4

I'm 3 days late, but Sunday was 4 years...

RIP

Sprint Gives Heisman

Hilarious, brilliant, CSRs dream, and PR nightmare rolled into one. I still can't believe they went through with this, especially given the suspect criteria used.

Sprint breaks up with high-maintenance customers
On June 29, 2007, Sprint sent letters notifying some customers that their service would be canceled by the end of July due to excessive calls to customer service.

"Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information," the letter reads. "While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs."

Part II: Apple vs. AT&T - The Activation

We all love cell phone activations, right?

It seems like in the past I've spent more time than I care to in the store when I purchase a phone.

With iPhone in hand, I went home to complete the activation. I had already downloaded iTunes 7.3 in the morning, so I was ready to go.

Unwrapping new Apple products is always a pleasure. They focus on the design, the packaging and how it feels. And I've always noticed that for 1st generations they put much more effort into it. (If you ever bought a first gen iPod, you'll know what I mean).

I plug the phone into the dock, connect to my computer and I'm off and running in iTunes. 5-6 pages later I arrive at the "Complete Your Activation" screen. I'm told it may take up to 3 minutes.

I wait, and wait. And then receive a messages that says "You will receive an email confirmation once your activation is complete." WTF?

Now I have to wait for email confirmation. This can't be Apple. So, I call the 800 number on the screen.

I still don't know if it was an Apple rep or AT&T rep, but the phone rings twice and is picked up - no waiting. Clearly those extra 2000 staffers made a difference. And amazingly the woman was very pleasant and easy to understand. I suspect that the rep was from AT&T, but it was a specially staffed iPhone 800 number. It was just too good for a regular carrier.

Apparently, AT&T is backlogged in new activation requests and it may take 24 hours to receive an email. Keep in mind, that NO iTunes syncing can occur until after your phone has been activated. So, basically I can't even use the phone.

Many compulsive email refreshes later, I receive the email, and my phone starts syncing. I had already setup preferences to sync contacts, calendar, personal email account, songs, photos, and a couple tv shows.

In summary, the activation experience (aside from the waiting) was awesome. I did it all in the course of 5 minutes from my computer.

Word on the internet, is that if you were porting a number from another carrier, the WAIT is much longer.

So, it appears that Apple's design experience and server available were top-notch. AT&T needs to figure out how to activate phones quicker.

Apple vs. AT&T

So, did I get an iPhone yesterday? Read and see.

The Logic
I decided to wait in line at the local AT&T rather than the Apple Store. My reasoning was that the lines were a lot longer at the Apple Store. 300 in my neighborhood vs. 100 at AT&T. And Apple was allowing two phone purchases per person while AT&T was allowing only one.

The AT&T Experience
I had a late work meeting, so I didn't get to AT&T until around 5pm. At that point, I was about 95th in line. The mood of the crowd was reasonably happy, no one here had been waiting for days.

Fast forward to 6pm and the doors open. The line moves up a bit as people crowd forward, but from then on moves VERY slowly. We finally get to a window where we can see inside the store and they have 10-12 stations, but the computers are moving VERY slowly, and it seems to take 10-15 minutes just to get one person done. Apparently, they're doing FULL credit checks.

They won't say much about inventory, but say we should get a phone though it may not be 8GB. This continues for around an hour and a half. Then at around 7:30pm, they say that there's a very low chance we'll get the 8s based on where we're at in line. I waiver, and decide to wait a bit more time. At 7:50pm (with 40 people still ahead of me), they say they're out of 8s and MAY not have any 4s available by the time it reaches me.

To hell with that. I resign myself to trying tomorrow, but decide on a lark to walk down to the Apple Store on the Promenade.

The Apple Experience
I get to the Apple Store at around 8pm. The line has about 150 people. But, it would seem to be moving fairly quickly. There are 10x as many police and the mood is much more festive.

Rumor passes through the line, that there's still plenty of iPhones, both 4s and 8s. But, the Apple employees while nice, won't confirm.

Meanwhile, there's free Starbucks coffee samples AND they start passing out water bottles to people in line.

Every 10-15 min. they're letting in groups of 30 people at a time. They're cruising through.

Around 9pm, about 15 Apple employees clap and cheer as I walk through the doors. I'm siked to hear that they still have the 8s in stock. Going through the in-store line, Apple employees are letting us play with iPhones while we wait to get to a register.

I'm up, I want an 8, and they're done in 3 min. I HAVE the iPhone!

The Moral
When faced with a choice to wait in line at an AT&T or Apple Store. Choose the Apple Store if you want free water.

iTunes 7.3

New iTunes update came out today to support iPhone activations. Probably tweaked some other things as well, but the first one I noticed was a bit weird.

Alphabetical sorting now puts artists and albums with numbers after the alphabet rather than before it, so the 22-20s are now near the end of my library, while a-ha has risen to the top.

Flashback

While trying to recall the old Chatsworth address for the Gmaps entry, I stumbed onto this blog post:

when i was staying in hollywood, i took a job at a company called inetnow.com

Gotta love the photo of the pen.

Anyone remember this guy?

New GMaps Feature is the Holy Grail!

Neil sent me a text about this tonight, and I actually left a restaurant early to come home and play with it. (True that double true.)



Hmm, I'd rather take the 405...



Wait, what am I thinking. Surface streets make more sense...



Un-flipping believable!

Play with it here

iPhone Video 2: Activation and Sync

Another iPhone video is up, this one about how to activate and sync.

My thoughts/predictions:

-They seem to have done a great job in allowing you to activate at home yourself via iTunes, as this tends to be a long, tedious, and confusing process that was made extremely simple.

-Based on this in home activation, rumors of no removable battery, and no obvious battery door in the other demo, we may have our answer on the "will it work on other carriers" question. My guess is that the way they "locked" the iPhone was quite literal: they locked the SIM in the phone, making it non-removable. (Or at least not easily removable.)

-Synching is iPod simple, with nice touches of being able to auto-sync a Yahoo address book and have POP mail settings synched to the phone as well if the accounts are already on your computer.

