Blog mocking, robot overlords, terrible URL mistakes

WHAT'S WHIRLING

Feature: Blogging about blogs, blog-mocking division
Weird Tech: I, for one, welcome our French robot overlords
Out of IT: Chinese to join Americans in post-death manned space program
A Site Worth Seeing: WordCount
Geek comic of the week: Sandals


SHE'S A 10

10 terrible URL mistakes ... 10 commandments of cell phone ettiquette ... 10 best Internet spoofs ... See all the 10s


LISTMANIA

Best and worst cities for "salary value" ... Best game show hosts of all time ... What Owen Wilson's hair is hiding ... Problems solved by MacGyver
http://www.itworld.com/jpitw/itwhirledblog/itwhirled/#lists


YOUR 2 CENTS

Who is your favorite Scientologist?

- Tom Cruise
- John Travolta
- Beck Hansen
- Chick Corea
- Lisa Marie Presley
- Edgar Winter
- Sonny Bono (deceased)
- L. Ron Hubbard (deceased...or is he?)

Answer this poll


WHAT YOU SAID

Which societal ills can be blamed on technology?

35.6% - Obesity
15.3% - Rudeness
1.7% - Poverty
8.5% - Illiteracy
39.0% - All of the above

Answer another poll

Master Foo on Web Mashups
By Sean McGrath

It was late in the morning (around 5:30 a.m.) by the time Master Foo arrived at the training center.

"I am sorry I am late", he said as he sat down. "I had trouble finding Raw Sienna. It was hidden under my meditation box."

The students looked at each other askance from behind the screens of their laptops. "Raw Sienna? What is that and what has that got to do with developing 21st Century Web Applications using mashup technologies?." The students had paid good money to attend this training course and had lugged their laptops up Pentimenti Mountain the night before to be here. Not to mention the fact that they had risen from their freezing tent beds at 5 a.m. to suit Master Foo's
schedule.

Read the full article here

Meet the remote-control self

Often wish you could be in two places at once? Ever wish you could clone yourself? Japanese computer scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro felt the pressure, too, so he built an android in his own image that walks and talks just like him.

"Shiguro, whose job is teaching at Osaka University, an hour's drive away, designed Geminoid so he could "robot in" to his classes and skip the commute," this article explains. "As he steps out from behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz, standing beside his robot self, the shift is disconcerting."

Merkel podcasts, vlogs, gets a neck rub

By now you've probably seen and heard far too much about the neck massage German Chancellor Angela Merkel received at the G8 Summit, but here's something you may not have known.... In addition to being Germany's first female chancellor, she's also the first head of state to deliver her own weekly video podcast and give an interview as a video blog.

Read the full article here