Just wanted to remind y'all that I'm over at http://kpao.org now.

Oh, and I just launched a new web site experiment called rated best. It gives a single product or service recommendation in each category. http://rated-best.org

Steve Kirsch has been a long-time philanthropist and also staunch supporter of philanthropy. The vision listed on his foundation's web site is:

We want a safe and peaceful world, one without the threat of destruction. We want a healthy world, one without disease and without pollution of our air, water, and land, and one in which all species have the ability to survive and flourish.

But now that's all changed. Steve was recently diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer affecting less than .0005% of the population. Here's the statement posted on the foundation's web site:

In early October 2007, the Kirsch Foundation announced a major change in direction for the organization. After extensive deliberation, the Foundation's Board of Directors made a decision to invest a substantial portion of its assets into research associated with Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia. The Board came to learn about this rare blood cancer through Founder Steve Kirsch's diagnosis with the disease in August.

So basically as a result of this diagnosis, Steve has decided to close his foundation turning his back on it's vision and divert most of the remaining assets to research for an extremely rare form of cancer with a median age of onset between 60-65 with a median survival rate of 5 years after diagnosis. According to the CDC, the average life expectancy for males in the US is now 75.4, so here is an illness that affects a miniscule portion of the population, and for those who do get it, it reduces their lifespan by 7-15%.

It's really too bad, Steve. You had big, hairy, audacious goals, and then you just gave them up for something that's none of the above and feels more self-centered than charitable.

In contrast, here's how Randy Pauch—computer science professor at CMU—responded to his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer that will kill him within 3-6 months. I have a ton of respect for this guy. To him, the cancer is just another "brick wall" to get though, an obstacle on the path to his true goals and not the goal itself.

As an employee of Yahoo!, I was doing my best to “dogfood” the company's products including using Yahoo! 360° for my blogging platform. But now is the time for me to let it go. I no longer work at Yahoo!, and Yahoo! itself is even giving up on 360°, but they don't yet have a replacement product to move to.

I can't say I'll miss it that much. I've lost my share of well-written posts in the early days. And I've received complaints from folks who don't want to have to log in just to leave a comment. I even made a failed attempt to move over to Vox, but they weren't much better.

I'm moving over to KPAO! for a group blog with my friends David and Philip. If I have any loyal readers out there, follow me on over. Oh, and if you have read and liked my stuff, leave a comment saying so.

I admit it, I bought a new Zune. I read the buzz on the net, installed the new client, and it all impressed me enough to buy a unit. The design—and especially the use of great typography—is impressive. The industrial design of the unit is well done – it's small, lightweight, and has simple, usable UI. I got the 8GB version, so the screen is a bit too small to seriously watch videos or look at pictures. But it is nice for navigating through my music collection.

There are some little things that make it clear people are paying attention. It will play M4A tracks, so anything ripped in iTunes will work on the Zune. The software can monitor folders on your desktop looking for new music tracks. And I like the mouse-over volume widget. Hide the controls to keep the visual noise down by default, but show it on mouse-over.

Also, they implemented one of my design ideas that I could never get my developers to do – faded to transparent on clipped strings (rather than ellipses). This preserves an extra character or two and is a much more refined visual look than the ellipsis, which has been around forever (back in the days of black and white screens on the original Mac, and probably even earlier).