So Artie does Artie on Donny Deutche

Aloha Airlines announced today that it will halt all passenger service Monday.  The company has filed for chapter 11 protection, but hasn’t been able to secure the cash necessary to continue operations.

If you have already paid for an Aloha ticket, you may be SOL.  You can try to contact your credit card companies, or file a claim in bankruptcy court…but good luck.

Apparently Aloha has suffered after Go! Airlines entered the market in 2006.  There are just so many people traveling to neighbor islands in Hawaii, and it seems there was not enough demand for three airlines.  Although Aloha has survived competition in the past…Midway, Discovery, and others…this time it was not able to compete.

Go! lost $20 million in its first 16 months of operations…but the company is backed by the Mesa Air Group.  Aloha suffered huge losses as competition drove prices down, and eventually it just had to fold.

It’s too bad…Aloha has operated for over 60 years.

Tonight the Google ‘turned the lights out’ in an effort to raise awareness for an energy conservation cause called Earth Hour.  The company didn’t actually turn the lights out…it changed the white background of its homepage to black.

Apparently Earth Hour encourages people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour, from 8pm to 9pm, on Saturday March 29.

Ok, big deal.  I mean really, I never really understood the idea of energy conservation.  We pay for power after all…if energy conservation was really that important we should be taxed for using power, or energy utilities should bump up their prices.

It’s not even like we’re running out of power either.  Everyone in california remembers rolling blackouts, and we’re just not there now.

I dunno, I hate to be a pessimist…well, actually I love being a pessimist…but really, what is Earth Hour really going to accomplish?  The fact that we have to get people to volunteer to turn off their lights symbolically for an hour really shows that we don’t have any power issues whatsoever.

This is kind of a cool video of an elephant painting a picture of an elephant.  It’s kind of a long video…but pretty amazing if you ask me.

Basically the elephant paints with a brush in his trunk.  It does a surprisingly good job of drawing, including legs, an eye, ear and tail.  What’s interesting is the elephant has pretty good control over the brush, even going back over lines to darken parts of the picture.  Check it out.

Even if you don’t know about hip hop, you probably know 2pac.  His music is pretty classic.  He’s one of those rap icons that will outlast nearly all others.

But since his death, 2pac’s name has been…well, slowly squeezed dry.  You may notice that the guy has come out with almost as many albums after his death than he did before he died.  And most have 1 or 2 decent singles and another 12 filler tracks.  Horrible.

More recently, 2pac’s image has been used on other merchandise, like t-shirts and hats.  That’s not bad, I guess.  The guy’s family has a right to make some money off of his image, sure.

But today I walked into 7-11, and saw something that went too far - a 2pac energy drink called Hunid Racks.

The can features a low resolution picture of 2pac lifting up his shirt with the ‘Hunid Racks’ logo on his abdomen.  The top of the can reads, “Respect the Name - Respect the Game - Respect the Drink,” while the bottom of the can reads “Energy Drink for the Real Hustlers.”

The drink’s website, 100racks.com,  explains the beverage’s concept.  For example, the site gives the definition of 100 racks:  “The term Rack comes from black folks in the hood. “How much are you selling your car for? 5 Racks ($5000.00).”

Also, in addition to the 2pac drink, Hunid Racks offers a Mac Dre drink, pictured.

I have yet to try the drink…I’m going to save one as a collector’s item for sure.

But really, this represents the lowest of the low for 2pac.  It begs the question what’s next?  You can’t sell out much more than putting your image on a soda can.

From Lifehacker.  Rip DVD’s on your PC with just a couple of clicks.  Lifehacker has a great guide here.  Check it out, they review a few ripping apps as well as media players.

I still remember back in college when DVD Recorders were like $800 and each disc was $10.  Now you can rent via NetFlix and build a DVD library with several hundred discs for less than $100.

I traveled back to Vegas yet again last weekend.  Of course, it was spectacular.

I went to a bachelor party this time, so no fancy dining, no shows…just drinking and strippers and drinking.

The bachelor party itself was at the Spearmint Rhino, which is widely regarded as one of the top two clubs in the city.  I have to say though, while the girls are above average the place is always way too packed.  As in, you have to fight for seats and spend much of the night standing.

