3M themselves have a web page (on their Canadian site) dedicated to providing a detailed description of how to make a men's wallet using nothing but a roll of Scotch® Duct Tape, a utility knife, a ruler and background music (optional).

"Most people agree that Duct Tape can save you money on costly repair bills but did you know that you could create a wallet to hold all of the money you’ve saved? It’s not as difficult as it sounds and in just a few simple steps, you could be the proud owner of this year’s most important fashion statement ('Duct Tape is my life')."

So, there's a good way to burn away a rainy weekend afternoon with the kids.

Kikizo.com has another (big ol') video of the XBOX 360 team discussing what's so cool about the upcoming console. This one's different than the Our Colony video from the other day (although it does share a little common footage).

Nice, and interesting how this marketing thing is happening... View the video here.

I heard a little about this upcoming Microsoft program earlier today (well, yesterday actually) so it's cool they just kicked out a press release: Microsoft just announced OneCare, a service offering that's geared toward the consumer PC market of unmanaged desktops. It will be available for beta testing by the public sometime in the future (see below).

A natural extension of the Windows Update and MBSA concepts, which can patch computers without user intervention and tell you where you stand from a security standpoint, OneCare will take that type of service to a new level. They'll be adding things like PC health management (performance maintenance) and data protection, as well as integrated spyware and bidirectional (yay!) firewall capabilities.

Features of OneCare will include:

• Defense against evolving threats: Windows OneCare will provide automatically updated anti-virus, anti-spyware and two-way firewall protection.
• Performance and reliability tools: PC owners will be able to choose to have Windows OneCare automatically carry out periodic maintenance tasks such as disk cleanup, hard-drive defragmentation and file repair. The service also will offer boot-time information and proactive support tools to help improve the customer experience.
• Backup and restore capabilities: Windows OneCare will enable automated backup of files by category on CD and DVD, along with the option to back up all files on the system or only those that have changed since the last time the action was performed. If files are accidentally deleted or corrupted on the PC hard drive, the service is designed to restore saved versions or map them on a new PC.
• Simple, integrated service experience: PC users will have one simple point of reference for checking the overall health of their system. Windows OneCare will automatically notify users of available updates or other recommended actions and enable users to easily act as needed. Otherwise, the service stays quiet and in the background.

Microsoft employees are having a shot at it this week for a dogfooding phase of testing, and the public will be able to use it during a beta phase later this year. If you want to nominate yourself to participate in the Public Beta, go to http://beta.microsoft.com and use "OneCare" as the guest ID there.

Kudos to Microsoft for an initiative-taking program that brings better managed services to unmangaed PCs.

The next version of the XBOX, called the XBOX 360, was announced today. They did this kinda lame thing for a half hour on MTV (but hey, what do you expect on that channel), but the device itself looks really awesome. Games, pictures, video, audio - it's a HD media center extender and game console and much more.

If you saw the MTV thing and found it lacking, check out this video. It's very good.

(found via Engadget)

UPDATE: Another preview video has hit the net.

MessageCast, the service that drives .NET alerts for many-a-weblog (and other services), has announced they've been acquired.

So, if you subscribe to MSN/.NET alerts through for this or other weblogs, they're offline for a bit and will apparently be announcing more shortly.

In an email from the company:

As part of the transition, we need to have you review new licensing terms. Our service will be temporarily disabled in preparation for this.

A follow-up email will be sent shortly which will allow you to re-enable alerts.

Interesting - Hmmm, I wonder who acquired them? I can guess...

UPDATE: Ah - just as I guessed - MessageCast was acquired by Microsoft:

"We have an important announcement: The MessageCast LiveMessage service has been acquired by Microsoft Corporation."

I'm in the greater Seattle area for a few days at Microsoft for an event. It's all covered under non-disclosure, so no blogging about the content is allowed, but if anyone's around and wants to catch up, send me an email [greg(a)greghughes.net] and let me know.