I was taking a break around lunchtime at work today and took a quick browse through an old issue of Wired (sorry, I forget which month).  It had a list of hundreds of high tech gadgets and toys.  On the List was Amazing Amanda (WARNING: Flash sound when the page loads.)

This is the first doll I’ve seen that takes advantage of RFID tags.  Yes, you read that right – RFID tags.  There’s one in her neck so she knows what she’s wearing.  There’s one by her mouth so she knows to get mad when you feed her spaghetti when you know full well that she asked for ice cream.

I’ve got to ask.  Who in the heck at Playmates Toys thought this was a good idea??  I’d like to shake their hand.  It’s a massively innovative way to apply a fledgling technology to a new market.  Kudos to you!

Ever waited on hold until your arm muscles disolved?  Ever listened to hold music at your desk on speakerphone for hours on end?  Fight back against poor customer service by reaching an operator ASAP!  See the quote below from Gethuman.com’s web site:

gethuman – changing the face of customer service
Welcome to gethuman.com; a consumer movement created to change the face of customer service. This free website is powered by over one million consumers, and the site is run by volunteers who demand high quality customer service. Our site has information for many types of companies including credit cards, finance companies (banks and mortgages), insurance companies, cell phone providers and many others.

The most popular part of the gethuman website is the gethuman database of secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for customer service. (See also our general tips.)

In addition, they now have the ability to add an entry to a DB to keep track of who has poor service and who has good service.  Got a story?  Let them know so we can all build on each others’ experiences.

I’ve been curious as to which was which.  Turin is the English name for the Italian named city of Torino.  I’m glad that NBC has been respectful enough to use the Italian pronunciation.

The answer, either one or both!

I just got a TMO phone (the Samsung x495) and activated service on their prepaid network.  I was talking to the rep to be clear on pricing, and she said t-zones access was free for whatever I could access.  Sweet!  Only problem is that pressing the t-zones button got me network unavailable.  I did some quick Googling and found a link to this T-Mobile customer service application in this thread at  the Mobiledia forums.

Click click click on the web site; recieve WAP message; click click click on the phone.  Whammy!  T-Zones access.

And hey, no yammering about having a crappy carrier, phone, or being weak for using prepaid.  I’m paying a lot less for my coverage than you are!  Unless of course you too are on TMO, in which case, hope you enjoy the tip.

It’s that time of year again for Seattle area residents.  Les Schwab is giving out free beef with tire purchases.  I prefer Costco, as they give out free rotation and alignement with purchase, and they are countrywide (we travel in the car quite a bit); but some look forward to this yearly ritual.  Enjoy and chow some cow!

There was a thread in the freebies section of BargainShare.com

It listed a link to a Wikipedia entry that has links to hundreds of .ogg classical music files.

Download the Firefox extension “Download Them All” and run it on this page to grab all of them at one time.

OK, so I missed the actual Date (January 31, 2006) by a few weeks. But here I am now! And oh what a treat. There is a Danish site that has 9 Mozart symphonies available for download. AND they have high bitrate versions as well! I’m not normally the classical music type, but there’s something about his music that moves me.

I can’t read the site, so if you miss the downloads before they get yanked, you can always download classical music on iTunes after the fact (although they won’t be free then – so go to that site above NOW!!!)

SXSW has put the 2006 Music Festival showcase schedule online. The festival is March 15-19, while the whole SXSW experience goes from March 10-19.

SXSW is a music, film, and interactive media conference with a HUGE festival of music. For those in Seattle, think Bumbershoot on meth. It’s held in Austin, and one of these years when the girls get older, I plan to take them. They both have a great love for listening to AND playing music. I think it’d be a great experience once they’re old enough to get them a pass to the conference as well.

Last year they put up a bitTorrent file of all the 700 some odd mp3 files that playing musicians submitted.  They say they plan to do so again this year as well.  I found a lot of great artists this way last year and plan to give it a shot this year as well.  I’ll let you know the details once they come out.

This is a followup to my original Faloozlebinger post.  This one doesn’t have the word as my title and thus no link back to my site.  I took that post down and am putting this one up instead.