It’s that time of the month again…when the California Highway Patrol comes out in full force to hand over speeding tickets to anything and everything that moves a fraction faster than the posted speed limits. With 3 prior speeding tickets and the last ticket being issued 7 months ago, I can’t afford to get another speeding ticket in the next 11 months otherwise my car insurance will sky rocket…again.

So what did I do on the way home? Moved over to the rightmost lane and drove just under the speed limit…and came to the realization that driving under the speed limit is MORE dangerous than speeding. How so? Because it puts me to SLEEP!

Arghhhh….

To readers outside California: It’s widely believed that the CHP has a monthly quota that it tries to fill on the last day of the month..definitely seems that way with the increased number of patrol cars on the highway and more drivers being pulled over to the side of the road.

Ticket #3 of 3 (issued 12/24/07).
Got me for going 30mph over the speed limit

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Jacques Rogge has big balls when it comes to putting his foot down and sending messages to athletes:

“Every athlete, the clean ones and the not clean ones, should clearly know that we mean business,” Rogge told The Associated Press in a recent interview.  AP story

What the hell happens to his balls when it comes to media censorship in the host country? He still hasn’t made any comments on that topic.

“Speaking on condition of anonymity, an IOC member has told the ABC that it appears now that China never had any intention of removing its censorship regime and the international media has effectively been muzzled.

The member says if this information had been had been known during the bidding process, China never would have got the Games.

The head of the IOC’s press commission Kevan Gosper says he would be surprised if IOC president Jacques Rogge did not know about China’s internet blocking.

Mr Rogge has arrived in Beijing but is yet to comment on the growing row over internet access.” ABC story

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Did anyone honestly expect China to allow journalists to report uncensored from the Beijing Olympics? You there in the back who raised his hand? Oh, the restroom is to your left.

Worse of all the International Olympic Committee isn’t making China stick to the promises it made years ago when it was awarded the Olympics. Yeah let’s first turn a blind eye to human rights abuse in the country and hand over the 2008 Olympics to them and then let them gag not only Chinese journalists covering the event, but journalists from around the globe.

Nice going Jacques Rogge (IOC President).

“The IOC’s reluctance to challenge the Chinese government’s ongoing violations of media freedoms is at odds with the Olympic Charter’s dedication to ‘ethical principles’ and ‘preservation of human dignity.’ If the IOC can criticize the Chinese government’s failure to improve Beijing’s air quality ahead of the 2008 Games, why can’t it speak out about China’s failure to respect its Olympic pledge on press freedom? ”

Sophie Richardson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Washington Post article on China limiting reporter’s access to the internet

Amnesty International Report on China

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So earlier this week everyone’s favorite facebook app Scrabulous was taken off facebook due to a legal dispute with Hasbro and replaced by EA’s (online versions of the Hasbro owned game is handed by electronic arts) slow loading cumbersome version of the game. Facebook users tried to save the the much loved app through online petitions, but it was to no avail. I was pretty ticked off when I heard news of Scrabulous being taken down, but just came across some good news - Scrabulous is back with a new name; Wordscraper!

It looks a lil different graphically, but its still the same game. So log onto your facebook accounts, add the wordscraper application and send me an invite to a game!

Edit: I know EA’s official explantion for their Scrabble app being slow/unavailable/icky is that hackers attacked their app as an angry response to Scrabulous being taken down. Hat’s off to those hackers!

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By now you must have heard about Cuil (pronounced cool), a new search engine created by former google employees. It was in the news all day today, and a lot of people initially thought of it as a potential google killer.

Google killer? Ha

As soon as I heard the news I jumped on Cuil and searched for some terms. Cuil claims that they have a larger index of web pages (i.e that through cuil you can find more results then google), but most of the terms I typed in resulted in ZERO search results! Here’s an example: I searched for “olympus e-520″ (its a digital camera) on both Cuil and Google.

Google came up with over a 880,000 search results including the price of the olympus e-520 at 3 online retailers and also linked the e-520 product page on the official olympus website.

How did Cuil do? All I got was a stinking:

“We didn’t find any results for “olympus e-520”

Some reasons might be…

• a typo. Please check your spelling.
• your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
• too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.”

