My typical issue with being asked what I’d like for a gift: I usually just get something, if I need it or really want it, or I’m saving up for it and it’s too pricey to be a gift.
So, this is more of a list for myself, to remind myself that there are things out there that I’m saving up for.
I saw the review of the Pulse Smartpen and LiveScribe software (now Mac OS X compatible!) and left a comment on their blog, hoping to win one:
We went to look for apartments in mid-November. On the plane to Austin, the flight was pretty full. The guy in front of me reclined his seat right into my knees. I’m 6’2″ and all leg; if I pull my pants all the way up I look like Steve Urkel.
Anyway, the guy also kept putting his hand backwards and holding the back of his seat, which I also found a bit creepy. And I think he was also passing gas.
Otherwise, it was a thoroughly enjoyable flight.
For the next few days I’m at the Austin City Limits music festival 2008, enjoying a lot of great music from a lot of very talented bands.
But they’re not all bound to hit me where I live… and there are 130 bands to check out. This translates into a lot of reading or listening ahead of time.
This morning, while looking over a schedule where I’ve only heard of six of the bands and actually only listened to four (out of forty-six!) I had a thought. What about music recommendation websites?
It’s really v1.1 – It has been said that the 2.0 release of the iPhone OS was like a 1.0 release for third-party apps. Given that mentality, today’s 2.1 update was a welcome relief – it made all of my third-party apps start working again.
It also helped my phone realize that there was indeed 9 GB of media (rather than ‘none’), and the MUCH faster syncing and backing up also comes as a nice surprise. Other claims include better 3G service and less battery drain – we’ll see. I’m still tempted to pick up one of those offboard batteries, just in case.
I added Evernote as a substitute for the (yellow) ‘Notes’ app. It is a free service with a web interface and syncs with native clients for iPhone and Mac (and windows, etc.) Apparently it can OCR even handwriting inside of notes that you take photos of (eg on cocktail napkins, which are usually the only things around when the best ideas occur.)
Update: iphone OS 3.0.
A brief list of features that I’d love to see implemented at a low level by Apple and/or AT&T.
While I wish I had a way to quickly mark an email ‘Spam’ on my iPhone’s Mail client, even more useful to me would be a button that would hang up on a telephone call AND mark the number as ‘Spam’. That would help everyone by minimizing the amount of solicitation they got.
My guess is that the Apple SDK does not provide any sort of API for plug-ins into the Phone application, for obvious reasons. Something like this would have to come from on high and be coordinated with the phone company.
In the meantime, I’m going to take some advice I saw online and create a ‘spam caller’ with a custom ringtone, and every time I get a spam call I’ll add that number to the same contact on the phone. But it’s more work for me.
I’m not very good at remembering lists of names, dates, and so forth. I think that history is fascinating and agree that it should be studied, lest it be repeated (or forgot), etc. But I’ve always had a hard time with it.
I think that a lot of that has to do with my learning style. I am a pretty visual learner, at least about things like this. Reading history like it’s a story is one thing, but usually it’s a bit too dry and factual to be taken as a story. I’m sure it was with the best intentions that my high school humanities teacher tried to get us to read Michner’s The Source, but it was like pulling teeth at the time.
Below I list some of the ways that I’ve imagined using modern tools like Google Earth or dynamic flowchart-style graphs.
Some observations about the iPhone 3G, and a revision of my wishlist…
I’m disappointed and I know that a lot of other people are, too. Netflix decided it would ‘serve customers better’ to eliminate the feature of their service that allows multiple people to maintain separate queues and ratings (for movie recommendations)Â on their site. Here’s the slashdot article.
What ‘s worse: they’re not offering any kind of migration plan to a new account. So all of the ratings and items in the secondary queues will just be lost. They suggest that you “Print out” the contents of your queue. WTH!?!
Be sure to tell them how you feel.
Update: All better now; they reconsidered their decision and profiles are here to stay. Good deal.