Today should have been an easy day, where I could catch up on some stuff. That was partly true, but I swear to GAWD, the application we support is a pain.in.the.ass sometimes. But the weekend is here...no thought to that until Monday morning!

***
AT&T finally enabled picture messages (MMS) on the network. The original iPhone did not support MMS messages -- since e-mail is so easy, I think Apple figured that you'd use e-mail to send pics. That was a bad decision on their part.

But even after the iPhone supported MMS messages -- AT&T took MONTHS to enable it -- even though they had plenty of warning that Apple was going to release the update. What a sluggish company AT&T seems to be.

So, when it became enabled today (via a carrier update through the normal iTunes sync), I tested it out by sending a friend the standard "pic in the mirror" message -- reference the http://guyswithiphones.com/ site. WARNING -- many of the pics are totally XXX -- you won't see my pic there (you may all now sigh a collective sigh of relief).

Anyways, I digress...the user interface for the pictures messages works pretty well. It's integrated into the standard text message UI -- and you tap on the picture to open up the full sized version of it --


***
Anyways, D and I were thinking about heading to 4th Fridays tonight, but he's still under the weather, so I'm meeting up with another friend.

Other than that, I think this will be a fairly busy weekend.

This is Pride weekend in Richmond. Tomorrow morning, I hope to get an early bike ride in. Then, a local gay athletic group is making sandwiches for the homeless.

Then, Gay Pride for a while.

Sunday, planning brunch with a couple of friends. And I may very well head back over to Ekoji Sunday night. Maybe the weather will cooperate for a bike ride on Sunday afternoon.

I used to buy a new camera every couple to three years...I have favored Canon Powershots because I always got good pictures with them.

Canon just announced the newest updates to the Powershot line. They also introduced their first touchscreen camera (you know I am a fan of touchscreens! If you don't know that, then you haven't been reading my many iPhone tagged posts!)

As it is, I've had my current Powershot A640 for 3 years. It still works just fine. I just have a case of camera envy :)

But after just buying a new bike and knowing I'll need new tires for the Subi in a few months, I just can't, can't, can't justify a new camera right now!

I'm reading the info, and the latest flagship Powershot has fewer megapixels than last year's model. I'm okay with the idea of the G11 having fewer megapixels than the previous G10. More megapixels is not a big deal. As I understand it, the physical size of the image sensor area in the camera is more important than the number of megapixels -- too small an image sensor and the pictures get "noisy."

Leading the charge is a model aimed at more-experienced photographers: the Canon PowerShot G11. The G11 is the new flagship model in the PowerShot line, a follow-up to last year's excellent PowerShot G10.

Like the G10, the new G11 offers the ability to shoot in RAW mode, has nifty old-school dials for quickly adjusting ISO and exposure-compensation levels, and includes an optical viewfinder in addition to an LCD screen; also, its 5X optical-zoom lens reaches from 28mm wide angle to 140mm telephoto.

From there, it gets a little different, thanks to a couple of changes: the G11 has a flip-out, articulable LCD screen (2.8 inches) to help with overhead and odd-angle shots, as well as a smaller megapixel count than its predecessor (10 megapixels, versus the G10's sometimes noisy 14.7-megapixel sensor).
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Canon is also touting the G11's improved low-light performance. Available in October, the optically image-stabilized PowerShot G11 will sell for $500.

....
Canon also announced its first touchscreen camera today, the 12-megapixel PowerShot SD980 IS, which features a 3-inch touchscreen, optical image stabilization, and 720p HD video shooting capabilities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081903121.html

So, I'm listening to Pandora tonight on my walk like I always do, and I make the mistake of thumbing up a song that I like, which doesn't sound like a mistake, right? It WAS a song that I like, but NOT one I wanted to listen to right then. So, I thumbed it up, and pressed skip. Long story short, Pandora played song after song after song of that same genre, until I had run out of skips (you can only skip so many each hour in Pandora).

So, I switched to my local songs...but as I was walking, it kept making a Bloop-Bloop sound and Bloop-Bloop skipping to the Bloop-Bloop next Bloop-Bloop song...

