Want proof? I've taken 26 different audio loops from the attraction, each with different orchestration and arrangement... and combined them all into a single, 48-second track. And believe it or not, it's not noisy or cacophonous at all!

Kudos to the genius Sherman Brothers.

But the problem with this is that your timing decisions are made by the trade show dates. When you announce something that isn't ready yet or doesn't go on sale for a while, you've just told all your competitors in the surrounding booths a heads up on what you're working on. Feeling compelled to make announcements at a trade show results in a slew of press releases touting products that haven't seen the light of day and boom — you've squandered your early-adopter demand.

Let's take a look at a few of the announcements starting to flow from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

• Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock: A new $300 hub device that leverages a Thunderbolt connection (which has been on Macs for about a year now) along with Ethernet, HDMI USB and Firewire. People have been waiting for a year for peripherals with Thunderbolt, but instead they get a hub to connect non-existent peripherals. Oh, and it won't be available until September 2012.
• iCade iOS Game Controllers: Clever and amusing game controllers that your iPhone or iPod can snap into. Makes your iOS device look like an old 1970s game console while you play Pac Man. Hilarious, funny impulse purchases. Oops - sorry, not available until an unspecified date in the spring.
• LaCie eSATA Thunderbolt Hub: Yay! Another hub! This one lets you use external eSATA drives on your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. The one that's been sitting around like an anxious virgin since last February waiting for something to plug into its shiny new Thunderbolt port. No price yet. No release date yet. Oh, but CNET "expects" it to be available in the Spring.
• OCZ Thunderbolt SSD: Hey! A Thunderbolt peripheral! "No timeframe for release."
• AR Drone 2.0: This fun item is a remote flying device, controlled by your iOS device. The 1.0 version is in the stores now, but I'm betting that sales start to tank - 'cos here they are announcing a 2.0 version that isn't available until the 2nd quarter of 2012. D'oh!

Hey, everyone! Let's go shopping! We'll meet at Best Buy sometime next fall.

Update:

LG shows off smart TVs that respond to speech

LAS VEGAS -- Talking to the TV is usually a sign of extreme agitation, mental instability or loneliness. LG Electronics is set to make it a more rational behavior this year, with a range of TVs that respond to speech.

LG will sell a remote with its high-end flat-panel TVs that contains a microphone. You'll be able to speak into the microphone to enter text on the TV for Twitter updates and Web searches. You won't be able to change the channel or control the volume by yelling at the TV.

Via Mercury News

What the hell is the point of this? This TV comes with a remote that you can speak to, to post Twitter updates. You CAN'T use it to change the channel or the volume.

Seriously.

Oh, wait. I should say Siriously - 'cos it's pretty clear that this waste of time is designed to preempt any Siri-enabled TV from Apple. Mark my words: when such a device arrives from Cupertino, you'll hear from LG fanbois (are there such things?) claiming that LG "had voice recognition first."

Agatha Christie’s elderly detective Miss Marple is getting the big-screen treatment from Disney. After months of negotiations, the studio has closed a deal to capture the movie rights to the character, who first appeared in 1927.

Mark Frost has been tapped to pen the screenplay.

Marple was one of Christie’s most famous creations, an elderly woman constantly knitting or weeding, looking sweet and frail though the exterior masks a sharp mind with a deep understanding of the dark side of human nature.

Disney is not making a period movie however but looking do a contemporary version.

Jennifer Garner will produce the adaptation, which will not only be contemporary but see the age of amateur detective Marple brought down.

Hiring Frost may also signal an intent to make something with an edge. The writer, whose recent credits include penning the Fantastic Four movies, is best known for co-creating the landmark TV series Twin Peaks with David Lynch. [Hollywood Reporter]

Here's how I'm imagining the conversation began at Disney:

We need a new franchise — a new character!

Let's look at the stats. Oh, hey — this writer Agatha Christie is, according to Guinness, the best-selling author in the entire world!

Excellent. Let's talk to her people and see if she'll write something for us.

Ah. Well. She died in 1976.

Even better! She can't ask for more money! Let's just buy up something she already wrote.

