Technology Changing
I’m watching “Back to the Future II” right now, and I’m amused to discover that in the producers’ vision of the far-off year 2015, they have flying cars, fusion power, hover skateboards, bionic implants…
…but they still use pay phones.
Just drives home how quickly the cell phone phenomenon took over, and how it really took everyone by surprise.
Movies | Comment (0)Aah, Spamfree
I’ve been getting increasing levels of comment spam in this blog lately–going from one or two a day a couple of months ago, to 20 or 30 a day lately–and it had been getting really annoying to go through and delete all of them. I tried blocking keywords, I tried blocking web hosts being linked to, and nothing reduced the tide for very long.
But I’ve finally found a solution, in the form of a WordPress plugin called Akismet. Haven’t seen a spam comment in days. It’s such a relief.
Meta | Comment (0)Arby’s “Deal” Ad
Arby’s is running an ad in which people freak out over what a good deal their 2 for $4 Beef ‘n Cheddar offer is.
The ad would be more convincing if it weren’t for the fact that, just a few years ago, it was a 5 for $5 deal. So 2 for $4 is hardly worth freaking out about.
Work | Comment (0)Just One Day
It’s been months now since Christmas dropped her bombshell on me. And I’m doing much better. Really. You can tell by the lack of whiny grey-boxed posts.
And yet, I still can’t go a single day without thinking about her betrayal. And every time I think about it, I feel the pain of it all over again.
I’m normally so good at bouncing back from stuff. Why haven’t I bounced back better from this?
Just one day. That’s all I ask. One day without thinking about it. That shouldn’t be hard, should it?
DRM Killing Your Music
This? This right here? This is why DRM sucks, and why I will never buy one of the DRMed eBooks that various companies have been pushing lately. If you buy a DRMed song, or book, or whatever, and the company that sold it to you decides to stop supporting it, *poof* you can’t listen to the song, or read the book, or whatever anymore. On the other hand, if I buy a paper book, it keeps working indefinitely.
Geek | Comment (0)Game Show Correction
Question on a game show I’m watching right now: “Which Amendment gives us freedom of religion?”
No Amendment gives us freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right; we have it simply by virtue of being human beings. The First Amendment protects our freedom of religion from government interference.
This sounds like a nitpick, but it goes to the basic philosophy behind the Constitution, and people should know it.
Rant, TV | Comment (0)My Dream Calendar
I’ve been using Apple’s fancy new “MobileMe” web applications since they upgraded. The interface is nice–I can add calendar items directly from my Web browser, that sync automatically to my iPhone and home computer.
But it could still be better. Here’s my vision for an ideal online calendar:
I log onto the online calendar, and it shows me my current schedule. I’ve just gotten an e-mail from my friend Jane Smith suggesting that we have lunch at 12:30 at Per Se on Wednesday. So I click an “add new calendar item”, and simply type “lunch with Jane at Per Se 12:30 Wednesday”. Then a whole lot of processing takes place behind the scenes.
First, the computer assumes that I mean 12:30 PM, rather than 12:30 AM, and that “Wednesday” means the upcoming Wednesday. It creates a new entry called “Lunch with Jane” with that date and time, and shows it to me so that I can change the details if it got any assumptions wrong.
Then it goes searching through my address book for people named Jane, asks me which Jane I mean, and attaches her phone number to the entry.
Then, since it knows that I live in NYC, it searches for places called “Per Se” in NYC and attaches the address, along with a map link, to the calendar entry. Once again, if there’s more than one, it asks me which one I mean, starting with the one closest to my work address (for weekday daytime entries) or my home address (for other entries). Of course, I would be able to change those settings if I worked unusual hours, or if I were out of town for a week, or whatever.
And presto, instead of a bunch of buttons and menus, I simply type one sentence and I get all of the information that I need, stuck in the calendar automatically and synced to my home computer and my iPhone.
All of the technology is there today to do what I’ve just described. Indeed, I believe that Google Calendar does some of it, although I haven’t tried it out myself. It wouldn’t be very hard to program–I could probably put it together myself if I had access to Apple’s servers, although it would take a few rounds of user testing to work out all of the possible types of sentences people were likely to want to enter.
So how ’bout it, Apple? Want to make calendar entries much easier to enter?
Geek | Comment (0)