Last night I had the pleasure of attending the final dress rehearsal for Palo Alto's Theatre Works' performance of Into the Woods. It was a thoroughly professional, impressive, and magical performance and if you're in (or can get to) the Bay Area, I urge you to get tickets for it right now.

Lots of you probably know I'm a techno-geek. But did you know I'm a music 'n' theatre-obsessed geek?

Well, I have lots... LOTS... on my mind about theatre stuff, but for now I'll just subject you to some random musings. Hope you don't mind.

After all the serious posts about geek stuff, I figured it was time to throw in a bit of levity again. So here's a sample I've lovingly clipped from The Blender's "Aunt Sue's Ant Soup." Click the little play button below to hear it (Flash and a broadband connection required)

[Did this stream nicely for you? Please let me know in the comments below!]

Here's a bit about this song and the group behind it... plus -- I know you're craving this -- the full lyrics I insanely transcribed in a fit of insomnia last night.

I know, I know, some of you are probably sick of me idly speculating on what Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are going to do next, but I just had yet another vision that I wanted to share with you.

One of the search engines is going to build or buy a leading OCR and/or photo scanning software package.

I just read on Darren's Problogger.net site (via Threadwatch) that Google is testing out a pay-per-call feature in its AdWords program.

I invite you to go grab your cell phone / mobile phone / home phone whatever and program the following numbers into it:

- 1-800-555-8355 ("555 TELL" -- TellMe)
- 1-800-373-3411 ("FREE 411" -- Free411)
- 1-888-392-7563 ("EZ ASK ME" -- AskMeNow - Initial signup on site required)
- 46645 ("GOOGL" - Google SMS beta - Google via Text Messaging)

NOTE: One or more of these numbers may be U.S.-only... sorry :|

For details on each service, read on...

https://www.google.com/analytics/

I learned that this was coming via this Information Week article.

First, let me offer a sincere disclaimer: I've debated whether or not to post this, because I'll get free Web hosting credits when people sign up with the link below.

But I've decided that this deal is simply too amazing not to share, and I just can't feel that guilty for using an affiliate link (when being up-front about it) in this context. I've already set up an account for myself, urged my good friends to get accounts, etc.

Here's the deal:
- 4.8gb of space (increases weekly by 40mb)
- 120gb of monthly bandwidth (increases weekly by 1gb)
- Plus shell access, mySQL, mailing lists, ftp, etc. etc. etc.
- Free 1-year registration of a domain
- Unlimited domain/subdomain hosting

...for $9.24 *TOTAL* for the first year (77 cents a month).
After that, it's $7.95 or $9.95/month (still a fab deal), and perhaps even cheaper by then.

Here's how to sign up:
1) Click here.
2) Click on "Managed Web Hosting."
3) Click on the "signup now" button under "Crazy Domain Insane."
4) Select the 12 month term.
5) Make sure to enter promotion code 777 to receive the special pricing!


* * *

I do welcome your frank thoughts both about this post and about DreamHost. My experience with DH so far has been generally good... a relatively straightforward signup process (with my account active in under 2 minutes), a friendly forum... but on the flip side, my control panel was initially slow, and I find the CP to be a bit unintuitive. Site speed, thankfully, seems pretty fast.

Lastly, I'd like to give a hat tip to the fabulously cool and useful deals site SlickDeals.net, from which I initially learned about this offer.

I don't know about you, but the vast majority of searches I do on Google Maps and the splendiforous new Y! Maps (beta) are for directions from my apartment in San Francisco to somewhere else in the city. Here's the sort of search I'd type in by default:

[{my address} to 16th and valencia]

But both Google and Yahoo! choke on this search, and choke bad. Yahoo! gives me an error message saying the address could not be found, and then nonetheless gives me directions to Valencia, Arizona. Google performs no better here; it asks me "Did you mean Valencia Road, Bromsgrove, Hereford and Worcester, B60, UK?" Suuuuuure, Google, I'm going to get in my car and drive from San Francisco to the UK.

Where's a Common Sense module when you need one?