Some other terms ended up giving me the same message. How pathetic is that? Google killer? Pfff….

Edit: Btw Google has found over 1 trillion pages on the web, but does not index all of them because many are similar or has auto-generated content. Read more on that here on the offical google blog.

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Oooo those are some big a** flames!

29 years ago a bunch of garlic lovers decided to start a festival to share garlic enhanced recipes with visitors from across the globe…now in its 30th year it attracts huge crowds and sends up a garlicky aroma all around the city. Besides having food stalls, theres also garlic inspired artwork (paintings..hats shaped in the form of a garlic bulb..etc), rides for the kids, live music..and the famous pyro chefs(like the ones in the pic above). Even though I’ve been in the area for the last 8 years I never bothered to check it out until this weekend with Andy and Christy.

I heard that theres a huge variety of food there, but my mission was to try out the following:

1. Garlic Ice Cream
2. Kangaroo meat
3. Alligator meat

The last two items don’t have garlic in em, but theres a vendor that sets up a stall every year with those items. Usually carries snake meat as well, but that was a no show this year. Took a while to find the items above due to the large number of vendors. Heres some pics to show what kind of stalls were present:

Deep fried garlic….hmm….I’ll pass.

Veggies? No thanks

Oooooo garlic ice cream! The perfect way to kill vampires…coz who refuses ice cream?

While I was looking for the two stalls pictured above and waiting for Andy and em to arrive I tried the garlic chicken stir-fry at one of the other booths…it was pretty good. Eventually came across the ice cream stall. Turns out that the garlic ice cream comes in a vanilla, pistachio, chocolate varieties ..what the hell…you mean its not made of pure garlic? Anyway I ordered the vanilla since the vanilla garlic flavor is the original flavor that kicked off this garlic ice cream craze. It did taste of garlic, but no where as overpowering as I expected it to taste!

Next up the gator tails! It came fried and on a stick. It tasted…like paper actually. If it wasn’t for the batter it was fried in it wouldn’t have had a taste at all. Hmm…not impressed

Ok Kangaroo time! This was prepared in some sort of stew and also came on a stick…hmm tasier then the gator tail…but really tough. Took me a good 15 mins or a lil longer to chew 5 pieces. Once again not really impressed, but glad I tried everything on my list.

Andy and Christy finally arrived during my kangroo trial and after that we spent about half an hour looking for others..checked out a few stalls…but for the most part just chilled (or tried to) in the shade. The 93 degree F heat (33 degrees C) was intolerable to the point where the only thing on my mind was getting out of there and to the nearest thing with an AC.

Overall the garlic festival wasn’t all that…besides the garlic ice cream and the awesome pyro chefs there was nothing awesome that I’d came back for next year.

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Just got back from dropping a friend at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) airport and as I was exiting the airport parking lot, that now familiar sick feeling in my stomach came back. Over the years most of the time when theres a need to go to SFO its because someone is leaving…family…friends..and now I even dread driving past the airport on 101..I just associate that place with the sadness felt after watching someone close walk through the security checkpoint and out of sight…and that feeling is amplified whenever I’ve exciting the parking lot..memories of previous visits to the airport come flooding back and I feel sick. The entire structure is a memento of those who are not here in California.

Was awesome to see my buddy after almost 8 years….its weird how even though we haven’t really kept in touch that much over the years it didn’t seem that way…felt like it was just yesterday that we were in high school. People change over time, but I guess good friendships always remain the same.

And that puts a smile on my face

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Had Chinese for lunch and my fortune cookie read:

“Focus on the color purple this week. It will bring you luck”

Yup, you read what the cookie said…purple will bring me luck..who am I to argue with the fortune cookie makers and their infinite knowledge and power? :)  While googling the color purple to get an image to post along with this entry I came across purple.com and haha its just a blank page with a purple background.

