There are photo blogs, and then there's Andrea's Photo Blog. A recent perusal of posts and accompanying photos will treat you to: Japanese joke pants, strange men's underwear where the male unit is replaced/covered (?) with a banana; a scientific experiment determining whether, "wrinkled clothing hung in a hot steamy shower room become less wrinkled"; the world's smallest pancake; and Japanese toilet seat warmers in action (and by action I mean…well…you'll see). It's a daily reminder that blogging can be fun and silly, and that Japan leads the world in strange consumer products.

I don't know how I missed this until now, but Stewart's blurb about the Google/Pyra deal is great.

I've noticed that both Ev and Jason Shellen, following Google's acquisition of Pyra, now have disclaimers on their websites stating that everything written there is their personal opinion and not the views of their employer. I wonder if you see them in person if they have a similar message tattooed on their foreheads?

Update: This post isn't about Ev and Jason, for those who seem to have misconstrued it. It's about the fact that neither of them had disclaimers on their sites before the Google acquisition, and now they do. That seems odd to me and I wonder whether Google asked/forced/encouraged them to do it.

Further update: Matt points out that Nelson doesn't have a disclaimer. So maybe Google didn't have anything to do with it. Maybe Ev and Jason did it because they thought it was a good idea, in which case I wouldn't have written the post, because my point really was that I don't like the idea of companies telling employees what to do on their personal sites, or during their personal time, etc. And I know that running Blogger at Google, and in general using the web at work, blurs that line and makes it fuzzy and we haven't figured out what the balance is yet. But corporate disclaimers, at least when corporations demand them, make me feel icky. And that was the thought behind this post.

Maciej's got a great essay in response to a Washington Post article about the technology of the space shuttle. In it he touches on important guidelines for the development of any technological project or system: the more complicated the system, the harder it will be to maintain; newer is not necessarily better; and one should use technology appropriate for the job at hand. Good things to keep in mind when embarking on that next project, whether it's a Mars-bound space ship or a Web application.

CNN reports that Pioneer 10, the first space craft to venture out of our solar system and the one that sent back all of the wonderful photos of Jupiter, has sent its last signal. It is more than 7.6 billion miles from Earth and its 21-month mission has continued for almost 31 years. Pioneer 10 has always held a special place in my heart because it was launched only a few months after my birth. [via Boing Boing]

I caught the second half of a great American Experience the other night on The Pill and it was fascinating. Being able to control my fertility is something I don't think I fully appreciated until now. The accompanying website is also really good, with a wonderful timeline of contraception and explanations of the female menstrual cycle both on the Pill and off. For those that have forgotten the lessons of 7th grade sex ed, or attended schools that didn't teach it, there's a lot to learn from the program and the site. Also worth revisiting, Malcolm Gladwell's March 10, 2000 New Yorker article, John Rock's Error: What the co-inventor of the Pill didn't know about menstruation can endanger women's health. There's a lot to be thankful for in life, but it's the work of the early feminists — the suffragists and birth control advocates — for which I am especially grateful.

A Salon article examines the weblog from the set of the upcoming movie I Love Your Work. While I think it's a really neat idea, I've been thinking since I was interviewed a few weeks ago for this piece that it's not much of a weblog if it's not released in real-time, or nearly so. (Also, links? There are no links.) Something about holding up all the content for weeks for the director's and Christina Ricci's publicist's approval seems decidedly unbloglike. But then again, it's Hollywood — I supposed we have to start with babysteps. A movie web site with actual content is a good start.

And of course, by "first" I mean the first Hollywood-on-the-set blog, not the first movie blog, since Jason's Adaptation blog came before. Yeah, enough about that.

The New York Times takes a deeper look at the Pyra/Google deal, Questions About Google Acquisition.

And if you're coming here today from the New York Times article, welcome! More about me and the site can be found here.

Why Did Google Want Blogger? Wired News' Leander Kahney talks to Dieselpoint CEO Chris Cleveland, whose company worked with Pyra Labs last year, for the answer.

Cleveland said Google's acquisition of Pyra would, quite simply, help Google create a more accurate search engine by adding rich new sources of data gleaned from weblogs…The secret, Cleveland said, is in the scores of links webloggers create every day to content on the Web.

Yup, it's true. The Danger is coming out with a color hiptop, but not in the US until, "stocks of the monochrome one fall," according to this article. Rumor, according to an email from a person who talked to a rep, is that you'll be able to remove the monochrome screen and replace it with color once it's available. Now that's be pretty cool…

Update: Ben Brown says the rumor about being able to swap in the color screen is untrue and that Danger have been trying to squash it for months. Drat.