Now you can buy a house modeled after one of Martha Stewart's three houses. People love these houses so much that sales are bucking the downturn in new home sales. Says a representative for the company building the homes: "It's our version of the iPhone. It illustrates the power of something different with a brand tied to it."

[ Now you can buy a house modeled after one of... (kottke.org) ]

@josephgrossberg: Wow. Talk about not getting it.

From this I can infer that there was a downturn of phone sales? Or the houses are a hybrid house/mp3 player with an innovative interface? Or their houses actually fit in your pocket and you can make calls on them?

If you ask me Martha Stewart has jumped the shark and not used her stint in the pokey to her advantage. A recent trip to Michaels introduced me to the Martha Stewart line of Scrap Booking supplies, and I have to hope that the Scrap Booking community is outright rejecting her crap in favor of their own creativity. (And no I don't scrap book, I'm toying with a new hobby in jewelry making...)

If you create software development tools, you’ll want to consider building on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell. A streamlined Visual Studio development environment, the Visual Studio Shell provides the core foundation so you can focus on building your application’s unique features. Flexible customization options help you deliver optimized experiences for specific markets.

[ Visual Studio 2008 Shell ]

Meaning, since you love Visual Studio and want to just get used to one IDE, you can now use the Shell and educate it for other platforms (like ColdFusion!). Previously that would have cost over $10,000 to get the rights from Microsoft to Frankenstein their IDE, but now:

Q: How much will the Visual Studio Shell cost?

The Visual Studio Shell will be freely available as part of the Visual Studio SDK starting with the release of Visual Studio 2008. Building and deploying applications based on the Visual Studio Shell will be royalty-free.

So we're ready for you to download the VS2K8 Shell SDK and build us an awesome CF editor, Gruska...

I grew up in Silver Spring in the 1970's and 1980's and as I keep telling everyone, it's no longer the Silver Spring I grew up in. Here are some prime examples, and some places that haven't changed in 30 years.

[ New Silver Spring - a photoset on Flickr ]

Hey look, I'm quoting myself! But seriously, Silver Spring is so nice now, check it out!

Coolpix S50

Barring a last-minute delay, Volkswagen of America will announce plans to move its headquarters to the Washington, D.C. suburbs, during a news conference several well-placed VW sources tell TheCarConnection.com will be held on Thursday.

[ Volkswagen Moving to D.C. Area - The Car Connection ]

Hot!

But such a great idea. It would take a ton of people to get on board with this, and lots of planning over many years, but the potential is well worth it, if not just to stop us from lugging transformers around for each of our devices.

1. Develop a universal standard around 12 volt dc for all electronics.
2. Develop a standard wall plug or distribution system for 12 volt DC.
3. Provide a secondary wiring system in all new houses at 12V DC.
4. Revise our current wiring codes to reduce the number of 110V outlets and circuits required.

[ Big Steps In Building: Change Our Wiring to 12 Volt DC (TreeHugger) ]

In a bottle. With carbonation. Really.

Reed's Spiced Apple Brew uses 8 grams of fresh ginger root, the finest tart German apple juice, and such apple pie spices as cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. Spiced Apple Brew is 50% apple juice and sweetened with fruit juice and fructose.

[ REED'S Ginger Brews ]

The word evolved from “kawabonga,” a word used by the character Chief Thunderthud on the United States children’s television program Howdy Doody in the 1950s. “Kawagoopa” was an all-purpose exclamation of the Tinka Tonka Indians, the fictitious tribe of Princess Summerfall Winterspring and Chief Featherman, and “kawabonga” was the equivalent exclamation of Chief Thunderthud, who was of the Ooragnak Tribe. By the 1960s, surfers who had grown up watching Howdy Doody adopted it for surfing use, turning it to “cowabunga.”

[ Cowabunga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

Why, you may ask, did I look this one up? Oddly the reason is also on the Wikipedia page:

Cookie Monster of Sesame Street, began to exclaim “Kowabunga!” in the 1970s. (Note the “K” spelling. He used it during a Letter of the Day segment as an example of a “K” word. When challenged by Prairie Dawn that it was not a word, he replied: “Kowabunga too a word. It esoteric, but it poetic in its own right.”)

So Cookie Monster is a surfer? Or just loved the Howdy Doody show?

Korean Air has 22 special needs meals plus 2 or 3 choices for the standard meal and 2 or 3 for the first class passengers. That includes 6 types of vegetarian meals (one is listed under Hindu).

We prepare a selection of special meals, catering to a wide variety of tastes as well as ethnic, religious and dietary needs. Special meals will be available in the flights with meal service only. Orders for special meals should be made at the Korean Air reservation center at least 24 hours before your scheduled flight.

[ Welcome to Korean Air ]