That got me wondering…who would pay for a domain name yet keep the site blank? Looked up the owner’s information and it belongs to a former computer science phd candidate from Drexel University in Philadelphia who now works for Goldman Sachs in London. Well I gotta admit that owning the domain purple.com is a lot cooler then owning something boring like blue.com (what are you depressed all the time?),  green.com (get over it..not giving up my V6 for a hybrid) or orange.com (you’re a florida orange farmer?).

Purple, unlike all those boring colors is cool…esp to a former world of warcraft addict like myself. (To non-gamers…in WoW purple items are EPIC items..the most powerful..the gear of gamer geek dreams..the stuff you can wear around a virtual town/city and get everyones attention with)

Anyway heres a purple image..will the image+entry on the color purple bring me luck? Guess only time will tell!

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My phone vibrated around 6:34am this morning..with one eye half open I picked it up and found a new email with the same subject as the title of this post. Was 3/4 asleep while reading the first few lines, but it caught my attention. The writer talks about love in economic terms and does a pretty good job at it!

“In every long-term romantic situation, returns are greater when there is a monopoly. If you have to share your love with others, if you have to compete even after a brief while with others, forget the whole thing. You want to have monopoly bonds with your long-term lover. At least most situations work out better this way.”

Really interesting way to look at love. I’m a sucky writer so instead of going on and on I’ll just post a link to the article so you can read it for yourself

Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics by Ben Stein: Click here to read

Thanks to SL for bringing this to my attention!

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San Jose, California was the 3rd stop of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida tour and there was nothing in the world I was going to miss it for =0) Was hoping to catch them in both San Jose and Oakland, but the latter show got canceled. Fuzzy and I forked out some serious dough for row 8 seats (spent less on row 2 seats to their show in 06, but auction prices are rocketing with their popularity), and it worth every penny…all 34000 pennies!

The stage setup was a lot different then the 05 and 06 tours. Two walkways extended on both sides of the arena. Looking up the “magic balls” that Chris talked about prior to the start of the tour could be seen…each one was rumored to cost $0.9 Million dollars! They’re basically screens that images/live footage is displayed on during certain segments of the concert. You’ll be able to catch a glimpse of em in the videos/pics below.

Setlist was similar to the setlist for the LA shows, but we got the added bonus of POLITK, one of my fav live songs…the live version of the song is what I used to listen to before, and hummed during, most of my college exams haha..yup im a weirdo. Besides politk, the san jose crowd was also rewarded with a full band performance of Yellow (versus the acoustic version they played in LA). Chris Martin called the LA show “Venti” (starbucks reference)..well if the LA show was Venti then the san jose show was super duper venti!

Two of the songs (In the san jose case the two songs were “The hardest part” and “death will never conquer”) were played in the seats between the upper and lower levels. That was a nice surprise for most people, but the hardcore fans knew from advance that they’ll be doing that. Death will never conquer was sung by Will, the drummer. Since the boys were pretty far away from the stage while they sung those two songs I had to watch it on the “magic balls”. Everything else happened pretty close to our seats so I wasn’t bummed about that.

The crowd was a good mix of older and younger crowd…while I was in line to buy merchandise I was talking to some “fans” and was surprised to hear that some people had not fully hard the album yet….so it was no surprise that barely anyone was singing along to 42…one of the songs from the new album that I think is pretty easy to sing along to - “Those who are dead are not dead they’re just living in my head”. Crowd fav seemed to be yellow…chris martin even turned his mic towards the audience for at least 1/3 of that song and joked to Will (who was playing the drums towards the back of the stage) that we were singing for him.

Some of the songs were sung on the walkways on the side of the main stage…so even if you weren’t sitting in the first few rows, you could still get a good view of the guys.

Anyone enough of my rambling..all you need to know is that the show was AWESOME! My fav songs of the evening were Lovers In Japan, Politk, Strawberry Swing, chinese sleep chant and scientist. During lovers in japan (you can see this in the video and pics) some “cannons” shot florescent colored confetti all over the crowd..at closer look they turned out to be butterfly shaped! Floor and seats (because no one was sitting) were covered with florescent butterflies by the end of the song lol.

