there to help. Thanks, Dan!

TwoGlasses (new to me; seems worth a glance so far) goes after the recent NYT editorial on getting out of Iraq point-by-point. Good post, many valid criticisms, but I especially like this one:

Times: And it [Iraq war] created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. –> TwoGlasses: Or we could, you know, not do that. We could stop pretending that international terrorists are this incredibly scary existential threat that demands we go to permanent DefCon 5 status. We could commit ourselves instead to bolstering international intelligence and policing efforts, tracking these irritating bastards down like the criminals they are instead of glorifying their pretensions by supposing they’re a proper adversary for our military.

Bravo.