Oh my: very odd promotion of podcasting 

The new Numb3rs episode depicts an alt-LDS prophet (like the guy in Big Love) who is on the run, and communicates to his followers via a podcast, which they can access if they know a long password. The episode, called "Nine Wives," should be on the CBS website soon, and Comcast OnDemand usually has new shows available within 24 hours of the broadcast.

I like the series generally, but this one is kind of dumb. Gueststars Teri Polo, though. The guy who played Will Bailey on West Wing has become a semi-regular, too. Wonder what the link is, if any. The series is produced by Ridley Scott.

Playing around with Opera widgets 

I'm lazily running through the Hello World tutorial to make an Opera widget, in between laundry trips.

The nice thing about coming back from a visit to my folks is I don't have much trip laundry piled up, because my mom figures that's a duty of the host. If you ever go with me to visit my parents, odds are my mom will do your laundry, too.

Unlike the prevailing sidebar notion, Opera defines its widget as a thing that runs outside the regular browser window without chrome or toolbars. I like the idea of making a little app, with transparency so the desktop shows through, which doesn't need Flash or anything very fancy or complicated -- just an HTML file and an XML config file, and optionally a bunch of other file types. Users of the widgets do need to have Opera installed, naturlich. But it's so nice and light and quick to install and unobjectionable from a trust standpoint, that it doesn't seem to me much of an imposition.

Once I figure out what I want to widgetize, besides Hello, I'll put it up with instructions.

I think it was Tara Hunt who opined a while back that people like widgets because they're little, and little things are cute -- and I think that's probably true.

Signal of message board renaissance? 

Techcrunch has added forums. What a good idea. They're even threaded. Good show.

I'll be curious to see how people behave. I didn't see any rules posted. With its oomph, Techcrunch could do some good work in modeling how to do respectful online discourse. I'd start small with a few rules, like "Don't get personal" and add to them as the need arises. Have a community manager move rudeness and attacks to a "Step Outside" forum, and see how it goes from there.

A fan 

I like message boards. I like to talk about them, as you can see.