-We also have the billing plan answer from the video: $59.99 for 450 minutes, $79.99 for 900 minutes, or $99.99 for 1,350 minutes. All plans include unlimited data, visual voicemail, 200 SMS messages, and the usual AT&T rollover and mobile to mobile minutes. (A little steep, but with my limited talking I could probably get away with the low plan and paying extra for an upgrade on SMS.)

iPhone Video: Check out the UI

Neil tipped me off to the video that Apple has on their home page. It's a 25 min. tutorial of how the iPhone works.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/usingiphone/guidedtour_large.html

The demo shows a lot of the contextual power of the UI. You have the right buttons that you need when you're performing certain actions. This seems like to be the biggest problems with most software.

Things I liked from the demo:

- easily adding a caller (conference) to a call - this seems like one of the things that regular phone systems never make easy

- different functionality is accessed depending on the orientation of the phone (vertical or horizontal)

- pinch zooming in and out

- they only mention Google and Yahoo as search options. Poor Microsoft.

- my Treo has SMS message threading. But the iPhone UI shows both parties in a bubble talk format

- the biggest problem with the demo, is the unbelievable speed that the internet is accessed. I'm sure it'll be much slower in reality

The 38th Parody

They say it's the sincerest form of flattery for a reason. It actually is pretty funny. My favorite is the ad at the top of the fake one. "Your mom is looking for a good developer." LOL

37 Signals
SvN: Sketching with a Sharpie
Ballpoints and fine tips just don’t fill the page like a Sharpie does. Fine tips invite you to draw while Sharpies invite you to just to get your concepts out into big bold shapes and lines. When you sketch with a thin tip you tend to draw at a higher resolution and worry a bit too much about making things look good. Sharpies encourage you to ignore details early on.

The 38th Signal
Wireframing with the blood of your enemies
Ballpoints and fine tips just don’t convey the same sense of malice and dominance as blood. Fine tips invite you to draw while blood invites you to visualize your concept obliterating the competition. When you sketch with a thin tip you tend to spend too much time worrying about making it look good. Using blood encourages you to ignore extraneous details and focus on what matters: the annihilation of your rivals and the subjugation of their people. You can almost hear the women weeping.

UPDATE: Fixed the 38th link above to be a permalink to the referenced article, now that they've started adding parody posts to match some other SvN content. Full site here.

The Sippy Cup Incident

TSA video counts 'sippy cup' allegation

Summary:
Woman stopped by airport security for having water in her son's sippy cup. TSA says she can't take it and has to get rid of the water and go through security again. In her anger she walks out of security through the exit, intentionally dumps out the water onto the floor, and tries to go back into security through the exit. A larger incident follows, and in the process she misses her flight. After the fact she claims she spilled the water by accident and was sorely mistreated in an abuse of power.

Rather than just take the heat, the TSA posts the security video on their website, calling her bluff and proving she spilled the water in an intentional episode of immature rage. (As you can probably guess, I love that the TSA posted the video.)

Moral of the story:
Even if you are put off by an arguably overzealous and unnecessary piece of red tape policy, lying will only make it worse.

And big brother is always watching...

Random Site: Forum Search Engine

I randomly came across this site.

http://www.omgili.com/

From their About section:

"Omgili is a specialized search engine that focuses on "many to many" user generated content platforms, such as, forums, Discussion groups, answer boards and others."

I'm sure there are better examples of sites like this, but I was drawn in by the design more than anything. I don't like the color scheme.

Do a search for "dating" and notice Buzz Meter that shows up on the right side.

I'd love to see Google incorporate historical popularity of search terms next to results, or have it as an option on the Personalized home page. Google already seems a little more cluttered with the new interface.

Browser Wars Revisited?

Does Safari for Windows mean the old browser wars are heating up again?

It's a head scratching move to a degree from a pure web browser standpoint, though it does make sense as an iPhone WebApp development environment, or if the iPhone eventually synchs Safari bookmarks over the air.

Origins of Deja Vu

Vague, but interesting.

Origin of Deja Vu Pinpointed
The brain cranks out memories near its center, in a looped wishbone of tissue called the hippocampus. But a new study suggests only a small chunk of it, called the dentate gyrus, is responsible for “episodic” memories—information that allows us to tell similar places and situations apart.

The finding helps explain where déjà vu originates in the brain, and why it happens more frequently with increasing age.

Buzz

This is pretty neat. I can't hear it, but Arlo can.

A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears
"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."

The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

The cellphone ring tone that she heard was the offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.

It was marketed as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz buzzer designed to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected.

MP3 here.

Become Famous on Google Streets

So, by now you've already heard of Google Street View that was officially announced at the Where 2.0 conference:

Google Maps Street View and Mapplets

However, what I didn't think about was the potential for Google's cameras to find people and things in weird situations. Here's an article on 10 weird sitings:

10 Bizarre Sights in Google Street View

I like the Borat one.

Now, if I can just find out when the Google van is going to visit my neighborhood.

The Dream...

I know it's probably unlikely to come true, but one can dream...

20-hour work weeks
CIOs need to prepare for the 20-hour working week as social models and technologies change to promote a work-light future, analyst house Gartner predicts.

Simply Google

Its been awhile...but I found something pretty cool.

Check this out...All of Google's features on one page.

Did you know about Mental Plex, Pigeon Rank, and Google Romance?

Banning the bulb?

LEDs emerge to fight fluorescents
"The light bulb, the symbol of bright ideas, doesn't look like such a great idea anymore, as lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology because of its contribution to global warming."

Home, End, Insert

Some classic observational wisdom from SvN.

Home and End: Two of the most useful yet underrated keys on the keyboard

"They’re small and their function isn’t all that clear. You can just press one to see what happens, but I’ve also noticed people don’t experiment with their keyboards. They use the keys they know and avoid the rest."

I'm surprised the comments haven't delved into a debate over the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the Insert Key, which I find to be a total waste of space.

We listened to songs about fire while Griffith Park burned...

Couple of on-topic discoveries related to the Griffith Park fire.

