Looking for hosts…

Literally Everything is a growing and diverse news source providing offbeat, technology and entertainment news to many users each day. Our viewers are interested in consuming entertaining and interesting content. To bring more content to our visitors, we are looking for two hosts for a new podcast. The show will be recorded and released once weekly. You’ll have the opportunity to play an important role in a new blog network. Please send an email to literallyeverythingblog@gmail.com if you are interested. We are looking for two hosts, with at least some prior experience. A demo may be requested of past work. We look forward to hearing from you soon.   

 

Mad Money? I think so…

Jim Kramer, the host of the popular MSNBC TV show “Mad Money” freaks out a few days ago during a guest spot on a news segment. Describing issues with the fed and the down markets, he gets intense and starts screaming. He’s usually an intense guy, but he really wins the award for one of the best freak outs i’ve seen yet on television. Definitely worth checking out, even if you’re not into finance news or the stock market.

Inmates Won’t Leave: Prison Food Too Good

 

Here’s one for the record books. Inmates of an Indian prison have refused to apply for bail because the food is just “so good.” The prison, Parappana Agrahara in Banglore is crowded to more than capacity, but the inmates are just enjoying their time too much. Criminals in jail won’t apply for bail to get out while younger offenders are lying about their age just to get in. The Bangalore Mirror, a local newspaper in the jail’s area is reporting that healthy and definitely tasty food is currently being served by ISKCON, a Hindu evangelist organization. They took over the prison’s food service department and have been under contract to supply food for prisoners since May. Lunch and dinner typically include steaming hot rice, vegetables and a spicy lentil dish known as sambar and buttermilk. They even serve dessert on festival days and national holidays. One prisoner, Raja Reddy, who has been arrested 20 times in the past 30 years for theft, robbery and burglary said, “When we are getting tasty nutritious food three times a day here, why should we go out and commit crimes.” 

We’re Coming Back

We’ve been out of commission here at Literally Everything. Things have definitely slowed down over the past few months, but we’re ready to breathe some new life into the blog. We’ll be back in business really soon!

Man Completes 3,272-Mile Amazon Swim

Slovenian Martin Strel has reason to celebrate. He just finished a 3,272 mile swim through the entire Amazon River. He’s lucky he made it safely considering how dangerous the Amzin river is. But, after nine weeks, Martin Streal arrived near the city of Belem, ending a swim almost as long as the drive from Miami to Seattle. He has been swimming an average of 50 miles a day since early Feburary. Just before he finished, he was struggling with dizzineess, vertigo, high blood pressure, nausea and delirium. He was ordered by his support doctor to discontinue the swim. However, he went against the odds and finished the river length.

He’s hit point zero,” Borut Strel, Martin’s son and the project coordinator, said by telephone from the Amazon. “There will be a ceremony Sunday in Belem, but he finished today.”

Speaking in fluent accented English by satellite phone during a break aboard his support vessel, the elder Strel said that the going got tougher the closer he got to Belem.

“The finish has been the toughest moment so far,” he said Thursday. “I’ve been swimming fewer kilometers as I get closer to the end. The ocean tides have a lot of influence on the river’s currents and sometimes they are so strong that I am pushed backward.”

Well, after several months of severe pain, he has accomplished his goals. He could have easily turned back when his arms and legs could barely move, or when he second-degree burns were developing on his face, but he didn’t let them stop him.

When sked about new adventures, he said: “I am not thinking about that right now … But I’ll find some other crazy swim, maybe in a lake or in an ocean.”

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We’re Expanding: The Green Factor

Just wanted to pop in to let you know that I’ve been working on expanding the blog. In the next few days, we’ll be launching our new blog: The Green Factor, which I hope will inspire people to be more concerned about the enviorment. Keep an eye out for the new blog.

Apple: 100 million iPods sold.

 

Apple® today announced that the 100 millionth iPod® has been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years ago, in November 2001, and since then Apple has introduced more than 10 new iPod models, including five generations of iPod, two generations of iPod mini, two generations of iPod nano and two generations of iPod shuffle. Along with iTunes® and the iTunes online music store, the iPod has transformed how tens of millions of music lovers acquire, manage and listen to their music.

 

“At this historic milestone, we want to thank music lovers everywhere for making iPod such an incredible success,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPod has helped millions of people around the world rekindle their passion for music, and we’re thrilled to be a part of that.”

 

10 Things We Can Do To Reduce Global Warming

 

I think we all understand that it is important to be concerned about our enviorment and the effect we are all having on it. However, I think it’s hard to figure out what we can each do to reduce our enviornmental damage. Here is a list of 10 things you can do to help slow down global warming. Also, you can calculate your carbon waste in the carbon calculator at the bottom of the list.

Install a programmable thermostat
Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill

Plant a tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%. The Arbor Day Foundation has information on planting and provides trees you can plant with membership.

Do not leave appliances on standby
Use the “on/off” function on the machine itself. A TV set that’s switched on for 3 hours a day (the average time Europeans spend watching TV) and in standby mode during the remaining 21 hours uses about 40% of its energy in standby mode

Take a shower instead of a bath
A shower takes up to four times less energy than a bath. To maximise the energy saving, avoid power showers and use low-flow showerheads, which are cheap and provide the same comfort.

Buy intelligently
One bottle of 1.5l requires less energy and produces less waste than three bottles of 0.5l. As well, buy recycled paper products: it takes less 70 to 90% less energy to make recycled paper and it prevents the loss of forests worldwide.

Buy fresh foods instead of frozen
Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce.

Air Dry Your Clothes.
Line-dry your clothes in the spring and summer instead of using the dryer. Save 700 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $75 per year, and add longevity to your clothes.

