I just came across a cool idea on using plucker to read del.icio.us entries offline. The idea is, you mark entries with a read-review tag, then use plucker to pull down the feed and 1 level deep of link data. This way, you can review pages away from your computer if you have downtime.

Now when I visit del.icio.us, I’m greeted by the following message, “Sorry, you have been banned for 30 minutes.”

Oops.

Chris informed me that the BestBuy near my house had a table full of iPod Shuffles for sale. I was surprised, since no stores seem to have them in stock. I picked one up. Now I’ll see if I can use it as motivation to exercise.

I’ve used a flash mp3 player, some little sd player from rio. However, here’s the rub. The rio music manager software just flat out sucks. You couldn’t even treat the device as a removable drive, which would have even been preferable to the software’s non-windows like folder interface. It was awful, putting music on it was a chore.

So, this is why Apple wins again. Being able to toss the songs on from iTunes, where they all already nicely reside, is the biggest benefit. Would I like a screen? Probably, though, the only thing I ever used it for when running was to tell the time. Since I carry my phone, that’s a non-issue.

Anyway, it’s pretty sweet. And if you live in Orange County and want one, check out the BestBuy in Tustin Marketplace.

The CompUSA near my house has a managers special tag out on the slightly older, iBook 14″ 1ghz systems. They wanted $699 for them. Amazon sells the 12″ variety for $799, so as you can see, this is a great deal. I was ready to buy, and guess what, none in stock! Then they told me they’d sell me the demo…then they wouldn’t. Then they wouldn’t give me a straight answer if they would be getting any more from a warehouse to clear out.

I guess I’ll have to call around over the next few days to see if I can work something out, because that price is incredible.

Today I’m experiencing both the joys and frustrations of using AIM. I use it all the time, of course, it’s nothing new.

On the serious “boo” front, it turns out that whatever the AIM proxy Cingular/ATT is using for the OGOs, well, it kinda blows. You get disconnected, and it still thinks you’re connected. Takes me multiple times of logging in and out to ever get it to work. I think my recent attempt took 7 tries. The error is uninformative, too.

On the “yay” front, I got to chat with Roland for like an hour and some, which was cool. Ahh, the days of both our jr. high and high school youths spent wanting to look like members of Skid Row.

I ran across an interesting Jabber application today called Lluna. There’s also a firefox plugin for it. The concept is pretty simple, it uses jabber for communication, and tracks what website you are currently viewing. It throws up your avatar at the bottom on the web browser for that page, as well as the avatars of other users currently at the site. This could, for instance, let users at a blog community like brendoman.com chat in real time about the news on the site.

T-Mobile released CallerTunes (aka Ringback tones) today. For those unfamaliar, it’s a tone played in place of the normal “ring-ring” to your callers.