Band Names

Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) wins today's band name of the day. However I am no way wild about the music, I am somewhat wild about puns.

An Homage if you will

Safeguy use to do this thing called inflamitory fridays on his site. I believe the tradition has died, and while I don't plan to make this a weekly thing*, I felt this would be fun. So in his honor I point out how dumb this head line is.

"Eliminate Violence Against Women? Get the Boys on Board"

Here's a grand idea...how about we just end violence ok?


*Hell I barely write some weeks.

A Telling Stat

"The AL MVP Award has been won by a first baseman 15 times. No other position has had as many MVP winners. Right fielders are next with 22, 11 in each league."

I want to be very clear about this, Albert Pujols was CLEARLY the MVP. Hanley Rameriz was the only other player I even considered. Now please read on.

I lifted that from the offical BBWRA....err BBWAA* website. I think this may show a pattern that after all these years that voters are still awarding hitting stats over defense, or maybe I just have an axe to grind. Your call.

*Baseball Writers Association of America

Palin

I stole this from my friend Nick. I find most of this to be truly amazing. It isn't Michael Moore unfair, but it is probably a bad sample size of her base, or worse it's an accurate sample of her base.

Facebook vs Myspace

I know this debate was settled long ago for most, but I actually do prefer MySpace for some reason. Today though I decided that it might be officially dead. As the well wishing for the earth making it another 365 days pours in through my Facebook, I have not heard even a peep from the MySpace.

Photos

I have been a huge slacker in the photography department this summer. I think the biking obsession got in the way a bit. Plus at my core I can only have so many hobbies that I am really pursuing, and since I will continue to play guitar constantly, either the biking or the photography will suffer.

Well this past Saturday, there were some Cyclocross races down in Harbor Town. I figured it would be a nice chance to take some photos. I was a bit suprised to see so many of my friends competing. My friend Charlie was sporting his new team colors.

Anyways, here some photos from that day.

Band Names

And the winner of best band name of the day goes to: Fall of Efrafa. Many I love me some cute cuddle rabbits.

A Truce

I have been thinking a good bit about marketing lately and I have come to realization, while the iDon't and the "There's a map for that campaigns" coming out of Verizon have been fun, they don' do a good job of selling to the right market. Look 16 year old kids are going to buy the iPhone. It makes to much sense for them. Who need to flag down are the tech nerds and the business users. That is how you truly compete. Once you have all of those people in your hip pocket, you go after the other companies market. First build your own then steal theirs. Rinse repeat.

Verizon Droid

Let me start of by saying that I am 100% in love with my droid. I feel it was the perfect phone for me, and my needs. I do not think it is the perfect phone for everyone. I feel that for the non-power user the iPhone might still be the best phone out there.

Some things that I think the iPhone has over the Droid.

1) The camera on the iPhone is a million times better. The camera on the droid so far has given me terrible results. However I couldn't care less about this. I'll explain why later.

2) I am willing to bet that searching the iPhone app store from the phone and web is actually a bit better then from android. Not a huge deal, but there is room for improvement. Like say being able to filter out pay or free apps after a search like "Terminal"


My expeirence with iPhone is pretty limited since I have never owned one and only used my friends phones, but some things I am in love with about the droid where the iPhone comes up short.

1) I don't really do much on Facebook, but the Facebook integration into contact is the win. I only wish you could add a face book account to someone in the case where there Facebook name is different from what you call them.* Due to this feature I don't really need the camera to work very well b/c It will simply use my friends Google or Facebook profile photo. No real need for me to have the camera.

2) If you are one the desciples of Google, the integrated Google Contacts, Calendar, and Email is 100% the win. There is another Google app that deserves it's very own bullet point.

3) Google Voice for the win. I can't say this strongly enough. While Google voice is still only in BETA and invite only, it has changed the way in which I view my phone. It allows me to have it take over all of my SMS and Voice Calling. To put this in perspective, you can in theory use zero minutes and zero SMS messages if you use a Google Voice number. FOR THE WIN.

4) VPN support out of the box. Well kind of anyways. I have yet to figure out how to get this working with CISCO VPN. I will have it solved before to long though.

5) It runs Linux. Look...this matters to me. Deal with it.


Overall for the non IT/Software Developer set, the iPhone is most likely still the phone for you. If your a youngster not super interested in technology or extreme control over your device, get the iPhone. There is nothing wrong with it. It's a VERY solid device. However if your the type who wants to be able to admin a server remotely and deal with your corprate life as well as your social life all from one phone, then the droid is the win.

*I am looking at you Alissa

I am actually this sad.

I love watching and reading about baseball. Except today. The idea that the Yankees just won their 27th World Series pains me so much that I am avoiding all baseball websites so far today. I know it won't last through the day, but for now it must. Congrats to Doug's God Damn Team.


p.s.
They didn't buy the championship people. Half the freaking team is home grown. They just find the best free agent they can and sign them. You wish your team could do the same. Stop hating.

It all comes back around

Note: I would like to see some of my more graphic design oriented friends tackle this topic in a more in depth manner*, but I have been pondering how aesthetics move in cycles.

When the iPhone first came out, I was blown away by how pretty it is. All those beautiful rounded edges. How it's so damn minimal. Just the one button on the front. It was so sleek and clean. It was truly something to behold. So what happened? Everyone ripped off that look**.

Now the Droid is coming out friday***, and the design of this phone (while similar to the iPhone) is kind of a throw back. I have seen all kinds of people talk about how the Droid isn't "sexy". I have no idea when we decided inanimate objects that are suppose to be utilitarian became "sexy", but it seems that it happened. Well maybe it's my clear (and rampant fanboydom) but I can't help but enjoy how the Droid looks. I love it's through back to more rigid and boxy shape. It doesn't look like every other phone, with their smooth and clean lines. It's rigid and terse. It looks like technology use to look like.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? My bet is that people will start ripping off this look and my pendulum will swing back the other way.


*I'm looking at you David and Patrick

**No blame here. If I was running a company, I would have done the same.

***I promise to stop talking about this damn phone soon.

Web Comic

Might I hip you kids to a new web comic? This one is drawn by Paul Southworth of Ugly Hill and written by Bill Barns. While Ugly Hill is sadly no more*, the new comic they are working on together called Not Invented Here is great. It's somewhat like Dilbert, but with a better fastball. In today's strip, just be aware that every electronic device I own is named after some sort of band. I am not even slightly making that up. If it's on the network, it's named after a band.

*Read it from start to finish, it's worth it.