I couldn't figure out what was happening...The iPod app on the iPhone has a "Shake to Shuffle" setting, and evidently I was walking vigorously enough to make the Bloop-Bloop iPhone switch to a new song!

****
Have you ever tagged yourself in a Facebook picture, even though it was not the best pic, but you liked a particular feature?

I tagged myself in this pic from a reception the other night at the Gay Community Center, because I liked how my legs looked in it, lol! I mean, my eyes are closed and everything, but I still tagged myself in it! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, lol!

I'm a fan of Apple products...but the company can be pretty appalling in its actions.

As a precaution, he threw the iPod outside and "within 30 seconds there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10 (feet) in the air," he said.

Apple agreed to give Stanborough a refund, but only if he signed a confidentiality agreement, agreeing not to disclose any information about the incident. Stanborough said he found the letter "appalling" and refused to sign it.

....

However, this isn't the first time Apple has been accused of trying to stop people from reporting on faulty iPods.

Reporter Amy Clancy of KIRO-TV in Seattle said it took her more than seven months to get documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission on iPods that mysteriously burst into flames. She said she had filed a Freedom of Information Act request, but Apple lawyers filed "exemption after exemption" with the commission to stop her from getting the over 800 pages of documents.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10302038-37.html

Dang Crackbook! I was supposed to get my butt up very early and bring the car into Firestone to get the state inspection.

I got up a late, and then I just HAD to check Facebook. That's when a (new F/B) friend from high school started up a chat. Well, there was a burning question I had wanted to ask him, so I chatted with him, and that meant I got to Firestone much later than I wanted. That means, it's going to take forever to do my car -- like several hours -- because there are people ahead of me. At least I got my burning question answered, lol! It was the answer I expected, 'cept with lots more personal details than I expected!

I could have just come back tomorrow, but I have been putting this off for a while now -- the state inspection expired in June, so I guess I was on the "13 month" plan this year. I also need new brake pads.

Anyways, it just means a long boring wait...I could be biking! This is when it would come in handy to have a partner to pick me up -- romantic partners do come in handy for some things, right?

***
Ya know, I'm using my old Dell laptop right now. Although I use a Mac at home, it is an iMac -- not a Macbook. When I'm out and about, I use this Dell.

Lawd, I miss the Mac! Yes, I use Windows at work, but I sort of expect that sort of pain at work. But when I'm doing my personal online stuff, I really really have gotten used to the Mac!

A lot of times, it's just the small things. Like, right now, I want to go take a restroom break, but I don't want to leave the Dell sitting by itself on the table. On the Mac, it would be easy to shut the lid, go into sleep mode, take it with me to the restroom. Then, come back to the table and plop it down and start using it -- it all happens in a snap. But if I do it on the Dell, the silly thing will take AGES to come back to life after I shut the lid. I feel like Homer Simpson, deciding if I should get up and go pee or not...

***
On a different topic, this Salon article is about how the Republican party is facing demographic changes -- the party does well among white voters, a population which is shrinking as a percentage of the voting population.

And the anti-immigration stance of the Republican party has turned off many in the non-white percentage of the voting population.

That's a pretty well-known trend, I think. The one comment the article made that I hadn't really thought about is that, with Obama's win, young voters probably have now gotten the voting bug, and will continue to vote.

And I think the writer is correct -- when you believe strongly enough in a candidate to vote, and the candidate wins, I think that gets you into the voting mindset. Until then, you might think your vote won't matter...but one win for a candidate you believe in makes you start thinking your vote does matter -- so you get in the habit of voting.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/20/gop_math/index.html

Facebook comes in handy sometimes. A friend from high school -- really, he was in my middle sister's class -- got in touch.

He was a goofy guy -- which I like -- and I remembered him immediately. He is also pretty tender-hearted, and I felt bad when I told him of another high school friend who passed away last Fall. It seem to make him sad.

He also was quite blunt about a couple of things, which surprised me, lol!

***
Work is in high gear right now -- the team is tired. Sometimes I find myself laughing hysterically -- which is not necessarily bad or good...The business users at work seem to enjoy the fact that I spend time talking to them -- evidently, the last Project Mgr didn't spend enough time with the customers.

