So the concept here is good...I guess.  Use the alluring aroma of bacon to help you wake up in the morning but I just can't imagine the greasy smell lingering in my bedroom forever after days and days of the Wake n' Bacon alarm clock.

So you have to get a frozen piece of bacon and put it inside the alarm clock every night...hello health department.

And what about vegetarians?

Kinda reminds me of the "memo" machine from "Risky Business".

Light up your ears.

..eh...I saw this at first and said to myself, "That is the most moronic thing I've ever seen."  Then I thought about it as actual turn signals for riding my bike...

Nah it's still stupid.

Now if they came in red and green to emulate the running lights like a boat...

Ok, I guess they'd still be lame.

I think a lot of people have seen this:

And it certainly has been written about at length, even over at oreillynet.com. So what do I have to add to the conversation. Well I'd like to talk about how this can be viewed through the lense of good user interface designs and the decisions you make when creating a new one.

Your Opinion Is Irrelevant

The young lady's opinion at the begining of the video is a perfect illustration of bias. Essentially it illustrates one of the great product management mantras, "Your opinion is interesting but irrelevent." By the end of the video clip you find out that her initial opinion was completely false.

Get the data before you make any decisions.

Morse code is a great illustration of a design choice. Here we have a method that speeds up the transmission of text across the wire (or wireless).  The choice is around user education.  Current phone texting takes virtually zero training, morse code takes more.

Even if Morse code is A LOT faster, in a cost benefit analysis it still probably makes sense to use the current standard UI.  Although it might be interesting for some phone manufacturer to try it out.  For some reason it sounds right up Blackberry's aisle to me...

Links:
Pocket Morse 1.3
Morse Coder 1.7

Update: Well hopefully the replaced video will stay live for a bit. But nevertheless I did find something else that is interesting during my search for a replacement. Check out this:

Notice the keybooad sitting next to it? It's our old friend Steampunk Keyboard Dude, better known as Jake. Check out the project page: telegraph

So I'm not going to put together a big comprehensive list of free software applications available for you, that's been done many times here are some links for that:

• Martin's List of Free Stuff.
• Best Free Utilities
• Scott Hanselman's 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
• PC Mag - The Best Free Software
• 121space - Ultimate list

Update here is a great list of everything.

• Mohawke's Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection

In fact there are too many ones to choose from.  How do you know what to use?  Well I may not know the best (and if you have suggestions please let me know) but I have some that work great for me.

What I am going to put together is a media pack.  A suite of applications, if you will, that satisfy all your media needs.

techRivet's Free Media Pack

1. Audio:
   1. Listening: WinAmp. I've tried a bunch. Windows Media Player, iTunes, Media Monkey, MusicCube, Songbird...etc. And I keep coming back to WinAmp. It simply works. It synchs with my Creative:Zen flawlessly and is easier to use than the software that came with the player. I guess it doesn't have a few of the bells and whistles...but to play music it's king.
   2. Ripping: Free Rip MP3. Fight the power. No MS or Apple empire here man. Just rip at the bitrate you want, where you want it. Easy.
   3. Burning: I actually use a non-free app for this so I am looking for suggestions.  I use Nero because it came with one of the CDR drives I purchased last year. Suggestions Welcome.
   4. Manipulating: Audacity.  You can record anything you want with this.  I record my vinyl records onto my computer.  I have even recorded a song from a DVD onto my comp as an MP3 (a barbie song for my daughter)  I just took the line-out from the dvd player and voila'. Easy.  I am surprised how often I end up using this app.
2. Video
   1. Watching: Use what you want, no big deal in my opinion.  But the best free non-commercial app out there is VideoLan's VLC media player.  This thing plays ANYTHING.  The UI is very 1995 but everything else about it is golden.
   2. Converting: Just found this one and it has been the impetus for this post - Super.  This app will apparently convert anything into anything.  I had been trying to convert this one MP4 file into a DivX file using Dr. DivX but I just couldn't get it to pick up the audio track.  Well I downloaded Super and BANG! done and done.  DivX sa-weet.
   3. Ripping: eh?  Nero again.  Suggestions Welcome.
3. Graphics
   1. Managing: Picasa, duh!
   2. Manipulating: For the quick and dirty use Paint.Net.  If you have some skillz and want to do more use The Gimp.  I actually have a for pay app for this (Paint Shop Pro from Corel).   I'll include both in the pack.
4. 3D
   1. Now I don't have the time to mess with this but I'm just gonna throw it in cause it's so cool. Blender. You wanna make your own 3d movie? Well here you go.

And just so you know how helpful we are here at the Rivet I've gone ahead and put all these files together in one handy ZipFile. 

Here it is: techRivet Media Pack - (75 MB so you may want to get the pieces you want...).  That link appears dead, I will work on a new location today.  Anyone have any suggestions?

This is a living list so any and all advice and comments are welcome.

Update: While in the process of writing this little article I wanted to find a place to put the techRivet Media Pack without impacting my download restrictions at godaddy.com.  I thought it even money that I could find a free place for online storage.  I thought there might be someplace, but no way would it allow for a 75 MB file...Well there is a place: openomy.  It was touch and go as I uploaded, but I tested the download and it looks like it works fine.

Interesting it appears to be backed by Amazon's S3 storage service.

Update: Well openomy appears to not like that file anymore, I will find out what is going on.  Meanwhile I'll look for alternate locations.  Anyone have any great ideas?  Free online file storage and download?

Update: I know the issue now.  You need to sign up with openomy and be signed in and then you can download the entire pack.

CES 2007: HD DVD versus Blu-ray - The porn industry says HD DVD

Putting myself through the arduous trek through the floor of the adult expo I did a quick straw poll on, the virtues of HD DVD versus Blu-ray, and the answer from a dozen companies, big and small, including Pink Visual and Bangbros editor-in-chief, is going into a single direction: HD DVD is the preferred format. Period."

Much of the recent and semi-recent media technologies have been built on the shoulders - or should I say tits - of the porn industry. It can be used as one of the leading indicators for technology innovation. If the adult video industry is truly settling on HD DVD as the format du jour - er format du porn - then you at least are playing with house money at that point.

Sony is unable to learn from past mistakes.  Buy HD DVD.

I hope you have found this stupendous product. It proves two things at once. One, that not everything under the sun has been invented and two that we have a cleanliness obsession in this country.

Clorox came out with a great product: [linky].

But I had one gripe with it...when you pulled out a wipe oftentimes the wipe would tear the way it was supposed to but it would leave the next wipe inside the container. This entailed one of two solutions, you had to reach throught the little tear hole and try and pull out the next wipe or you had to open the whole conainer and restring it through from the bottom.

That sucked. It hurt to stick your finger through the little tear hole. It seemed the easier solution but it wasn't.

Now Clorox being a good company listened to its customers and/or did some extensive product testing realized that this was a "bug" in their product that should be addressed. And they did.

The tear hole now has a little hinge opening. It's the neatest little thing and completely removes the pain-in-the-ass-ness of their previous version of the product.

1. Dangit! The next wipe is inside the container.

2. No problem I'll just reach inside that little hinge thingy and pull it out.

3. Easy as pie.

Great example of a company introducing a product and then improving the design after release to eliminate existing issues.

Huzzah! Clorox. (I just wanted to say Huzzah!)