"Miss Marple" seems to be very popular. They've done a whole bunch of TV series of it.

Great! Comes with a built-in fan base! We'll sell millions of action figures.

I dunno. I can't quite fathom how the brain trust at Disney came up with the decision to modernize Miss Marple by making her young and edgy. Seriously, what moron says "this is the best-selling mystery in the history of mysteries, so rather than leave it the way that billions of humans know it, we'll change it to alienate the entire world of mystery fans."

Doctor Who has topped the list as the most purchased TV Series from iTunes, according to figures released by Apple in the US.

Doctor Who outranked US hits including the Emmy-winning sitcom Modern Family and Glee to become the most downloaded series of the year.

What can we learn from this?

1. Even though Doctor Who is now shown on American cable on the same day as in the UK, people would rather buy it than watch it cut to shreds for commercials and plastered with promos and bugs all over the picture.
2. People don't want to wait for delayed DVDs anymore.
3. British sci-fi in a series of 13 episodes is far more compelling than ubiquitous US "unscripted drama" or procedural crime shows that run every damned day.

Media companies, take note.

I dunno, it's not really all that big a deal, really, but this morning when I left the house I found on my front steps a folder with the City of San Jose logo on it. When I opened it, I discovered inside this certificate:

City of San Jose
Commendation

WHEREAS: Thank you for your time and kind consideration in delivering holiday cheer to your neighborhood by delightfully lavishing your home with festive outdoor decorations; and

WHEREAS: The twinkling lights and extravagant holiday décor has made spirits bright by making the community smile and jump triumphantly with joy; and

WHEREAS: Your jolly holiday homestead will be admired with fond appreciation because it captures the warm spirit that this magical time of year represents.

NOW, THEREFORE I, Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, do hereby recognize and commend most highly your beautifully decorated

2011 WINTER HOLIDAY HOMESTEAD

[Signed] Pierluigi Oliverio, Councilmember, District 6, City of San José

Yeah, I assume that everyone who decorates gets one, and it's just a silly piece of paper, right? Of course, the funniest thing is that I haven't even finished decorating yet.

You’re the capital of the nation
You listen to 105
Keep listening to their magic all day long

You’re the capital of the nation
And you’re lovin’ what you do
Keep the dial on this station
The choice is up to you
Hey-ay

You’re the Pepsi generation
Guzzle down and win some tickets today
On WAVA…

I’m betting Michael Jackson did not want to be remembered for that particular performance. Click here to listen.

The first dozen times I tried this, Apple’s new virtual assistant Siri was unable to help because of network issues — in fact, the first 36 hours I had the new iPhone 4S I was unable to get Siri to work. One assumes that, because the majority of Siri’s magic happens not on the phone but on some centralized server somewhere, the sudden influx of a million users trying out their new assistants overwhelmed the system.

When Siri finally began responding to requests, slowly and hesitantly, I tried the reminder again.

The first time, it appeared like it was going to work — I was excited when Siri responded that it was finding Target stores near me — but then it bugged out again.

When the system finally stabilized that night, that tantalizing search for stores was nowhere to be found. Siri couldn’t understand that I wanted a reminder when I arrived at Target. I found there was simply no way to get Siri to search for a place and then create a reminder for it.

It’s not just Siri. A look at the Reminders app reveals that it will only use locations that are saved within your contacts. You can set a reminder for when you leave or arrive at your home, your office, or your dad’s house. But unless you add your local Target location to your contacts, don’t expect to add a reminder that goes off when you reach the store. Reminders won’t use bookmarks in Maps, and more egregiously, won’t let you search for a location using maps. The entire world is available on the iPhone, including every Target store and it’s location — Siri will find one if you ask for the closest Target, but you can’t set a reminder there.

Here’s another example that shows a strange lack of logic: I asked Siri how old I am. It couldn’t answer that, despite the fact that my birthday, complete with year, is in my contact page; and Siri knows what today’s date is. Even the Mac OS built-in calendar application is intelligent enough to calculate the ages of people in my birthday calendar.

