the daily awesome

My biggest gripe with the internet...

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:35:00 +0000

If there is one surefire way to have your website annoy the crap out of me and cause me to never return to it again, it's to have any type of audio playing automatically when the page loads. I hate this more than anything else on the internet.

When I am web browsing, I generally am also listening to music. When I am at work, this music is played through my computer, but is kept at a low volume so as not to disturb my coworkers. Because of this, it's not really practical for me to mute the entire computer, but this isn't too much of a problem...that is until I click a link to some stupid website and all of a sudden ads start talking to me or music starts playing. And it's never at a low volume or even the same volume as my music, it's always much louder than my music and catches everyone's attention.

At home, I usually keep my computer muted so that I don't have to be annoyed by this and I just listen to music on another computer at my desk or on my stereo. This is great until I go to YouTube or want to play a file that's on on my computer. Then I have to unmute the computer, do what I want to do, and then remember to mute the computer again or face the consequences.

The biggest offender of this is MySpace. I rarely even go on MySpace, but the few times I do, every page I go to has some stupid song that I'm sure to hate automatically playing when it loads.

Can't I just browse in peace? Is that so much to ask?

Now, I know that the entire internet isn't going to change and this is probably just going to get even worse so what to do about this? Someone, and I would do it myself, but I'm never going to have the time to sit down with this, needs to create a Firefox extension that allows the user to mute individual tabs. I would like to have it automatically mute all tabs except for those that I manually unmute or put on a safe list. This way, I can browse in peace and listen to music, but when I want to actually hear something from a site, I can unmute it and hear it.

I got lost on the internet

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:20:00 +0000

It's a good thing someone made this map of the internet because I keep getting lost. Of course, now my head hurts. Which is worse?

Help classify galaxies!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:46:00 +0000

GalaxyZoo.org is letting any Joe Schmo help them classify galaxies. Since there are millions of them, scientists can't do it all themselves. All you have to do is sign up on their website and they have a brief crash course in how to do it. It's pretty simple.

Astronomy is pretty awesome, but I wonder how accurate this is going to end up being. I predict a mess.

Ginormous, yes that's the technical term

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:20:00 +0000

Merriam-Webster has announced that they will be adding "ginormous" to the dictionary (my first attempt at typing that came out as "dictioncry," which might be more accurate). There are about 100 new words being added this Fall when the new edition goes on sale. Among the other words added are "crunk," "speed dating," "sudoku," "DVR" (as in digital video recorder), and "smackdown."

Am I the only one that thinks "crunk" will be completely forgotten in less than ten years? There is no way that people will continue to use that word that long.

My predictions for the future? Next year internet acronyms will make it. The following year, l33t speak. If I ever open a dictionary and see "pwn" as an actual entry I'm going to strap myself to the nose of the space shuttle just before launch. That experience will easily be more enjoyable than living in a world where l33t speak is considered proper English.

Nothing is personal anymore

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:33:00 +0000

Anyone can see that as the internet continues to grow, interpersonal relationships have become much less...well, personal. A recent survey by Yahoo! found that up to 14% of men would fire an employee via IM with an emoticon. My question is, what the hell would be an appropriate emoticon for firing someone? I don't think that the standard would cover it. Maybe could get the job done?
I'm pretty sure that if I got fired via IM I'd be pretty pissed off and probably steal some office supplies on they way out. But if there was an emoticon with the IM I'm pretty sure I'd walk into my boss's office and punch him in the face for being a pompous prick.

Additionally, the survey found that there are people who would propose to someone via IM. This is the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with and you can't even propose to them face to face? Come on, unless you're only going to get married in World of Warcraft land, get the hell off of the computer and spend some quality time with your main squeeze.

This isn't to say that some things aren't easier to discuss via IM. I'll be the first to admit that I've used the internet to initiate awkward conversations, even recently, but there is a line between when this is acceptable and when it is not. Marriage, firing someone (for work or a relationship) need to be done in person. Maybe you can fire someone via the phone, but definitely not via IM.

Google maps is still getting better

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:11:00 +0000

This morning Google added a "My Maps" feature to Google Maps that allows users to add various bits of crap to the maps that they are looking at. Google has taken information from other websites and stitched them into its own. Content includes gas prices, real estate, movie times, earthquakes, crop circles, webcams, area calculators and thousands more.

A couple of the more interesting ones...

