1. What is the T-Mobile HotSpot Free Weekends promotion?

The Free Weekends promotion allows T-Mobile USA mobile phone customers the ability to access T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi Internet service on the weekends for no charge. In order to participate in the Free Weekends promotion, T-Mobile phone customers must have an active post-paid or pre-paid voice or data account with SMS capabilities. This is a limited time promotion and provides participating customers with unlimited Wi-Fi access between 12 am EST Saturday to 3 am EST Monday at all U.S. T-Mobile HotSpot locations.

Fun! Not that I often end up at non-free WiFi locations... but sometimes. And I can imagine how to share the love...

Wireless Internet Access - T-Mobile HotSpots

Gladwell: This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? Why does Eddy Curry come to camp every year overweight?

The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder.

To me, this is what Peyton Manning's problem is. He has the work habits and dedication and obsessiveness of Jordan and Tiger Woods. But he can't deal with the accompanying preparation anxiety. The Manning face is the look of someone who has just faced up to a sobering fact: I am in complete control of this offense. I prepare for games like no other quarterback in the NFL. I am in the best shape of my life. I have done everything I can to succeed -- and I'm losing. Ohmigod. I'm not that good. (Under the same circumstances, Ben Roethlisberger is thinking: maybe next time I stop after five beers). I don't know if I've ever felt sorrier for someone than I did for Manning at the end of that Pittsburgh playoff game.

ESPN.com: Page 2 : Curious Guy: Malcolm Gladwell

Marc Levinson explains why the shipping container, along with the microchip, should be considered one of the great inventions of the second half of the twentieth century.

Sounds like a great book; shipping containers have been a recent source of fascination for me, starting upon my visit to the Panama Canal. I kind of want an excuse to play with some, like build a second home.

800-CEO-READ Blog: Jack Covert Selects -- The Box

Okay so that's a wise-ass title, but it's from the heart. 37Signals impressed me with 43Things, and can claim a string of successes in RubyOnRails, BaseCamp, and Internet Marketing in general. Now they are spilling the beans on how they achieve rapid success in the market with an inspirational how-to-succeed-developing-software ebook.

37Signals reveals the Secrets of How and Why they disappoint me.. for $19.99 | Threadwatch.org

Below is an example of the Pad Thai recipe (pretty close) to the way it appears in the book. Look closely at the recipe, it reflects the way all the recipes in this book are written - short-hand instructions, grams and litres - the combination of the two could be enough to discourage some of you newbie cooks.

101 Cookbooks - Dylan Pad Thai

From Search Engine Watch's 2002 April Fool's page: Google Quits Search, Focuses on Waste Management

Google To Become Portal
GoogleMail is to allow anyone to be myname@google.com. New GoogleStocks and GooglePages web building feature also unveiled. "Yeah, we said we'd never become a portal, but that was all part of our master plan," said cofounder Larry Page. Google's other cofounder Sergey Brin also confirmed that the company was launching a hostile takeover of Yahoo.

GooglePages | A Whole Lotta Nothing

The online storage market is evolving fast. In the past, users could expect no more than a simple service where files could be slowly uploaded and downloaded from a mapped virtual drive or a simple web based interface. Little competition (and the bursting of the bubble) led to very high prices for a minimal amount of storage.

Over the last year a slew of new services have launched (some are launching in February) with serious web 2.0 features, reasonable pricing (including free unlimited storage) and, in at least one case (OmniDrive), the ability to read/write directly to the file with local applications like Office, on the remote server. This last feature speeds the process of writing to files significantly by skipping the requirement to download the file to the hard drive first.

TechCrunch � The Online Storage Gang

How do you elminate viral marketing? Put a wall around your content. Times Select shows how its done.

Not at all surprising...

A VC: Times Select and Anti-Viral Marketing

As part of developing a business model for Omnidrive for months (probably years) I have been thinking about the economic model of online storage. When speaking to potential users, investors and reading general feedback it seems that Google have set the bar high for other services with their Gmail offering. Most users now expect at least 2GB of storage for free, afterall, if Google do it then so must you. Mike Arrington from Techcrunch went as far as to ask for 500GB for cheap

Nik Cubrilovic � Blog Archive � The Economics of Online Storage

With apologies to Bruce Eckel, I sat down this afternoon and put together a draft list of the first-order elements of Web 2.0 thinking. It's not that I have the hubris to consider this list official in any way but it should be a serviceable starting point for debate, discourse, and reference. I'd also like to give credit to Jeremy Zawodny for his write-up pointing me to Tom Coat's excellent presentation notes from his Future of Web Apps talk which partially inspired this effort. I think both of them have really solid source material. But they still don't quite capture a complete high-level picture of the ingredients, forces, and decisions that have to go into thinking about, using, and building complete Web 2.0 software experiences.

Thinking in Web 2.0: Sixteen Ways (web2.wsj2.com)