iPhones and Bubble Baths and Burning Man - Oh My!

By Li Evans

A lot of news happened this week, especially in light of the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas and MacWorld in San Francisco. In light of my past few days of watching both a "nearly" four year old (as my nephew likes to say) and a 8 month old (my niece has yet to comment on this), it's left me sparse on the time to write (apologies to the audience for that!), so here's a SMG link round up of some goodies I'd like to share.

• Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone at MacWorld on Tuesday.  It’s not the “real” iPhone - that’d be the one trademarked by Cisco, who is a bit upset about said trademark infringement, enough to sue.  Apple doesn’t seem too concerned about this impending suit, to quote their spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris, “It’s Silly”.  There might be a good point to that, Engadget is reporting that Cisco could have lost that trademark already.
• Speaking of Apple – they are now just Apple, no longer Apple Computer.
• While MacWorld got a lot of attention, CES was not to be missed.  PodTech set up Bloghaus which featured the likes of Scoble, Engadget, Gizmodo, and 1938 Media - everyone reading any kind of technology blog knew what was coming out of CES the entire time.  Also - don't miss Loren Feldman's bubble bath, the guy is hilarious!
• A favorite of Bloggers around the world – MyBlogLog was bought by Yahoo!  The crew at MyBlogLog are now well aware of how this makes there service much more visible to spammers and people wanting to game the system and they are working hard to combat the issues.  Loren Baker has a great article about how MyBlogLog could possibly save Yahoo!, personally I'm  hoping it pushes Yahoo! to bring back their Blog Search.
• Speaking of acquisitions: Ebay bought StubHub, Napster bought AOL Music, and Avaya is buying Ubiquity 
• Andy Hagans was about to give up hope, but at the 11th hour he pulled it out by ranking #2 for "Neil Patel" (yes, Neil Patel = Princess).  I think this was a great demonstration about how a few bloggers can show how linking can work for ranking articles, web pages and sites in general!
• It's not just Google that is working to get Real Time Live Quotes from the Stock Exchange, although they'd like you to think that it is!  The NYSE is also providing the information to CNBC and is in talks with other "Media" outlets such as Yahoo!
• Looks like our (and others') tax dollars are at work, with the new U.S. Legislature in place, the Representatives in congress are becoming keen on data mining.  Not to be outdone, the Brits are going to start emailing Terror Threat Alerts through and email bulletin service.
• VentureBeat is asking if the Web 2.0 bubble is bursting in light of a few companies closing, laying off and not meeting the expectations of the funding they got in 2005.
• Matt Cutt's is giving Google Infrastruture Weather Updates.
• I don't know much about Burning Man, but I know enough to know it's a pretty popular thing in the tech world.  Anyway, that aside, it seems that John Law is suing his Burning Man partners.
• Resource Shelf has a post about how DC Metro is now has real time Rail Info for the Mobile Web.  Personally, I think this is great! As a person who actually likes to take the Metro in DC rather than drive, it's perfect.
• And lastly, for some comic and stress relief - ever go to the store, any store with a parking lot and see someone who just didn't park their car right?  Well now you can let them know just what you think of their park job.  And yes, you can also submit pictures of "parking violations". :)

Hope that keeps you busy reading while I get caught up on some writing, now that the Eagles lost (*insert little sad sigh sound here*), my Sundays are free.