Ugh, had to turn the ol captcha back on due to spam spam spam spam spam. Desu desu desu….sigh…
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Author: blueZhift
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Verizon on iPhone: No Worries
The Verizon CEO says he’s not worried about the iPhone. I think he should be because while he’s correct that Verizon has phones that will offer more in services and functionality than the iPhone, which isn’t even 3G yet, a features checklist will not win the battle for cell phone customers. In Asia, it is already quite clear that your cell phone is as much about fashion as functionality, perhaps more so. From what I’ve heard, people in places like Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea change phones and service providers as often as some people change their socks! And there seem to be signs that the cell phone is becoming a fashion accessory in the US as well. With this in mind, I think Verizon should be worried that the hot sexy new iPhone will win out over something less sexy with more functions. Afterall, there are plenty of digital music players with more features than any iPod, but I don’t see anyone deserting the iPod, which remains the number one digital music player despite its higher cost relative to other players with similar features.
As a techie, I used to believe that the best tech would always win. But personal observation has shown me otherwise. Sexy/hip/cool devices with good marketing will beat better technology almost every time. The only wildcard I see in the iPhone equation is just how much of a brake on sales the high price will be. Unless there are major quality issues the iPhone should do very well. If I were Verizon, I’d be trying to get some sexy new phones to market as soon as possible.
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Why Square? Oh Why?
It turns out that the Destiny’s Child game I mentioned here earlier, has been announced by Square-Enix! Yeah, that’s SE of Final Fantasy fame. Why Square? Oh why? In all fairness of course, the game could be great, but it does seem a bit off of Square-Enix’s usual fare. But hey! Change can be good! You know, I think I’d like to see John Carmack try his hand at a dating sim too!
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Lewis Hamilton Is On Fire!
F1’s first black driver Lewis Hamilton is on fire baby! He just picked up his second straight win holding off all challengers to win the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway! I don’t really follow Formula One racing at all, but if this guy keeps it up, I may just have to make some room in my schedule for it. Hamilton is already being referred to as the Tiger Woods of Racing, which I guess is okay. But I just wonder if he would have gotten the chance to race at such a high level if he’d been born black in the US rather than the UK. No matter, I’ll be keeping an eye on him!
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Crush On Obama
I haven’t been paying much attention to the 2008 campaigning for the US presidency because for the most part I’ve already made up my mind and have better things to do until election day. But this video certainly caught my attention and again plays up the fact that the new avenues of participation made possible by the internet may be reshaping the political game in the US. In a world of YouTube and MySpace, a politician’s public image is no longer shaped merely by handlers and spin doctors. It looks like the public is getting a say too! I wonder what wife Michelle thinks about this chick crushin on her man?
I Got a Crush…On Obama
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Safari for Windows GTFO!
I’m sorry, I like Apple and everything, but the Safari for Windows Beta is a piece of crap! I cannot believe they released this bug infested alpha level application. To call this beta is an insult to beta level software! Since the initial release of the “beta” a few days ago, a new updated version has been released. I had hoped this fixed the textless menus problem and lockups that I and others had experienced initially. Well, no such luck! I tried submitting a bug report via the bug button, but that only served to totally lock up the program. I won’t be touching this thing again for a very long time! Someone should have told Steve Jobs that Safari for Windows was no where near ready for even a beta release. Oh, maybe someone did and they are now looking for a new job. Sigh…
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. To Hendrick?!
What if the Pope converted to Islam? Suppose Bin Laden accepted Christ? What if Cub fans moved to the Southside? Now how about this, Dale Earnhardt Jr. joins Hendrick Motorsports and becomes Jeff Gordon’s teammate! This hasn’t been announced officially yet, if true, but if so I cannot wait to see the quakes of Jr. fan reaction. They have never, ever, taken a liking to Jeff Gordon, and now he’s to be teammate of their idol. Oh sports, you are so rich with drama! I think the 2008 season is going to be something to behold!
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Destiny’s Child Video Game
I guess these days everyone has to have their own game. I mean back in the day, then supergroup, Journey had their own arcade game. Now Destiny’s Child is featured in a new mobile phone game. In the game to player is auditioning for a spot in the group as a backup singer. I can’t wait to see how this works out in a cell phone form factor. It says that the player has to hit buttons to the beat, but will the player actually get to sing into the phone too? That would be cool, otherwise it doesn’t really add anything new to the table. There have been Nintendo DS games that make use of its built in mike, so why not? And let’s not forget those Karaoke revolution games!
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No Safari Love For Me
Apple released the first beta of the Safari web browser for Windows today. Naturally, loving new tech toys, and having heard good things about Safari, I downloaded and installed the beta. Well, I have no regrets, but sadly I’ve not been able to get anywhere except for Apple homepage.