Dig a hole through the Earth - Select an place on Earth and this will tell you where you would pop out if you dug a hole straight through the center. I tried my apartment in NJ and it looks like I would come out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles off of the southwest coast of Australia.
Been there? - I could easily see myself spending half a day trying to put in every place I've ever been to. I've always thought it would be cool if there was a way to keep track of everywhere I go, now that there is, I'm a little frightened.

Final Cut Studio 2 install

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:25:00 +0000

This was intense!

I got a free copy of Final Cut Studio 2 today and figured that I'd install it on my work computer since I don't have a Mac at home. I probably won't use it too much since it'll be a work, but I figured what the hell.

The install took about 3.5 hours, 8 discs, and 53GB of hard drive space. That is seriously one intense install. Even Windows installs faster than that. I can't even believe that software programming has gotten to the point where a single package of software takes up 53GB of hard drive space.

Science, you're going to far...

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:50:00 +0000

I love science as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but there are somethings that maybe are just a bad idea. Some researchers have developed a drug that can be used to erase single memories from a person's brain. The idea is that it can be used to treat people who are suffering from psychological disorders related to post-traumatic stress. That isn't too bad, but this could be abused so easily by people who just don't want to remember things even though those things don't cause stress in their lives.

Technology like this scares the crap out of me because people today are too dumb to be able to handle it.

Oh well, I guess if it goes terribly wrong, we can just use the drug to erase the memory of it and it will be like the whole thing never happened?

What does an old radio studio look like when you take it apart?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:31:00 +0000

At the radio station that I volunteer at, we are rebuilding our production studio. It's pretty old and has some really old equipment in it. The console is all rotary pots! Remember those!?! The air studio is 5 years old and looks beautiful and pretty up to date, but walking into the production studio is like taking a trip back through time.

Click the slide to see the dismantling of the studio. Over the next few weeks, we'll be putting it back together with all new equipment. It should look really bad ass when it's all finished. I'll post more pictures as the project continues.

Customize your directions from Google maps!

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:47:00 +0000

Google has finally done what I've been hoping someone would do for a long time. You can now drag the blue line detailing your route to customize it. Every time I get directions from Google Maps, I always end up changing half steps anyway because I know ways that are just better and less trafficy so it's nice that I can do this on the computer before I actually print them now.

Or I could stop being cheap and get a GPS already.

Unsubstantiated iPhone rumor

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:14:00 +0000

For really no reason at all other than the fact that a website can't compete with the rest of the internet in this day and age without posting about the iPhone every hour on the hour, I'm going to throw out some nonsensical iPhone rumor. The iPhone has a 3G chip built in, but is currently being disabled and will later be enabled with a firmware update.

No real reason to say this, but it just seems so ridiculously silly that a phone being touted for it's web browsing doesn't have 3G. I refuse to believe it. Besides, Steve Jobs has said that there are still surprises to come and that he thinks edge is slow. Additionally, there have been tons of rumors about the iPhone being brought to Europe before the end of the year and because every other first world country has higher technology standards than we do, they simply wouldn't stand for a "smartphone" that doesn't have 3G. However, Apple won't give Europe better technology than we have here in America and this Fall is probably a bit too soon for the 2G iPhone to be available. So I am proposing that when Apple releases the iPhone in Europe, it will have 3G capabilities and Americans will get a firmware upgrade that unlocks the hidden 3G capabilities in the iPhones that they already have.

This will also help to provide a second boost in sales for the iPhone after the initial sales bonanza starts to die down.

Note: Apparently, AT&T's edge network decided to get faster today. So everything I just said is probably crap...well, it is crap because I just made it up. So yeah.

Duct tape server

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:58:00 +0000

These dudes made a computer case out of duct tape. This is almost as awesome as when I made a duct tape wallet...wait, this is way better.

Who wants to start work on an entirely duct tape car? That'll be cooler, right?

Update: Their site works, but the images don't seem to be available anymore.

1.8 exabyte iPod?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:42:00 +0000

iTunes is currently showing that I have 10,021 songs taking up 1.8 exabytes of space on my iPod. I THINK that it may be lying to me, but damn, sign me up for an iPod with that kind of storage!

I wonder what kind of ultra high-definition digital format these songs are encoded in that they require that much storage space?

RSS obsession

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:32:00 +0000

Really Simple Syndication or Really Simple (I'm a) Sucker?

