Over the past few months, Not Too Stale has become quite the opposite. The frequency of my posts here have been reduced to a slow crawl. I can legitimately use excuses like being busy with work and the holidays, but the primary reason is that some of my posts have a new home. You can find them on my Tumblr blog.
Since most of my posts are links to things I find interesting, videos, images, and quick thoughts, a tumblelog is a great fit. Plus, with mobile posting by email and other quick post methods, Davidville’s Tumblr is also dead simple to use.
From Tumblr.com:
What’s a tumblelog?
To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.
You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still lovin’ the WordPress and this blog will continue to be updated with longer (and hopefully more thought out) posts. But the stream of consciousness posts are best suited for the tumblelog.
Hopefully, this will be a better use of my time and yours!
Because Verizon decided to be greedy with the GPS in the Blackberry Pearl (which, along with many other reasons, has made me suspicious of their recent “Any App, Any Device” announcement), users must pay for Verizon’s own VZ Navigator if they want any map positioning functionality. Yesterday, Google decided to save the day and announced a new triangulation location feature in Google Maps beta that can pin-point your location to within 10 city blocks, even if you don’t have GPS in your mobile phone (or your GPS has been crippled by the carrier). This can be very helpful when looking for nearby business and restaurants. Thanks for making up for Verizon’s shortfalls, Google.
If you are interested in honing your debate skills, I think I have found an effective method:
Join Verizon Wireless and call customer service, they will debate/argue with you regarding any issue. You are considered wrong until you prove your case. Truly an effective teaching method.
“Verizon’s new debate program improved my skills as an orator by 47%*. Thank you VZW!”
*results may vary
Or, if it is more convenient, just drop by a Verizon retail store. In fact, I think they recently launched a competition to see who can provide the most inferior customer service. Retail stores are in the lead by 1 point! Keep a close eye on that race folks, it is going to be close one.
/sarcasm
Verizon is lame. But, then again, so are Vermont’s mobile phone provider options.
[Update] This frustration stems from spending over one pleasant hour on the phone with Verizon customer service this morning on still unresolved issues. The Verizon rep promised she would find a supervisor and call me back within two hours. Well, it is four hours later…and still nothing. Should I have expected anything else?
Looks like IMAP is making it’s way into Gmail, which is exciting and long overdue. Great news for those who use desktop apps to manage their Gmail. Now changes you make in your desktop app are reflected in your Gmail account.
Although, still no love for it’s Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) accounts. Which, actually, is not surprising. Google Calendar and Gmail have great mobile interfaces, but the business app users, who arguably need it more (and pay for it), get nothing beyond the standard Gmail BlackBerry app. Google seems to have it’s priorities backwards. They update their free consumer accounts before their paid business accounts.
A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.
“Early adopters always pay a premium. “Early adopters” being a business term meaning dipsh*ts who stand in line for 6 hours…for a freaking phone. It’s not a price cut, it’s a repeal on the nerd tax.”
“If you didn’t have to be the first on your block to have the latest gizmo, you would now have an extra $200 to spend on your imaginary girlfriend.”
…and for all others not willing to be chained to AT&T in order to use the Apple iPhone.
On the downside, why does the iPod touch not include Mail.app or Google Maps, as the iPhone does? It would also be great to see the 16GB of flash memory boosted to 32GB soon.
Oh, and the other small thing that is missing from the “Vermonter’s iPhone”? The phone.
In science, absolute proof of a theory is considered impossible to achieve (you know like global warming…and gravity), but I think we have proved my theory that people in this world are absolutely, without a doubt, weird.
As if we needed proof, here he is in all his glory, the professional line-sitter, Greg Packer. Already well-known for his desire to be first in line, Greg starting sitting in front of the 5th Avenue NYC Apple Store this past Monday at 5 AM, waiting for tomorrow’s release of the much-anticipated iPhone. Does he care that much about the iPhone? Not at all (see video below). So what does this guy love so much about always being the first in line? Maybe he was always last in the lunch line in school, or maybe he makes a bundle selling Wii’s and signed Brandy posters on eBay…who knows.
Regardless of how weird he may be, I still find myself envious that he will have an iPhone and I (living in wonderful Vermont) will not.
Yesterday, Google launched a new version of its mobile search. Now from your phone’s browser, you can view news, local movie times and weather, right from your homepage. This is very handy considering browsing through a sub par mobile phone browser is never enjoyable (enter iPhone, I hope).
The real improvements of the new Google service come into play when actually performing a mobile search.
We realize that when you’re on the go, you usually just want an answer to your query, rather than everything and the kitchen sink. So we’re continually refining our algorithm-based search to intelligently produce the results you want. You won’t need to sift through both mobile and regular web results, or specify your search type—local, image, web, etc.—as our new search experience will offer you results based on the nature of the query itself. So if you search for [bbc] on your device, you’ll get a link to the mobile-friendly BBC website. Search for [us post office], and you’ll get listings for the branches that are closest to your set location, and so on. No extra stuff that gets between you and the information you need.
Official Google Blog
Accessing this new mobile browser on my Blackberry, took a few steps:
Navigate to google.com in your mobile browser
Choose Mobile from “View Google in: Mobile | Classic” near the bottom of the page
Choose “Try our new mobile search”
Select info you would like displayed on your homepage
The New York Times, today, reports that Verizon Wireless (my mobile provider), is about to allow ads on their mobile phone screens.
Exactly what we all wanted, right? Not even close. We are already bombarded daily with generally useless, irrelevant advertising. Plus, this method of stuff-it-down-your-throat advertising is SO 1990’s.
I was disappointed to read this on my NY Times RSS feed this morning and was happy to see this articulate response posted on one of my favorite blogs.
Read it here (especially if you work for Verizon or care to keep your cellphone ad free).
