Writing Stuff

I didn't last a week. I gave dropping Google almost entirely about 3 days before I just had to go back. Google is a bit like crack (and food ), it seems, and I just can't kick the addiction yet. The biggest thing I missed were my personalized homepage. When switching to MobileMe, I switched to using Yahoo! as my browser homepage and dumped Chrome as well. iGoogle used to bring in my Gmail account, Google Calendar, RSS feeds and news to me in once place and it loaded quickly. When I stopped using Gmail and Google Calendar, this page became pretty bare and ugly so I stopped using it. Yahoo! looks nice, but it takes too long to use and isn't as personalized and interactive as iGoogle. The overall switch on my Mac wasn't as hard as I thought and the MobileMe integration with my iPhone and work Mac were pretty awesome. Switching my iPhone over from Google wasn't a huge deal, for the most part. The calendar integration was similar but the contact syncing was great. I h...

I think that I’ve finally decided to part ways with Google’s grasp on my most personal information. I’ve been a loyal Google user for many years now and use just about every free service that they provide, but this weekend I’ve decided to start the process of moving away from some of their core services. For privacy reasons, I’ve taken my email and calendar hosting elsewhere. To replace the awesome support and syncing that Google offered for the iPhone, I’ve gone back to using MobileMe. Sure, it costs money but it’s nice to not have absolutely everything relating to my online existence be with one company. Not only is one point of failure a concern, but so is a single point of court ordered privacy violations. Having all of your eggs in one basket makes it that much easier for hackers or law enforcement to find out everything about me, who I’m talking to and what I’m doing for the forseeable future. Finally I’ve realized that that may not be right for me. That’s a concern with anyone...

One of the biggest expectations for Apple’s iPhone event yesterday was that a new piece of hardware, one capable of running on Verizon’s network, would finally be unveiled. This was obviously not the case and Steve and Co. gave no indication of any future announcements on Big Red’s front. There’s still the expected hardware announcement in June or July (Apple has said the iPhone is on a yearly hardware development cycle), but my guess is that we’ll see the event come and go without so much as a hint of Verizon being mentioned. The iPhone doesn’t work on Verizon for technical reasons, not just because Steve may hold a grudge (Verizon originally  turned down  Apple’s offer for exclusivity… Oops!). Verizon’s network operates using the  CDMA  wireless protocl whereas AT&T and most other international carriers use  GSM . There would need to be an entirely new wireless radio developed and a new manufacturing process introduced for the iPhone to support Verizon’s...

While I haven’t been lucky enough to get an invite to an Apple event (hey, I’m pretty small-time) I do spend a great deal of time poring over the wealth of information that comes in from those that are lucky enough to attend the event live. You’ll be able to find the sources of my information after the break, but enjoy the details first! I didn’t think the event was going to be as exciting and filled with information as it actually turned out to be, so there’s quite a bit of content here. I’ll do my best to summarize what’s not super important or interesting and spend some good time with what is. Apple generally releases video of their keynotes a number of hours after the event. I’ll download and watch this once it’s available and update this with things I may have missed. Tidbits – Steve loves to throw stats around, and here they are: 450,000 iPads sold since opening day (4/3) 600,000 iBooks downloaded since then. 250k downloaded in first 24 hours. No word on how many were ...

This weekend sucked. Sure, the iPad finally released but I didn't have one. I, kind of unfortunately, pre-ordered a 3G iPad and have to wait about another month before I'll get mine. Saturday was an annoying day for me, to say the least. I spent most of the day regretting the decision to not purchase a Wi-Fi iPad or trying to keep myself from buying a Wi-Fi model while I await delivery of my 3G one. Thankfully I was able to restrain myself. I guess what I was most disappointed with was that I opted to not be part of the "experience." When I originally placed my pre-order I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to miss camping out and picking up my iPad in store on launch day, but I immediately regretted that Friday night when the coverage started exploding after Apple removed their press embargo. Apparently some major tech. pundits had had them for about a week and were finally able to reveal this and release their reviews. I knew that I had made a mistake once I st...

I've been super busy at work recently and haven't had much personal time to do things like update my blog or dedicate any real time to social networking or checking up on Facebook after I leave for the day. When I get home the last thing I want to do is sit at a computer, much to the chagrin of the news junkie side of me. I have been able to drag myself online to play some World of Warcraft, however, and that's enjoyable. I do hope to be able to spend some time this weekend catching up on all that I've missed online and in the news over the past week, though taxes threaten to take up at least the greater part of one of my days. Work was always fairly busy for me, but I was generally able to get out a bit early and catch up with things at home or use a bit more personal time at work and stick around the office a while later. Not recently, though. From the time I get in to the time I leave there's generally always something to do. I guess that's the way work is ...

Thanks for being completely useless. I bought a JBL 200ID speaker dock at the Apple Store the day after Christmas since I'd been wanting a small speaker system like that for a while. I opted not to pay the incredibly high prices for a Bose and am seriously regretting not doing that or just not buying anything at all. I didn't really use the dock much for the first couple of months but when I decided to, I noticed that it would randomly pause songs that I was playing on my iPod Nano or iPhone. I tried a reset procedure that JBL listed on their support site, but that didn't fix the problem. After contacting their support team via email, I received a return authorization and paid about $23 to have UPS package and ship out the dock to them. I received my replacement unit a couple of days ago and it doesn't work either, with different but similar issues. Instead of pausing songs randomly, this one skips to the next song at random times during any and every song I play. Aft...