***
It wouldn't be a week if I didn't talk about an iPhone app, right? Usually, I stick to the free apps, but I decided to splurge on a $4.99 app called "Sketches," just for fun. It lets you draw with your finger -- either on a colored background, or on a picture that you have in your album, etc.

Here is me playing with that picture that I like of D and me --


Here are some of the tools --

I've installed the 3.0 iPhone update. It's got some good (and too long awaited) features --> http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/.

It did a slightly weird thing with my apps -- when it automatically installed the new Voice Recording app on the first page, it pushed just one of my apps onto page 2, all by itself. At first, I thought it had deleted my other apps or something, until I realized that they were all still there, but were on pages 3+. So, I just had to do a bit of re-arranging to get it straight again.

Copy/Paste

Really? We had to wait this long for the OS to have such advanced functionality as copy and paste? (I am totally being sarcastic here...)

However, the implementation is good. Hold your finger down, and you get a menu and a highlight that you can drag with your finger --



Later, when you're somewhere else, you hold your finger down, and you get the option to Paste --



And, if you change your mind about the paste, you shake the iPhone (like an Etch-a-Sketch) to get an option to Undo the paste. You shake the iPhone for a fair number of things, so it makes sense from a user interface perspective to have a shake as the Undo --

MMS - Picture Message

Up until now, you would just send and receive pictures via your e-mail on the iPhone, which worked out fine for me.

The only time it wasn't so good was when someone else would send me an MMS -- but the iPhone just wasn't equipped to do it. So, AT&T would send me a web link with a password -- pretty lame -- especially since I couldn't copy/paste the password, so I'd have to write the password down before I clicked the link, so that I could remember it. Very lame, lol!

Although the iPhone is now capable of MMS, AT&T is not - so still in wait mode on this one until later this Summer.

Spotlight

"Spotlight" search now works on the iPhone. You can see below, when I search for "Karm" it shows me both websites and songs. It would also have shown contacts, so it's a universal search feature.

Horizontal Keyboard

Nice to finally have a horizontal keyboard --

Voice Record

Voice Recording is a new little app that Apple threw into this release. I already used Evernote (which has a voice note), so this one doesn't do much for me.

Nonetheless, here's how the Voice Recording app looks --

Youtube login

It's nice that they threw in the Signin button, so that I now can sign into my Youtube account (I could have done it on the browser before but now it's built into the Youtube app).



So, then you get your own Youtube videos --

I always go for the free apps on the iPhone. I guess I'm cheap that way.

Back before Apple's WWDC this year, Lonely Planet temporarily put out it's iPhone San Francisco version for free. I have always liked Lonely Planet travel books, and considering my heretofore mentioned cheapness, and my pleasure when I visited San Francisco last year, the free Lonely Planet San Francisco version was perfect for me!

It would have been REALLY convenient to have this on the iPhone last year when I visited!

The other night during a storm, the external speakers on my computer stopped working. Everything is hooked up to surge protectors, so I guess it could be coincidence that the speakers stopped working that night. I tried changing the fuse in the subwoofer, but that didn't help.

These four satellite speakers and the subwoofer were the speakers that I ordered with the old Dell six years ago. I don't know what the expected life of external speakers are, but I suppose I did get a fairly good number of years of use out of them.

My computer is the primary entertainment source for me. I listen to lots of music, NPR and other radio stations, watch TV episodes on Hulu, play a few games, etc.

So, the sound matters to me. Having to listen to the Mac's internal speaker is not a great thing! Although the Mac's internal speaker sounds better than the old Dell, it's still just not that great.


I find picking out speakers to be fairly difficult.

You have no way of knowing how the speakers will sound in your space, as opposed to how they sound in someone else's space and at the store.

It's difficult to judge ratings online. If someone has been used to listening to an internal computer speaker, then ANY external speaker will sound great, so they will rate it high. On the other hand, an audiophile will think almost any computer speaker is terrible -- they typically just aren't up to the same level as home entertainment systems.

