Chuck Burt’s Blog

Remember when a rock band’s lead singer could wear a leopard print leotard and still be taken seriously?

YouTube – Ratt-Round and Round Official Music Video.

Bruce Schneier:

Self-enforcing protocols are safer than other types because participants don’t gain an advantage from cheating. Modern voting systems are rife with the potential for cheating, but an open show of hands in a room — one that everyone in the room can count for himself — is self-enforcing.

This is exactly why I believe Vermont’s ‘town meeting day’ style of democracy is so successful. People are far less corrupt when they are held accountable by their peers/neighbors.

(via daring fireball)

3:43:08 PM man, you went after her like she was made of bacon!

My friend Ray commenting on this video.

Thanks to Ryan for making it!

In honor of Modest Mouse’s new EP check out Heath Ledger’s disturbing and awesome video for the track “King Rat.” Well worth a view.

(via Stereogum)

Choosy v1.0 has finally come out! You may recall I’ve mentioned my need for a hyperlink manager tool before.¹

I’ve been using Choosy for over 6 months at this point and it has become an indispensable part of my workflow. Especially since George has added functionality for advanced rules.

My setup is as follows: I use Safari as my primary browser, however, my company has a number of internal web apps that have been built with Firefox in mind. This means at work I leave Firefox open all the time. So, using Choosy, I’ve set up some advanced rules for the web apps that make their URLs automatically route to Firefox.

I also have a few SSB instances in Fluid (Gmail, Fever, and others) and so I can direct links meant for these apps directly to them.

Everything else asks from the list of open browsers, defaulting to Safari when no browsers are open or if it’s the only open browser.

It’s fast, elegant, optimized for either mouse or keyboard users. The best part? It’s only $12.

Well done and congrats George!

NIN keeps the free music coming, this time with Jane’s Addiction along for the ride!

NIN|JA 2009.

YouTube – Crocodile eats shark and attack of the ninja kangaroo!.

Hulu Blog: Doing hard things.

Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. Without their content, none of what Hulu does would be possible, including providing you content via Hulu.com and our many distribution partner websites.

Apparently doing the right thing in this situation is simple: screw the users.

Wrong

The right thing to do here is keep the users happy while working out the hard details. Ads are still being shown; revenue is still being generated.

When will these content producers realize that they can’t possibly “own” any content—without an audience to watch it? Keep screwing customers, but don’t come crying when they are compelled to steal the content instead.

Any company that feels safe enough to screw their customers rather than innovate deserves to lose.

An important comment about the concept of a website “redesign,” from #3 on this list:

Because corporate websites are under-resourced, they are often neglected for long periods of time. They slowly become out of date with their content, design and technology.

Eventually, the website becomes such an embarrassment that management steps in and demands that it be sorted. This inevitably leads to a complete redesign at considerable expense.

This concept of investing considerable money to “reshape” as things get “stale” is a hold-out from two prior models: 1) the distributed, desktop software model from the IT perspective, and 2) the brochure model from a marketing perspective.

The truth is that websites defy the rigidity of both of these models. A website can change organically—that is, many slight changes over time—without the need for new distribution, packaging, etc. This is a more natural approach for users and allows the website to better adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace—without ever having an overbearing and costly “redesign.”

Read more from the list here:
10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites | How-To | Smashing Magazine.

I am now blocking evite invitations. I’m sorry to my friends that try to invite me to things, but I just can’t deal with them any more. I’m not doing it to try to change them for the better, I just have no desire to take part.

Anytime I receive an evite invitation, my email account will automatically send the following message and delete the invite.

Hi!
It appears you tried to send me an evite.com invitation.  I’m sorry, but all evite.com invitations have been blocked at this email address.

I apologize for the inconvenience–I do it for the following reasons:

1. They sell your personal information.
2. They are owned by TicketMaster (IAC/InterActiveCorp).
3. They haven’t bothered making any major enhancements to their platform in years and are stagnant.  There are much better alternatives.
4. They require users to click through the emails to their lousy site just to see the details.  This stinks on a mobile device.

If you wish to invite me to something, I recommend one of the following methods, in order of preference:

1. Email me.
2. Call me.
3. Text me.
4. Message me on another service, such as Facebook.com or Twitter.
5. If you want to use a website, I personally recommend anyvite.com.  You can very easily import your evite contacts and it takes mere seconds to set up a really nice invitation.  Best of all, guests can see all of the details of the event in the email that gets sent.

To read more, check out the following sites:

• Evite Alternatives
• Wired Magazine – Why Things Suck: Evite

Cheers and have a wonderful event!

-Chuck