Pics and videos follow are below. Video quality is decent, but by default youtube will display a lower resolution (standard) copy of the video so be sure to click “Watch in high quality” (located on the lower right of the video window) to see it at a higher resolution. Will take a lil longer to load, but its worth it

Set list was:

1. Life in Technicolor Video
2. Violet Hill Video
3. Clocks Video
4. In my Place Video 1 (Chris & Jon close to where I was sitting)
Video 2
5. Viva la Vida
6. 42 Video 1
Video 2
7. Yes
8. The Scientist Video
9. Chinese Sleep Chant Video (played on the left walkway)
10. God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (new version) Video (played on the left walkway)
11. Square One Video
12. Speed of Sound Video
13. Strawberry Swing Video
14. Yellow [full band] Video
15. Politik Video
16. Lost Video
17. The Hardest Part (acoustic) Video
18. Death Will Never Conquer (sung by will - this is on the hardest part video)
19. Fix You Video 1
Video 2
20. Lovers in Japan Video
21. Death and all his Friends Video 1
Video 2 (Coldplay leaving the stage)

That’s it for the videos. Now for the photos!
Pics from the San Jose 2008 Coldplay concert

Hope they come back to northern california after the european/australian leg of the tour as they did during the 05/06 Twisted logic tour. While I’m at it I might as well link the pics I took during the 05 and 06 shows

Pics from the San Jose 2006 Coldplay concert
Pics from the Mountain View 2005 Coldplay concert

Ok I’m done! Hope you enjoy the pics and videos! Comment here rather then on youtube

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Edit: Haha reading this post on the monday after the concert and its hilarious! Out of the 4 of us waiting for coldplay to arrive I was the oldest by 4 years haha. The others ended up going to the hotel that CP was supposed to be staying at that night to try and meet em, but the last update I got from them (around 2am-ish) was that it looked like CP flew straight out to Vegas after the show and didn’t stay at the hotel that night. Sucks that we weren’t able to get a pic taken with the guys, but hey at least a got a wave from CM out of it!
I still need to upload the pics and vids to the blog..will do that tonight…taking a while to upload the vids because there’s just too many of em.

07/18/08 3:30ish pm:
Woooohoooooooo!!!!! Oh my fucking god chris martin waved at me!!! Feel like a giddy school girl right now!! He saw me!!!! He saw me!!!! He waved back!!!!! Chris martin waved!!!!
Don’t care if u call me crazy..chris martin waved at me!!!
Sent from my iPhone

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It’s 2:07pm and been waiting outside the hp pavilion, to try and catch Coldplay going in for a soundcheck, since 11:50 a.m. Show starts at 7:30pm.
There’s two other fans here beside me. They drove 2 hours from Sacramento to be here.
Even though the chance of them coming out to talk to us is pretty slim I have to give it a shot!!

Sent from my iPhone

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First up, this is the first time I’ve been to the Fillmore venue and I have to say that it is now my favorite venue. Its really small (holds 1,250) and intimate and the sound is amazing!

Doors opened at 7pm, but Trideep Gogoi (referred to him as Deep in my other posts, but he wants to see his name online lol) and I got there a lil after 6pm. Felt a bit old because everyone else seemed to be in their teens besides the parents that were there to chaperon their kids. Ah whatever. There was around 30 or people in line in front of us…great…ANOTHER line just days after spending 4 hours in line for the iPhone! Anyway it wasn’t so bad and once we got in we managed to get spots really close to the stage..there was prolly about 6 or 7 people between us and the stage initially but by the end of the concert there was only about 4 people between us and the stage. Venue is general admission and standing room only…so coming early definitely helped.

Opening band was “The Daylights”. Never heard of em before, but they were pretty good! They’re sound a lil like switchfoot but check em out for yourself because its hard to describe their sound. On some tracks they sound like keane (without a keyboard player)..other tracks have a heavy southern california sound. They don’t fit in any box which is great. Purchased their album “Shift and Blur EP” on itunes after getting home and been listening to it today. Really impressed.

The Daylights

Second band was “Carolina Liars”. Wasn’t impressed by this group. Think the drummer and guitarists need to back off from singing…or screaming the lyrics and let the lead singer do his job..they kept drowning his voice out. Lyrics are good so there was some potential there.