Run your dishwasher only with a full load.
Save 100 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $40 per year.

Avoid products with too much packaging.
Save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%

Use Recycled Paper
Make sure your printer paper is 100% post consumer recycled paper. Save 5 lbs. of carbon dioxide per ream of paper.

If you want to learn how much of an impact you could be making, test your own carbon standards in the carbon calculator.

Picture of the Week

A spider monkey that escaped from a Mexico City zoo boarded a bus and attacked a passenger, Red Cross officials said Tuesday.

Apple and EMI Announce DRM-Free Content

Update:  Apple today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes Store worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. At this time, content from other studios will remain at it’s current price, sound quality, and protection standars. However, it may not be long until other labels make the switch to this standard-premium download system.

From the rumor mill…EMI and Apple may be holding a press conference in London tomorrow at 1PM London time(8AM EST). It was said earlier that this will have to do with the Beatles’ and Apple deal, but soruces have been telling Idolator that it will not have to do with the Beatles. This could be a joke seeing how it is April fools day but I doubt it. It could be the beginning of the end of DRM. Maybe any EMI owned song will be without DRM on the iTunes store! I Love You Steve Jobs. -Evan Doyle

 

Google Launches Sewer-Based Wifi System

It’s April Fools day, and Google decided to get in on the fun. Today they are launching Google TiSP, a home wifi system that uses access nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines. It’s really quite easy to set-up…

#1   Remove the spindle of fiber-optic cable from your TiSP installation kit.#2   Attach the sinker to the loose end of the cable, take one safe step backward and drop this weighted end into your toilet.

#3   Grasp both ends of the spindle firmly while a friend or loved one flushes, thus activating the patented GFlush™ system, which sends the weighted cable surfing through the plumbing system to one of the thousands of TiSP Access Nodes.#4   When the GFlush is complete, the spindle will (or at least should) have largely unraveled, exposing a connector at the remaining end. Detach the cable from the spindle, taking care not to allow the cable to slip into the toilet.

#5   Plug the fiber-optic cable into your TiSP wireless router, which has a specially designed counterweight to withstand the centripetal force of flushing.#6   Insert the TiSP installation CD and run the setup utility to install the Google Toolbar (required) and the rest of the TiSP software, which will automatically configure your computer’s network settings.

#7   Within sixty minutes — assuming proper data flow — the other end of your fiber-optic cable should have reached the nearest TiSP Access Node, where our Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) will remove the sinker and plug the line into our global data networking system.#8   Congratulations, you’re online! (Please wash your hands before surfing.)

It’s great to see Google getting in on the fun. Even more amazing, you can find a link to the TiSP on the main Google homepage. They’re calling it the “Dark Porcelain” project. Unfortunately, it’s not quite ready for the big time. I’ll think on wait on this one. I’d rather not have to experience what Google means when they say that “When things go wrong with TiSP, they go very, very wrong.”

Most Awkward Interviews

Someone has put together a list of the most awkward TV interviews. Some of these will really make you crack up. My person favorite, is one of Paula Abdul completely drunk on a news channel interview about American Idol. Check these videos out here. Some other’s include the Jim Rome fight, Tom Cruise being himself, and Vanilla Ice with Jon Stewart.

Just because it’s so great, i’ll post the Paula Abdul video below.

Create Your Very Own WIRED Cover

A little promo offer i stumbled upon today from WIRED magazine and Xerox. If you are a subscriber you can customize a cover that will be mailed on your July issue of Wired. The promo is limited to the first 5,000 people so you better hurry up. I know I have already made mine. I will be sure to show it off in July. If I remember that is. To take advantage of this opportunity go to here and customize your cover page. -Evan Doyle

Weird Al’s RIAA Tribute

Of course someone has to side with the RIAA besides Metallica.

- Evan Doyle

Justin.tv

Justin.tv has been making tech headlines recently, as they launched the net’s first live 24 hour “Truman Show” webcam. Justin and his team have created a live video stream so that viewers can see what it’s like to be Justin. With a camera attached to his head, and a suprisingly fast wireless connected backpack contraption, they are able to broadcast the stream no matter where Justin is. The most important fact about Justin.tv according to the crew is that Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even in the bathroom. Even on a date. It’s sort of a really interesting look into someone else’s life.

However, Justin and his friends were suprised when the police stormed into their apartment with their guns ready to fire. Apparently, someone had called 911 using Justin’s cell phone (which he posted on his website) as an alias, and reported a stabbing. When the police arrived, they were suprised only to find two terrified geeks with laptops. And of course, the whole thing went down on camera. What a sick joke.

Check out what Justin is doing now…Watch the live video stream.

Welcome to Version 2.0

Today we are glad to announce Literally Everything Version 2.0.

We’re rolling out specific pages so that it’s easier to find what you want. (And there are more on their way) In addition, we’re welcoming a new blogger who will be working on some great stuff for the site. The podcast is coming back once again, and it has its own dedicated page. Next, we’re launching a mini-web advertising campaign. We’re reaching out to other blogs and sites for advertising space…as well as getting the word out with our own good old “get the word out” grassroots campaign. If you like the site, please let your friends know that we’re worth checking out. Lastly, we’re opening up the site to you guys. We’re adding a page where you can submit your own articles and stories. We think that you guys will have some good things to say.

It’ll take us a few days to flip all of the switches for Version 2.0, so we’ll continue to roll out some more features throughout the weekend.

Sincerely,

The LE Blogging Team

Dan Hoffmann (Editor, Offbeat)
Evan Doyle (Tech)
Ryan Ponce (Politics, Tech)