I have 24 sites in my RSS reader on my work computer. That's probably not a lot compared to many (or most?) people who use RSS, but it sure keeps me busy. Many of the sites update many times a day. Each time a new article is posted, my RSS reader blinks a transparent "RSS" logo in the middle of the screen. It's quick and unobtrusive, but the moment I see that logo pop up, I HAVE to check what the headline is. I have literally no self control to wait until I'm done doing what I'm doing. It doesn't matter if I'm writing an important email or on the phone with someone, I instantly click to see what the headline is.

Could this be classified as an addition? Maybe not medically, but I would definitely consider it to be one. I can't even get any work done in the morning until after I go through all of the new headlines that came in since I left work the day before. That sometimes takes up to an hour.

Where am I going with this? The obvious route. It's been said many times before, but technology makes our lives way too complicated. Before I started using RSS to keep up on my favorite sites, I would only check said sites when I was bored with no work to do. If I missed stuff that was posted, it wasn't a big deal. My favorite sites would get checked every day and others just once a week. Now that I have something that updates me automatically, I've become completely addicted and cannot ignore them. Sometimes I even get stressed out if my RSS reader backs up a little. I can't stand to see it showing that I have unread items and will stress myself out over trying to read everything and get my work done.

RSS as taken my web browsing from something that I did only when I had nothing better to do and made it something that comes to me and distracts me all the time, whether I have other things to do or not.

Will I stop using RSS anytime soon because of this? Nope. In fact, even as I was typing this entry I was clicking on links to all kinds of things from my RSS reader. I even added another site to my reader while posting this because of one of the links that came up.

I hate to say it, but the iPhone is already a success

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:46:00 +0000

Apple doesn't need to actually sell a single iPhone for it to be a huge success. With people already waiting outside of stores for Friday's launch and the whole internet going apeshit over this thing, it has already done exactly what Apple wanted it to do.

It has created an immense amount of hype over the brand Apple. Yes, Apple is going to sell millions of iPhones and they are standing to make a decent profit from it as well. But that doesn't really even matter as much as the effect that the iPhone has already had on Apple's imaging. The general public is viewing the iPhone as the greatest gadget ever created. I have even heard it being referred to as the "Jesus Phone." Come on, that's a bit of an extreme statement, right?

It doesn't matter that the phone has some serious shortcomings. As long as everyone goes nuts over the idea of it, Apple's name is always going to be fresh in their minds. Essentially, the iPhone is just one gigantic advertising campaign for Apple...and it's working. And if the phone were to fail to sell in mass numbers, which it won't, Apple's work here is already done.

Save net radio...

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:30:00 +0000

Tomorrow, thousands of webcasters will be turning off their streams in protest of a huge rate hike for music streamed over the internet. A bill signed back in March is changing the way that royalties will be paid. The old method was per song, but now royalties will be charged per listener. So for each listener that hears a song, a royalty needs to be paid. If a station plays a song to 500 listeners, then they need to pay royalties 500 times for that single song. On top of that, royalties will have to be payed retroactively. This is enough to shut down many small stations' streams and for an internet only station, that effectively leaves them out of business.

If this does bill does not get changed, we can all expect many of our favorite internet radio stations to shut down completely. That would suck...a lot.

It's funny how the record companies want to make more money yet think that the best way to do that is to keep people from actually hearing the music they want them to buy. I do a show at a local college radio station that centers around new music and just getting it out there and heard. Because we are a small station without a lot of money and are located in NJ which has a very full FM band, much of our listenership comes from the internet. Our signal is not very strong and even when we move to our new tower site this fall we still won't be broadcasting terribly far so the internet will continue to be important to us. Our licensing fees are paid for by a blanket agreement that Rutgers University has with the major licensing companies so we will be largely unaffected, but there are many for-profit stations out there that are similar to us and rely on internet listeners.

You can get involved and help by going to www.savenetradio.org.

The pefect car?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:37:00 +0000

A British car maker has announced that they have the technology to build a 700hp electric car that gets 250 miles on a 10 minute charge.

All I have to say is: GIMME!

Because it is electric, all 700 horses are available instantly, without having to wait for your engine to get revved up. Normally, most of these electric cars look pretty ridiculous or are slow as hell. This both looks good and is fast.

Again, gimme!

Want to be smarter? Kill your older siblings...

