wow factor

I know what you like...now what do you hate? - Ask Metafilter

A lot of usual bitching, however the following takes the cake. :D

Tucking it in my pants pocket ruins my awesome silhouette.

Roger Ackroyd

It's that time of the year. Portrait art meets the masses, the punters and everyone with an opinion about art.

Archibald 2009 Portrait Competition

Best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics

The warm up prize has already been decided.
Archibald Prize 2009: Packing Room Prize Winner

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2009 Packing Room Prize winner. Paul Jackson's Flacco’s chariot

The Packing Room prize gives the Gallery staff who receive the entries for Archibald the chance to vote for their favourite Archibald portrait. This is the Gallery’s head storeman, Steve Peters’ 25th Archibald Prize and his 18th Packing Room Prize

The full online presentation of the Archibald Finalist are here.
I agree with the bookmakers that Guy Maestri's Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu may win.

Update: The winner is..
Guy Maestri's painting of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu as featured below.

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Guy Maestri's Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu

The last of the US Amigos, Sol Trujillo, leaves Telstra

I hope the door hits him square in the arse on the way out.

View 1. Roy Blount Jr. NYTimes.com decries the fact that the new Kindle 2 reads to you mechanically and avoids paying professional readers any Audio Rights.

What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books. For this, the guild is being assailed

View 2. He may be comforted by David Pogue's review of Kindle 2.

they sound oddly Norwegian, sometimes — and, of course, they’re incapable of expressing emotion. They read Hemingway the same way they read Stephen Colbert.

Roy Blount should be congratulated for his defence of professional reader's livelihoods. I do think his Guild will eventually be steam rolled by technology. A little like the newspaper he's published in.

View 3. Meanwhile, XKCD has other uses for his Kindle 2.

It may be Machine, OS, Labs, Browser, Location or Code specific, however I'm reverting to UI=1, the Older version, for basic email functions.

I've had too much of this

using UI=2

I love the wizzbangery of UI=2, especially Tasks, however the overload is just too much when trying basics like clearing the Bin or Spam

The snappiness of UI=1 Beta is a dream compared to UI=2 Beta.

Update: Just released - Google Apps Status Dashboard