1. The Los Angeles Fire Department has an official blog, and it's well done and pretty damn informative at that. Gotta love seeing new media put to good use in simple yet unsuspecting ways. Can't wait for the day when it's not so unexpected to see something like this.

2. Sitting down to dinner and wanting to drown out the noise of the helicopters, I opened iTunes, typed "fire" into the search box, and assembled a quickie themed playlist. (Some might remember my "Rain" mix CD that I kept in my car during June gloom a few years ago. I so amuse myself...)

> > Light My Fire -- The Doors
> > Fuel for Fire -- M. Ward
> > Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head -- Gorillaz
> > Fire On The Bayou -- The Meters
> > Ring of Fire -- Johnny Cash
> > Firetruck -- Mike Doughty
> > Fire and Rain -- James Taylor
> > Fire -- Jimi Hendrix
> > Ceasefire -- Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
> > Play With Fire -- The Rolling Stones
> > Chinese Firedrill -- Mike Watt
> > Fire In My Head -- Piers Faccini
> > Fire In The Garage -- Papa Grows Funk
> > Fire On The Mountain -- Grateful Dead
> > Fire Tender Red -- Abdoujaparov
> > Firehead -- Devics
> > Fireplace -- R.E.M.
> > Firetruck Remix -- Mike Doughty
> > Friendly Fire -- Citizen Cope
> > I Set The World On Fire -- The Thorns
> > Ring Of Fire -- Social Distortion
> > Lake Of Fire -- Nirvana
> > Playing With Fire -- Stereo MC's
> > This Fire -- Franz Ferdinand
> > The Unforgettable Fire -- U2

As we went through the songs, I realized that some that had fire in the title didn't really fit the theme ("Firehead" by the Devics; "Fire in the Garage" by Papa Grows Funk), and others that had fire in the lyrics should have really been included but weren't due to the nature of the iTunes search function. ("April 29, 1992" by Sublime: "wanna let it burn wanna wanna let it burn"; "Laid" by James: "this bed is on fire...")

And then it hit me how brilliant this rumored deal between Apple and Gracenote to provide lyrics in iTunes could be if done right.

Imagine the mixtape making power of being able to search a music library for words and phrases contained in the lyrics. Or how many more songs you might buy if you could literally search based on "that song that goes..." Filmmakers could import a script into a tool that would spit out suggestions for the soundtrack. Vacation mixes could dig up ditties that reference your destination. The list goes on and on.

It's more than just allowing for an iPod based singalong. This is going to be huge.

Biz 2.Doh!

It happens to everyone...

June Issue Of Business 2.0 Deleted Before Going To Print

via TechCrunch

Maps: Usability vs. Accuracy

Can He Get There From Here?

Great NYT article (via SvN) about one man's quest to revise and simplify the NYC subway maps.

"He wisely recognizes that usability is more important than geographic accuracy here. Subway map readers want to know how to get from A to B a lot more than they want to know the exact curve of the tracks along the way. Sometimes truth is less important than knowledge."

I completely agree. Reminds me of the magic that makes the old MapBlast LineDrive directions so powerful. A clear blueprint of where you're going is far more important that whether or not the map is "to scale" in a traditional sense.

Very Observant

Hey BoRyan: We were right, and it goes even deeper:

Replays of Red Sox’ Homer Feat Tell Different Story

It was the third inning when Manny Ramírez, J. D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek each hit bases-empty homers to put the Red Sox ahead, 4-3. Each one was accompanied by a colorful verbal send-off by ESPN’s Jon Miller.

As ESPN rolled the replay of Drew’s drive, Miller said, “Theo Epstein was watching and was pretty impressed.” In a taped reaction shot, Epstein, the Red Sox’ general manager, appeared to say, “Oh my God.”

A few minutes later, as ESPN replayed Lowell’s shot, Miller said, “Manny Ramírez was watching it from the dugout.” Ramírez jumped off the bench, exultant, and hugged a teammate or a coach.

Then the third inning ended, and ESPN offered a sequence of the four home runs, and this time, Epstein’s reaction no longer came after Drew’s home run, but after Varitek’s, the last in the record-tying run.

In the seventh, the sequence was shown again, and Ramírez’s reaction was shifted to look like he was celebrating Varitek’s shot, not Lowell’s. Epstein’s reaction shot followed, again making him look like he has been stunned by one home run when he was really amazed by another.

In the sequence that ended the broadcast, ESPN shifted Epstein out of his original reality to look like he was reacting to Lowell’s home run, not Drew’s or Varitek’s. He was now unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

Superman?

Gary will appreciate these related random findings in the news today. Maybe Superman is real. First they discover his Achilles, then his home...

I read this in the morning:

'Kryptonite' discovered in mine
"A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine in Serbia."

And this the same night:

Potentially habitable planet found
"The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun."

DNS Update - blog.towform.com

I setup Towform to use the Custom Domain feature that Google provides. You shouldn't notice any differences, but it technically means that you'll want to set your favorites to go to http://blog.towform.com (that is the official url of the blog now).

For now towform.com and www.towform.com are redirecting to blog.towform.com.

Anyways, just geeky stuff that I was playing with.

Save Internet Radio

I don't usually post things like this, but...

Save Internet Radio Petition

Recent legislation has nearly tripled royalty fees for streaming Internet radio stations such as Pandora and KCRWMusic.com, which could be the death of this industry as the fees prevent them from sustaining a viable business.

Signing the above petition sends a customizable email to your political representatives expressing your objection to this ruling.

Special bonus on topic UI coolness:

Love how filling out the "Your Name" box in the signature section of the petition auto parses and populates the first name/last name boxes on the right hand side. Brilliant, elegant simplicity at its best.

Day 6: 11pm-12am

Um...BEST EPISODE EVER!!!!!!

Even though the message boards think otherwise.

Brilliant all around, and crazy that it's what the rest of this ok season has been setting up all along.

Acoustic Classical Thrash Metal

Rodrigo y Gabriela blew me away at the KCRW Sounds Ecelctic show last night.