Since we had a bunch of guys we got picked up in a big Rhino van and were let in for free through the back entrance.  But after that, no table without buying a bottle.  And you need at least one bottle for every 5 guys…and at $300 a bottle that adds up quick.  Check out Sapphire instead.

We stayed at the Flamingo, a surprisingly decent hotel.  The best feature of the place?  Blackjack tables next to the pool.  There was even a mini craps table.  And your drinks?  Served by girls in bikinis.  Not bad at all.

But got, the city burns you out.  This monday was the longest day ever…even after sleeping much of Sunday.

Still, it NEVER gets old.  Who’s going next?

Warm up your iPhones…another Woot! Off is on.

It’s been over a year, but the Justice Department has finally approved the merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and XM.  After the news broke, Sirius stock jumped as high as $3.40 a share before closing at $3.15.  It was up another $0.11 in after hours trading.

So far good news.  But the merger still must get approval from the FCC.  This is far from a sure thing, although approval from the Justice Department will make it more difficult for the FCC to block the deal.

Opponents of the merger are adamant that the combination of Sirius and XM creates a monopoly over satellite radio.  And they’re right, the new company will be the only satellite radio provider out there.  Just one thing though - there’s free radio, iPods, CDs…hell, even HD radio.  There is LOTS of competition out there through varying delivery mechanisms.

It’s no secret that terrestrial radio companies have lobbied hard to get this merger rejected.  But in reality, terrestrial radio is just not going to make the cash it used to.  Who wants to listen to 20 minutes of commercials an hour, when you can put 40,000 commercial free songs on your iPod.  You can even download popular radio shows as podcasts.  Terrestrial radio is just not good business any more.

As this merger grows closer, you also have to look at one key figure here…Howard Stern.  Before Stern joined Sirius, the company had only about a half a million users to XM’s 3 million users.  Today, the companies are neck in neck, and actually Sirius has a stronger balance sheet.  The fact that one DJ had such a strong effect on a multi-billion dollar industry is amazing.

FCC - we’ll be awaiting your decision soon.

Its happened again.  Another poor airlines goes into bankruptcy because of its inability to compete. This time its Aloha Airgroup which operations the Aloha Airlines brand.  In my lifetime I think I’ve seen so many inter-island carriers come and go it doesn’t surprise me anymore when they go out of business.  One thing I still don’t understand is why can some carriers operated profitably while others seems to just accumulate losses.  Also in light of getting smoked while competing, why don’t these small carriers attempt the low cost Southwest model and just ride of all the frills; the free POG, the skinny Wahine/Mahu and the many friendly grounds crew. 

Help Find Clara The Bulldog

Reward - $3,000 No Questions Asked

Filedropper is awesome.  Just browse, upload a file up to 5GB, and share the link.  And that’s it.  SUPER clean interface, and you can even email links to others.

It works great…although the site is a bit slow today after being dugg.

You can go to filedropper here.

Or, check out this song I already uploaded here:

http://www.filedropper.com/Beatles_-_With_a_Little_Help_From_My_Friends

And up 4% today.  Is a merger pending?

The Wall Street Journal thinks it is.  I’ve heard stories like this at least once a month for the past half-year, so take this with a grain of salt.

But still, the huge after hours job suggests someone knows something…or the lemmings are following each other off another cliff.

To be fair, Apple makes a great mp3 player,and a pretty good phone.  But their iTunes software, on Windows at least, sucks.  Big time.  It’s slow, buggy and places TONS of restrictions on music.

But since you need iTunes to load music into your iPod and iPhone, lots of people have this piece of shit on their PC.  And Apple sees an opportunity here.

The latest update for iTunes offers an upgrade to Safari, Apple’s web browser.  You get the same Apple Software Upgrade dialog box, but instead of seeing another update to iTunes or Quicktime, which I don’t really want on my PC either, you see an already-check box for Safari 3.1.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t use Safari currently - it’s just there.

Now really, this is bullshit.  I don’t want to use iTunes and Quicktime as is…and I certainly don’t want to use Safari.  Pushing the browser on users via an iTunes update is ridiculous, and similar to tactics used by spyware vendors.

Look, Apple, if we wanted you bloated 22MB web browser we’d download it on our own.  Fact is, you have shit market share in the browser market for a reason…Firefox and even IE is a better alternative.

Stick to dumping your also-ran software on Mac users.  We don’t want your shit here.  Thanks.