Then I had a sobering moment and analyzed what we're really getting:
A phone with:
An sdk and 3rd party application support
3g internet
GPS assisted google maps
Exchange support
all priced around 200 dollars

Having just bought a new windows mobile phone, when I thought about the last two features I realized we'd all been had. You've been able to buy a phone like this for a really long time now. Really, this should have been called the iPhone Apology instead of the iPhone 3G.

These are all features that have been implemented by the competition forever and are really features that should have been there in the first place. And still there are a boat load of other problems still remaining:

1. No user replaceable battery
2. No user upgradeable memory
3. No bluetooth audio
4. No MMS
5. No video
6. No copy and paste
7. No multi-tasking
8. No laptop tethering
9. Verizon has better coverage than at&t

Still I have no doubt that the phone will sell extremely well, but hopefully if you're reading this you'll stop to consider other options out there before drinking the kool-aid

Here are few reasons why I'll be keeping my HTC Touch:
1. Much better form factor. Try putting the htc touch right next to an iphone and see what you think.
2. It has the iphones missing features:
multi-tasking, copy and paste, video, mms, full blueooth stack, sdhc upgradeable to 16gb, stylus, user replaceable batteries which allow me to carry a spare, I did a speed test today. I got 1.5Mbps down and 250kbps up.
3. has all the iphones new features:
gps with google maps and windows live search, full exchange server support, tons of 3rd party development, "3.5G" speed internet with REV. A EVDO
4. Plus there are some additional cool features that the htc touch gives me:
- bluetooth keyboard support - I have the stowaway. You will never know that windows mobile 6 has alt-tab support until you get a bluetooth keyboard.
- winzip file support
unbelievably useful when your company's outlook is set up to automatically zip attachments
- Better versions of the iphone software suite
s2p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=377627
s2u2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=381588
s2v
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=358187
pcm keyboard
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=349647
- A better browser
Opera mobile mini loaded that demo page that took steve jobs 22 seconds in about 9.

Then I had a sobering moment and analyzed what we're really getting:
A phone with:
An sdk and 3rd party application support
3g internet
GPS assisted google maps
Exchange support
all priced around 200 dollars

Having just bought a new windows mobile phone, when I thought about the last two features I realized we'd all been had. You've been able to buy a phone like this for a really long time now. Really, this should have been called the iPhone Apology instead of the iPhone 3G.

These are all features that have been implemented by the competition forever and are really features that should have been there in the first place. And still there are a boat load of other problems still remaining:

1. No user replaceable battery
2. No user upgradeable memory
3. No bluetooth audio
4. No MMS
5. No video
6. No copy and paste
7. No multi-tasking
8. No laptop tethering
9. Verizon has better coverage than at&t

Still I have no doubt that the phone will sell extremely well, but hopefully if you're reading this you'll stop to consider other options out there before drinking the kool-aid

Here are few reasons why I'll be keeping my HTC Touch:
1. Much better form factor. Try putting the htc touch right next to an iphone and see what you think.
2. It has the iphones missing features:
multi-tasking, copy and paste, video, mms, full blueooth stack, sdhc upgradeable to 16gb, stylus, user replaceable batteries which allow me to carry a spare, I did a speed test today. I got 1.5Mbps down and 250kbps up.
3. has all the iphones new features:
gps with google maps and windows live search, full exchange server support, tons of 3rd party development, "3.5G" speed internet with REV. A EVDO
4. Plus there are some additional cool features that the htc touch gives me:
- bluetooth keyboard support - I have the stowaway. You will never know that windows mobile 6 has alt-tab support until you get a bluetooth keyboard.
- winzip file support
unbelievably useful when your company's outlook is set up to automatically zip attachments
- Better versions of the iphone software suite
s2p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=377627
s2u2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=381588
s2v
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=358187
pcm keyboard
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=349647
- A better browser
Opera mobile mini loaded that demo page that took steve jobs 22 seconds in about 9.

While trying to post about this, I found another annoying "feature" with digg, You can't post a link to another digg page. I guess they don't ever expect the digg pages themselves to be news.

What do you think of when you see this guy now? Windows Vista? PC's? Microsoft?

Is it just me or has this guy been more successful at representing PC's and Windows more than an intentional marketing scheme like the Dell guy?

Sure, I find a lot of the commercials a little annoying, and I don't know if Justin Long leaves as big an impact on consumers, but Hodgman seems to fit the part perfectly.

It would be one thing if Vista was doing well, but seeing Vista sort of flounder makes it all seem so fitting.

For those of you who don't listen to NPR here's a link to the radio broadcast.

While most of the time, when things to right, people will happily say "Oh thanks! you're a genius!" When things go wrong, it quickly becomes "You screwed up my computer with an update? Thanks a lot Genius!!"

First off let me say the biggest reason i'm annoyed with facebook everything about it is a farce.

1. claim: Facebook is a online community for friends
reality: Facebook is an anti-social unsafe online stalking tool.

We have children posting up all of their pictures, who their friends are, where they go to school, what their favorite things are, where they want to go on vacation, where they have been. All of these personal details are now posted online. Just ask Chris Hansen if he think kids should be using "social networks"

2. claim: Facebook is social networking
reality: users select and post pictures, post personal details, post notes for others to gawk at. Then people go online snooping on everyone they can get access to.

