Kat wrote about wanting an iPhone yesterday, but I’ve known for a long time that I’m really just not interested in the thing. Today I found this story on Gizmodo that really lays out why:
Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have
Songs as Ringtones
Games
Any flash support
Instant Messaging
Picture messages (MMS)
Video recording
Voice recognition or voice dialing
Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)
Stuff we already knew it didn’t have
3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
GPS
A real keyboard
Removable battery
Expandable Storage
Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)
For reference, my existing cheap-as-in-free LG CU-500 phone has all but 3 of the the things above. The iPhone looks to be like it’s a major downgrade. I kinda wonder if it’s even capable of making phone calls.
On the plus side, you’ll soon be able to find out which of your friends has more money than brains, because they’ll be sporting their shiny new useless blingy phone! And that is going to be the most useful feature ever.
Edit: I just noticed that Amazon has several books available for a phone that actually hasn’t even been released yet! Including “iPhone for Dummies“. Amazing.
I signed up for twitter today, and installed a plugin for the blog that hooks into it. It’s kinda neat. The basic idea is that you can send “what you are doing right now” to it at any given moment, and the site posts it. Not complex, basically like a blog for one-liners. The Wordpress plugin I installed lets you show the latest twitter messages you’ve sent to the service on the sidebar, or in a post, or what have you. Very nifty.
So if you look on the bottom right of this page, you’ll see the latest info on what I’m currently doing. The cool thing about it is that you can post what you’re doing to the site via email or IM or even text message. Quite entertaining, albeit somewhat useless, information. Still, fun for a while, and maybe I’ll figure out something useful to do with in the long run.
So, I’m sitting here drinking some of my new homebrew. It’s a rather nice cherry wheat that came out a tad more spicy than I was actually expecting. I think I rather overdid it on the cinnamon. I figure that after another couple of weeks of bottle conditioning, it might turn out to be a rather good beer.
One thing I have noticed is that it’s a lot stronger than I was expecting. After just one, I’m catching a buzz. Very nice.
Anyway, while I’m basking in the sun and enjoying a frosty beverage, I figured I’d putz around with the website a bit. Those of you of a geekish bent might try looking at the site on your mobile phone or whatever handheld device you happen to prefer. Through the magical power of the interwebs, the blog should now look different on the handheld devices, more suited to smaller screens. It’ll eliminate the sidebars and rejigger the display a bit. Since I’ve been using the mobile web a lot more, I find this quite cool.
Also if, for some demented reason, you feel it necessary to produce hardcopy of my random meanderings, you’ll find that the excessive imagery disappears on the printout, leaving you with just the basic text and little else. This should all be automatic if you have a modern browser, no strange trickery required. Although I’m dubious as to why anybody would want to print out my worthless words, the option is now there, if you happen to come up with a reason.
I know that I’ve talked about Amazon Grocery before, lastyear in fact, but I got an email this morning from them basically trying to drum up interest in it again, and so I had another look.
They have really expanded their product line. Plus, with the addition of their “Subscribe and Save” thing, the prices are basically the same as you’d find at the store. It’s a neat idea, to have a regular order of the crap you always have to remember to buy anyway on an automatic order basis. Simple stuff like laundry detergent, toothpaste, cereal, and yes, even toilet paper.
So I set up a few automatic orders for various items. The automatic orders get 20% off their normal price, and they’re all free shipping, so it’s a pretty good deal. Definitely worth checking out.
I also found that somebody had made a Bonnaroo Wish List while I was browsing around over there. I thought that was quite clever.
Warning: Heavy geek content ahead. If you’re not interested in PHP code, you can safely skip this post.
One thing that not a lot of people know about is that Wordpress is capable of checking your bookmarks/blogroll links for you and organizing them according to the time they were last updated.
The reasons people don’t know this are:
a) It’s not automatically setup and working, and
b) It rarely works in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
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