Let Her Go And Start Over

Interesting blurb about how to revamp the Internet for more security, speed, and functionality in a mobile age.

Researchers explore scrapping Internet

Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."

GMaps Easter Egg

Funny little hidden "feature" of Google Maps, courtesy of my cousin Adam.

Search for directions from anywhere in the US to anywhere in Europe.

Using this example, read down to step 38 of the directions...

The Kitchen Website

Perfect score on the website creativity meter:

No One Belongs Here More Than You

via SvN

TC + FC?

Not sure if this one is another prank, or just an ill-timed announcement ala the original Gmail launch.

TechCrunch Acquires FuckedCompany

In some regards it makes sense, in others these seem to be two guys who would enjoy an elaborate joke.

In either case, I did like the subtle teaser on the FC landing page:

That time of year...

Logged into Gmail tonight and had a quick WTF moment when I saw this announcement, but quickly realized they must have updated the page early on the West Coast...

Gmail Paper

UPDATE:
Looks like we get two this year:

Google TISP

The ePop Oops

Remember all those times you were talking about someone and accidentally ePopped them something you shouldn't have because they were on your mind?

Microsoft Accidentally Sends Secret File On Journalist, To That Journalist

Useless?

I found this hard to believe, but it speaks a lot to perspective.

Many Americans see little point to Web

A little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in their lives, according to a survey released on Friday.

PS: I failed miserably at shutdown day, but mainly for work related reasons.

Shutdown Day

Interesting experiment this Saturday. I think I'll give it a try...

Shutdown Day

Once You Go Jack...

No, this isn't a 24 post.

Just a friendly announcement that everyone's favorite computer gameshow has returned in a new online beta.

You Don't Know Jack

Ahhh, memories....

Now Now

Amazon's new iNetNow-esque service. And they sort of stole our name.

NowNow by Amazon

Google Maps Becomes Friendly to Local Businesses

I'm sure you guys will have seen this by the time you're reading.

Google is finally starting to do SiteSearch like things with Google Maps (photos, payment methods, websites, etc.)

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/photos-on-google-maps.html

And they've even added the ability for businesses to offer coupons directly in their business entries:

http://google.com/local/add/coupons?hl=en-US&gl=US

TellMe: Is it true?

Reports say TellMe may have been purchased by Microsoft:

TellMe For Sale


Or maybe not:

TellMe not sold to Microsoft


Don't you love getting news by blog?

Back to the Future vs. Bill and Ted

Couldn't resist two "versus" posts in a row:

BTTF vs. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

No argument here on the clear winner...

Gates vs. Jobs

Kinda silly, but still pretty funny.

Black Wednesday

Bah! The only good thing about V-Day is this site.

Be My Anti-Valentine

Some good new ones this year. The social networking one is great.

Precursor to Mr. Fusion?

Hey team!

I found something fascinating today. Researchers are developing a new generator that eats garbage and "poops" out energy. It is initially a military application for soldiers to produce energy and get rid of their garbage at the same time.

More here.

Awesome!

PDT meets Y2K

You already know about my daylight savings time pet peeve.

This year there are 4 more weeks for the PST idiots to be wrong.

At least this article is hilarious.

Clocks' Early Spring Forward May Bring About a Few Falls

Excerpts:

When few people were paying attention in August 2005, Congress lengthened daylight saving time by four weeks in the name of energy efficiency. The change takes effect this year -- on March 11 -- and it has angered airlines, delighted candy makers and sent thousands of technicians scrambling to make sure countless automated systems switch their clocks at the right moment. Unless changed by one method or another, many systems will remain programmed to read the calendar and start daylight saving time on its old date in April, not its new one in March.

"After building bunkers in the desert for Y2K, we're not even talking about this, and it's happening in less than two months," said Matthew Kozak, an information technology specialist at Rutgers University who monitors numerous sites and discussion groups.

Microsoft cautions that some of its older products -- including Windows XP SP1 and Windows NT4 -- will require manual updates. The company's Web site provides detailed instructions on how to update various products, although it is pushing against the deadline in some cases. Updates and tools "are being developed and tested," the Web site says, and some will "be released through early March 2007."

As a fallback, Microsoft urges customers to double-check meetings scheduled during the four weeks being added to daylight saving time this year.

"Users should view any appointments that fall into these date ranges as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees to make sure that the item shows up correctly on everyone's calendar both internally and externally," Microsoft says on its Web site.

If there is a sweet ending to the debate, it will occur Oct. 31. Candy manufacturers lobbied for years to stretch daylight saving time to encompass Halloween. Not only will children have more daylight hours to consume treats, they contend, but they will be safer zipping across streets in their costumes.

Billboards That Talk To You

I wasn't sure how to categorize this, so I'm giving it a new "marketing" tag.

I know we're going to see more of this localized, location-based, Minority Report stuff in the future. For some reason though this makes me uncomfortable. I wouldn't opt in for this type of marketing, but I'd love to see the fool next to me using it...

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/01/talking_billboa.html

"The enthusiastic guinea pigs for the Mini experiment will be more than a thousand Mini owners in New York, Miami, Chicago, and San Francisco who have signed up for what the company calls "an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful, and unexpected messages."

The boards, which usually carry typical advertising, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. The messages are personal, based on questionnaires that owners filled out: "Mary, moving at the speed of justice," if Mary is a lawyer, or "Mike, the special of the day is speed," if Mike is a chef."

I especially liked the 4th comment down.

Sincerest Form of Flattery

Bo showed us ChaCha back in this September post.

Small world, eh?

Tech guru’s ChaCha to have human touch

Tim Durham, one of the wealthy individuals Jones approached for investment in his new search engine, said ChaCha’s business model is similar to one he attempted himself half a decade ago with a company called iNetNow. Now defunct, it also employed teams of college students to surf the Net on behalf of others.

“The difference is, we had a call center and you had to man that call center day and night. That was the bulk of your cost,” said Durham, CEO of Indianapolis-based Obsidian Enterprises Inc. “Scott’s unique approach is to have college students be his call center all around the country.”

