In it what is in it

Steep.it to time your steeping time

Confused by the title or confused by how long to steep your tea? Visit Steep.it for the answer. Hailing itself as "the simplest internet tea timer EVER" the site lets you enter in the time you want to steep your tea. You can enter in "30 seconds" or "3 minutes", or whatever, and the countdown begins. The screen warms up from pale to a dark and satisfyingly deep golden-red-brown color when you are greeted with, "Tea is done!". It is surprisingly pleasant, as countdown experiences go. You also get hints about the right temperature and, of course, steeping times for various teas. For black tea, 206 degrees Fahrenheit is favored, with steeping for 2 to 3 minutes. (I prefer 212 degrees, boiling water, for starting my extreme black teas).  For green, the recommended water temperature is 175 degrees, for 1 minute.

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Lala -- the next big thing in music? [Update: Poof! It's gone!]

[Update: If you visit Lala now, you are greeted with the message, "Lala is shutting down. The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010".  What happened? There are two speculations: 1) Apple bought Lala to shut it down, wiping out potential competition.  2) In June, Apple is going to announce iTunes Live, which will be a reincarnation of Lala branded for Apple. I favor the second explanation  -- and June is not far away. Below you see my original post from March 27, 2010, toting Lala's merits.]

If you haven't yet heard about Lala, the new place to get your music on the web, you will. TechCrunch says, "Lala may have just built the next revolution in digital music". cnet calls it, "the first indispensable online music service since Pandora". Apple bought them in December 2009.

Lala offers 8 million songs (and counting) any of which you can listen to for free by streaming to a web browser. But that's to listen just once. If you want perpetual access to a favorite, you pay just 10 cents for it. The music is streamed without ads and raises the question: why download songs, rather than just hear them when you want? You can make playlists, and since there is no download, there is no hard disk limit as to how many songs 'belong' to you. This browser-centric model works brilliantly for PCs and laptops today using Adobe Flash. Streaming is being worked on for smart phones and is expected soon for iPhones. For today's portable non-web devices like the iPod or Zune, or iPhones, you can still download the MP3 for 89 cents. Visit Lala to learn more.

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What are memes?

he Oxford English Dictionary succumbed in 2003 to officially including “meme” (rhyming with “dream”) as a word. The definition is, “An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation”. A paradigm for understanding the internet, media, politics and more? You betcha. Urban Dictionary spells this out further. A meme is “an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)”. UD then goes on to give four more definitions: “a pervasive thought pattern that replicates”, “the fundamental unit of information”, “an idea that spreads from blog to blog” and “an internet information generator, especially of random or contentless information”. In today’s world of viral You Tube videos, chain letters and instantly recognizable spam themes like the Nigerian inheritance, these latter definitions of meme are easily understood. 

Cisco's CRS-3 'foundation' for tomorrow's internet

Cisco's new CRS-3 is being called a game changer -- at least by Cisco. This Carrier Routing System, a 'core router', can pump data at three times the capacity of its predecessor, and 12 times what the competition (Juniper?) can offer. If 322 Terabits per second does not make you gasp, here is the translation of what this throughput speed means:

• The entire printed collection of the Library of Congress could be downloaded in 1 second.
• Ever man, woman and child in China could make a video call, simultaneously.
• The totality of every motion picture ever created could be streamed in less than 4 minutes.