In this installment of the Technology and the Arts podcast, we share some interesting news, web sites and online resources we have come across recently, including an expanded look at FriendFeed, a video asking Bush or Batman? and Knol, Google’s answer to Wikipedia.nPlus, we discuss the passing of “last lecture” professor Randy Pausch and the emergence of Cuil, the latest search engine to take on Google. Hosts: Brian Kelley and John LeMasney. File size: 19 MB. Time: 39 min., 59 sec.

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Related Links:

• FriendFeed.com/lemasney – John LeMasney’s tumble log.
• lemasney.com – John LeMasney’s Web site.
• FriendFeed.com/bktandem – Brian Kelley’s tumble log.
• Tandem With the Random – Brian Kelley’s blog
• Here are some things John talked about:

The birth of his second son, David, on May 16

John’s recent Lyme Disease diagnosis

Even after talking about it in the last podcast, John just can’t get enough of FriendFeed and the concept of lifestreaming and brandstreaming (check out John’s FriendFeed).

Cuil, a search engine developed by former Google engineers, launched this week to great fanfare…John and Brian — and quite a few others — aren’t all that impressed.

Meanwhile, John is a bit more pleased about Knol, Google’s answer to Wikipedia.

John recently ran into Oliver Giller, a Rider alumnus who turned John onto open source software. As a result, John wants to thank him for being such a big influence on his life.

A video that asks the age-old question: Bush or Batman? (see above)

Canada’s open-source answer to Twitter: identi.ca.

Streaming video sites ustream.tv and justin.tv.

John is excited about a live-action “Cowboy Bebop” film that is in the works.

John’s other projects: BeerCritic and NJ Dining Review.

Review site Yelp.com.

• Here are some things Brian mentioned:

He will be backing up his friend Christian Beach on a bluegrass version of Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock” for an upcoming Main Man Records tribute to 80s hair metal.

Brian is looking forward to his friend Jason Pester’s upcoming visit to New Jersey in August.

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Randy Pausch, who became famous for delivering a “last lecture” on realizing your childhood dreams after being told he had 3-to-6 months to live, passed away at age 47. His speech became the basis for a best-selling book and the video of the lecture has reportedly been watched by more than 10 million people. Thank you for being an inspiration to so many people, Dr. Pausch. You will be missed. Carnegie Mellon remembers Dr. Pausch.

Our friends at Pandora, the Internet radio service, is looking for video testimonials in support of Internet radio and pushing for fair royalty rates for webcasters. Click on the link to learn more.

Ars Technica reports that Yahoo! Music is pulling the plug on its online music store and taking the digital rights management (DRM) license keys with them. If you purchased music from Yahoo, well, you better stock up on CDs and start burning away to keep your purchases usable on new machines after the license key servers go down September 30. UPDATE: After recording the podcast, Yahoo! announced it would offer refunds to affected customers (CNET) and is looking for a way to provide DRM-free versions of the downloads to customers who would rather have music instead of money. Yahoo! may be down right now, but it’s nice to see the company do the right thing in this case.

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