One of my biggest pet peeves on television shows, especially crime shows, is how obnoxious their computers and technology are. Every bleep, blap and bloop with every click, tap and scroll really annoys the heck out of me. So when I saw this compilation of obnoxious photo-enhance scenes from popular television shows and movies, I knew I had to share it. Going through YouTube I discovered a plethora of these compilations, totally check them out. Woot has a great selection here.
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I would like to thank all those that provided me with tips on which books I should get for my mother for Christmas. Living in Saudi Arabia, getting American books can be a bit difficult at times.
My dad and I thought, what better gift than an Amazon Kindle to solve this problem?! With new latest version she will be able to use Wispernet, even in Saudi Arabia, to buy books, get the latest New York Times and sync her reads between her Kindle and perhaps her iPod Touch. Pretty amazing technology we have these days.
It’s this sort of ubiquitous wireless internet and background syncing that will prove to the victors of the future. It will form the backbone of future operating systems, from the desktop to the tablet to the phone. I’ve already setup something like this for myself, combining systems like Dropbox, MobileMe and SugarSync with my iPhone, laptops and iMac. Amazing to think of how far we were away from this technology just a few years ago.
Ah, but I digress, back to the Kindle.
I got lots of recommendations on how to properly give the Kindle as a gift and especially on recommendations for books based on my description of my mom through Twitter.
I loaded up the Kindle with four books and one audio book of my favorite audio books.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is one that I started while on the plane. You might think, wow, using the gift you’re giving your mother for your own?! Well, how else to make sure it works? Just like how she used to eat one of my candies or part of my dessert at a restaurant to “make sure it wasn’t poison.”
This book, recommended to me by @MaryMG, so far is just incredible. Within the first several pages I found my eyes tearing up. Didion has a sensational way of turning ordinary words into a phenomenal, emotionally rich story.
I can’t wait to read more of this book. Experiencing the Kindle has convinced me that it’s something I need to invest for myself. A slick eReader that makes reading more enjoyable and easy than I’ve ever known it to be.
Sure makes some twenty-four hours of travel more exciting, less annoying. And the girl in front of me who refuses to give me any legroom, your constant seat adjustments might keep me from watching any inflight movie or using my laptop but it certainly will not keep me from enjoying a good book!
Oh and for the complete reading list:
The first three I strongly recommend. I”m about half way through The Year of Magical Thinking, I enjoyed Fraud when it came out a few years ago (anything David Rackoff does is worth a read or listen) and Malcolm Gladwell has never disappointed, really exited about his latest book, a compendium of his library of articles.
UPDATE:
Mom absolutely loves her new Kindle and the book selection we (me and all my Twitter friends chose!)
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I’m sure you’ve read about the controversy behind the Crunchpad, CrunchGear, Fusion Garage, Michael Arrington and Chandra Rathakrishnan.
Here’s a brief breakdown and then I’ll get into my absolute exclusive, breaking news story.
Michael Arrington and his blog CrunchGear had this idea of an Internet tablet. He has an incredible pull in the tech industry with production companies, advertisers, publishers, the whole deal. Arrington had this idea of an internet connected, totally open source tablet that would allow a user to have a total web experience without the big computer. Most of your web experience doesn’t require a mouse or keyboard, really. A multitouch screen, like that on the iPhone, has proven this.
Of course, Apple has a rumored tablet coming out too. But lucky for Arrington, the Apple tablet, if it is indeed real, would be in a totally different market. Arrington wanted the Crunchpad to cost around or les than $200. There simply isn’t any way Apple would meet that. When their tablet comes out, if it does exist, look for one at least $800.
Just days ago, Arrington broke the news that the company he had teamed up with to build the Crunchpad had bailed on him, that they planned to release the device without his backing and that lawsuits were pending.
Rathakrishnan, of Fusion Garage, the company behind the actual creation of the Crunchpad had a lot to say about this. Here are his claims, which actually sound pretty legit.
His argument is pretty interesting. If Arrington (a lawyer) didn’t sign any contracts and had no formal agreements, prior art, etc… he’s pretty much SOL.
So what about the name? Arrington definitely owns the rights to Crunchpad. Whatever will Fusion Garage sell this device as and for what amount?
It’s the JooJoo, which means magic and you’ll be able to buy it for $500.
It’s got a sleek, elegant, industrial design it plays back 1080p video, built in WiFi, five hour battery life, 5gb of built in storage and I want one.
However… upon closer inspection, something didn’t seem right.
I got to thinking about tablets and when I first heard such a thing and that’s when I realized, Fusion Garage totally, and I mean TOTALLY, ripped off the JooJoo from someone else. Someone with a higher power at his side, even higher than Arrington if you can believe it. I even have a photograph of the original tablet with two prototypes! The first two were destroyed after a lackluster adoption by the masses…
I give to you, the original “JooJoo” tablets.
Behold, the original JewJew tablets as modeled by the Fusion Garage of 1441 BC. We all know the story of Moses, leader of the Jews, and his creation of the tablets with the intellectual property loaned to him by God.
Think of it this way. Michael Arrington is to God as Chandra Rathakrishnan is to Moses. I’m pretty sure this will take the technology world by storm. Look out CNet, ValleyWag, Engadget, Gizmodo and yes, even TechCrunch/Crunchgear.
