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Here’s Battelle on the new yellow pages search from A9:

In short, Manber & Co. strapped GPS-enabled digital videocamera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, and drove them around the commercial districts of major U.S. metropolitan areas, recording what became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. Tens of thousands of miles later, they had more than 20 million images of over 14 million businesses in 10 cities, and they aren’t done yet.

Based on this shot of the Sony Metreon in San Francisco, the trucks were most likely roaming Baghdad by the Bay sometime in August 2004…

Update:  via Kottke, this fellow found himself in one of Amazon’s photos.  That didn’t take long…

Having spent all of about ten minutes in an Apple store over the weekend (exiting quickly to avoid the temptation to buy a Mini), I’ve come to the conclusion that the most interesting thing about the Shuffle isn’t its lack of screen, or its “pull tracks at random from iTunes” feature, or its price point or its button placement.  The most interesting thing is just how light it is.  With other Apple products there’s the familiar heft – their relative density (combined with superior industrial design chops) make their products just “feel right” in the hand.

But the Shuffle is something else entirely.  It’s light enough to be remarkably light.  Ridiculously light, even.  So light as to truly deserve the “wearable” label.  Which is why I’m surprised they’re shipping with a lanyard instead of some sort of integrated clip (like some other flash-based music players).  Lanyards would be great if headphones were wireless; otherwise you end up being a mess of cabling.  A clip would be perfect – clip it to your shirt, your pocket, your bag strap, your coat collar, your tie even.

With apologies in advance to the inimitable Merlin Mann, five things I’ve yet to tire of, after all these years…

1. Discussions of the pros and cons of various ways to combat unwanted messaging.
2. The guitar sound in The Breeders’ Cannonball.
3. To do lists.
4. The lip-smackingly-close way that Carl Kasell is miked on NPR in the mornings.  You can hear.  Every.  Syllable.  Dis.  Tinct.  Ly.
5. New devices.  You’d think I’d be over that by now.  You’d be wrong.

More soon, patient reader. This site’s place in your favorites list, your My Yahoo prefs, or your fully synchronized OPML-driven info-cloud aware self-organizing attention management system is appreciated.

Thanks to the glory of NetFlix, over the past month or so we’ve become fans of  Alias.  Based on a recommendation from a friend, we queued up the 18 discs that comprise seasons 1-3, and have been making our way through them… 

This is the first television series I’ve watched this way – binging on one episode after another, without having seen them before.  I’m finding three things kind of odd… First, episodic television is designed to create addiction, week to week and season to season.  When we finished season two (when Sydney discovers she has no memory of the past two years of her life), we just popped in the first disc of season three to see what the hell happened.  Second, episodic television is also written with the first-time viewer in mind; it’s amazing how much dialog is used to fill in the uninitiated on back story plot lines (“I was married to your mother for 18 years without realizing that she was a Russian spy…”).

Third, watching the shows on DVD like this kills the water cooler effect.  There’s no one to talk to about what you’re watching.  My friends who are long-time Alias fans are most likely tiring of my emails to them asking about particular plot twists or characters – depending on what episode I’m watching, we’re two or three years out of sync.  They’re having trouble just remembering the episode, much less the scene that spurs the question.

I wonder if there’s an opportunity here for subscription services like NetFlix or TiVo or for retail outlets like Amazon or Blockbuster to create micro-communities of episodic entertainment viewers.  Folks who aren’t watching the shows “as they happen,” but who are catching up.  Netflix knows who else is watching Alias Season Three; could those users be connected for some watercooler conversation?  Because I’m dying to talk with someone – anyone – about Sydney’s missing two years, while season four piles up on the TiVo…