Durham said he considered investing up to $500,000 in Jones’ company, but ultimately passed because his money was tied up elsewhere. He said ChaCha would likely be most useful to cell phone users, who could connect with it when they wanted rapid answers to questions like where to find the nearest Italian restaurant or men’s clothing store.

“I think the concept is a great one. Now, whether or not it becomes economically profitable is another issue,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that are neat ideas that don’t make money. I couldn’t get it to make money, but his model is different.”

SMS: The Novel

Kinda steals my idea of telling the story of iNetNow only in emails...

Text message novel published in Finland

"The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000 altogether — are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in regular SMS traffic.

She Came In Through the iTunes Window

Neat NPR story about meeting a wi-fi freeloading neighbor via the shared iTunes folder they left behind.

How I met my neighbor on iTunes

(Click the "listen" link near the top.)

via TUAW

iPhone and the Blind

Couldn't resist...

Does the iPhone shaft the blind?

Comments are an especially fun read, running the full gamut from honest to troll to politically incorrect.

Stock Prices

Here's my obligatory iPhone post:

Check out the hourly stock price comparison for Apple, RIM, and Palm.


Wonder what happened midday today? ;)

Also interesting and amusing:

Note the difference in presentation between the Apple and Cingular websites.

Intended for different audiences maybe, but feels like different planets.

The Expert Mind

As you can guess, I tend to read Scientific American religiously.

It's a very interesting read on how experts process large amounts of information to come to their conclusions.

It talks about "innate talent" vs. "intensive training", and may give hopes to those of us who want to improve our mental abilities in a particular area.

http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945

Google's Hiring Algorithm

This reminds me of taking what we were trying to do with new surfers at iNetNow to the next level (OK, many levels above what we were doing).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?_r=1&em&ex=1167973200&en=96e5f90b11ca1594&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

"Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google — in typical eccentric fashion — has created an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month. It is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality and biographical details going back to high school."

Bubble?

Interesting post over at TechCrunch theorizing that Web 2.0 isn't actually a bubble, but moreso a return to sanity for venture capitalists.

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble

"Remember that VC’s business models are designed to fail most of the time - the majority of their investments are expected to go belly up, and they hope that just one or two out of ten have a big return. VCs place a bet, and if it fails they move their money and attention elsewhere."

"In Web 1.0 companies didn’t fail (until the crash). They just raised more money, at a higher valuation, and gave it another shot. That isn’t happening today. VCs are letting their startups die, as they should. Things aren’t as exciting as they were in 1999, but it’s a whole lot saner."

Which Superhero Are You?

Gary will love this. I'm Spider-Man:

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.



Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Assault on a Battery

This would have come in handy when we were looking to power the CatchPhrase timer on Xmas.

Why I Never Pay For "AAA" Batteries

(via Lifehacker)

And speaking of CatchPhrase, check out the new electronic version...

2006 Zeitgeist

It's that time of year again...

2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Still blows my mind that people do google searches for things like "myspace" or "wikipedia" rather than just using the URL. Plus the queries with "Who is..." or "Where is..." in front of them.

That said, I will concede the usefulness of "how to" and acknowledge the brilliance of the Google "define" command.

Should I be embarrassed I've never heard of Bebo?

Now with more spam!

Unbelievable. Or, believable that it's true, but unbelievable that it's come to this.

"On average, spam accounted for 87% of e-mail traffic this year, a 30% increase over a year ago. Spam rates, however, varied considerably by user and organization. Some small enterprises had spam rates as low as 45%, while large free e-mail providers got pummeled with rates as high as 98%. In general, business e-mail accounts received a smaller percentage of spam than consumer accounts."

(From InformationWeek, via TUAW)

#6

The annual DVD rip of the 24 "prequel" bridge between seasons is floating around the net. Most of the links I found to it were dead, but this one was still live as of last night:

24 Season 6 Prequel

Agree with most of the Internet chatter that the RAV4 product placement here is pretty lame. Otherwise it's entertaining to get a little sneak peek that's part of the official canon yet not as spoiler-filled as the trailers/commercials that I can't stand to watch, even if it has no "real" bearing on the story other than a couple of minor hints of background and timing.

Happy Tails

Arlo's Christmas present...

Happy Tail Ale

New Version of Blogger Ready...Almost

Psst...Bo. We're ready to upgrade to the new version of Blogger, but you have to initiate the change as the owner/admin. Pretty please?

Money from Home

How flippin' cool is this?

USAA Federal Savings Bank Allows Customers to Send Deposits Electronically from Home

"Starting today, home banking takes on a whole new meaning for members of USAA Federal Savings Bank ("USAA"). USAA is now the largest nationwide bank to offer an easy-to-use, secure new service that enables its customers to deposit checks into their bank accounts using a scanner and an Internet connection."

Philosophy of Google

Never noticed this page on the Google Corporate site before:

Ten things Google has found to be true

"Google has persistently pursued innovation and pushed the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use search service that can be accessed from anywhere. To fully understand Google, it's helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet."

Follow link above for a paragraph on each, but the list is:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.

Pretty inspirational stuff...

Also amusing (and true) disclaimer on the bottom:

* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer –- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -– and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).

No More Answers

Google is shutting down Google Answers.

Adieu to Google Answers

Remember the buzz around iNet when this service was born? We encouraged all of the Surfers to utilize their skills and sign up as a side project (I registered too), but not a single one of us was accepted.

Is this the first Google product to be retired?

(I mean actually retired, rather than never graduating from the lab or being banished from the front page.)

Deja Vu (and Internet too)

Saw Deja Vu on Friday. Eagerly anticipated after the teaser trailer due to my well known time travel fascination, but went in skeptical based on the big budget blockbuster vibe and a feeling that the full trailer gave it all away. (Both trailers are here.)

My thought process during and after went something like this:

-Loved the movie while I was watching it, but thought the ending was lame, too Hollywood, and obviously a rewrite.

-Started to deconstruct the time travel in my head and felt it started to fall apart and not make any sense.

