Stan Lee dreamed up Spiderman way, way, way back when. Until today, he's never really gotten his due. People don't realize that he's never really been compensated, other than as an employee, for the Spiderman franchise's income.

He sued, and a judge has ruled that Stan the Man should get 10% of Marvel Comics' earning from Spiderman sales since 1998.

Marvel, of course, says they'll appeal. Hmmm... Can anyone say DC?

"The ruling is a long time coming. Lee began with Marvel in 1939, and served as writer, editor, art director, head writer and publisher for the company before effectively retiring from active duty and becoming chairman emeritus. He filed the lawsuit in November 2002, pointing out a clause in his contract that entitled him to 10 percent of TV, movie and merchandising deals, an amount he thought was significantly higher than the $1 million-per-year salary he currently receives. Marvel tried to find a loophole in the wording...

"...Lee's lawyer says the victory is bittersweet.

"The foundation of [Marvel] was based on characters he created, and to have to ultimately sue to enforce an agreement under which they were supposed to give him his fair share was very disturbing," Graff told the Hollywood Reporter. "We're certainly hoping that Marvel, after they recover from the sting of this decision, will determine that it's time to own up to its obligations to Mr. Lee."

(from Yahoo News)

Finally!!! I have been struggling with the fact that there has never been an IFilter available for CHM (Microsoft compiled help) files. But now there is!

UPDATED INFO: Apparently there is another relatively new freeware CHM IFilter avalable in addition to the commercial one mentioned below. I have not had a chance to check it out, and documentation is pretty much non-existant on the web site, but check out Citeknet. They have a CHM IFilter, a tool called IFilter Explorer that you can use to examine your system's IFilters, and a bunch of other IFilters (CAB, CHM, HLP, MHT, ZIP) on their web site. Thanks to Sean for the comment and the pointer - I stand corrected. I think IFilters in general deserve another post here (click to read the followup), especially with the genesis of these new desktop search applications and new activity/interest in IFilters in general.

If you use a system that can leverage IFilters to index or discover the content inside of proprietary files (systems like SharePoint or Windows built-in search, for example), this is for you. There are IFilters for all kinds of binary formats, such as PDF, TIFF files with optical character recognition (OCR), etc... And now, CHM!

In fact, IFilterShop has a whole slew of filters for sale:

• CHM IFilter
• MindManager IFilter
• Inventor IFilter
• WMV/WMA IFilter
• SHTML IFilter
• WF IFilter
• Msg IFilter
• PDF+ IFilter
• Zip IFilter
• XMP IFilter
• StarOffice IFilter
• OpenOffice IFilter
• vCard IFilter

There are also a whole bunch of free IFilters available on the Internet.

Here is the official announcement:

IFilterShop releases CHM IFilter 1.0

IFilterShop is pleased to announce the release of new product CHM IFilter.

CHM IFilter extends Microsoft Indexing Service to extract content from Compiled HTML Help (CHM) documents. Microsoft HTML Help is Microsoft's online Help authoring system. It is designed for use by authors or developers who create Help for software programs, multimedia titles, intranets, extranets, or the Internet. CHM IFilter makes Microsoft HTML Help files instantly searchable in all products built on Microsoft Search technology.

For more information, please visit our website at:

http://www.ifiltershop.com/chm-ifilter.html

(ED: removed direct reference to .exe file)

Microsoft Expert Zone WebCast: How to listen to digital music in your car
Wednesday January 19th, 10:00am Pacific Time

I have a project pending where I plan to do some serious computer-in-the-car stuff. So, I took note of the fact that Microsoft is putting on a live webcast in their Expert Zone Wednesday morning at 10am Pacific Time about that very topic: Digital music and spoken word and podcast or whatever.

"...But you need a way to connect your digital audio to your car stereo. The topic of this WebCast is how to find digital audio to listen to, how to connect a portable audio player to your car stereo, and how to support and power it while you drive. This presentation also discusses how to replace your car stereo, how to add a hard disk-based audio player, how to burn custom CDs with digital audio, and where to turn in the online community when you need help and have more questions about digital audio."

The PowerPoint deck can be downloaded prior to the event, as well.

The Jib Jab crew has been hard at work again - and here's their most recent funny film:

Check out "Second Term" from the creators of "Good to be in D.C." and "This Land." This latest cartoon pokes fun at President Bush, conservatives, liberals, and just about anyone else vying for political power.

5.8MB of fun and jest. Gotta love those Jib Jab guys. It's humorous - maybe not as funny as some of their past videos, but a good one.

Note that when you get to the end and the credits appear on the screen, some of the names in the credits are links to each person's web site - an interesting and fun diversion.

