Infosync: AT & T Wireless subscribers will be able to vote on the next American Idol season using their SMS capable phones according to this article. I’m sure this is just a trial balloon for the network and ATT, but this could be the start of something a lot bigger here in the US where SMS hasn’t really taken off like in Japan and the Scandinavian countries. I think my major concern about the possible success of something like this is that even most tech savvy people I know don’t use SMS messaging from their phones at all. My more non-technical friends don’t even know how to use the phone in this manner. My Danger, which supports sms messaging, has the major hole in it’s operating system that does not let you generate SMS messages from listings in your address book. I think that the current lines of phones could be improved quite a bit in terms of the ease of text messaging.
Cory has a new story, named Liberation Spectrum, (fiction) up on Salon that is about, in part, Wi-Fi.
David Pogue has an interesting article discussing upcoming TiVO features in today’s Circuits section of the New York Times. The good news is that, as of April, the phone jack requirement to access program data will go away, and you will be able to connect to their service online. The not so good news is that it looks like those of us with first series machines will not get all of the new features. I guess I’m not that concerned about that particular aspect, I’m going to hold onto this first generation machine, with its lifetime subscription to the service, as long as I can.
Mariucci is fired by 49ers. Not such a good move for the franchise as far as I’m concerned, the guy is one of the best coaches in the league. I get the impression that this thing is really about egos and coaching styles. Bill Walsh, who is one of the greatest offensive minds in the history of the game, wanted to run one style of offense with, of course, a pass focus. Mariucci wanted to run the ball more. I’m certain that he won’t be looking for a job for very long. Personally, I’d love to see him here in Atlanta, but I doubt that is going to happen any time in the near future.(That’s another post for another time.)
Matt is at Yosemite. I went there years ago, before my involvement in the Web, and before I was chained to my desk at work all day moving text around on a screen. I think at the time, I was splitting my time between DJing at a club two nights a week, working at a record store three or four days a week, and working at a comic shop on the weekend days. That’s not really very relevant to this post though. Yosemite changed me as a person. The place is like a church to me. The scale of everything reminded me how small I am, and how large and beautiful the world is. I suspect a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was living in a very urban New York environment at the time. I think about that trip all the time, not because I think about the woman I was dating at the time who went with me, but because I was changed as a person from standing in that park. Oddly, I haven’t gotten back there since that trip despite many business and pleasure trips to California since then. America is a grand country, with so much to see, so much beauty, and so many incredible people, it makes vacation planning a nightmare in a good way.
Garret takes great sunset photos. You should go over there and get that one for your dekstop, it’s very peaceful.
I’ve added a substantial amount of information to yesterday’s mini-essay Mac OS X86.
Best Spam Subject line mistake ever; “Does your job pay you up to 00.00 an hour?” Why yes it does, it does pay me up to zero dollars and zero cents an hour.
Apple objects. Yawn.
Mena said, “For those who use Movable Type and are interested in moblogging and blogging from PDAs and handhelds, this purchase is good news.” It sure is. I’ve been contemplating a move to some other backend setup for some time. This might push me over the top.
Interesting that the Analysts at Jupiter are now keeping blogs, but I didn’t find anything insightful on any of them thus far. (link via Scripting News)
I have another major beef with the hiplogging feature of Danger’s Sidekick service. You cannot include links in your postings. Now, I’m not really a blog purist by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that the ability to post more than just a bunch of plain text is a basic blog feature. I mean, this is one of the primary purposes of having a blog in the first place. Come on people, get with the program, get some perspective on what people use their blogs for, and clean up that darned copyright statement too. Update: you can include links and styled text in postings as documented here. I’m not sure why they went with a non-HTML syntax for this particular feature. HTML works, and people already know it.
Console games, especially those for the PS2, have taken a sort of weird turn in the last year. It’s becoming more and more common for the more popular games to try and sell more merchandise than just that particular game. Two recent examples from my gaming library include Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Madden NFL 2003. In order to get to additional cheat codes for Vice City, one can purchase one of the six soundtrack cd’s that go along with the game or the boxed set of all six cd’s. In order to get to some of the cheat cards in Madden, one must own other EA Sports games. I suspect that many other gamers fall victim to the same anxiety over possibly missing out on something cool that I do, leading to the purchase of some or all of these additional objects. I wonder how long this will go on before it gets completely ridiculous.
Here’s why I haven’t set myself up with a blog on Danger’s hiptop site. I can’t believe how clueless this particular decision is. I write stuff, I should get to decide how it is available to others for their use, end of story. (via evhead)
So sad. We’ll miss you Oolong.
This review of Windows XP Media Center Edition is a good informative read. I was curious, despite my entertainment hobbled living room layout, if this is something I should be considering. If they had found a way to make these machines also play Xbox games, they would have added another selling point.
Oops. Seems that the power went out in my house at some point when I wasn’t there in the last two days, and I failed to notice. As a result, I haven’t been able to update. I should have checked this out last night, but I changed my sleep schedule this week to a much earlier to bed and earlier to rise one. Updates resume, well, now.
Apple has already updated the .Mac home page with information about some of the things that are being announced in relation to that service at MacWorld today. The biggest seems to be an online address book that is iSync compatible.
Macromedia has made Mac OS X compatible developer editions of JRun and ColdFusion available as of today. This is a landmark moment for both companies in my opinion, and a major boon to those of us who develop with ColdFusion, but also enjoy the chewy goodness of Mac OS X.
Update: Infoworld Article on the Subject. I find the fact that Apple refused comment amusing. When I was at Macromedia Devcon 2002, I talked at length to Phil Costa, the Product Manager for ColdFusion, and to the Apple folks that were at the show about this particular subject. Apple said that they wanted Macromedia to support their platform with their server technologies and that was one of the reasons that they were at Devcon in the first place. So, when they finally get this, they refuse comment?
Here’s Apple’s worst move yet, assuming it’s true. They have continued to squeeze more and more revenue out of their customers, and I can only imagine that it is now getting to the point where people will begin abandoning them for this. This move takes away one of their competitive advantages over Windows in a big way. No a good vibe at all, but it sticks with the theme set by iTools, get people used to something when it is free, then charge them for it.
In keeping with resolution number one below, I have started the year off by delving into some books. I read on a regular basis, and I probably read close to 100 books in 2002, but I wanted to create a formal goal that would make me want to strive to read even more than I had been. So this week I’m reading:
I’m very amused by this listing of Cockney Rhyming Slang. Part of the reason I’m amused by it is the fact that I needed it in order to understand something someone I work with said.
At the risk of embarassing myself quite badly, I thought I would go ahead and post my New Year’s Resolutions here. Somehow, I think that makes them more real. So here goes, in no particular order:
- Read 100 books this year.
- Drink more water, less coffee and soda.
- Go to the gym two out of every three days this year.
- Worry more about myself, and less about others.
- Get up earlier, go to bed earlier.
- Relearn to read non-fiction.
- Quit smoking.
- Make this Web site a labor of love.
- Write more.
- Learn Object Oriented Programming better.
- Do one major house project each month.
- Be more financially responsible.
- Enjoy things you already own rather than buying more stuff.
- Be a better friend.
- Meet a new girl.
- Improve my work ethic.