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:25:00 +0000

A recent study by some dudes in Norway suggests that the oldest sibling in a family turns out to have the highest IQ. However, this does not seem to be genetic or caused simply by biology as subjects with older siblings that died young generally have a higher IQ than those with older siblings that are still living. This would seem to make it a sociology thing.

The lesson here, kids?

Kill your older siblings and then you'll be smarter...or at least smarter than them since they'll be dead.

Wait...I'm the oldest in my family...shit, now I have to be constantly watching my back.

Stupid sociology.

Fluorescent lights that don't look hideous

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:54:00 +0000

Some dude named Ross Lovegrove has created a modular fluorescent lighting system that adds a modern look to the historically, hideous lighting technology. Well, they still look kind of crappy, but they're infinitely better looking.

The design allows you to link any number of modules that you want to create a design that fits the room you're putting them in.

Am I the only one that thinks these look like they belong in an Apple store?

Women, you're dirty minded too...

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:05:00 +0000

A recent study by researchers at Emroy University has found that men spend more time looking at a woman's face when looking at erotic stimuli while women spend more time looking at the action. Women also stare at the overall picture longer as well.

The main theory that explains the reason for this suggests that men need to find visual cues in a woman's face to figure out whether or not she is aroused while women only need to take a quick glance at a man's crotch to find out.

So you hear that women? You are the perverts, not us. We're just innocent bystanders. While you care about what a man's packing, we just want to stare longingly into your eyes.

Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:13:00 +0000

A kid proved that Hell cannot exist. Incredible. Now where am I going to damn people to? Utah?

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University
of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer to the bonus question
by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with
colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have
the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic
(absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law
(gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So
we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the
rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once
a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different
Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions
state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.
Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do
not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls
go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of
souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of
change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the
temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell
has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase
until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls
in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell
freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman
year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,"
and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then
number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and
has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since
Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more
souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving
the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting
"Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Garage door keypad?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:40:00 +0000

RIM has submitted a patent for a garage door like keypad on their Blackberry phones. Upon reading this, it was an instant "why has no one thought of this before?!?" type of feeling. The idea sounds excellent. You show the keys that you need when you need them and hide the rest to give you more screen real estate.

Think about it, when you're writing a message, you can display the full QWERTY keyboard, but when you're watching a video doing something that doesn't require much text input, you can hide all of QWERTYness and have a much larger screen.

Of course there do seem to be some things that could be problematic. How thick will the device need to be for the design to work? What will the keypad feel like? Will the buttons have a nice solid feel or will there be a lot of flex?

Either way, this is a pretty crafty idea and I guess time will only tell how it works out.

Google Blogger widget

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:27:00 +0000

I downloaded the Google Blogger widget for OS X since I use a Mac at work. I figured that I could use it to update my blogs and then when my boss walks by, I could just exit the Dashboard real quick to hide it.

It works great except for one major problem, you can't easily title blog entries. I find that I have to go into the web application and add the title to the blog afterwards. Quite annoying.

The only other complaints that I have are that it doesn't scroll the text after a point and the lack of spell check. Once you fill up the window, it just expands line by line as you type and at no point does it begin to scroll the text in the window. Eventually, if you are making a decent length entry, you run out of space on your screen.

Other than that, it's pretty decent. It allows you to post to any of the blogs on your account easily and you can save drafts.

Great for quick little updates where you don't need a title, but for anything lengthy, I'll stick to the web app.

What do I expect from a phone?

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:45:00 +0000

I've been thinking about the purchase of a new phone for over a year now. My p910a is quite yet still gets me through the day. I developed a long list of must have features and after months of looking, HTC announced the Kaiser. The feature set was literally exactly what I was looking for. It was originally supposed to be released this month so I waited and waited for it. To my dismay, at the end of May, they announced a delay until at least August. Because of the delay, I started to rethink it and started looking at what was already available. I found the Cingular 8525 to be the closest available. Makes sense too since it's just a rebrand of the HTC phone that is being replaced by the Kaiser. The only thing that it's missing that I was looking for is integrated GPS, but I think that I have gotten myself over that considering that I can pick up an 8525 refurb for $99 right now instead of dropping $700 in two months on the Kaiser. This was the biggest selling point for me.