On my Windows XP SP2 box, Safari starts up looking like iTunes big brother in general appearance. But unfortunately for me, all of the menu text is missing. Not only that, I could not enter text in the address box either. After a few minutes of bumping about in the dark, so to speak, Safari locks up and I have to shut it down. So no Safari love here.
I know betas are test versions, so I’m not surprised by bugs, but I would have expected something more esoteric than the menus not showing up. That seems like something too basic to miss, especially since iTunes works well on my machine. I’m sure the problem will be fixed soon enough.
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Kobayashi Maru Monday
Monday’s tend to suck enough already, but having a fight in the car on the way to work is just the worst. It’s a no win situation as most stupid arguments are. And this one was no different. I should have been smart enough to avoid a fight like that. Oh well, live and learn I guess…T_T
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Kunoichi Vs NASCAR
I usually watch NASCAR races after church on Sundays, but today I returned home to find that the TiVo had decided that I might like Ninja Warrior and was recording that. I am in fact a big fan of Ninja Warrior on G4 (aka Sasuke in Japan), but on this occassion it was actually recording the Women of Ninja Warrior (Kunoichi in Japan) which is a female only version of the competition. Since the kids were showing great interest in the show as well, I decided to postpone my race watching in favor of Kunoichi.
It was a lot of fun watching the mostly kawaii competitors overcome or spectacularly fail to overcome the often sadistic obstacles of each stage. In the end it was the cute blonde acrobat/dancer Ayako Miyake who conquered all stages and became the first woman to win Kunoichi! Then I discovered that the Pocono 500 had been delayed due to rain, so I hadn’t missed anything, double bonus!^_^
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Return To Jail Paris!
It looks like Paris Hilton is going back to jail! I neither love nor hate Paris Hilton since I really don’t pay any attention to the things she has been a part of. But the rich and famous getting special treatment in the courts is not unique or surprising. It just happens, unfortunately for Miss Hilton, that her case is getting an extra helping of attention probably because she is hated by quite a few people. She is the epitome of the spoiled rich girl, and as such, a lightening rod for attention of all kinds. I would hope that the rich and famous would take a lesson from this and learn to live up to a higher standard. Instead of being the jealous envy of the not so rich and famous, why not be a shining example worthy of emulation by all?
Most of all though, I hope that Paris herself will learn something useful from all of this. After all, she’s really the one with the most to lose.
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Drat! Still No Video Playlist For TiVo!
I spent a little time with the TiVo last night looking at some new things, at least to me, that I had missed before. There’s the TiVoCast, which has show downloads from the internet kind of like Democracy TV. And there’s the Amazon Unbox service for movies and TV shows via Amazon.com. But the thing that remains conspicuously AWOL is a video playlist! All I want is to be able to say program an entire day of TV watching. Why oh why is that soooo hard for them to do? I can only guess that the media powers that be don’t want people to become their own program directors. It doesn’t really make sense to me at all. I’m not talking about skipping commercials. I really don’t care about that anyway, being from the generation that used such breaks to go to bathroom or, *gasp*, talk to family members! So what is so bad about me stringing together a few hours of recorded programming? I can only guess that maybe they are afraid I’ll totally ignore their new shows or something…But wait, isn’t that what I’m scheduling anyway? Again, it makes no sense.
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The Mouths Of Babes
My kids like to sing, and it’s a wonderful thing. Though sometimes it gets a little annoying when they latch on to a single song and won’t let it go. Right now their favorite seems to be Crawling by Linkin Park. I like the song too, but 3 small children singing it over and over again is a bit much! They discovered the song in the form of a Naruto anime music video on YouTube. Earlier I’d discovered Linkin Park’s With You, also in an AMV featuring clips from Gunslinger Girl. So I bought both tracks from iTunes.
The real fun and lulz are had when kids are singing things that just don’t fit. One of my favorite AMV discovered songs is 4ever by The Veronicas which was used in a Haruhi Suzumiya music video made by AUN Studios. The kids like the video and sing the song too. But there’s something just too funny about a 6 year old singing “come on baby we ain’t gonna live forever”. LOL BTW, the media companies should take note that I bought 3 songs that I probably would never have heard of were it not for fan created music videos which exist in the grey areas of copyright law!
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Mach 5 Revealed: A Sweet Ride
Speed Racer was one of those anime I grew up watching long before I realized it was anime. And now a live action movie of this old favorite is right around the corner due out next year. There are of course sooooo many ways this can go wrong, but on the surface at least it is shaping up to be a film I’ll pay full price for as the Mach 5 is revealed on Filmwad. It looks like one sweet ride!
