photo credit: Eric Kilby

There’s a link at the top of Google Calender today called “New: Sports calendars”. The new feature allows you to subscribe to your favorite professional sports team(s) calendars and see the game schedules. This is a great way for Google Calendar users to keep up with their favorite teams and a timely addition for new NFL season which starts this week.

Tags: sports

The Notwist are a wonderful alternative indie rock-pop-electronic band from Germany. Just recently, allmusic.com led me to discover the various side projects from the members of Notwist. Here is a brief exploration of those projects.

Console – Suck and Run

(switch to HQ to fix the sound quality!)

Console is a side project for Martin Gretschmann, the lead programmer for Notwist.  Console has released 4 electronica albums on various labels.

13 & God – Men of station

13 & God was a calaboration of Anticon label members Themselves (Adam “Doseone” Drucker, Jerry “Jel” Logan, Dax Pierson) and Germany’s the Notwist (Markus Acher, Micha Acher, Martin Gretschmann, Martin Messerschmid).  They released a self titled album in 2004.

Tied & Tickled Trio – Revolution

Tied & Tickled Trio was formed in 1994 by Notwist members Markus (drums, programming) and Micha Acher (trumpet, upright bass).  Their debut features Christoph Brandner on drums as well as serveral other German musicians.  The group has been described as a fusion of modern electronic and contemporary jazz.

Lali Puna – Faking the Books

Guitarist Markus Acher is a member of Lali Puna along with vocalist Valerie Trebeljahr and drummer Christoph Brandner (of the Tied & Tickled Trio).  The experimental electro-pop group released 3 albums in the 90’s and 00’s.

Ms. John Soda – Number One

Ms. John Soda is a “part-time” project by Couch keyboardist Stephanie Böhm and Notwist bassist Micha Acher.  They’ve released three albums, most recently Notes and the Like in ‘06.

The usb functionality on my digital camera stopped working recently and I needed a memory card reader for my computer.  Luckily there are loads of very cheap memory card readers on eBay.  I picked up a little semi-transparent blue SD Card reader for $.89.  I got it about a week later and it works just fine right out of the box.  Just be careful removing the plastic caps because the plastic is thin and can break easily.  The cool thing about little readers like this is that they can be used as a flash drive once you put a memory card in them.   Somehow these little gizmos are so cheap that the ebay sellers can afford to ship a “bran-new” gizmo from China to the US for under a buck.   Here are some eBay search results.  At these prices there’s not much to lose.

photo credit: Mr. T in DC

Hey BoltBus, you’re already awesome for having a beautiful fleet of new buses with Wifi and electrical outlets, offering very competitive prices and doing it all with an air of professionalism.  You’re my “china-town-bus” sans the violence and poop smell and while your name may not be as charming as Double Happiness, you are clearly my first choice in regional transportation.  And now I can buy tickets from my cell phone… nicely done.

Go to boltbus.com on your cell and you will be directed to the mobile site

-from Boltbus.com via Twitter

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Wednesday, July 22, was a good day.  Although I just discovered this now, on that day Google released Google Maps for Mobile version 3.2.  The new release adds “layers of fun” to the application.  In other words, you can now show or hide layers which contain information on search results, My Maps, Transit and points of interest from Wikipedia.  How cool is that!?

When I went to Dublin last year I created a My Maps of places of interest.  At that time I printed the map out and labeled the points of interest by hand because that was the only way to take it with me.  Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for Google to put My Maps on cell phones.  I’ve even gone onto the Google product ideas site to vote for it.  Now, not only do we get My Maps integration but more goodies as well.  The Wikipedia feature is a great idea.  Bravo!

Read the official Google Mobile Blog post here.

photo credit: Digiart2001 | jason.kuffer

Rudy’s is a NYC landmark, established in 1933 and still standing as the last bar of it’s kind on 9th avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.   It’s a dive covered floor to ceiling in duct tape with cheap beer, free hot dogs, outdoor space, history and character.  9 out of 10 bars in NY have none of these things!  Rudy’s needs to re-open the outdoor patio to save the business but the city is dragging its feet.  Save Rudy’s or the paper mache pig will die and you may never taste the glory of free hot dogs again.  Further pleading at thelmagazine.com

Click Here to Help

Monoliths and Dimensions, the new album by Sunn O))) has a Metascore of 87 which is currently the 3rd highest Metascore of 2009.  This is the type of critically acclaimed yet difficult to digest experimental indie album that eMusic users should eat right up.  Which is why I was surprised to see the eMusic user rating is a mediocre 3.0 out of 5.  So what gives?  It turns out the users who gave negative reviews were actually expressing their contempt for eMusic’s new pricing structure in lieu of rating the music on the album.

So I can get this 4 song album for 12 song credits? Score!

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(cc) photo credit: daryl_mitchell

Anyone remember Tinker-Toys?  This was was one of the great toys of past generations which allowed kids to be creative. I use the past tense here because I assumed Tinkertoy was extinct, replaced by newer, “better”, plastic-er, modern products.  Well to my surprise, it’s still available!  And what’s even more shocking is that it’s still made of real wood, at least for certain parts.  If you have a young child, I wholeheartedly recommend Tinkertoy.  Don’t worry about the splinters… it’s all part of the fun.

The Tinkertoy Construction Set was created in 1914—one year after the A. C. Gilbert Company’s Erector Set—by Charles H. Pajeau and Robert Pettit in Evanston, Illinois. Pajeau, a stonemason, designed the toy after seeing children play with pencils and empty spools of thread. He and Pettit set out to market a toy that would allow and inspire children to use their imaginations.

-Wikipedia

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It’s official. According to Google, who knows everything, the most prolific figure in the world [wide web] is Obama.  It sure is a close race though.

Google Searches in the last 30 days

Introducing the new breakfast cereal from eggyweb.  Recommended daily allowance of corn: 10,000%! Nutritional Info Not Applicable. Product details TBA.

Last week as I was walking down 11th avenue I saw two consecutive scooter puffs and I thought “this would be fun to blog about.”  Not surprisingly, like 99% of everything, it has already been blogged about.  One day I will return to this world renowned scooter puff hot spot armed with my camera.  For now I will simply regurgitate the following:

…even as the obesity problem grows in America, we at Manolith see a silver lining: more fat guys are riding scooters. -Manolith