3. claim: Facebook apps are the new .com
reality: Yes they are the new .com, but in a bad way. Someone please tell me how these apps are making money? the only thing i see is that they are starting to add a lot of garbage to facebook and they are starting to make the site look like the wasteland that is myspace. Really? someone threw a fish at another person online?

4. claim: Facebook is hip and cool
reality: everyone from high school students, to their teachers, to their parents, to the evening news is talking about and using facebook. how hip is that?

So what's my biggest peeve? All these people wasting effort on facebook is just sad. We should really be developing better tools. We should be developing tools that are truly innovative and open.

If people want to share photos, use photo sharing tools, flikr? picasa?. If people want to post their comments, post on their blog, blogspot, movabletype?. If people want to play online games play online games, wii, warfish?

Although I don't know of a good way to link these together yet, maybe that's the direction we need to head. Or maybe it's better that they aren't.

So I'm introducing the latest Facebook Application creation, WhereImDrinking.

The basic idea is, everybody marks down where they're planning on drinking. Then that info is populated into your profile.

The hope is that once enough people start using it, you'll start to be able to see where everyone's gonna be on a certain night. You'll be able to look up which neighborhood more people are going to and which bars more people are going to that night.

I've loaded in New York, Boston, DC, and Beloit as lists of bars. More are coming.

Let me know if you haev any questions or comments.

--Bryant

I just wanted to check out the Facebook API today, so I decided to do an ironic mashup.

For those of you who are Facebook members, you can add the Snubster application at:

http://apps.facebook.com/snubsterfb/

By the way, if anyone knows who registered the other facebook app called snubster, let me know. I have a few words for him/her.

Normally I size up the person and how they use a computer, but always the answer is no.

Here's a good checklist for those of you who might still consider asking me:
1. Do want less compatibility?
2. Do you want slower performance?
3. Does transparency make you ignore 1 and 2?
4. Are you a security nut?
5. If yes to 4, when was the last time your computer was hacked?
6. Do you have a bunch of time to kill?
7. If you saw something that wasn't broken, would you try to fix it?

I've tried Windows Vistanow for several months and have been completely underwhelmed. While if you do get it for free, I do encourage you to check it out, I would say spending any more than a dollar for the operating system and upgrading your existing system would be a waste of those 4 quarters.

In my experience with Windows Vista, I have not found anything in Vista that I haven't been able to do in XP. In fact, XP does everything its users and applications expect and want it to. So why switch?

When it comes to it, think about what most people do on their computers now:
1. Turn on / wake up computer
2. read email
3. check weather
4. read blogs / news sites
5. stalk people on myspace / facebook
6. watch stupid clip on youtube
7. go get lunch
8. start working
9. Work on Excel / Word document
10. goto #2

In none of these actions are you going to get your $379 dollars worth for Windows Vista.

Oh but what about hard core users?

Gamers:
Less compatibilty and slower performance for DirectX games

Developers:
Visual Studio still has bugs to work out in Windows Vista.

Instead of upgrading to Vista, in the past two weeks I have become a raving Apple fan. After having used PC's for over 20 years of my life. I have finally made the switch. And no, it isn't because of those stupid ads on TV. I hate those stupid ads. It's because now with Macs on an Intel Platform, you can do everything you love to do in OSX(see above) and stuff that you HAVE to do on a PC, you can either dual boot into XP or you can run a virtualization program like Parallells and do your dirty deeds. Plus, the Mac Book Pro is probably the best laptop I have ever owned: compaq < dell < (sony = ibm) < Apple.

Oh and of course a little video showing you Vista Speech Recognition:

In the middle of this episode, there was a business card exchange from Claire's dad to the professor's son. This business card had a website address and a phone number.

If you go to http://www.primatechpaper.com/, you will be greeted by an intentionally sparse and poorly designed site. The entire site is more or less uninteresting except for a careers link. If you click on that, it requires a code to enter the site.

At first, I jumped to view the source. Sure enough, the validation is all done in javascript and the link can be obtained, but they must be doing some kind of referral checking. The passcode is an MD5_hex hash. Rather than trying to crack the hash, I decided to dig some more.

If you dial the 1-800 number you will be greeted by a fake phone tree. You can try different options, which all say they're not there right now. If you try the careers one, they'll give you an access code for the jobs site.

For those of you who'd rather not call or are impatient, the code is mt36 . This code lets you fill out a form where you basically put in some contact information. Probably means that the "game" can contact you. At the bottom of the form are some personality questions that seem like they try and detect evil doers and heroes. Not sure if this will have an effect on the game, but we shall see.

I've already started getting some text messages from them. Fortunately I'm on an unlimited plan.

I've done a domain lookup on the domain and obviously it's owned by GE, the parent company of NBC:
General Electric Company
Internet Registrations
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield, CT 06828-0001
US

I'll try to keep posting on what happens in this "game"

The Nintendo Wii is possible the best gaming console EVER.

Unfortunately, it makes it really hard to get a hold of. Analysts are speculating it will be tough until March to walk in a store and just get a Wii.

According to my sources, (internets, interweb, the google) Retailers have been saving their inventory for sunday morning.

Each store should have a minimum of 15 with some up to 50.

Retailers:
Best Buy
Target

I wouldn't recommend getting there right before opening, I would say 5AM at the latest