We rolled together the rumors that were making the rounds a month ago for new product announcements by Apple for April. We expected an anniversary surprise of sorts that never materialized. The iPhone has reportedly gone back for a complete redo and won’t make it until fall or the holiday season. No new video iPod has appeared with the bigger screen and a new iTunes movie store. Not even a new iBook replacement. All we got was a 17″ MacBookPro and the continued migration to universal apps.

LostInaFog.com has joined the BlogBurst network. BlogBurst is a distribution network that exposes certain “high quality, topical” blogs to high traffic websites. Basically, they get permission to use my posts at sites like the Washington Post, SF Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, etc. In return I get higher visibility and more traffic (each piece used must carry my byline and links back to the site).

I have no idea how well this will work, but I’ll keep you posted. I doubt that the major newspapers are lining up to link to my post on the Shinto Penis Festival.

No, that’s not me, but thanks for the thought. Welcome to the Shinto Penis Festival. I could type on for a bit here, but you know you just want to go look at the pics.

Declan McCullagh over at CNET supplied my morning wake-up rant enabler today with news of another bill headed to Congress designed to hand even further power over to the RIAA, Software and Information Industry Association, etc. Fair Use is about to drop out of the lexicon completely, it would seem. The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 will be brought forward shortly by Texas Rep Lamar Smith, but was evidently written inside the Bush Administration’s Justice Dept. Rep Smith is the Chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Follow that link to the subcommittee page to see the rest of the members of this RIAA-bought group. If any of these congresspeople belong to you, make sure they know how you feel about this anti-consumer legislation.

As you know I tend to use this blog to do a lot of experimenting, hoping to learn a little somethin somethin. I spend some time on Wednesday adding some new google adsense scripts in and messing around with them to match the colors of the website, etc. So the thin little google menu bar that runs at the bottom of the header above seemed to work just fine, as did the mods I threw at the code for the adsense block in the right toolbar.

Take a close look at that photo. At first glance it may appear as if this is just a distressed-so-it-costs-twice-as-much art object of a birdfeeder. But no, that’s the result of my brother Mark’s plastivorous squirrels assault on his “squirrell-proof” birdfeeder. They’ve evidently now chewed off enough that they can hang by the cable and swing down for a treat. And this after he already had to move it further away from a tree because the squirrels had mastered the art of jumping the 7 feet and grabbing on to the bottom part, avoiding the “proofing” system altogether.

San Franciscans “celebrated” the 100th anniversary of the great quake of 1906 this week with all sorts of activities and nostalgic stories. Here’s a short rundown of the ones I liked best:

CNet News.com blogger Michael Kanellos has a piece today reminding us that it wasn’t the quake that killed the City as much as the political ineptitude afterwards. Hmmmm. Sounds familiar…

Apple has languished in the 3-5% market share area for many years now. That would be in the PC market, not the portable entertainment device market that remains dominated by Apple. Apple’s fans don’t seem to mind, and in fact see it as something of a status symbol. But I think that Steve Jobs and Apple have their eyes set on something more. How does Apple get to 10% market share.

There is nothing better than a clever protester…well, except for maybe that really funny heckler at the baseball game. But come on, regardless of your opinion on the matter, this IS funny…

I found this at OneGoodMove, along with some other humorous and thoughtful fare.

The lack of activity on LostInaFog is in direct correlation to the time needed on other projects recently. It seems only fair that I should give you some idea of the other things happening so at least you won’t think I’m just sitting here watching Conan all day–OMG, did you see the John Lovitz In the Year 2000 bit the other night?.

I highly enjoyed Parnell and Samberg’s Lazy Sunday a few weeks back and like Natalie’s gangsta rap just about as much. Lazy Sunday seemed to spawn its own little industry of tributes, replies and mocks of the original. Most were just…well…bad. But this one we like. West Coast respresents with Lazy Monday. And I promise, no more vids for a while. Thanks Niff for the pointer.

Youtube has become my goto site for ridiculous and funny waste of time moments. There’s almost always something lingering that will send you flying. Here’s a couple of the more…interesting…clips I’ve found this week. These guys bring lip-syncing to a whole new level—

I see today that the DEA agent in the vid is sueing the government for ruining his career and life by allowing this video to make its way into the blogosphere. I don’t know. Maybe you did all that yourself by just, you know, shooting yourself in the foot in front of a class of elementary kids?