Also, if someone has a $50 budget, then they will pick the best speakers they can get for that money, and then rate them highly.

I settled on the speakers below because of the types of comments made about them online -- the comments seemed to match sort of what I was looking for.


I looked at the Bose Companion 5 speakers, but they were just too darned expensive. Smaller (and cheaper speakers) all seemed sort of tinny.

So, I settled on these speakers below, which people online seem to love. I have not heard them, but the place I ordered them from has a local store, so I can return them if I need to. (The local store didn't have them in stock).

There's no separate subwoofer -- just 2 "bookshelf" type speakers. The dimensions (8.75h x 6w x 7.25d) are bigger than typical computer speakers, but I think I can work them into my space.

These speakers also seem to be in short supply. The place I ordered them from said they would ship in 2 weeks -- which seems long to me. Amazon said 1 - 2 months! I have a sneaking suspicion that Amazon may be more correct, so I may be living with the Mac's internal speaker for a while!

Although it makes sense, I had never pictured the military using iPod touches and iPhones. They are definitely little hand-held computers, but I didn't picture them used this way!

With their intuitive interfaces, Apple devices—the iPod Touch and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone—are becoming the handhelds of choice.

...
Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/194623

Um, sometimes things get a bit TOO small...the new iPod shuffle is smaller than a house key (and smaller than a AA battery). The controls have been moved to the earbud wires.

I suppose that if you're a runner, this might be a good deal -- very light. Otherwise, it just looks a little too easy for me to lose!


http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

****
And here is a set of devices that is similar to what you saw Tom Cruise using on "Minority Report." This is a presentation from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference.

There have been one or two revisions of the iMac since I bought mine, but this is probably the biggest one.

The new iMacs do not have Intel chips -- opting instead for Nvidia chips.

The top of the line iMacs are hella expensive, but one thing really caught my eye -- they are coming with Terabyte sized drives!


http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTE2NjM

I wonder how Apple will fare in today's economy. Yes, they have a devoted group of followers, but I think most people are holding onto their money right now -- so I wonder if Apple will ever lower its profit margins a bit..

I had a pretty busy day today. I started out with a career prospecting meeting this morning. The meeting was a very good meeting for me -- I got a lot of tips and things to think about plus I made a couple of contacts. There were probably about 40 folks in attendance.

Then I was off to Best Buy to buy a new cable modem. The old one (about 8 years old) had started to pluck my very last nerve -- it had some sort of short in the power connector, so every time I jostled the modem, it would turn off. Then, I'd have to jiggle the connector to get the modem to start up again. Last night, the modem started turning off even when I hadn't touched it!

Luckily, I had a gift certificate to Best Buy from Christmas, which paid for most of the cost. So, now I have a nice new, sleek cable modem to replace the big, fat one I had before.

After I called the cable company so they would set me up to allow my new modem onto the network, I spent the afternoon networking, getting a walk in and finally having a glass of wine with a friend.

So, a good day!

I got a 3.5 mile walk in yesterday, and I jumped rope tonight. So, I'm a bit sore from the combination, after being inactive since Fall!


On a more sedentary note, I like computer games, but I'm not much on the shoot 'em up variety. I tend to go for the civilization or empire building games, like Ages of Mythology.

Since I had heard good things about Civilization IV, I just bought it -- haven't really gotten into yet, but it looks nice.

It struck me how much work is put into these games, even the opening sequences!

Here's Civ IV's opening.
(Sorry these are both off center -- I haven't gotten the hang of recording and editing yet...)


And here is Ages of Mythology --

Huh...

A few months ago, I bought a connector that would transfer pictures from my camera to my iPod -- to give myself some additional storage in case I filled up the couple of camera memory cards I have.

It worked great with my last camera. But I just got around to testing it with the camera I bought a while back -- it won't work with this camera! Both cameras are Canon Powershots, but when I connect the cable from this camera to the iPod, the iPod says "no card inserted," and the camera doesn't respond at all.

Oh well...it was a good idea...but, alas, it won't work for me right now. I have a fair amount of storage on the memory cards, so I think I'll be ok.