-Picked apart the time travel a little bit further and suddenly realized the underlying story and plotting was absolutely brilliant (including the ending, but excluding the laser pointer), and especially impressive given the big budgetness of it.

-Probably the best non-indie time travel flick since 12 Monkeys and BTTF, and even holds it's own against Primer and Donnie Darko.

The other tangential thought I kept having during the movie was this:

How the heck did Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives end up as part of the same government agency? Wikipedia to the rescue.

Slippery Ships On Air

This is a more scientific article than usual, but it does have implications for energy conservation and global commerce.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg18925391.600&print=true

"YOSHIAKI KODAMA is weaving a magic carpet large enough to carry a ship. Conjured up from thin air at the flick of a switch, this slippery blanket will help transport a fully laden tanker or container ship across the ocean at higher speed, and using far less fuel, than ever before."

Choices = Headaches

I read this blog frequently, and I liked this particular article.

The fellow runs a software shop, but they get other aspects such as UI, marketing, etc. Maybe a little like 37 Signals.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

The article discusses the many choices in turning off a computer using Windows Vista.

My New Movie

I'm Gonna Kill You Saturday Night is a short film I shot in September. It's a dark comedy described as follows:
"When Jimbo and Stu, two stoner roommates, receive a threatening card in the mail all hell breaks loose as the clock ticks down to Saturday Night."

Check out the website and trailer, linked above. You can get to the trailer quickly by mousing over and clicking on the remote.

We're having a premier in Hollywood on December 5th in the evening (time TBA) so please keep that free - you are all invited!

Yes, shameless plug. BTW, my director designed the website as well -- pretty slick, huh?

Features: "A Collection of Hacks"

Great article about the creator of Firefox's next project -- untangling the loose alliance of applications and hacks that hold the web/desktop interface together to create a more unified system.

Thought this was appropo and similar to Google's approach of making what they have work together better.

Parakey


The answer, he and his programming partner, Joe Hewitt, decided, resided in the gap between the desktop and the Web. “Right now, people want to shuffle around content,” he says, “but the world’s fused together by a collection of hacks.” Something that should be simple, say, getting photos from a digital camera onto the Web, is a Sisyphean task for most people. “Step back and ask, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’” Ross says.

The problem, according to Ross, is there’s no simple, cohesive tool to help people store and share their creations online. Currently, the steps involved depend on the medium. If you want to upload photos, for example, you have to dump your images into one folder, then transfer them to an image-sharing site such as Flickr. The process for moving videos to YouTube or a similar site is completely different. If you want to make a personal Web page within an online community, you have to join a social network, say, MySpace or Friendster. If you intend to rant about politics or movies, you launch a blog and link up to it from your other pages. The mess of the Web, in other words, leaves you trapped in one big tangle of actions, service ­providers, and applications.

Ross’s answer is named Parakey. As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.”

Features, not products

Wake up call over at Google? Though a little saddened that the quick surprise releases of new cool things will slow down or stop for now, I do agree that some fine tuning and improving of their core will be very welcome.

Interesting how it somewhat mirrors the old Surfboard strategy too. At first it was more sites, more categories, more sections. But later it turned to more automation, tighter Zuma integration, better usability.

Google Puts Lid on New Products

In another sign of Google Inc.'s growth from start-up to corporate behemoth, the company's top executives said Thursday that they had begun telling engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead focus on making existing ones work together better.

The initiative's primary goal is to make Google products easier to use, especially by packaging disparate products. For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications.

The company does not plan to tell engineers to halt all new products, Google said, nor does it plan to kill little-used services.

Rather, the effort is more focused on future development. After launching the initiative this summer, Schmidt said, Google canceled several services in development — which he would not describe — and instructed their creators to instead make them features in other products.

Networking and LinkedIn

Newest episode of Venture Voice is an interview with the founder of LinkedIn. I found most interesting the discussion on what I feel is the biggest problem to the legitimacy of LinkedIn: Mediocre workers with glowing testimonials bringing down the value of a referral by mis-using the networking concept.

It goes into some interesting ideas on how they plan to handle it in the future and how they intend for it to be handled today if people utilize the tool properly.

(If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, this part starts around the 33 minute mark).

Venture Voice #40: Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn

Simple Organizing: Scrybe

G. and I were just talking about organizer type applications the other day.

I came across this one, which seems like it's in closed beta currently.

http://iscrybe.com/main/index.php

They're doing a cool marketing campaign, where they're using YouTube to do different product demonstrations before they launch it to the public.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/21/scrybe-could-set-a-new-standard-in-office-apps/

I like the PaperSync towards the end.

Time Machine Video

Found a great (though somewhat cheesy)time machine documentary on google video.

The theory is that time travel into the past on very small particles is now feasible. If we could encode information onto said particles, then we could technically send information into the past, but only so far back as the "time machine" has been invented.

Thus, when it is finally created, it may suddenly be flooded with messages from the future. This scientist's theory is that Einstein was correct about black holes - but that laser light itself is actually much more effective at twisting space/time.

Thought Jake of All Trades might really appreciate this. The video is 45 minutes.


Time Machine

Microsoft Installation Woes

Great SvN Post on the frustrations of installing software on Windows, including an almost comical screencast video.

Semi-related:

The 37Signals "Getting Real" $19 PDF book is now available in a free online HTML version, as well as a $29 print on demand paperback from my future publisher Lulu.com. Now there's no excuse not to read it if you've been too cheap or too lazy. (I'm the latter.)

Getting Real: The Book

Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus

This little jab on the official Apple release about the iPod virus is awesome:

"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

(via TUAW)

The 100th Post - Cool Gadget Search

Apparently, I'm lucky enough to be posting the 100th entry on this blog. Kudos to J. for having contributed more than his fair share to get us here.

Anyways, just saw an article for this site:

http://www.retrevo.com/

It's a targeted search engine for gadget-o-philes. I like the dual-paned "preview" interface. Admittedly, I haven't done enough searches to see how much easier it is to find information than Google.

