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I just finished watching the Billy Mays tribute on the Discovery Channel.  Feeling a bit sentimental I started searching for Billy Mays stuff on the net.  I came across this gem of a useless, yet fun, application: Billy Mays Caps Lock.

The application, when installed, plays random Billy Mays sound bites of his famous pitch lines when you hit the caps lock key.  After installing, I hit my caps lock to hear Billy say, “Hi, Billy Mays here!”, which quickly brought a smirk upon my face.
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Unlike the LPGA, the NFL will not encourage the use of twitter, by team players and staff, during sporting events. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello emailed NBC Sports this morning explaining that tweeting during a live game will get you the yellow flag and fines.
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Famed TV pitchman, Billy Mays, has been found dead in his Tampa, FL home early Sunday morning, June 28th.  Mays was found unresponsive by his wife and was pronounced dead by Tampa Fire and Rescue at 7.45 a.m. local time. “There are no signs of forced entry to the residence and no foul play is suspected,” Lt. Brian Dugan of the Tampa Police Department said. The Medical Examiner’s Office is expected to complete the autopsy on Mays’s body by Monday afternoon.

“Although Billy lived a public life, we don’t anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days,” Billy Mays’s wife, Deborah, said. “Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times,” she added.

UPDATE: On Saturday, Mays was on board the U.S. Airways passenger plane which made a hard landing at Tampa International Airport. No one was injured in the accident, according to airport officials, but Mays told a local television station that an item fell on his head. “All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head,” Mays joked. Lt. Brian Dugan called it “pure speculation” to say his death could be related to the plane incident.

Billy Mays pitched OxiClean, Orange Glo,Kaboom, Engrave It, Handy Switch, iCan, Mighty Mendit, Mighty Putty (regular) & Mighty Putty Wood, Hercules Hook, AwesomeAuger, Steam Buddy, Zorbeez, Big City Slider Station, The Ding King, ESPN 360, Energize, Impact Gel Insoles, Omni DualSaw, Jupiter Jack, What Odor?, Tool Bandit, SIMONIZ Instant Shine, SIMONIZ fix it! (regular) & fix it! PRO, Gopher, Samurai Shark, Grater Plater, Ragazzi’s Pizza, and Green Now!

Today is a sad day whether you liked Billy Mays or the sound of his voice sent shivers up your spine.  Billy, along with his friend and business partner Anthony “Sully” Sullivan, have been pitching gadgets and gizmos for the last couple decades.  I think it would be quite hard to find anybody in the US that hasn’t heard Billy shout his line, “Hi, Billy Mays here!”

RIP Billy Mays, you will be missed.

The Federal Trade Commission is planning to investigate the practice of bloggers taking “kick-backs” in exchange for positive reviews.

Apparently, many bloggers have been accepting free items, such as laptops, cell phones, gift cards, and even straight out cash, to post favorable blog posts regarding said products and companies. Some bloggers let their readers know, in some degree, that they got a “freebie”, however many do not reveal, at the time of posting, that they have received such compensation at all.

The extreme growth of this practice and public “calling out” between rival bloggers has drawn the attention of the FTC. A video surfaced of, tech blogger, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch asking fellow blogger Leo Laporte, “Did you pay for the Pre?” during a broadcast of Twit.tv that Leo hosts. The conversation was regarding Leo’s favorable posts regarding the Palm Pre mobile phone before and at launch of the device. Arrington says, “Let’s get the disclosures right out of the way.” This conversation turns into a flurry of obscenities and ending with Laporte kicking Arrington off the show.

Companies such as IZEA, have sprung up in the surge of blogging. IZEA connects high profile bloggers with companies that offer compensation for posting reviews on their products.

The FTC believes that bloggers should be held to the same rules as other advertising campaigns regarding false claims and disclosure of compensation. The FTC has submitted, for approval, new guidelines that would allow them to go after such bloggers. The new laws are expected to be approved later this summer.

The guidelines proposed allow the FTC to investigate bloggers, defined as anyone writing a personal journal online. Many personal bloggers fear repercussions for posting articles about every-day things they like. Would this make a blogger think twice before posting about the new fertilizer they used over the weekend or the great sales they found at the local department store?