Carolina Liars

Next was PHANTOM PLANET!!! They almost stole the show from OneRepublic! That’s how good they were! Alex Greenwald, the lead singer, interacted with the crowd throughout their set and the crowd was totally into them.

Phantom Planet

PP sang some songs off their new album “Rise the dead” and some older stuff…and closed off with California! Pretty much everyone in the audience was singing along..more then they did with any of OneRepublic’s songs…yeah OneRepublic may have more well known tracks worldwide..but this is cali! Had to stop myself from singing because I didn’t want to ruin the video I was making. Yes, you heard me right I recorded their performance of California =0)

Here it is - Phantom Planet: California Video

Next up was OneRepublic! Stage went dark and the backdrop with their name on it lit up with a bluish effect making it look similar to their album cover.I was so excited I can’t even remember which song they played first, but I think it was Mercy.

Wow they sound 10x better live then they do recorded! Was there an earthquake during their performance? Oh wait that was the crowd shaking the dance-floor-ish wooden floors of the venue.

They sang all 12 songs off their album..or so it seemed..I love their album..one of the few where every song has the potential to be on the charts and this could clearly be seen during the concert as there wasn’t a single low point..no songs that seemed to drag on.

The lead singer, Ryan Tedder, reminds me of Chris Martin in some ways.They both play the piano and guitars..they both dance around the stage in a similar fashion. Chris has a better overall stage presence IMO but I could be biased.

Took a few videos during their performance. Uploaded them onto youtube and linked them below for your viewing pleasure. Quality on youtube is so-so..the original looks much better but each file is around 500mb in size so won’t be practical for me to post links to the originals here haha, but if anyone wants em I can pass it on to you by sending you a dvd or using a file sharing website.

Here’s the  “Say (All I need)” Video

I’ve uploaded videos for “Apologize”, ”Stop and Stare”, “Mercy”, “Empathy”, “All we need” (all by OneRepublic) along with “Do the Panic” by Phantom Planet to my youtube account. You can get a small taste of how Phantom Planet got the audience to participate by watching the “Do the Panic” video. Also uploaded close to 60 pics from the concert to picasa. You can check em out by clicking on the links below

Link to Videos

Link to Pics

Overall it was a really good concert! Thanks to Deep for coming along!

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Was just browsing the venue’s website when I found out there there’s 3 other acts performing besides OneRepublic. Phantom planet I’ve heard of because of their song ‘california’ that was the opening track for the tv show O.C. The other two acts I’ve never heard of.
Screenshot of the page is below. Oh n in case you’re wondering why it says no service on the corner it’s because I’m using my old disconnected iPhone to write this blog entry. Makes an awesome web browsing device.

Sent from my iPhone

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8:46 pm
07/11/08

Wooohooo! After almost 4 hours of waiting…the moment has arrived! Picked up a 16gb Black 3g iPhone. Didn’t take too long to complete the purchase. All they had to do was change my data plan from the 1st gen plan to the 3G plan, and then they hooked it up to itunes to unbrick the phone. Entire process took about 6 mins..much less then the 20-30 mins being reported in the morning (guess traffic on the itunes servers died down towards the end of the day since a lot of stores sold out of the iphone). After that it was up and running within seconds. First call I made on it was to my sis to tell her about the purchase. She beat me to the iPhone by 3 hours…managed to cut in line thanks to some friends, and left the store with her purchase while I was still in the line outside the mall lol.

Overall it was a pretty cool experience. People in line were super friendly so even though I wasn’t there with any of my friends, it sure didn’t feel that way. Apple store employees were around to answer questions and to provide bottled water to the people in line.

With the way this thing was selling I can’t wait to see the sales numbers. All bay area AT&T stores sold out of the phone earlier today. Not sure about if the other Apple stores nearby still had units left in stock.

Oh and I overhead from an Apple store employee that Steve Wozniak was at this location earlier and bought some iphones.

Here’s some pics before I head off to get some food. Starving!

Black and white iphones side by side at the apple store

My iPhone being unpacked. This was taken after I paid for it and before it was activated. The white bag on the left of the pic is what each purchase was placed in.