At a minimum it does seem to make it easier to filter out the true reviews from the proliferation of shopping price engine sites that usually come up when you search Google.

Narnia Redux

I know I'm way behind on this, but I never realized there were so many response/parody/sequels to the "Lazy Sunday" Narnia Rap until I did some YouTube surfing today:

The Original

The West Coast Response

The Midwest Response

The English Response

Organic Canadian Response

German Response

Dallas Mavericks

Little Kid Remake

Wicked Wednesday

Reid Park Zoo

Central Style

Conventioneers

1833

Google boss warns politicians about Internet power

Google boss warns politicians about Internet power
"Many of the politicians don't actually understand the phenomenon of the Internet very well," Schmidt told the Financial Times. "It's partly because of their age ... often what they learn about the Internet they learn from their staffs and their children."

Fun With Verification Boxes

Saw this SvN post, which led me to this Jeteye site. Some interesting/amusing word choices in the infamous verification box. (Keep hitting refresh on your browser to change the word.)

What Might Have Been

Think Neil mentioned before that he thought if iNetNow were still around today the Surfboard, etc would be more Wiki based. Sounds like the rest of the world is starting to agree. The Google profile page sounds a little like an advanced version of our old employee page intranet.

Web 2.0 entering corporate world slowly

How The Maps Are Made

Interesting article on the behind the scenes world of online map database making and techniques. Too bad they chose the worst one for the title ;)

Map Quest

Some interesting tidbits:

-Williams stares at his email inbox: a solid wall of news alerts from Yahoo and Google. His search terms aren't the usual fare, like "Hilary Duff." They're more like "Tulsa city one-way" – queries that will help Williams track down announcements of road changes reported by local newspapers. Today has been slow, but suddenly he lights up. An email has arrived containing a newspaper report that a particular one-way road segment in northwest Indiana is changing from westbound to eastbound. Sweet!

-GDT acquired detailed aerial photography of major cities. "We could look at a street and see which way cars were parked, even tire rubber going into intersections, and deduce 85 percent of the turn restrictions and one-way attributes,"

-"We've had projects with pizza-delivery companies where we've printed out for them a big wall map of their 30-minute delivery area. The guys mark things that are wrong and send it back to us," says former GDT president Mike Gerling, who now heads Tele Atlas' North American division.

Mobile providers lock away GPS on phones

An interesting NPR story on the power of GPS in mobile phones and why many cell providers lock it away from the users. Still doesn't explain why AT&T use to have the find a friend mode but then got rid of it.

Power of GPS Phones Locked Away from Most Users

Can't See The Target

From Consumerist, via LifeHacker:

The image with the article is priceless...

Target Still Being Sued For Having Website Blind Can't See

"The class action brought by the ADA on behalf of Bruce 'BJ' Sexton, a student in California, contends that Target.com is problematic for blind people because, "alt-text is missing from images, preventing screen readers from describing them to blind users; purchases cannot be completed without a mouse because keyboard controls do not work; image maps are inaccessible; and headings are missing that are needed to navigate."

For a blind person, Brian can sure see bad web design darn good."

To Blog or Not To Blog

Maybe this explains the low post rate around here lately...

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger

Dot Bomb 2.0

11 Suggestions for not being a dot.bomb

Great stuff here, and compelling reading for all of us that went through the first hype wave right before the crash of 99...

Web 2.0 Logo/Dossier List

I found this yesterday after Boryan posted; it was a link somewhere else on the "Death by Google Calendar" page.

I spent almost two hours playing with this last night. This is a list of the most popular "Web 2.0" applications by popularity and logo. I particuarly like "Rollyo", but the list here is comprehensive. Still wading through it, but some really great ideas.

Check it out.

Search Powered By People

New Engine 'ChaCha' Offers Real-Time Answers From Live 'Guides'
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060904-044533

I think this has too much overhead to be successful, but it's fairly close to the user-supplied search and text message idea we discussed a couple of month's ago. I think you have to find a way to recruit "guides" and provide them with non-financial incentives only.

I liked the "best LA hotel to stay in with kids" questions. It's those kind of questions that highlight the limitations of search even in this day and age. Unless you've stayed at such a place, chances are you meet the asker's expectation.

Death By Google Calendar

Just re-posting an article on Slashdot.

http://dumblittleman.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-get-robbed-killed-or-stalked-by.html
"I find it utterly stupid that people display their lives online. As a simple study, I did some digging on Google Calendar. Now, keep in mind that I am somewhat tech-savvy but I used no skills for this. Everything I found in this case was simply a result of a Google Search, an additional search on Travelocity and a 411 call. There was nothing to this at all."

I like Google Calendar and use it, but in this age of Myspace tell-it-alls, there really needs to be a class in junior high or something that teaches kids how to maintain their privacy.

After all, the magic sword is forever imprinted in my past...

Stupid "9" tricks

Search Terms:
stupid 9 outside line

Kuro5Chin
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:fwZ2-S8mXu8J:www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/21742/8241+stupid+9+outside+line&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=firefox-a

“Now the last piece is this: You may think that in-band signaling is a thing of the past, but it isn't. In the telecom company's infinite wisdom, they have overloaded this switch-hook depression to an extreme degree. It can be a hang-up request to "start over", it can be a rotary "1", AND, if you happen to have already connected to a party, it is now the "flash" signal, a request to put the first caller on hold, and get a new line, for three-way calling, etc.

So, here is what I think happened. I dial
1. "9-1",
2. aw shit, I'm not at work
3. -- Just completed 911 due to rotary compatibilty mode!
4. don't hear dial tone (because we are connecting to emergancy dispatcher!)
5. (3-way calling mode, dispatcher now on hold, which they refer to as an "open line")
6. Dial my lady... yack away... moments later, troops arrive!
Just to let you know to be cautious in a similar circumstance.”

Also found this link, from the same page as above. If you’re brave and really want to find out, maybe you can under the “North American Numbering Plan Administration.”
http://www.nanpa.com/

The North American Numbering Plan Administration? Really? We have an organization just dedicated to this? Sounds like a horrifically boring job...

