Finally there is some good news coming out of Washington. After years of anti-consumer laws when it came to digital content, two congressmen, Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) have introduced a bill called the “Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship” or FAIR USE. The aim of this bill is to reverse some of the overly-limiting mandates of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

For years, it has been legal for a person to make a backup copy of content and even share that content with a friend. It is a legal precedent established back in the 1970’s called fair use. In 1998, lawmakers did an end around on fair use by passing the DMCA which made it illegal to circumvent Digital Rights Management of any kind.

On the face of it that doesn’t sound so bad, until you realize that the DMCA makes it illegal to put movies that you purchased on your video iPod. What? Are you serious? The DMCA breaks decades of fair use and freedom. It’s a bad law.

Enter Rick Boucher and John Doolittle. Finally two lawmakers I can believe in! Bravo men, for not taking the money of the Hollywood lobby and standing up for your constituents, the people who just want to watch the movies they own the way they want. Bravo.

It is the first time in a long time I am proud of any lawmakers. It seems trivial when compared to the war in Iraq and some of the other awful thing going on in the world, but get us out of Iraq and I will make another glowing blog entry. But until then, Congressmen Boucher and Doolittle are heroes! (If I could vote for you, I would…you listening Arkansas lawmakers?)

According to this story on CNET, Adobe is currently developing an online version of its photo editing software that is slated to be absolutely free. This is great news for a large number of people who need only a rudimentary photo editor. Almost everyone needs light editing capabilities and up until now low cost, easy-to-use photo editors have been relatively hard to come by. But, now with the majority of Americans on the net now having broadband, and bucket loads of computing power easy to come by, Adobe may just be ahead of the curve.

Adobe’s CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET the plan was to have advertisements to pay for the online version of Photoshop.

I’ve said it before, but with every new app that appears on the net, the closer we get to a world where OS and computer make really becomes commodity. PC’s have been commodity for years, and as more and more apps find their way online, even Macs become less interesting.

It just occurred to me that that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are allowing us to tivo our friendships. Instead of the world we used to live in where social interaction was a real-time activity, now we can interact on a very deep social level whenever it is convenient.

There is term given to our tv viewing habits since the advent of Tivo and other digital video recorders and that is “Time Shifting”. Tivo allows us to watch our favorite tv shows whenever they are convenient to us. Gone are the days when all things had to stop because The Dukes of Hazzard is coming on. Now we place our favorites in a season pass, and we can watch at 3:00AM when we can’t fall asleep.

Social networking sites bring that sort of time shifting ability to our relationships. In facebook, when you log in, you get a blow-by-blow, moment-by-moment recap of everything your friends have been doing.

I don’t know why, but something about this is a little creepy. I don’t want my relationships to be relegated to a simple RSS feed. I guess the onus is on me, and all of us, to go beyond the keyboard and screen and actually get some face time with the people we love.

Look down your friend list and go on a coke date, eat a burrito or go throw a disc.

Facebook, MySpace, have you heard of these places? They are examples of social networking websites; websites built around gathering people together around common interests or … something. As time passes, social networking has morphed and ballooned to the point that it is hard to define. All the definitions fall short because social networking functionality is popping up everywhere.

I just heard about something on Om Malik’s blog that will add to the craziness. It is called www.ning.com. Social networking has become commodity. Now it has become easy to deploy.

Ning allows you to set up a fully functional social network website that revolves around anything that you are passionate about or that catches your fancy.

Think about the organizations you belong to. Keeping up with all the members can be a bit of a nightmare. We are all busy, heading in many directions at once. A social network site that allows like-minded individuals to rally may be just the thing. But, be careful. Social Networking looks to be the parachute pants of the 2000’s.

Skydiving down the face of a mountain.

I am constantly on the lookout for what is next in the online world so that I can be nimble and have the appearance of being able to read the future. If you were to go back 3 years ago and look at the online landscape and look for trends, if you were very perceptive, you might have just seen podcasting be born. For those who are completely invested in the online world, it is hard to imagine the podcasting, something that we take for granted, is that young.