Wooohoo! It’s up and running!

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8:02 pm. Finally inside the store. About 15-20 people in line in front of me. ALMOST THERE!

Sent from my iPhone

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7:11pm: can almost see the entrance to the store!!! World peace, the knowledge of countless generations, immortality, the power to make all dreams come true awaits.
Oh wait is it just a cellphone? No way!

Sent from my iPhone

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5:59pm. Just made it to the line inside the store. Damn close to 150 or more ppl inside. Looks like 2.5 hours left from here. Apple employees were nice enough to hand out bottled water to the people in line.

Sent from my iPhone

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Ok it’s almost 5pm and I’m in line at the apple valley fair store. Holy shit there’s over a 100 ppl lined inside the mall and about half that number or more outside the mall! They said it could take 4 hours before we’ll get up to the counter.
Ok this is it..not leaving this time. Store closes at midnight n I plan on staying that long…I think =0)

Sent from my iPhone

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Ok so the last store (on stevens creek) didn’t have any in stock. Now I’m at the el camino/kiely AT&T location. Over 60 ppl in line. Looks like ppl are still leaving with bags so they might still have it in stock!
As I was typing this out, a guy came out and said that the 16gb models are completely sold out and that the 8gb is very low in stock and that there’s no guarantee that anyone would be able to get one no matter what they’re position in line is (which is stupid..come on if you have X units then only the next X ppl in line will be able to buy the phone since they were only supposed to sell one per customer…don’t need to use calculus to figure this out!) and that most people would have to place an order and receive it in 5-6 days.
Talked to my sister..gilroy store is also out of stock. Apple Valley Fair store has units in stock, but lines are really long.
Heading back to work. Hope I’m able to find one after work!

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Ok I couldn’t help myself. Currently standing in line outside an AT&T store (on stevens creek). Figured if I got here 2 hours after it opened then there won’t be a line.
Crap just found out it’s sold out at this location n that everyone in line is waiting to place an order and that they’ll get it in 6-7 days.
Screw that I’m gonna look for another store

Sent from my iPhone

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Stories like these bring a smile to my heart and a tear to my eye. There’s just not enough of these that get heard/read so posting it here. Thanks to SL for bringing it to my attention.

“This year’s college graduates owe their success to many factors, from hectoring parents to cherished remedies for hangovers. But one of the most remarkable of the new graduates, Beatrice Biira, credits something utterly improbable: a goat.

“I am one of the luckiest girls in the world,” Beatrice declared at her graduation party after earning her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College. Indeed, and it’s appropriate that the goat that changed her life was named Luck.

Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?” and “What can I do?” …….” Click here for the complete story

Can’t wait to check out in detail  GlobalGiving one of the sites mentioned in the article that make stories such as this one come true. They seem to have a lot of active projects going on around the world that you and I can lend a helping hand to by donating. That $5 starbucks latte..that $250 Wii..that $199 iphone…might put a smile on our face and give us temporary satisfaction..until the next new thing comes out..but the same $$ can change lives!  Be sure to check it out!

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Title says its all….long day at work.

Looking forward to this Sunday’s OneRepublic concert at the Filmore. Found someone who wants to go! Too bad SL isn’t around because shes the only other local (no longer) OneRepublic fan I know. Most people don’t know who OneRepublic is are until I ask them if they’ve heard the song “apologize”..and even then they think it’s a Timberland song! Pooey!

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Haptic feedback on a touchscreen? Now that would be sweet. I love the iPhone to death, but I can’t type out messages on it without looking at the screen as I could with other cellphones that have raised keys. Haptic feedback technology on touchscreens would create the same “raised key” feeling and apparently nokia is already working on it:

“The main idea behind the haptikos is the possibility to create “… variable and controllable user perceived surface roughness or friction coefficient“.

This is achieved by placing   a “…plurality of closely spaced voltage controllable protuberances” that  can be raised and lowered on a touchscreen surface.