Scott and Omar have announced the release of dasBlog Community Edition v1.7. There's lots of new features and improvements in this version, and best of all, it's open source and free of charge. I have had the privilege of running it in various dev stages over the past few weeks, and yesterday one of my blogs running the v1.7 pre-release software got Slashdotted without as much as a hiccup, so I think it will hold up just fine under pressure.

In fact, this weblog was Slashdotted last year while running v1.6 (with a super-heavy traffic load that day), and it help up quite well - the slashdot traffic overran the NIC well before the app ever had a chance to choke. Considering that dasBlogCE v1.7 has a slew of big-time performance enhancements over v1.6, you can pretty well rest assured it's built to handle a serious load.

• Download dasBlogCE here
• Version history is here
• Scott's release announcement is here
• Omar is a program manager at Microsoft, who recently caught the programming bug. He's turned out to be a pretty darn amazing learner of .NET development, according to Scott.

Hey - it’s a worth a few minutes of our collective time for the chance at a free computer. Freeminimacs.com is from the same people who ran the free iPod promotion. You do have to agree to one offer, but they are all free - minus of course a touch of your marketing info.

Go ahead let’s help each other out… freeminimacs.com

From the people who brought you the Free iPod, here's your chance to get (and this is for real) a free Mac Mini - and it's the 80GB version, too.

• You have to sign up for one offer or service on a marketing web site. The marketing is what pays for the computers [Note: I signed up for an offer for Blockbuster's online rentals (unlimited rentals for $9.95 first month and $14.95 per month after that) and I'm dumping NetFlix, since the Blockbuster service costs a little less each month and adds two free in-store rentals a month - it's a perfect deal for me].
• Then you have to have 10 people do the same thing.
• Once 10 people have signed up under your referral, you get shipped you new Mac Mini.

So there you go - CLICK HERE to get started! And thanks for helping - your sign-up via a link on this page will help me get mine. Get on-board early!

The Brand New Apple Mac mini (80GB) Fast G4 processor Comes with 80GB harddrive iLife ’05, Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther,” Quicken 2005 for Mac, Nanosaur 2, Marble Blast Gold Built-in Ethernet and modem Slot-loading Combo drive DVI connector, VGA adapter Just 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall Weighs only 2.9 lbs

Picasa v2.0 has been released, and for people looking for a powerful desktop photo organizing and tweaking tool, this is the real deal. It's free, it's from Google, and it does great things with the photos on your Windows computer.

New editing features, CD burning, slideshows, tagging/labeling, captioning, enlarge for posters, send to TiVo Series 2, turn photos into a movie - lots of new and improved stuff.

Download here

Blue Collar TV is hilarious - it's a great show on Comedy Central.

They have a new feature that you can participate in: Redneck Yard of the Week.

Know someone with 15 cars in their yard? Wanna get back at them or need a good way to give a friend a hard time? Grab your camera and start shootin', and send it in. Put' em on the TV.

Here ya go: http://www.redneckyard.com/

Enjoy.

Now here ya go - awesome cool stuff. I've been spec'ing out touch screens and mobile PC cases the past few weeks, and this guy's got some serious mobile Media Center happening.

Video, pics and a great description are available on the hossweb.com site.

My own project (in design mode, not yet acquiring parts) won't be in-dash, and include GPS nav and voice commands. We'll see if I ever get around to it

Dumm deee dumm dee dahhhh...

Seems like I need some "switch" background/theme music or something...

(oh, and don't read *too* much into this, heheh)

The Cops on Top web site and weblog - where a group of mountaineering expedition team members currently climbing Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro are calling in via Satellite phone to record instant audio blog posts - got slashdotted a little while ago. That, of course, means the web server (which is the same one this web site runs on) may be under heavy load for a while.

And by the way - the expedition team made it to the summit of Kilimanjaro today!

You know, I used to blame Rory for everything. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should be blaming Scott instead...

Luckily it's the middle of the night here in the states, but we'll see what happens when people wake up in the US and start checking out their /. and getting their geek/nerd fix after a weekend of dealing with their girlfriends/wives. Heh.

Related Links:

• The Cops on Top web site and Climber's Audio Weblog that's the topic of interest (it really is cool stuff)
• The Slashdot article (note - slashdot comments are notoriously rude and insensitive, reader beware)
• Scott's "I Slashdotted Greg again" weblog entry (with a choice quote from me)
• Audioblog.com is the provider of the phone-in audio blog posting service. Cool service and cool people there.

Ok, so I can't help but post this one...

Every now and then you see Flash movies and apps that are actually worth the effort put into them. You also see a lot of useless junk. And then you have those occasional truly awesome little uses of the technology - the ones where you know Macromedia just stands back and says, "Now that's why we spent zilions of dollars on the product."