I love open source software. I've been using Firefox for years, love Thunderbird for email and run Adium as my multi-chat client. During my high school years I even dabbled around with Linux a bit, but now that I help administrate and troubleshoot Linux servers for a living, there's been less of an interest in using that as my home operating system. I guess technically I'm still a *NIX user, since I switched to using only Macs a year ago next month. Even though I love my Mac, I'm a bit torn with how Apple handles things. When it comes to computers I appreciate things being as open as possible. The stability and performance improvements that OS X provide over Windows make it less painful to sacrifice some control for quality. Windows is even less open source than my Mac, technically. When it comes to mobile phones, I adore my iPhone. I've had every model that Apple has released and plan to purchase this year's upcoming model, even though I don't qualify for...

I've transitioned to a new website and blog name as of today. I'm still keeping Blogger as my blogging platform since it's so incredibly easy and fun to use, but I'm now blogging on a more personal, dedicated, and hopefully interesting website. Instead of using my name as a clever (cheesy) blog name and blog address, I've decided to get something that suits me and my blog a bit better. We're now known as " Writing Stuff ." Throughout the years I've tried to find my niche for my personal blog and have always failed. There's so many things that I'm interested in, feel strongly about, and like to share my views on. I'm sure my office mates have tired of hearing my talk about the most random, technical, political, and religious topics and now I've got a space online where I feel comfortable sharing all of this. I can't restrict something so personal and fun to just one topic. Finding a blog name and domain name to suit somethi...

Google is primarily an ad and software/service company, so why bother with hardware? Google has not only been in the smartphone operating system business for a few years now, but they even joined the fray and began developing their own hardware, the Nexus One , this year. Why would a company that focuses primarily on ad sales and developing software want to get into hardware as well? I look at Google like the Borg . They want to assimilate everyone and have everybody using their services. The more people that use their services like Gmail, Search, etc... the more ads they display. Not only that but the more these people actually use the service, the better it gets at targeting ads to what is going to be most relevant to these users. As you use Gmail, Google scans your email automatically and displays ads that are relevant to the topic of the email, or things that are mentioned in it. As you search on Google they can store and analyze your searching habits to help provide you (and eve...

Today Google unveiled their plans to experimentally  offer fiber-optic internet service to "a small number of trial locations" across the US. Their initial effort will target at least 50,000 households, but strive to reach up to 500,000. This service will provide internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most of us have access to right now, at 1 gigabyte per second through fiber-to-the-home connections (much like Verizon's FiOS ). Not only is Google going to build, operate, and provide this service directly to customers, but they will also make the network and technology open and available to other providers. This will give consumers a choice of who to use instead of requiring them to sign up through Google. I would imagine that this is along the lines of phone companies having to lease out access to their lines to smaller companies, or old regulations requiring wireless providers to lease access to cell sites which allowed providers like AllTel and T-Mobi...

Google launched Google Buzz inside of Gmail today and I was lucky enough to get access to it in the first batch of users. I've played around with it for a bit and found that, unfortunately, it's not for me and probably not for a lot of other people either. At Google's event to announce Buzz this morning, they said their goal was to create a more social experience between all of your current social networking sites like Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Google Reader, and more. Sadly, Google Buzz just adds another social network to the mix, giving me one more network that I have to manage separately. A lack of Facebook support is what keeps Buzz from being the top destination for me to get my social fix, and I'm sure it's the same for others. Inside of Facebook, I can already get Flickr posts, Twitter updates, Picasa web albums, and shared Google Reader articles from my friends. Since Google Buzz can't pull in content from my Facebook friends (where most of them ar...

Wired ran an article yesterday on Google and the NSA partnering up to help secure Google's network against the recent cyber attack they were hit with from China. While this sounds good initially (who doesn't want Google's network to be secure?), when you consider that the NSA was the agency that "worked with" AT&T to perform warrantless wiretaps on American citizens it becomes pretty scary. This is incredibly disappointing. While Google claims that this partnership will not violate their privacy policy, I find this very hard to believe. The NSA isn't really one for caring about privacy policies and Google being willing to jump into bed with the NSA shows an initiative to work with them in the first place, which I don't like. I'm already scared enough that Google probably knows more about me than I do, but allowing what's probably the biggest techno-spy organization in the world a foot in the door at Google makes me even more worried. I ha...

The iPad is exactly  what I've been waiting for. Many people I've talked to are pretty disappointed with Apple's latest announcement , but I'm thrilled. Sure, it wasn't as revolutionary as people thought and won't replace my MacBook Pro but it does fill a void that I've been wanting to fill for a while now. Netbooks are garbage. I bought one for $300 a couple of months back and have been completely underwhelmed by it ever since I opened it up. It's slow, sucks at multitasking, runs Flash incredibly poorly, and dies after about 4 hours of usage. It's not the ideal solution for someone wanting to casually surf the web, watch videos, or send an email while relaxing on the couch. Apple realized this and came up with a solution. To fully appreciate the iPad you need to put it into perspective and see it for what it is and what Apple wants to do with it, not what you hoped it would be. What you hoped for doesn't exist and won't exist for some t...