So what am I expecting from this phone? What do I plan on doing with it? A lot. First off, I use my phone to organize my entire life. I keep anything I need to remember in it. Any dates, appointments, parties, birthdays, etc. etc. I kept in the calendar. I keep notes for things that I want to remember and todo lists. I keep shopping lists. I even keep a list of every DVD that I own, movie that I have on my computer and DVDs that I want to purchase. Take out the DVD wish list and there's over 600 movies on the list. Why do I keep this list? Because when I'm not at home, I can't remember what I have on DVD vs. what I only have ripped on the computer. I prefer to have something on DVD so if I'm at a store and I have some money, I'll pick up a DVD or two. With this list, I can quickly double check that I'm not purchasing something I already own...which I've done before. I also have a program that manages all of my passwords, important financial information, combinations to things, etc. I use this daily. It's excellent. Occasionally, I need to work on Excel or Word documents.

That's most of what I use my phone for on a daily basis beyond phone like things like calls and texting. I keep every one's phone number and email addresses in my phone as well.

So in addition to all of that, what do I expect to improve upon by upgrading to a newer phone? I've searched through software available for the PocketPC and based what's out there, there are a ton of new things that I want to be able to do from my phone. First of all, I need internet access. I think that I will be fine with just WIFI since I can't afford to get a data plan for $45/month. Besides, there is WIFI almost everywhere these days.

My biggest use for internet will be to administer ELCRo, the web application that I develop for the radio station that I volunteer at. We run the software 24/7 and completely rely on it so it's important that I am able to quickly respond to any problems. I also plan on marketing this software to other stations soon so having complete access to it as much as possible can help me work out bugs faster. The software uses MySQL, PHP, HTML, javascript, CSS and AJAX. I want to be able to work on all of this from my phone. I don't expect to be writing large amounts of code, but I do expect to be able to make minor edits and fix code via FTP right on my phone. If I'm at a family function and I'm bored out of my mind, I'd like to be able to be productive. If a DJ calls me with something that screwed up in a log, I don't always have an interface created to fix it and sometimes I have to manually fix it in the database so I will also need to be able to execute MySQL queries right from the phone. And being able to log into the application and use it should go without saying.

After that, I want to be able to IM and receive IMs on multiple chat clients. I mainly use AIM and Google chat so that's what I need. I want to be able to keep every bit of contact information I have for everyone I know in one place, my address book. I want to keep this synced with Outlook on my computer at work and at home. I want to sync my tasks, calendars and notes as well. Symbian allows this, but I found it too frustrating to use on the p910 so I've lived without it for two and a half years.

I want to access RSS feeds from a simple and clean RSS aggregator. When WIFI is available, I want my phone to automatically check the sites that I keep up with and let me know of the updates. In turn, I want to be able to post to multiple blogs from an application, not a webapp.

When I'm at home and I have people over, I often open up a playlist in Winamp on my HTPC and let it play on random. I want to be able to control this and make changes to the playlist from my phone. I run speakers to the backyard when it's nice out and I don't want to have to go inside to skip a song that I don't want to hear.

If I have something on my phone that I want printed, I want to be able to print straight from the phone via WIFI. I don't want o have to bring a computer into the mix. However, speaking of PCs, I want remote desktop for all of my home computers as well.

I do plan on purchasing a bluetooth GPS receiver for the car so I turn by turn directions.

Entertainment? Yes, there are a few things that I want. Music playback isn't big for me. I have an iPod for that and until storage capacities for cell phones start to break 60GB, I won't be looking to replace my iPod. I do however want to be able to keep the occasional movie on my phone for when I'm stuck somewhere waiting for something. I also want some games. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't need much, but a small assortment will be nice. A decent NES and SNES emulator should get me through most of what I would want.

That's what I expect from a smartphone today. Is it a lot to ask? Probably, but after a lot of research I have found software that should cover all of my needs. How well will this software work though? Who knows? That will have to wait until my new phone arrives and I get to play with it a bit.

Look for a review in a few weeks.

iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Andy) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:12:00 +0000

The iPhone...

Wonderful idea. People are going nuts about it. And why shouldn't they? Beautiful touchscreen, elegant design, a seemingly intuitive interface, full iPod capabilities.