Smart Phone

Another one courtesy of SvN (aren't they all these days? I'm starting to feel like a plagiarist when I'm inspired by my RSS list...):

Cooper Consulting does their conceptual take on a better UI for an office telephone. Brilliant and long overdue. How much of a pain in the butt is figuring out (and correctly performing) common tasks like conference calls, call transfers, or even navigating voicemail on a typical office phone or cell phone? Too bad it's not real.

Once again it makes me want to wax nostalgic about how far ahead of our time we were with web based phone switch integration, shortening the complicated key presses for iNetBlind call transfers into an elegant "highlight-->right click-->listen for ring-->click ok to confirm" experience.

And speaking of phones, who was the moron who decided 9 should access an outside line when it means virtually every call from an office phone will start with 9-1, giving good odds of a single miscue to reach the emergency operator? I must be losing my touch, since I can't find an intelligent answer to this question anywhere on the Internet.

Simplicity is Complex

Great post over at Signal vs. Noise documenting the creative process of building a simple interface. Reminds me of some iNet brainstorming sessions on BoRyan's pimp-lounge couch.

Would be neat to see an archive of Surfboard development with comparative screenshots such as this...

Search Trinity Broken

I know the changes to the Google front page are getting a lot of criticism. My two cents:

How could they pull Groups off of the front page and add an extra click to access it via the "more" button? Web, News, and Groups are the big three/holy trinity of useful information search. (I might call images a darkhorse #4.) Bumping books and Froogle makes sense, but Groups?



Example:

Imagine you're searching for Fantasy Football Draft Strategy. Where will the best info be? Web and News and Groups. Images aren't very helpful. Maps are useless. Books and Froogle are helpful, but more from a secondary standpoint if instant gratification fails. I'll concede that Video may be useful here one day, but only one relevant hit right now and still a secondary tier for quality info in my mind. Blogsearch doesn't even get an official front page nod and has better results.

I know they probably want to make room for Maps and Video as their "hot" products on the front page, but that seems really ill conceived and off brand. Couldn't they at least try to group things into related buckets? Or set a preference to choose what options each user wants displayed? Or would it kill them to add 3 more links, sort of how "Desktop" search magically appears if you have the application installed?

Google Image Search 2: Coming Soon?

Google acquired a company called Neven Vision, an image recognition software company. Could have some interesting implications. From the Google Blog:

"Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects."

The Neven Vision site has the usual "Hooray, Google just bought us" veil of silence post sale, but a trip to the wayback machine shows some hints at what may be to come.


"Interact using enhanced visual messaging for desktop or mobile platforms.
> Visual Messaging
> Video Gaming
> Avatar-Based Chat

Explore the hyper-linked world with object recognition and visual search technology.
> Image-Based Search
> Mobile Travel Guide
> Comparison Shopping

Identity verification with industry leading face recognition technology and biometric solutions.
> Access Control
> Credit Card Authorization
> Mug Shot Matching"

Are You A Basket Case?

Some interesting articles are popping up discussing the search data that AOL disclosed to the world.

This is my favorite so far:

http://www.slate.com/id/2147590/?nav=tap3

Maybe AskJeeves could help with this one...

"i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life."

To the point

Remembering how useful it came in on 9/11, I was curious how Daypop was handling today's news. I don't know if this just happened today or if the site has been like this for awhile, but I respect a straight and to the point error message such as this:



Text reads: "Daypop down until further notice... Sorry for the inconvenience. After adding a bunch of submitted sites, Daypop no longer has enough memory to calculate the Top 40 and other Top pages. If there's no simple fix, Daypop won't be back up until a new search/analysis engine is in place. A new engine will take at least a month to get online."

Why we don't get the (text) message

Great business 2.0 article on why SMS hasn't taken off in the US as it has overseas. Or at least not with most. I'm usually over 1000 per month counting inbound and outbound (largely thanks to 4info and Google SMS), especially during baseball season.

Why we don't get the (text) message

Interesting snippets:

Ecuador, with a per capita GDP of $4,300, has the United States beat when it comes to a critical wireless technology. Americans may be 10 times as wealthy, but Ecuadorians send four times as many text messages.

Users in Ecuador and the Philippines send north of 200 SMS messages a month and the Danes and Irish average 100 a month, while Americans manage to tap out fewer than 50.

In cell-phone-swamped Finland, there are popular TV programs where you can send texts that scroll onto the screen in a live chat, and others where you direct a character via SMS.

The right way to think about text messaging for now is to bring successful SMS services tested elsewhere to the United States. Google gets this - which is why it's basing much of its wireless development in London, not Mountain View.

Exponentia, a startup in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a service that allows Canadians to predict the next play by SMS in everything from golf to hockey.

Rather than substituting for PC-based communication, as it does in poorer countries, mobile messaging Stateside will untether commerce, social networks, and other applications originally tied to PCs. When smart innovators translate services originated abroad to America's cell phones, we'll really get the message.

Apple Phone at last?

Rumors are heating up. Saw this iChat Mobile post at Engadget earlier today, and 37 Signals comments as well saying the cellphone is still up for grabs. Great quote:

"They’ve had years to get it right, but still no one has. The UIs suck."

Will Monday be the day?

Craigslist Scammer Defense

It's not about the blind, but this is a riot.

Invisible

Scientist thinks invisibility possible in future

Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four."

"She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice," Leonhardt told Reuters in an interview. "That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future."

"What the Invisible Woman does is curve space around herself to bend light. What these devices would do is to mimic that curved space," he said.

Although the devices are still theoretical, Leonhardt said scientists are making advances in metamaterials -- artificial materials with unusual properties that could be used to make invisibility devices.

"There are advances being made in metamaterials that mean the first devices will probably be used for bending radar waves or the electromagnetic waves used by mobile phones," he said.

The devices could be used as protection mechanisms so the radiation emitted from mobile phones does not penetrate electronic equipment. It is guided around it.

"It is very likely that the demonstration for radar would come first and very soon. To go into the visual will take some time but it is also not so far off," Leonhardt said.