For those few who were perceptive and quick on the uptake comes notoriety which is extraordinarily hard to replicate today in podcasting. There are names like Dawn and Drew, The Evil Genius Chronicles, SoccerGirl Inc. among others who started podcasts and captured attention early. I would posit that if these same people were to start a podcast now, they would languish in obscurity. Being the early bird definitely has its perks.

That means that it is very important to be ever vigilant for what’s next in the online scene. I think I have found a candidate and it is something that I am calling nanoblogs. Nanoblogs are quick little 1 or 2 phrase or sentence blogs that keep your friends up-to-date with where you are, and what you are doing. (I just did a search and it appears that Rafe Needleman has already coined this phrase and has an entry out there talking about nanoblogging. You will just have to take my word for it, I thought of this name on my own in parallel with Rafe.)

The first one I heard about nanoblogging on a podcast called Net-at-Nite. Leo LaPorte and Amber McArthur were talking about Twitter, a brand new service that allowed its users to write extraordinarily short blog entries and post them. Really what it amounted to was a moment by moment, blow by blow commentary on the minutia or the writers life. It is not uncommon for a Twitter user to post a passing thought, her current location, an annoyance, or whatever tiny tidbit crosses their mind.

I subscribed to Leo LaPorte’s twitter feed for a couple of days. I set it up so that the updates would come in through my cell phone. It was a strange couple of days of electronic voyeurism that was strangely interesting. I finally shut off the barrage of IMs when I discovered I was running through my small allotment of monthly SMS’s very quickly.

Another technology that I just heard about is a micro to nano blogging tool called www.tumblr.com. It is a new thing that is just like a regular blog only much, much lighter. In fact, the more I think about it, it is in the middle of nanoblogging and standard blogging. You can call it a microblog.

I don’t know if nanoblogging or microblogging will have the impact of podcasting, but it does seem to be the latest permutation of the RSS society that we are building. Who knows this could be a bridging technology to something yet unimagined. Whatever it is it seems to be the next thing for whatever it is worth.

By the way you can subscribe to my Twitter Feed right here.

Bravo Webbleyou.com on keeping us bloggers in the loop about why our sites have slowed down. I just received an email from my service provider with an exhaustive explanation as to why murdog.com is running slow at the moment.

Excerpt from email…

As soon as we are able to set up the new servers, we will start moving sites. We anticipate this taking about a week, which is much longer than we’d like, but is probably a realistic estimate given the steps that are involved.

In the meantime, the servers will continue to work, but with a delay of about 30 seconds between page loads. My sincerest apologies for this inconvenience. I understand how important it is to have your website up at all times, and I am working closely with our hardware specialists to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Again, if you would like a refund for this month, please ask and one will be issued. Thank you for your business and patience.

As you can see, in about a week, we should be back to our zippy selves. Again, I want to say bravo to webbleyou.com for caring enough for its customers to just let us know. Transparency goes a long way to making us feel good about your service. Slowdowns and hiccups are a part of the Internet and are to be expected. One thing that has seemed to diminish over the past few years is customer service. It’s nice to see that webbleyou.com hasn’t succombed to that.

If you want a full-on blog that is hosted by good people, I suggest going to webbleyou.com and letting them set up a word press blog for you. I haven’t missed blogger.com one bit.

Here is a great collection of crazy car accidents. You will find yourself entertained and godsmacked at some of these pictures. Please come back and comment about the pictures that BLEW YO’ MIND…

The one that really turns my stomach is the teal pickup truck on top of Ferrari. What is this world coming to?

Ok, this may be the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. It is a product from Philips that allows you to use a virtualy paint can “filled with colorful light” that allows you to paint on the wall with colored light. I know, I know, you are saying “Wha…what are you talking about.” You have to see it for yourselves.

I would love to get this for the kiddos, and then play with it myself after they go to bed. You will have to check it out.

MacScoop is reporting that we can possibly expect a black iMac. It seems like a pretty safe bet, but you know about mac rumors, we’ll believe it when we see it.

All that said, it would be a pretty mac!