Billmonk just got Boingboing'ed. And to think, we've been using it for almost a year.

Bill Clinton's interview on Fox. Great video.

Although it's a commercial, it's also a bit of good social commentary.

Cormie initially pointed me to this, but it's so good that I just had to post it.

An Iraqi militant group led by al-Qaeda has threatened to massacre Christians in response to remarks about Islam by Pope Benedict XVI ... (who) quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who criticised the teachings of Mohammad for endorsing the use of violence

emphasis mine.

It's official, brown is the new black (just like black was the new white, and white was the new beige). Of course, the furniture industry's known this for about the last three years, where wenge (the colour, not the wood) has been the hottest colour for pretty much everything. But today, when Microsoft officially introduced the Zune, they also announced it in the colour brown.

This, along with the Sony laptop also available in wenge shows that the consumer electronics industry is finally catching up to the rest of the world.

Let's see what happened today.

Apple announced a new iPod. Oh, wait, no they didn't.

The regular iPods now have a brighter screen, better battery life, gapless playback (gasp) and get this, more games. Isn't it amazing what more than a year of R&D will do? I hear the games look great on the brighter screen.

Then there's the new Nano, except it's an anorexic version of the old mini. The industrial design is the same, and so are the colours (with the addition of Black - which is the new white). We all know that retro is cool, but bringing it back 2 years is not retro.

Of course, the new Shuffle looks slick, with an all aluminum casing, and a built-in clip. But, one of the major reasons I bought the original Shuffle was because of the USB plug right in the player. Now, there's a dock, even for the Shuffle. That's a step back.

Apple also announced the new iTunes video store, with tons of content ... from Disney, and (only) 75 movies at launch. Pricing sounds about the same as Amazon's Unbox, but you have to pay extra for content that goes on the iPod.

Lastly, the thing that got everyone excited, the iTV. It'll come out next year, supposed to stream video/audio to your TV, has HDMI, blah blah blah. In short, it's a Media Center Extender.

Good job Jobs.

Link.

In the last month, I,

went biking in Panorama, then saw Ben jump off a bridge in Whistler;

had a party at the apartment (although Ann has better pictures); and

went to Bumbershoot.

Nothing too exciting. Maybe next month.