These are just a couple examples of the gaping holes I’ve found in the integration of iPhone technologies with Siri, which is admittedly in beta status. But until the underlying frameworks that share information are better fleshed out, Siri is only going to be as good as the weakest API.

Don’t get me wrong — there is much to like about Siri so far, not the least of which is its astonishingly accurate voice recognition (which I assume is due to its processing remotely).  With a ubiquitous Internet connection, Siri begins to fulfill the promise Apple made in the mid-90s with the Newton, and before that with “Knowledge Navigator.” It just needs more synapses and interconnections to use the information it already has access to in a more intelligent way.

Update, October 17: taking the logical step, I added my local Target address to my contacts, and suddenly Siri is able to respond appropriately to my request. Asking “remind me to pick up trash bags at target” resulted instantly in a reminder set for that location. So, at this point I’d have to anticipate the various places I go and add them to my contacts rather than expect Siri to search a map.

93% say that student loan debt should be forgiven

Huh? Why? You took out a loan, repay it. Sounds to me like what they really mean is that they think higher education shouldn’t be so expensive, but this is a ridiculous, simplistic solution.

98% believe that health care should be free

How can it be free? Are they saying that those nurses should donate their time? That hospitals should somehow pay their power bills with beads? Again, I think this is a simplistic, facile response to a complex situation and these days, no one is interested in complex solutions. I believe that health care should be a fundamental service that is provided to all — like police protection, the military, libraries, fire fighting — but people are mistaken if they think it is free. We all pay for it in our taxes. And yes, I think that healthcare should be provided in a national healthcare service, financed with our taxes. It has been proven around the world. But no, it’s not free.

54% do not believe that the Obama stimulus program was a good idea.

Complexity and lack of understanding. The stimulus was not only a good idea, it has been proven that it kept us out of a much worse recession — and, in fact, should have been much larger.

93% believe that communications like cell phone and internet access be a right and not just reserved for the rich and we should have free internet and cell phone service as a national goal.

I’m struck by how many people seem to think things should be “free.” I am hoping that this is a simplification from Forbes or the pollster. Are they also calling for free electricity, water, food? Nothing is free. Someone must pay for it. I don’t think that communications like cell phones should be some kind of “right,” and this smacks of a First World problem to me. People are starving, don’t have access to clean water, and we worry that they can’t log on to Facebook?

84% said they think that if a bank decides to implement a $5 debit card fee, the government should not allow it, while 16% said let them do what they want – customers can move.

I’m with the 16%. I am not a fan of banks, and I rail against all these stupid fees. So I use a credit union.

95% believe that drug prices should be controlled

I do, pretty much, agree with this — although again, I think the real solution is more complex.

Are these really the sentiments of the broad range of protestors? Or are these naive fantasies being cherry-picked from the group for another agenda?

“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” They only have to change one person’s world. Like the autistic child who can now communicate with his parents through the direct interaction of an iPad.

I thought about analogies to show how important he was to my generation.

Steve Jobs was our generation’s Walt Disney. Steve was inspired by Walt’s creativity, attention to detail and ability to meld those qualities together with savvy business sense. In many ways Steve exceeded the accomplishments of his inspiration. The next generation will have it’s Walt, too. And it’s a safe bet that he or she will have been inspired by Steve Jobs. I can’t wait to see how they exceed what Steve accomplished.

I wondered what would happen next.

Few of us know what the future holds. But I’m betting Steve did. And I hope he wrote it down, took notes, and instilled it into his team at Apple.

I thought about how I’ve been using Apple products since the early 80s, how I transitioned from rub-on lettering, graph paper and pencils and clip-art books to MacDraw and MacPaint; about how if it weren’t for the way he helped push away the technical barriers for creative people like me I would probably never have had the career I have. That career has grown from everyday graphics to interactive design, creating mobile apps for handheld computers that Steve brought us, to putting together a film festival that has been wildly successful for 8 years using Apple products and built-in free software to present more than 60 shows in multiple theaters. Steve Jobs brought us graph paper and pencils in computer form.

So, what do I say? I say thank you, Steve. Thanks for making me one of the crazy ones.