1. Rental car company Avis has no problem with a blogger writing about them, but for some reason they have a big problem with said blogger also using their logo in the post.  Doesn’t anyone understand the term “fair use” anymore?  Madness!
2. Buzz is that E*Trade is on shaky footing.  Seeing as how what few stocks I have are managed through E*Trade, this is an item of concern for yours truly.
3. If you ever wondered what good-looking HTML code is supposed to resemble, take a gander at this picture.

1. I don’t know what’s gotten into the FCC lately, but they’re actually making…sensible decisions!  Looks like they’re about to impose some significant new regulations to open the cable market.  Long overdue.
2. For future reference:  Pixel Mana has whipped up this nice template for creating boxes in Photoshop.  Never know when you need to fake…er, make a box for use on some web site somewhere.
3. Screw Guitar Hero…I want Accordion Hero!  [via Gizmodo]

1. An English mom said she ordered someone in a gorilla suit to deliver a birthday message to her son at his school.  Instead, he got a stripper….
2. The Sunlight Foundation whipped up a layer for Google Earth to show where and what projects U.S. government officials are budgeting funds for across the country.  [via LifeHacker]
3. Among the things that third-world kids who get a laptop as part of the OLPC (one laptop per child) will be the original SimCity.

1. Frank Gehry’s works are unique and usually controversial, but I never thought they were lawsuit-worthy.  MIT thinks so and has a laundry list of complaints that have developed at their Gehry-designed Stata Center. [via K10K]
2. You may someday soon come across a gas pump with Google Maps running on it.
3. If you have more money than you know what to do with, you could always try your hand at Moneygami.

1. I did a lot of reading of sites last night, and still found nothing interesting enough to write about. Of course, this is super weak because even the dullest of night, there’s always something interesting on the web.
2. I was out having a social life. This would be a more than acceptable excuse, if only it were true. Unfortunately, I was in my apartment all night.
3. I got wrapped in working on other projects that I lost track of time, and didn’t have a chance to post until now. This one is helped along by the fact it’s true.

Patience is a virtue. I’m still trying to kick many, many months of bad blogging habits. Once upon a time, I really did know how to balance constant posting with a richly lived life….

1. Congestion Pricing has been a cantankerous subject to deal with, because many people feel like they’re going to be screwed with the tolls. I dare you to read this proposed compromise plan over at Streetsblog and still keep any ill thoughts of the concept (execution by the politicians involved in implementing it)
2. Science marches forward, and your hair will be all the better for it. Yes, rsearcher’s have mapped out the genome for the microbe that causes dandruff.
3. Get ready for tons of reruns on the boob tube, because The Writers Guild of America is on strike. They’re trying to get a fairer share of DVD and internet sales revenues, of which they currently get a pittance and nothing, respectively. At least one good thing to come out of this is that the topic dragged Ze Frank out in front of the webcam again to comment on it.

1. This WWF (no, not wrestling — the World Wildlife Fund) video ad is quite well done: Money makes the world go round, you know.
2. Trying to get a remote connection working?  Check out YouGetSignal’s Open Ports Tool.  They also have this little Network Location Map.
3. Here’s a great mash-up map showing recent anonymous edits to Wikipedia entires, and where they’re being done.  Fun to see what pops up.

1. Former Price is Right host Bob Barker had his signature cause be controling the pet population.  Could new host Drew Carry’s cause be medical marijuana? [via Boing Boing]
2. What a great showing of Halloween spirit here.  Someone stuck a car horn in a jack-o-lantern to greet trick-or-treaters, and recorded the reactions for us to enjoy.
3. Someone went through great pains to assemble a collection of 40 CSS layouts to use.  Seeing as how I always seem to want to reinvent the wheel with every design I code out, this might be a handy link to keep around.

1. I’m good enough.
2. I’m smart enough.
3. Doggone it, people like me.

1. By car, by bus, by light rail, train or subway…it matters not.  Looks like New York commuters are in the grips of a perfect storm of fare and toll increases.  I’ll grumble a lot less if I see that extra money actually being put back into the systems for upgrades (some seriously overdue).
2. The brothers Magliozzi from NPR’s “Car Talk” wrote a five-page letter to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming telling them that Detroit can get to 35 mpg in 5 years, and not to be told otherwise.
3. DARPA’s next step in the quest for a self-driving vehicle is coming soon with its Urban Challenge.  Out of 35 entrants, 11 have been deemed competition worthy.  Hopefully Nova does another episode on this like they did for the Great Robot Race.

1. The design world meets the land of infomercials with Make My Logo Bigger Cream!  Works on both print and web sites!  ^_^
2. Looks like Google is set to really weigh in against Facebook (the current darling) and the rest of the social networking landscape with their own OpenSocial networking API.  This should be interesting….
3. California governor Arnold Schwartzenager is quoted recently as saying about marijuana: “That is not a drug. It’s a leaf.” [via Boing Boing]

Anyway, this is some of what caught my eye yesterday…err, today…maybe tomorrow?:

1. Two illustrators drawing dueling characters to defeat the one previously posted. It’s the Superest.
2. The Register digs into the ongoing fair-use battle between Prince and a Pennsylvania mother over her use of “Let’s Go Crazy” in a video of her kid that was pulled from YouTube. If you ever had the chance to see said offending video, you’d see it’s indeed a crazy that the symbol guy is even doing this!
3. Seriously, I’m gonna try to cut back on the OS X Leopard chatter, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to the best nuts-and-bolts review — from Ars Technica, of course.

1. This new smart suit for rescue workers is designed to help with communications and pass along location and vitals to the command center.s problems during disaster relief.  - Disaster relief, fires, floods, car accidents, and other unfor [via Gizmodo]
2. Comcast sure seems to be handling every aspect of this whole peer-to-peer blocking issue with a heavy hand.  Case in point, the new edict to employees:  deviating from the PR talking points can cost you your job.
3. Jack Zavada shares ten tips for living beneath your means to save money.  Since I don’t see myself following many of these tips as gospel, I guess I’m just linking to it for the hell of it.

1. This morning on Meet the Press, presidential hopeful Chris Dodd was smacked around by Tim Russert over subjects including using the FISA hold for political gain.  The more i listened to him speak, the more I wanted to curse and wretch.
2. Brand New has a little dissection of the new Holiday Inn logo.  Sad to see it go, and replaced with something not quite as appealing.
3. ThinkMac delves into a list of things they’re not quite digging in the updated Leopard UI.  Some of the things I can see, but I’m more happy with the overall changes than they are, I guess.

1. John Nack has word for those upgrading to Leopard on compatibility with Adobe’s products.  The good news is the two I care most about — Photoshop and Illustrator — are in the clear.
2. Sprint Nextel is being forced to unlock phones for customers by pressure from a class action lawsuit.  Another step at a glacial pace, but maybe someday before I die I’ll be able to buy the phone I want and use the service I want without the two being inexorably linked.
3. Someone from Comcast was nice enough to have leaked their internal talking points memo for dealing with the BitTorrent debacle.  You know the management must not be too thrilled with that.