Wired is running an article about the CALM Act.

The CALM Act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) would require the FCC to enforce “internationally accepted standards of television advertisement volumes” within a year of becoming law. A version of the act had already passed in the House, where it will return for reconciliation with the Senate bill. Supporters hope for a final vote next month. It’s hard to image President Obama not signing it.

I wholeheartedly disagree with the article's premise that this is too late. With a little daughter at home, I frequently have to jump for the DVR remote to avoid disturbing her when she's asleep and I'm watching TV. Sure, I fast-forward through the commercials anyway, but I don't have to be right on the button like I do when I'm trying to avoid the huge blast of sound that the commercial breaks all have. I especially loathe the loud "bumpers" that AMC puts around Mad Men and its other top shows, but don't know if they'll be covered by this act.

In any case, this is welcome and I hope it passes. The industry has proven that it isn't willing to self-regulate in this regard and this legislation is what they get for being jerks.

"Holy Roman empire and a side of red sauce, this mother is angry." Awesome.

Well, here's another potential black eye for the sport. There's a lot of conversation swirling about the levels of the drug found in his system, and how the amount was so far under what is even required to be tested for. Even if he's innocent, the recent past scandals around Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton have made cycling fans reticent to believe any top pro when it comes to something like this. And it really doesn't help that Contador comes off as such an arrogant prick a lot of the time.

I hope it's not true. We don't need another Tour winner stripped of his title.

I'm totally in the mood to buy a new bike, even though that's definitely not in the cards at the moment. Earlier this year, I got my old 5-Spot back on the trail and am really enjoying it. In a strange way, that makes me want to get a new bike, even though I completely understand in my head that this makes no sense at all. There are great deals to be had on 2010 5-Spot frames, which would be nice. And the 2011 5-Spot pictured above is seriously drool-worthy. Ah, jonesing for a bike is only fun when you actually get to buy one.

I was in a local bike shop and saw a new Ibis Hakkalügi that really did it for me for some reason. I'm not sure why I found this bike so attractive given that I primarily mountain bike, pretty much only road bike for occasional commuting and the odd special event, and have never ridden cyclocross. I guess it doesn't matter though, does it?

Once I got home and looked up more about the bike, I realized that I'd seen one in pretty much the only cyclocross video I'd ever watched:

That's great stuff and makes me want the bike even more, but that's not gonna happen. My road bike gets little use as it is, and I can't justify spending that money on a bike like that. But, boy do I want to.

What I really need to spend the money on is upgrades to the MTB stable....

Very cool. As I'm sure most people are, I'm wondering how it'll compete, image quality and handling-wise, with Micro Four-Thirds cameras like my GF1. Great job getting the buzz factor up pre-Photokina, Fuji!

GV Connect, an iPhone app for Google Voice, is now available in the App Store.

ADSF is a neat little tool that starts a webserver in any directory with a single command. Handy.

Do want!

This article on TechCrunch has gotten my hopes up that there might be a decent Google Voice app now that Apple has changed and clarified its position on App Store review policies. Honestly, Google Voice integration is the "killer app" that always has me thinking of switching to Android in the back of my mind. Now I can only hope that Google re-introduces its first-party app for Voice.

Apple posted a page about the upcoming (in November) release of iOS 4.2 for the iPad. Man, I can't wait.

If you don't like the new iTunes 10 icon (there's not much to like), here's a better one. I guess Apple was trying to make the Mac version look more iOS-y?

Ars Technica has an interesting article on Twitter's now-mandatory OAuth implementation. The article describes the OAuth system and challenges for implementors pretty well, so I won't rehash them here. I wrote an implementation of OAuth for a previous employer and indeed ran into many of the challenges described in the article, particularly around how to protect the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret in client software that was distributed to end-users.

In the end, it was very clear that OAuth was a good solution to the problem it tackles, allowing an end user of a service to delegate access to a his own online resources at that service to a third-party without sharing his credentials with that third-party, but for server side communication. We were shipping a Flash-based client that embedded Consumer Keys and Secrets, but ultimately determined we couldn't rely on them alone as any sort of guarantee of what service "consumer" was asking for access to ours on behalf of a mutual end-user, for the exact reasons discussed in the article. It's a shame that Twitter made these poor choices that will probably hamper developers of Twitter clients and the service's end-users alike, and likely be a (undeserved) hit to OAuth's reputation in the developer community.

Good to see Ars digging deep on such a technical issue and not shying away from writing about it.

The newly released Twitter for iPad is interesting, but was also an immediate uninstall for me.

I like the design of automatically sliding out a panel to show an embedded URL in a browser without requiring an extra step from me to open it. I was confused when I instinctively tried to swipe it out of the way (which worked), but it wouldn't get all the way off-screen. The remaining clutter was distracting and I investigated getting rid of it completely, but it wasn't obvious I could. Overall, that was a near hit for me.

The deal-breaker? No way to send a link for future reading or blogging to Instapaper or the like. I know that this app is trying to appeal to the masses and probably resisted implementing something like that for similar reasons that the same feature isn't in Twitterific. Still, I need it, and if it's not an option, I'm out.

I'm stmpjmpr on Ping; feel free to follow (or friend, or whatever) me there. I've set it so that I'll have to approve people until I decide what to think of Ping, but I'll be liberal in approving accounts that look like real humans. The whole thing seems pretty empty right now and being devoid of friends on a social network makes it pretty useless.