When no current is applied, the protuberances are flush with the surface of touchscreen and the whole surface area feels solid and smooth. When voltage is applied, the protuberances raise from the surface with increasing extent, providing the feel of tactile elements on a touchscreen. By controlling on which parts of the touchscreen and when the protuberances are raised, and illusion of a tactile feedback is achieved……”

Click here for more details

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If you sign on to your gmail account on multiple computers check out this new feature by google that lets you remotely sign out of any computers that you’re logged onto- Gmail Blog:Remote sign out

No need to install anything. Simply by looking at the footer of your open gmail account, you’ll be able to see how many other computers you are signed on to and can sign off.

I love this feature because I used to accidentally leave gtalk open at work…only to come the next morning to find tons of messages from people who thought I was at my desk. Now I can close those active sessions from anywhere!

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Turns out that the group lining up outside the NYC Apple store is doing so to bring attention to their concerns of “sustainability, affordable housing, energy security, locally-grown food and eating right”….ALONG with buying iphones for themselves, Obama and Mcain.

“….“We’re here to restore the edible landscape,” says Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, the group’s organizer and spokesperson and a young man given to making grand pronouncements. “We want to bring seeds of change back to the White House.”

Daniel and his supporters — there are 10 in town this week, but only five braved the rain that soaked the city overnight Friday –  want to set a new Guinness World Record for “longest time waiting in line to buy something.”

But that’s just a vehicle to get attention for their broader concerns — sustainability, affordable housing, energy security, locally-grown food (New York State apples are a big theme this week), and “eating right,” says Simon, “especially our leaders.”

…..”

Full article here

I see a lot of hate directed towards the NYC group and the guy who began waiting outside a New Zealand store sometime yesterday (iphone comes out there at 12:01am NZ time - 8:01am EST making him the first in the world to purchase an iphone) on other blogs. What’s with that? If someone wants to use a week of their lives waiting outside an Apple store, let them! Its a great way to bring publicity to any cause (as in the NY case) or to satisfy fan-boy urges (as in the NZ case) lol!

What do you readers think? Comments please =0)

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Wow….people lining up a week prior to the 3G iPhone’s launch day? Pictures below were taken earlier today outside the NY store.
Click here for the story

Not sure if I’ll be camping for the phone on the 11th. Since each phone needs to be activated in-store (unlike last time where we could activate it from home using itunes) I expect extremely long waits once the store opens…at least 10-15 mins per customer. So I’ll probably wait until the 12th or 13th to upgrade my baby.

What am I going to do with my current iphone? Was considering letting a family member use it, but it can’t be used on At&t without a unlimited data plan and they really have no use for that..so I’ll probably end up using it as a wi-fi enabled widescreen ipod.

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Was shopping for some CD-R’s at Bestbuy two weeks ago when I came across a few Wii boxes. Since they’re generally sold out minutes after new stock arrives, I assumed that these were empty boxes for display but picked one up anyway and found out that it wasn’t just for display! Oooo a real Wii IN MY HANDS! I ended up buying two of em..one for my mom and sister…and another for my cousins who were in town that weekend.

That was two weeks ago….since then how much time have I spent on the Wii? Hmm…15-20 mins max. In comparison how much time have I spent on the Playstation 3 (PS3)? Lets see…around 23 hours (playing Metal Gear Solid 4 from start to finish 4 times) or more.

The big WHY? The Wii is brand spankin new whereas I’ve had the PS3 since last July…shouldn’t I be more excited about the Wii…the gaming console that the whole world is going la-la over?

Nope..and its not that I didn’t try to like it. I did…I genuinely wanted to like it…I went out looking for games to buy, but nothing caught my eye. Sure there are tons of kiddie games out there for the Wii…but there just aren’t any Wii titles out there that calls out to the gamer within me.