You learned of this vast conspiracy here first. Spread the word!
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I hate that I might actually have to give up on Disqus. It’s gotten so bad that even when @Disqus comments on my blog they don’t show up on their dashboard or the blog while somehow they show on my WordPress dashboard.
Not sure what’s more upsetting. My Disqus not working, over 1,600 comments missing or the fact that my blog has become a review of Disqus. I typically only review products I adore, of course with few acceptions. This time I feel disenchanted by a service I was so optimistic about. And I’m honestly not sure what else I can do. I’ve exported my blog to @Giannii or @Disqus four times in three different formats. What more can I do?
Oh and Disqus, why make a comment requiring a followup on a blog where the PROBLEM is comments not showing up on the blog? You have my email address.
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Yesterday I shared my ultimately negative experience with the blog comment system, IntenseDebate. The system was at first promising, before it fell flat on it’s face with a beautiful front end but clunky backend, inability to properly manage logins and artificially limiting features. You can read more about why, just click back to that post.
So I switched back to Disqus, the commenting system I tried out a couple of years ago before ultimately abandoning it. The early versions of Disqus wouldn’t synchronize comments with the WordPress database. If Disqus ever went away, so did your comments.
I installed the latest Disqus as a plugin for the latest version of WordPress. I rand the installation, followed the directions to import my comments and this is what happened and continues to happen.
No comments are imported! I went to Twitter and talked to @Disqus a few weeks ago. I even emailed them about the problem and they said they’d take care of it.
And yet, still, there are no comments from my previous posts. They all still exist in my blog, you can see there are over 1,600 of them.
If I go to Disqus to see my comments, only five show up!
There is certainly no way I can really review Disqus until I get it to actually work. I really want to like the system and the people behind it. They have been so quick to send help my way, even on this blog, but sadly the help never fixes the problem.
For right now though, Disqus is just a disappointment. Even more so than IntenseDebate. At least that would import my comments…
So why not discuss this Disqus problem but logging your comments on the form below. See, any new post and any new comments show up just fine. It’s those pesky historical comments and conversations that never showed up to the party.
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I’ll get some pictures posted later but here’s the short, sad news.
July 6th, I went to the Apple Store to get a new, better suited, laptop/camera bag. I wanted something that held my laptop more securely than my Tamrac bag. I picked out this great Incase bag, tried my laptop in it, tried it with the camera too, fantastic.
Put my laptop back into my Tamrac bag, put my camera in my Tamrac bag, zipped everything up and then headed to the checkout.
CRASH!!!
My laptop fell out of my bag! Just as I was buying a new one, a new one being purchased because I feared this would happen.
The laptop screen was cracked, the side of the computer bent up. Even the top of the computer has some hills and valleys in the aluminum. I was very sad.
After my four insurance policies denied coverage (what the f*ck) I finally decided to buy a new one today.
The purchase was complicated, card was marked for fraud, Apple Specialist Mark forgot to add the free iPod Touch/photo printer… But in the end everything worked out. I was told by a couple of Apple Stores and Apple.com that they could add the iPod Touch/Printer on my original receipt when I get to my store in Houston.
I bought the top of the line 15″ MacBook Pro with the 512mb video ram. It’s so beautiful, so pretty, so fast, so awesome. I haven’t decided what to do with my old MacBook Pro, sell it, turn it into a desktop (if the computer portion still works)… who knows.
Meanwhile, I have a new, even better, computer so hooray for everything working out, even if it did cost me $2,400 more than I had expected to spend on my vacation.
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If you were one of the lucky ones, you picked up a copy of Netshare while it was in the iTunes store. Its status with the iTunes App Store has been under scrutiny what with it coming and going willy nilly. Thanks to Nick Starr I caught it on one of its short lived moments in the App Store.
But if you did get it going, I highly recommend you hit up Apple Insider for a step by step guide to setting up Netshare with your iPhone. This of course allows you to hop on the internet with your just you laptop (ideally) and your iPhone. To my knowledge, no one knows what AT&T will do about this. They claim you cannot tether the iPhone and use it’s unlimited data plan at a $30/m savings to their regular data plan.
It gets really complicated as each application has to be reviewed by Apple before they are put into the wild for users to download. Secondly this app costs $9.99 which means if they disable it, customers would demand a refund… Thirdly, Apple will technically have benefited from this app which AT&T might claim to be illegal under their contract. Apple just renewed their exclusivity contract with AT&T through 2010.
Basically I’m thinking, use are your own risk!
I was hanging out at Diedrich Coffee today and thought I’d give it a try.
It took quite a few tries to get it going using the Netshare’s built-in instructions but Apple Insider’s tips were great and I had it up and running in no time. And it works. The speeds aren’t what I get on my Verizon card but in a pinch, 900kbps isn’t so bad.
Yeah so Netshare works pretty darn good, only one thing. When I did an IP trace on the address assigned by AT&T, I got some interesting results.
It says the IP is coming from AT&T but it’s coming from the United Kingdom. Not sure what that’s about but I’d be interested to see what other people are getting for their IP address when tethered to their iPhone.