I will state publicly that I have never taken nor received any “freebies”, “kick-backs”, or any form of compensation for my postings. But, I’m not opposed to being compensated for my work. Come on, I’m broke, where are all these freebies!

Associated Press Online

Do you tweet?  I recently asked my freshman writing students this question, and was surprised to find that none of them knew what I was talking about.  Twitter had become, I had supposed, a phenomenon that everyone under the age of fifty would certainly know about.  Even I know about it, and that’s saying quite a lot, since I am slow to acknowledge and quick to dismiss many of the Myspace-type networks after the initial excitement wears off–not so with Twitter.

What exactly is the difference between tweeting and posting information on other “social networks”?  Because of the limited number of characters allowed on each “tweet”, Twitter is not a place to banter back and forth about your latest romantic relationship or wish a friend Happy Birthday and find out details about the upcoming party.  These snippets of information must be eye-catching, informative, and meaningful in order to get more than a quick dismissive glance.  Additionally, there is perhaps no better way to connect with people who are actually interested in the same things, whether those things are as trivial as cooking techniques or as critical as world hunger.

Recently, I taught a poem in my freshman literature course by Allen Ginsberg.  Having never taught this poem or author before, I simply searched on Twitter for references to Ginsberg and connected with other professors, students, and casual readers.  I began following some of my new “friends” and received input on teaching and reading one of our greatest American writers.  Sharing information is the key to the success of Twitter, but unlike other networking ideas, the information is completely controlled by the user.  Not interested in celebrity tweets?  Fine, Twitter allows you to block their often self-promoting advertisements; however, if you are interested in witty and often hilarious one-liners and instant links to funny videos, then following Weird Al Yankovic is something to lighten up your otherwise dark and dreary day.

Ultimately, Twitter will not only survive simply because of the unbelievable opportunity to connect with anyone in the world within seconds, but also because of the informational control placed in the user’s hands.  For those of you still not tweeting, I suggest you give it a try; Weird Al is waiting.

Follow me:  @teachgirl521

This morning I woke up and was happy because it was Saturday and my day off from work; then, I realized it was actually Friday and I only had a few minutes to get to the office.  I was extremely dejected that I hadn’t really jumped through time and it got me thinking about time travel.  A Google search for “time travel” brought me to The Time Travel Fund, a site dedicated to securing “your ticket to the future”.

The premise behind the site is that you invest into the fund which will accrue interest for the next 500 years so that future people can come back and “retrieve” you right before your death and fund medical treatment to keep you alive.  They even say that because of compound interest you should have enough money left over after the retrieval to “live on in comfort for a couple centuries, and then some”.

You could be retrieved seconds before your recorded point of death. This brings up several points: By retrieving you right before your recorded “death” it reduces the chance of any Star Trek[tm] type paradoxes. Perhaps a “clone” of your body will be grown and inserted back in time to your point of death to take your place for the funeral. This possibility also assumes that by then medical science will have advanced to the point where you can be revived, and your body rebuilt to a younger, stronger state. Just think, you may one day wake up 1000 years in the future, a young, healthy and physically 18 years old, with several hundred years of life ahead of you.

At least they are thinking about taking measures so that there is not a universe swallowing paradox.  If you want a good chuckle you can check out The Time Travel Fund for your self.  I just hope we don’t bomb ourselves back to the stone age before we can invent time travel.  LOL

Johanna Ganthaler, an Italian woman and her husband are on vacation in Brazil. It’s May 31st and finally time to head home so they head to the airport to catch their flight but because they were having such a good time they lost track of time and got a late start. They finally make it to the airport, but alas they have missed their flight. No worries, they are able to book another flight leaving Rio de Janeiro airport the very next day. Now, they have a little more time to enjoy in Brazil but 4 hours later they hear that Air France flight 447 has been lost from radar and later discovered to have crashed in the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 aboard.

Fast forward a couple weeks to June 11th; while driving through Kufstein, Austria, Kurt and Johanna Ganthaler’s car veered across the road and collides with an oncoming truck, seriously injuring Kurt and fatally wounding Johanna. No reports have been released as to the cause of the crash or who was driving.

Many people on the social site Twitter have been posting their condolences and correlating this sad twist of fate to the cult movie series Final Destination. In these movies characters escape death by some sort of divine intervention only to meet their fate later, insinuating that you cannot escape death.