This story is one of those great if your there but will make you forlorn if you are not.  This weekend actually in the wee hours of the morning Sunday morning approximately 8 hours from now, residents of Northeaster Wisconsin (can pin it down much better than that) will get a chance to see the planets Jupiter, mercury and Mars clustered together in the sky.

It will happen about 45 minutes before sun up and the planets will be very close together from the perspective of a person on the ground.

Jupiter and Mars connect a little more often, but Mercury rarely makes it into this planetary line up.  So if you are a astronomy lover and happen to be in Northeastern Wisconsin or you are in road tripping distance, You are definitely in luck!

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This weekend I am putting up a new forum for Maven Mapper’s Information.  The new forum will enable more of my readers to drop by and have a conversation from time to time and cover some of these topics more thoroughly. 

I am using a new service from GoBoardz.com. 

They offer free GoBoardz Forums all you need to do is provide a valid email address. Its a pretty slick way to kick off a forum for your forum especially if you are running a blog through a service like Google.  They offer many configuration options and I now have to work on getting mine setup in a sleek new style to match the blog.

You can take a look at my forum in progress at GoBoardz at Maven Mapper’s Forum!

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Video Game Sales and Console Sales appear to be shaping up to be a winner this year, with the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii duking it out at retail.

Business week has pegged hardware sales at $771 million up 69% over last years November sales of $456 million.  That $771 million figure breaks down to $252 million from portable sales which saw a 26 percent increase and non-handheld consoles which rose from $255 million up to $519 million.

The Sony PS2 sold just short of a million units at 918k compared to its newest sibling the PS3 with its $5-600 price tag selling 197k.  The Wii sold 476k units with a price half that of the PS3.  The Xbox 360 was no laggard after its launch a year ago the console sold 511k units this November.

Software sales were up to $804 million up $102 million over a year ago. 

Microsoft’s “Gears of War” title was the software winner selling 1 million units.  Final Fantasy XII, Legend of Zelda, and Guitar Hero 2 brought up the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions repsectively indicating that sequels can sell, but that Microsoft’s non-sequel could outsell.

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Its a Saturday and low on my priorities today is serious writing.  I need a quick tech fill however and hopped over to Digg where I came across a great story from a writer that works for Google debunking the myth that Google works for or in collaboration with the CIA.

Now the article doesn’t really debunk anything with proof, the debunkation buck stops short of the mark and sidetracks on a very funny dialogue between a Google Public Relations Person and a Google Founder.

From a personal perspective, I don’t care one way or the other.  Both groups will do what they have to do in order to get ahead.

Could Google have been cooperating with the US Government when they moved their Chinese user database out of China and out of the hands of the Chinese government and Red Army?

Sure such a move was good for corporate relations, but it would have been good for the US government too.

Of Course Google had previously agreed to censor searches in China.

So on an evil scale of 1 to 10

Google might see giving search records to the Chinese government as an 8, but censoring information from Chinese citizens is only evil at about a 5 or 6 and advertising for russian dating women at a 0.5 to a -2, but the Google culture might even see importing Russian brides as a public service for the brides and the nerds that bring them to the states so maybe its a -10 on the evil scale.   Either way they see it that helping the Chinese Government directly is more evil than withholding the raw information from their Chinese customers.  Its a corporate dilemma worthy of Solomon and worked out by mere mortal Googlions.

Playing into the hands and designs of the CIA and or some other group yet to be named by conspiracy theorists is off the scales (you be the judge of which direction it is going off the scales).  Then again is Google being devilishly smart, kind of like The Firm Character, Mitch (aka Google) has secreted away its database some where in a safe harbor where no government can touch it, not the Chinese and not the US.  Its good for the CIA the Chinese can’t touch it but may not be helping the US stay the course in the War on Terror.

But then again the NSA has been working on systems and codes for a lot longer than Google has been putting together algorithms.   Google may know how to get the right search result most of the time off the internet but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts the NSA knows how to get information out of a Google DB when they need it, safe harbor or not.

[insert maniacal laugh here]

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Apple has spent years developing the image that they are cool, their products are cool, their services are cool and so are their customers.

Recent ad campaigns have highlighted the differences between Mac-cool and PC-nerdiness. 

What happens when the nerdy reality hits the Mac road?

Apple’s iPod was launched with much fanfare and some of that fanfare came from their infamous Duke iPod campaign, convincing the university to provide iPod’s to incoming freshmen.  That was almost 6 years ago.

These days some of those students have graduated and moved into the workforce.  The lecture like podcasts they received from their professors to ’study’ at school are now being adapted to the corporate world.

Podcasts are meeting the corporate rank and file coming to them in their iPod ear buds.  Podcasts training employees on the routine and mundane lectures on safety.  Podcasts relaying the latest financial results or quarterly company pitch.

The idea is that employees can listen to their iPods while they are doing ‘whatever’ and continue to accomplish the mission.  Defining that ‘whatever’ time however is where things could fracture the Apple mystique.  Does the average worker want to listen to a training lecture about Driving Safety while they are commuting home from work?  Is that even safe?

The podcast has a significant potential to help companies get the message out, quickly, effectively and on the cheap.  Employees however are already feeling the personal time pinch.  Just because an employee is ’salaried’ does that mean they should fill their every waking hour multi-tasking.

If employees reach their multi-tasking angst tipping point, will the backlash be felt by the employer or will they take their anger out on the messenger and shoot their iPod?

The Wall Street Journal covered this blurring of the lines between work and leisure time in their article The Boss Puts The iPod to Work by Anjali Athavaley .  In that article, they discussed the perk of getting a free iPod balanced with the bossy bug in their ear, providing instructions in their free time.

At the end of the day, most employees in the short term will probably enjoy the perk.  They will probably also enjoy the reduction of boring lectures and training sessions in employee packed rooms and cafeterias.  In a few years though, what will they think of this technology after the old way has disappeared.  Companies need to start working on redefining their mix to help their employees maintain a work life balance otherwise the iPod will suffer less than the employer when the tipping point is reached.

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