Yeah, so this kinda sounds like a problem…

FAA computer problems cause flight delays - CNN.com.

Adobes Lightroom 2 beta broadens editing horizons | Underexposed - CNET News.com

CNET is reporting that the next version of Adobe Lightroom will give photogs greater editing capability within Lightroom. In the first version of Lightroom, if you needed to adjust a photo it was an all or nothing deal. All changes were global. We couldn’t adjust the light levels in just one part of the photo. In order to do that, we had to open the photo in Photoshop and mask it off and on and on. This was definitely do-able, but it was an extra step which slowed down the overall photo editing job.

The next version of Light room will allow you to use a brush and adjust portions of a photograph. That is extremely handy and will speed up the work flow markedly. Time is money and the faster you can edit, the more money you make.

I had skipped the first version of Lightroom, sticking to my CS2 workflow because it worked. I am going to take a harder look at Lightroom 2.0 when it comes out.

I can’t believe that I never hear anyone talking about sharing interesting news links via Google Reader. It is such an easy thing to do and it doesn’t add that much overhead to your news reading regimen. Google Reader is an online RSS aggregation site. That means that through Google Reader, you can subscribe to sites that you go to and get notification when new content is produced. Cool stuff.

I have subscribed to a number of sites, some news, some sports, but mostly tech related. As I scroll through the stories, I look for interesting content. When I find something that piques my interest enough to read it, I share it. That creates an RSS stream of news that I find interesting. That has value. I go through the news and cull out the boring stories.

I will admit that my choices are highly biased by my tastes and what I think is important, but I would find it interesting to subscribe to friends news feeds just to get a glimpse into what they think is important.

Google Reader makes this so easy that I am stupefied that this isn’t something that more people do. We share our thoughts on blogs. We share our thoughts and location on twitter. Heck, we share everything. Why hasn’t news sharing taken off more.

I know Del.icio.us, the bookmarking website has been around for a long time, but I could never get into how it works. It has always seemed like an extra step. Besides, it was created before the explosion of RSS-ified content.

I went to Del.icio.us earlier today to see if there was a way to combine my RSS feed of news in Del.icio.us and couldn’t find it. It would be great if I could wire my Google reader feed to create Del.icio.us links, but I can’t make that happen.

Right now I am only following one news feed, and that’s Steve Gillmor. He shares news in fits and starts, but it is incredibly interesting to see what he finds interesting.

I am looking for more news feeds to read.
Robert Scoble?
Jason Calacanis?
Veronica Belmont?

There are a ton of feeds I and others would read. Why hasn’t this blown up?

If you like what I write about on this blog, and are interested to see what news items I find interesting, check out my Google Reader news RSS feed. Subscribe to it in Google Reader or the RSS aggregator of your choice. If you aren’t an RSS maven don’t fear. You can also see what I am reading on my Google Reader Shared Items page.

Yesterday, I finally decided how and when I would use Google Readers “share” function. Google Reader allows you to click a link called “share” that will make a list of news items that you find interesting. That list automatically creates a page and an RSS feed that others can subscribe to.

I have been using the share function on a hit and miss basis for well over a year now, but I didn’t have any rules.  Now I do.  From now on, if I take the time to actually read a story, I will share it.  Simple.  That means if the subject matter of a news story or blog entry piques my interest, then it is good enough to share.

How does that effect you?  Well I can be your source of sorted geek news.  Subscribe to my feed in your aggregator, and then maybe we can discuss the news of the day.

Boyfriend: Phobia caused woman’s 2-year bathroom stay - CNN.com

This is one of the craziest stories I have ever read. Apparently, in Wichita Kansas, a woman spent the last two years sitting on a toilet refusing to get up and leave the bathroom. She stayed on the toilet long enough to become fused to it. Wow.

If you don’t believe me, read the story, it’s on CNN.

KFSM, a Northwest Arkansas CBS affiliate reported yesterday, February 7th that there was an outbreak of leprosy in Northwest Arkansas in a community of people who have been relocated here from the Marshall Islands. The story broke that there were eight cases of leprosy in the Marshallese community and the news piece was very sensational. KFSM played up the “fact” that leprosy has no cure and that it was very contagious airborne disease. They interviewed people and whether they meant it or not, they painted the Marshallese in a very negative light.

As it turns out, there is no outbreak. No outbreak. What were they thinking? It is absolutely unbelievable that a news outlet would not do its homework when it comes to such an inflammatory story. The story was very sensationalized and came off xenophobic. In this era of political correctness, I thought this type of fear mongering was a thing of the past. It was very unfair.

The Arkansas Department of Health made a statement that there has been no outbreak and that leprosy isn’t as contagious as it was reported.

To add to the tragic nature of this story is that the Marshallese were forced off their island because the United States tested nuclear weapons during the 1950s and ’60s on an unpopulated atoll in the Marshall Islands. The contamination of the from the fallout made the Marshallese sick and forced them off their south Pacific island. The United States relocated them to Springdale Arkansas. What we didn’t do was make them United States citizens which makes them ineligible for healthcare aid. Now, they are the targets of sensationalized news reports that have turned out to be false. It is incredibly sad. We poison their island home and then poison their reputation here in the United States.

In the case of KFSM, they have made a terrible blunder. A blunder that could have been averted if the editorial staff took their time to do their homework and get the story right. To drag the names of people with such a tragic past through the mud is unforgivable and extraordinarily embarrassing. It will be a long time before I see KFSM as a trustworthy source of news.

Hey, I just want to post a couple of links for you. If you are interested in seeing what I am reading, or subscribe to a list of articles that I think are important or interesting, you can do that. If you want to use your browser to look at what has tickled my fancy lately, take a look at my Google Reader stream.

If you want to cut out the middle man and make this whole thing automatic, you can subscribe to my link stream. It will allow you to have the “MurDog Approved” sites be sent directly to your feed reader.

I like to read the feeds, so it’s not a big deal to simply share the stories I find interesting. I can serve as a filter for you to help you stay up on what is really going on out there on the web.

There are no hard and fast rules to my feed… it is simply a river of links that happened to catch my eye. Have fun.

Engadget is reporting with “100% certainty” that a group of 6 guys who call themselves the iPhoneSIMfree.com team has made it possible to unlock the iPhone from AT&T and use it with any GSM carrier.

For those of us in the US, this isn’t that big of a deal. The only other GSM carrier of note is T-mobile, and they have their issues just like AT&T… mobile users just have to pick which issues they can deal with and go with that carrier.

The people who profit the most from this news are people outside of the United States. Many countries will never see the iPhone, and the ones that will, won’t be seeing it anytime soon…until now.

The iPhoneSIMfree.com team seems to have found an unreversible way to unlock the iPhone which is great news to us, the consumer. Products should be free. We should be able to purchase electronics and use them wherever and however we want to. These lock-in contracts break the fabric of our free-market system, and leads to artificially inflated prices and functionality-poor devices.

If real market forces are thwarted through monopolistic practices then the gray market will force the hand of the players involved.

I am an AT&T customer, and I don’t plan on buying an iPhone, but I still see this as very interesting news, and I am anxious to see how this all plays out.

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Now playing: Nouvelle Vague - Friday Night Saturday Morning

I wrote about Josh Wolf, the infamous internet journalist who had the unenviable title of the longest incarcerated individual in the name of journalism, last month. It is a sickening story of government run amok. Freedom of speech should never be taken for granted lest we lose the part of our country’s heritage that makes us great.

Enough with the high minded rhetoric… Hooray, Josh is Free! Way to go Brosive!

Heaven help the poor sap individual that has to call the Geek Squad when their Internets are down…

Speakeasy - Press Release - Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy