Smoke Signals? Telegraphy? Carrier Pigeons?

How were large, complex (are there any other kind?) geographically-scattered software projects managed before companies finally got IM on corporate networks?

Why, over email, of course.

So how were these projects managed before the arrival of email?

God, I don't *want* to remember.

Handsome As An Amphibian With A Mustache

A what with a mustache, now? (link to discoveryon.info)

"Bozo The F***ing Clown"

A small but funny collection of rock one-liners. Bob Dylan seems to have cornered that market. His zinger to Neil Diamond, supposedly said during the Last Waltz concert, if true, deserves some kind of an award.

A couple of good one-liners can also be found in the comments section, so check that out too.

What Color Is The Universe?

Beige.

BlahEIGE?

No, seriously.

Google Music

Google now does music. I thought it was all right. Useful but not terribly exciting.

Searching for and serving up results for a song title, artist's name or an album title can't be too hard. Instead, Google could have let users search for legit MP3s/audio streams by entering snippets of lyrics.

Oh well, one can always just google for those things ;)

Man Throws Shit, Judge Throws Book

"As they began to file out of the courtroom, McGowan pulled out a bag of feces he'd hidden in his clothing, rubbed excrement on his lawyer and threw it at the jury."

All kinds of awesome here.

The closing sentence from the defendant's attorney too cries out for an honorable mention:

“When he hits the bottom, he gets angry when he is mistreated or when he feels he is mistreated,”

Yeah. Makes sense. But you know what? If you haven't at least once felt the urge to fill a bag with feces with the intent to fling it at the world, well then, man, maybe you just don't give a shit.

Is There An Animated .GIF Tombstone?

This Monday, Yahoo shuts down Geocities. Oh God, now where will I go for those "site under construction" signs?

Just google for "Geocities" and click on the "News" tab and be prepared to be surprised at just how much news Geocities made back in 1997 or 1998. Actually, with Google's "Timeline" feature, you can go all the way back to 1990-91 - but that just throws up some archived newspaper pages containing Geocities links, probably ads.

Here's an interesting abstract from an archived article in the LA Times from 1996:

"The site is called Geocities (http://www.geocities.com). It exists solely to make money from our natural human instincts to puff out our chests, announce that we are here and what we say can make a difference.

The Santa Monica-based company offers free access to an Internet tool set and a mapped address book that lets Web "homesteaders" create a page in a "community" of their own choosing.

Then Geocities makes a business out of it by inviting advertisers and commercial vendors to market directly to these specialized neighborhoods, by offering deeper Web services to individuals and through transactions."

Funny, I always thought Geocities pages simply existed to stab us all in the eye with their HTML and occasionally puncture our eardrums with a self-launching MIDI interpretation of the Geocities page owner's favorite '50s tune. (For some reason, it was *always* a '50s tune.)

Can we count on Father Time to make social networking sites go away in 2019?