Ted is 39

Today is my birthday. Today around 8:00 PM (the time I was born) I will begin my 40th year on this planet. 40 years. That's the longest assignment I've ever taken! But this planet seems to be OK in most regards, so I don't mind sticking around for another enlistment term...

I told my daughter (now 1 1/2) this morning that it was my birthday and that I was now 39. I said "Can you imagine being that old? 39?" She said "yeah." Ahh youth. Of course she often says "yeah or nah" seemingly at random... so who knows what she thought I asked her.

Yesterday at dinner time I asked if she wanted some Indian food, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be really spicy, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be so hot it burns the roof of your mouth off, she said "yeah." I think she trusts me too much.

Every year on my birthday I try to think about resolutions for the year ahead. Birthday resolutions ARE "new year's resolution" -- MY new year... Last year my resolutions included spending more time with my family, writing more, and continuing to lose weight and get in shape. I am happy to say I have achieved all three goals. Now I have to think about what I can do this coming year...

New Orb Blog

Rather than continue to fill this blog with Orb related news, we will now return to our regular scheduled programming, and direct you to the new OrbCasting blog for news about Orb by a range of folks from the company...

Orb International

One week ago we announced that Orb Media would be free and it has been a tremendous week of activity for us. Tomorrow we announce that Orb is available internationally! Most of the great Orb features will work everywhere in the world -- streaming video, streaming audio, photos. The only thing that is still US-centric is live TV -- because we have to license the TV guide in each country and it takes us awhile to find someone to license the data to us and then to integrate it into the user interface... But in the meantime everything else works, whether you are in Singapore, Baghdad, Rome, or anywhere else...

And tomorrow we will unveil our first foreign language UI -- mon.orb.com gives you the entire Orb interface in French! Any user can go to this URL instead of my.orb.com and see their personal media world with a French accent. Japanese is next, later in April...

There are a lot more exciting changes ahead to support the international flavor. For example, we are working to expand the Internet TV and Radio listings sections to include content from all over the world. So I can't wait to hear from all of you outside the U.S. that are trying Orb.