I'll tell you why I'm not going nuts over it. It's a great first attempt at a phone for Apple and sticks with their whole attitude towards everything, but I will pass. For starters, I like buttons. I've always liked buttons. When I was a kid I would push every button I could get my grubby little hands on. This never really changed much, I'm the same way today. In my spare time I do radio at a local college station (www.thecore.fm) with plenty of buttons for me to push. So why does Apple think that they can completely do away with buttons? Their touch interface looks hot and the pretty easy to use, but I like to feel stuff when i push buttons. With my current phone, I can be halfway through doing whatever it is that I was going to do before I even get the phone out of my pocket. This is because I can feel where the buttons are and go to town on them before I even look at the device. When it comes to typing out text with an onscreen keyboard, I don't think that I could do it full time. I like to have both physical and visual cues for finding the buttons I'm using.

What about 3rd party applications? We'll be left to web apps? I get that this helps increase security and will save internal storage space for media. It will also make developing applications easier and quicker. All that being said, what were they thinking?!?! This will require users to have an active internet connection in order to use the applications. What about when we're on a plane or in the basement of our grandmother's house where there is no WIFI or EDGE service or the subway? What's the point of having a "smartphone" if half the apps that we want to use aren't accessible at all times? On my p910a, which is about a week away from being upgraded to a Cingular 8525, I have installed a lot of software that I want access to at all times. My most used peice of software is a password manager. I store passwords to hundreds of websites there. I store combinations for lockers there. I store all of my credit card, bank account, student loan info there. You get the picture, if it's something that I will need to remember, it goes there and it is always available to me.

I mean have they used web apps before? Yes, they are great in so many ways. I love that they are available to you no matter what computer you are on. I love that the software gets updated more often. I develop a very powerful webapp for the radio station that I volunteer at. The app runs most of the backend of the radio station and we are completely reliant on it. I'm even using one right now to post this. But all of that aside, they can be very slow sometimes. At the radio station, we have problems with the server getting overloaded from time to time. We can't afford to run it on a dedicated server so we use shared hosting which is great 95% of the time, but when there are problems it's awful. With regular software, you know that once it's installed, nothing outside of our device is going to cause it to not work.

Also, what about real power users? While my p910 doesn't have WIFI and I don't pay for the EDGE service on it, I do wish that I could do more to administer the system that I develop at any time. I have been spending time searching through software available for Windows Mobile and have found plenty of applications that will allow me to edit the code straight from the phone or administer the MySQL databases. To my knowledge, there are no webapps that can do what I would need them to do in this respect. And I certainly am not going to take the time to build one myself.

Other issues? Sure, there are plenty. Of course, it is expected that Apple would create the iPhone without a removable battery and without a storage expansion slot, but I cannot back a device without either of these. AT&T and Apple are requiring a 2 year contract with the phone. So not only will you be stuck with the iPhone for two years when they release a newer, better version 6-9 months after you get it, but those last few months are going to get brutal as your battery life drops to about the length of time that a AA battery could power a Mack truck. What's the gripe with removable storage though? Why don't they allow this? Sure the slot my hinder aestetics slightly, but I want as much storage space as I get and when I take a picture I really like with my digital camera, I love being able to slap the card into my phone and set it as my desktop or caller ID picture for a friend. Why should I have to bring a computer into the mix for this? My camera is a couple years old so there is no wireless of any kind on it, nor have I ever really desired for there to be so it won't be getting an upgrade.

While the lack of 3G has been beaten to a pulp by most of the internet, I have to agree with them. EDGE service really isn't that fast...especially since they are touting YouTube integration. But I'll leave that one be. You know what would have been really nice? GPS. Apple showed off the mapping abilities of the phone and I thought it looked great, but having a built in GPS receiver might have been enough for me to overlook all of the problems that I've already complained about.

Lastly, price. $600 is a huge chunk of change. The iPhone is a convergence device, but even at $600, it can't replace my 60GB iPod which doesn't have enough storage as it is. I'm a real music guy. I have tons of music. My MP3 collection is closing in on 40,000 MP3s. I like to have as much of it with me at any given time because I never know what I'm going to want to listen to and I don't want to have to worry about deciding ahead of time what I should load onto my MP3 player. So a $600 convergence device can't even replace one of the two devices that it was designed to replace.

That's a lot of negativity towards one device that hasn't been released yet, I know. So let's talk about what looks good. The overall sleek design is hot and that screen looks beautiful. Nice and big and the touch interface looks very responsive. Web browsing looks great on it. There are a few other little things that I really like, but right now the verdict is that I'll be passing on the first generation. I'm excited to see where the second generation takes the product, but until then, no thanks.