Now, if you're like really easily offended, stop reading and just go somewhere else for a while. You probably shouldn't be in the Internet anyhow. But I mean, what the heck, ya gotta admit this is kinda cool - even cooler if you have a Tablet PC, but still lots-o-fun if you don't. Now, this really is intended for the guys out there, so... uhh, never mind.

Anyhow, already: Go write your name in the snow. Yeah, I mean that way. You know you want to. And all from the warmth of your home or office. Wow. So go do it.

(via Jeremy Zawodny, who calls it Calligrapee)

Dave Barry has been writing hilarious stuff for the Miami Herald for years and years. I read his column all the time. He still makes me laugh out loud. Well, Dave's decided to hang up his hat on his regular column, at least for now:

"There comes a time in the life of every writer when he asks himself -- as Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Hemingway all surely asked themselves -- if he has any booger jokes left in him...

"...So this is a great job. And yet I'm quitting it, at least for now. I want to stop before I join the horde of people who think I used to be funnier. And I want to work on some other stuff.

"So for the next year, I won't be writing regular columns, though I hope to weigh in from time to time if something really important happens, such as a cow exploding in a boat toilet.

"At some point in the next year, I hope to figure out whether I want to resume the column. Right now, I truly don't know.

"So in case I don't get to say this later: Thanks to all you editors for printing my column, and thanks especially to all you readers for reading it. You've given me the most wonderful career an English major could hope to have. I am very grateful.

"And I'm not making that up."

For the record, I think he's just as funny today as he was when I started reading him more than 20 years ago. Thanks, Dave!

I’ve been an audioblog.com customer for some time, and have always liked their product. I have not used it much in the past, but recently I found a perfect use for their service.

Cops on Top has a team of 13 climbers – police officers and a couple civilians – in Africa on Mt. Kilimanjaro, making a climb to the summit of Africa’s biggest mountain in memory of fallen Officer Isaac Espinoza of the San Francisco Police Department.

They have a satellite phone with them, and are calling in audio blog updates using the sat phone. As soon as they call in an update, it’s posted instantly to the Cops on Top web site’s climbers weblog.

Imagine that – technology now allows a group of people in the furthest corners of the world to instantly file an audio recording update to a web site, so people everywhere can know what’s happening, right now.

I had a configuration problem the other day as I was trying to get the service running for the Cops in Top site, and Eric over at audioblog.com helped out and made a quick fix that allowed us to solve the issue and get the service working. Righ then, right there, solved the problem and made sure it was working for me. True service. Nice.

If you’re geeky and have a blog, give audioblog.com a try – it’s nifty stuff and works well.

Forgive the non-tech post, but it’s a pretty good day today and apparently there are a large number of people who are keeping an eye out to see how I am doing after my back surgery last month. I have not posted much about it here, preferring to suffer in private, but for the first time today I feel like I am turning a corner, and it’s a great relief.

I’ve spent the past three weeks fighting what at times has been extreme pain, quite debilitating and agonizing. I had surgery on my L5–S1 disc, which was herniated and pushing pretty hard on the sciatic nerve roots in that joint. The condition made for chronic pain and occasional agonizingly painful periods where I would be left effectively non-functioning. It needed to be fixed.

I had the procedure done three days before Christmas, which was an interesting decision in and of itself, one that had more to do with insurance and coverage before the end of the year than anything. At any rate, after a couple days of feeling pretty good post-op, things got terribly painful the day after Christmas.

Apparently that’s not too unusual. It tends to get worse before it gets better, they say. But that doesn’t help me feel any better. And it got a lot worse for a while.

I have spent the past few weeks with friends living at my house to take care of me and carry me around, followed by dragging myself out now and then to do something like buy food or go to work for a little while. Last week I decided to work from home the last half of the week. I found I could do most (not all) of my work in bed, and that as long as the pain was reasonable I could be fairly productive. But staying at home all the time makes me a little stir crazy.

I went to work the past two days, found a couch to lie on with my laptop instead of sitting in a chair, and confirmed that taking it easy was – in fact – a good thing to do. Today I decided to stay home again and work from here (conference calls, VPNs, remote desktops, instant messaging and email are all amazing tools), and to go to my physical therapy appointment this afternoon.

Today is the first day in three weeks that I can say my pain level is below a 5 on a 10 point scale, all morning. That’s progress. Not to mention relief. There’s nothing quite like living in fear the pain will never go away, especially when you’re not sleeping and can’t put on your own clothes.

But the fact is it’s more about progress than about perfection here. And God willing, if today is an indicator, things are starting to look up – slow improvement, but looking up.

Of course, I have physical therapy in an hour or two, and who knows how I’ll feel after that. Probably worse, but if it means things get better down the road, I will just continue to suffer. With a smile on my face, of course.