Happy Halloween everyone! To celebrate, here is your Halloween MSN Messenger Display Picture!

Ever wonder what the origins of Halloween are? I did. So I searched Google and found a number of pages with varying descriptions. Almost all the pages say that the holiday can be traced back to the ancient religion of the Celtics. There are also some pages dedicated to taking information from the Bible to explain its origins (don’t ask me why). I like this one:

Originally, Halloween was commonly celebrated as a religious holiday meant to scare evil spirits away. People used to dress up as goblins, witches, and ghosts in order to celebrate All Saints’ Day without a visit from the evil spirits. Other customs associated with Halloween that can be traced back in time include the Jack-O-Lantern. Irish children used to carve out potatoes or turnips and light them for their Halloween gatherings. The commemorated Jack was an wicked Irish villain unwanted by either heaven or hell. Jack wondered the world endlessly looking for a place to rest. Once in America, the Irish began to use pumpkins to celebrate Halloween with a Jack-O-Lantern because pumpkins were easier to carve and could be found in abundance.

Anyway, enjoy your last day of freedom. Freedom? Well you can count on seeing Christmas everywhere starting tomorrow. You won’t be able to escape the red, green and gold decorations, holiday music, and Christmas trees. New Years won’t come soon enough!

It has been a busy weekend for BlogosphereRadio so far! On Friday I posted a new Blogosphere News episode, and tonight we posted three new shows. First is a special episode of The Vlog in which we talk about election humor. There is also a new Blogoversial episode covering the election, with a follow up show to be posted on Wednesday or Thursday next week.

Finally there is a new episode of Blogging With, in which I interview Jon Gales of mobiletracker.net. Jon is a 19 year old blogger who has made some really decent money off his blog from advertising. The interview went quite well, so definitely check it out!

I know, lots of posts on the US election recently, but I am really into it. The latest is this story on Betfair, which has been accepting bets on who will win the election. Looks good for Bush:

Although U.S. opinion polls are still finding it hard to separate President Bush from his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, customers of Betfair, an online betting exchange, have overwhelmingly backed the Republican candidate.

Betfair’s latest figures show 2.3 million pounds ($4.2 million) have been wagered on Bush, while Kerry has attracted only 680,000 pounds ($1.25 million) in bets. Bush is now at 1-5 odds to stay in office, whereas gamblers can still get odds of 2-1 on Kerry to win.

Apparently the betting patterns are quite accurate, but I guess we’ll find out. I have long said that I would vote for Kerry if American, but that I think Bush will win. So he’s ahead in the polls today, and in the bets. Looks like another four years of terror.

Read: CNET News.com

Looks like Osama bin Laden has his timing down. Just days before the U.S. election, a new video tape has appeared in which Osama says:

“Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened (with new attacks).”

You know what this means? Both Bush votes and Kerry votes lose. If you vote Bush, you’re just blind. If you vote Kerry, you’re almost listening to Osama! Unfortunately, I guess the release of this new tape means that he won’t be caught right before the election. That would have made things interesting.

Read: Reuters

The Economist today endorsed John Kerry for President. Why is this significant? Well they endorsed Bush in 2000 and Dole in 1996, so this is a bit of a departure for the magazine. And if a widely respected and usually accurate publication like The Economist is endorsing someone other than the incumbent, what does that say about the state of the American economy or its outlook?

The video for Eminem‘s new song “Mosh”, which I mentioned the other day, has hit the net. Check it out at MTV!

Read: Gen Kanai

I am pretty pissed right now. The spammers have moved from email to blogs. I know this isn’t JUST happening, its been going on for a while now, but in the last two days, my blog has been hit hard. I don’t mind if real people are leaving comments. What I cannot stand are automated programs leaving comments for dugs or poker or whatever. In the last two days, over 100 of these spam comments have appeared on my blog.

I really don’t want to have to turn off comments completely. Since .Text has not been updated in ages, it lacks any sort of spam protectection. For the moment I have just written an SQL script to go through and remove all of the offending comments, but this will require constant attention from me, which isn’t ideal either. If it gets really bad, I might have to delve into the source code and rig something up myself.

My guess is that things will only get worse from here 😦

Looks like the politicians are not the only ones hopping on board the blogging bandwagon:

Although political blogs have received the most attention, advertising agencies and communications professionals are using blogs to create discussion about ideas within their industries.

The biggest fear is of an uncontrolled message slipping out, said Steve Rubel, vice president for client services at CooperKatz & Company in New York, a public relations agency with clients including the Association of National Advertisers, JPMorgan Chase and Wendy’s. “Do they allow comments or do they not? Is there an implication if it is a publicly traded firm? Who is the one who should blog for us? How might that choice be received in the company?”

All problems that should be considered, but which must be solved. Blogs are to 2005 like websites were to 1999 – if you don’t have one, you’re going to be left out, behind, and forgotten. I personally think that trackbacks, comments, and feeds should be standard on ALL blogs, but that isn’t happening even today so I doubt it will in the future. Without those community or interactive features, another question can be posed that Steve Rubel did not ask: Will our blog seem contrived?

Read: CNET News.com and NYTimes.com

It has been a while since the last news show was posted, so I figured it warranted a post on my blog. You can check out the new episode here. I guess in a way this is a “We’re Back!” post, as we haven’t done any shows for a while. We have two Vlog episodes coming up this week (I just need to mix them), and hopefully a new Blogoversial episode as well.

Thanks for listening!

Apple today announced two new members of the iPod family. Meet The Ugliest iPod Ever Conceived (this is the U2 branded version), and also The Biggest Waste Of Money Ever (this is the so-called Photo iPod).

Seriously, why would you buy an iPod anymore? If you want a good portable media player, get the Creative Nomad Zen Touch. Similar size and weight to an iPod, much longer battery life, much better media file support, and much, much cheaper.