The Wii remote is really innovative, but can it be used in a game like Metal gear solid or GTA? Is it any good for games that DON’T involve tennis, or cooking? You can argue that there’s also a version of the Wii controller that you can use in shooting games…but hey the same is available for other systems (Time Crisis anyone?) and those other systems have exponentially better graphics so there’s no real reason to play those games on the Wii. Racing games on the Wii? Yeah there’s a steering wheel controller..and if you’re into driving around a cartoonish track in a cartoonish cart with mario behind the wheel then yeah you’ll be satisfied..but if you want to drift around the corner of Japan’s Suzuka International Racing Course in a metallic silver Nissan GT-R looking so photo realistic that you forget that this isn’t a video but a game then you’ll need to look at a next-gen console like the PS3. The only Wii game that looked good to me was Resident Evil 4…problem is that I played and completed that game on my Playstation 2 around 3 years ago! Bottom line is that any good game on the Wii has already been out for other systems and look better on the other systems. Any games unique to the Wii are aimed squarely at lil kids and non gamers.

The Wii continues to and will continue to outsell PS3 and Xbox 360s in my opinion because
a) Price is much cheaper. I paid $599 for my PS3 when it came out (Current price is $399) whereas the Wii is $250. That by itself makes it attractive for parents to buy for their kids and for adult non-gamers who do not want to invest much in a next-generation gaming console.
b) Games are much simpler and much easier to get into and play then games for PS3 and Xbox 360, making it easier for moms and dads and uncles and aunts to play along with their kids.

Kudos to Nintendo for capturing that untapped (until now) market..but if you want a REAL gaming console then I suggest you lookaway from the Wii.

Hint hint: Get a PS3!

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One of the biggest complaints about the current generation iphone and the 3G iphone due to come out on July 11th (besides not having a physical keyboard) is the lack of MMS support. That got me thinking…Apple rarely does anything without a reason..were they trying to make a statement about SMS and MMS becoming less relevant as more and more devices can access email accounts combined with a greater abudance of both unlimited data plans and wi-fi networks? Personally I have no real use for SMS or MMS…I can email messages and images to friends…if I need to have a quick conversation with someone, I can log onto meebo on my phone and chat with anyone logged onto their gtalk, MSN, yahoo, aim accounts. And at $20/month for unlimited data, it goes a lot further then paying $20 a month for unlimited SMS messages or $0.10 a sms for messages capped at a measly 160 characters.

I was surprised to find that I’m not the only one who shares this view. Came across this blog earlier today -Click Here.

What do YOU think? Think this is crazy talk? Think that SMS is too important..too widespread to just be tossed aside?

Think back to May 6th of 1998, when Apple announced the then shiny new iMac..that caused a media uproar because it lacked a floppy drive! Now no computer manufacturer ships computers with built in floppy drives! It started with one company and then moved across the board.

Could the death of SMS and MMS also been looming? With over 70% of cellphone users using these services I don’t expect it to drop dead all of a sudden….but a slow death could be in the books for both SMS and MMS.

A little something extra thats also on my mind: When the Mac Air was announced a lot of people laughed at the lack of a optical drive (including myself..I think the Lenevo X200 is a much better laptop - almost as thin as the Mac Air, but has a optical drive)…but from the early 90s companies like Sun Microsystems have been trying to promote the concept of a “dumb terminal” (computer with basic hardware and not much software installed on it - these computers will run software off of central servers). Now while the Mac Air is not “dumb” in any regard it does look like a step in the direction of what Sun and other companies promoted at the time.

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No thats not how much I was charged on my last cell bill, but thats how much I would have paid if I didn’t have an unlimited data plan! Was going over my bill a few minutes ago when I noticed that I used 163,742kb (163MB) of data in the last month and was wondering how much I would have paid had I not had a unlimited plan. At&t charges $0.01 per kb if you don’t have a data plan..so would have amounted to a huge-omus $1637.42 bill! Thank god for my $20/month data plan!

Note: I should add that a non-iphone user would prolly not get anywhere close to this amount of usage even if they used their cellphones as much as I do because the iphone loads regular webpages and not cellphone optimized pages and as a result more data is transmitted to the phone.

Its thursday…4th of July weekend almost at the door..still no plans set in stone..guess it might just be me and the ps3.

Currently researching DSLR cameras…figured its time to get a REAL camera to sumplement my point and shoot (Canon SD750). Was leaning towards the Olympus E-510 with some advice from Deep, but after talking to SL this morning the Nikon D60 looks attractive..but pricey..decisions decisions!

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