The Future is Here

Welcome to Futureville. Population: Us 

I’m sure you already know this, savvy reader, but recently a new mobile device from a certain mega-huge company was revealed. This game-changing device promises to be a strong contender for occupying the number one slot in your belt loop-attached cell phone holster.

Of course I’m talking about the Casio G’zOne Rock (available from Verizon), the first cell phone slash fish finder.

This bad boy comes in a ruggedized clamshell and features six different modes:

• Tide Mode – Get ebb and flow times, sea tide levels and learn the best time to fish!
• Earth Compass Mode – Get GPS distances for 40 worldwide places. ON YOUR PHONE!
• Walking Counter Mode – Keeps track of steps, time, distance, speed, energy consumption. It’s a pedometer…IN YOUR POCKET!
• Thermometer Mode – Brrr, sure is cold outside! How cold? Just fire up thermometer mode and find out!
• Astro Calendar Mode – Ever wonder how many days you have left until the full moon turns you into a werewolf? Wonder no more.
• Sunrise Sunset Mode – Ever wonder how many hours you have left until the sun rises and you have to get back to your coffin (real vampires sleep in coffins!)? Wonder no more.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, what I’m saying is you pretty much can’t live without this phone. In fact, I’m wondering how we made it this far.

2.0-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, Verizon VCAST video and music…is there anything this phone CAN’T do?!

$200 from Verizon.

Oh, and some other phone that I guess a few people care about was announced yesterday….whatever.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It…

Confidential

For iPhone User Eyes Only

 

 Launch Time: 1200 PST

Completion Time: 1300 PST

Location: USA

Director: Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs)

Goal

To convey, via civil and technological disobedience, the message that AT&T should focus on improving and expanding the capabilities of their infrastructure rather than exploring methods of “incentivizing” users to not use the device for the reason they purchased it.

Background

On June 29, 2007, Apple, in coordination with AT&T launched the iPhone, a profoundly game changing cellular device. A runaway success for both companies, the device went on to spur fresh development in the then-stagnating cellular product world. However, the rampant popularity of the iPhone has proved too much for the sole carrier of the device in the US, AT&T. The CEO of the company in a recent interview made remarks indicating a possible plan to encourage users to use less data (through fees and rate hikes) rather than improving the network to accommodate the increased popularity of the device. This has been deemed unacceptable.

Operation Details

Between 1200 and 1300 PST, all iPhone owners are to ensure they’re not using a wi-fi connection and, for the entire hour, use the most intensive data applications available, such as video streaming or emailing large files. This will create a heavy load on AT&T’s data network, sending a message to the service provider that they should be focused on upgrading their service rather than penalizing customers for wanting to use the service they already pay a high fee to use.

For iPhone User Eyes Only

Confidential

Because Brown Tuesday Wouldn’t Have The Same Ring To It

The fourth Thursday of November is a special day for Americans, where we reflect and give thanks for what we have by gorging on turkey and stuffing, eventually slipping into a tryptophan-induced coma in front a football game. But even MORE special is the day after Thanksgiving, where we then give thanks for awesome deals on stuff we don’t really need.

I’m talking, of course, about Black Friday, a day with a name so unintentionally metal you’d think it was from Norway. On this day, retailers across the nation, eager to help you part with your cold hard cash by giving slightly-more-than-mild discounts on various items. The big draws are usually on electronics, causing massive lines to form outside all the big box store locations.

I don’t normally get caught up in the frenzy, but a few years ago, I did the unthinkable:

I went shopping on Black Friday.

My special lady and I had been wanting to move up to one o’ them fancy LCD teevees that was all the rage with the young folks in the old days, and after seeing some of the good deals going on, I decided to bite the bullet and walk among the commoners to try and grab one from Circuit City, a nice 46-incher going for an amazing price. I had a backup plan in place involving Sears, just in case this deal fell through. And it did. Spectacularly.

Circuit City opened it’s doors at 5am, which is the time I rolled up (I got up at 4am. For a TV. No wonder terrorists hate us.) As I got close to the store, I noticed tons of people walking towards it, and a lot of cars for 5 am. I had woefully misjudged the magnitude of Black Friday sales. The Circuit City parking lot full, I ended up parking around the corner at a mattress store that had chosen to skip the traditional sales madness of the day after Thanksgiving. Hey mattress store, what gives? People need mattresses with insane discounts too…

The pedestrian line to gain entry to the Citay had wrapped around the building. As I approached and got in line, I walked past the remnants of obvious temporary residence. Cheap folding chairs, discarded Starbucks cups, some blankets…people had camped out here! For electronics?! But who am I to judge? Here I was among the herd at 5am shuffling in to try and get a TV. *shrug*

When I got in the store proper, it was nuts. Wall to wall people, with two massive lines snaking around half the store for those shopping just for TVs. I realized then this was going to be an ordeal, and I seriously thought about turning around and heading to Sears.

But the deal was just too good to not give it a try. Maybe the line would move fast. I jumped in and waited. And waited. And waited. Why wasn’t the line moving? Turns out, sure there were 8 hojillion more shoppers today, but not a commensurate increase in the number of cashiers. There was ONE guy ringing people up for TVs. One at a time. Most applying for a Circuit City card to take advantage of the 24 months no interest deal. After an hour, I’d moved maybe 8 feet. I still had about 55 jillion feet to go.

As I debated abandoning this stupid idea, Circuit City came along and made the decision easier for me by announcing they had sold out of the TV I was after. A classic Black Friday ruse: insane deal on one or two major items with very limited supply and marginal deals on lots of lower-ticket items. I had been had!

That was my cue to split to Sears, which was far less of a madhouse. A quick 10 minute wait and I was buying my backup TV, which I sort of liked better, even though it was smaller than the Circuit City TV. The kicker was I could have ordered this TV online from Sears at the same price, which is what I should have done and will do in the future.

What about you? Ever stood outside at oh-dark-thirty in line for a great deal on a laptop? Would you do it again? Share your Black Friday stories in the comments!

Online Anonymity? Surely You Must Be Joking 183.145.34.104…

The next time you find yourself wanting to add a comment to a blog post think twice about what you write. A man in St. Louis recently resigned after his management confronted him about an obscene comment he left on a blog post at the site of the St. Louis Post-Dispatcher. The comment was vulgar (a one word response to the question “What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?”) and was deleted immediately. The commenter posted it again, though, and that’s when things got interesting. The blog editor, Kurt Greenbaum, looked up the commenter’s IP address, learned where it was coming from and called the location (a local school) to notify them. The school’s IT person had the time and did a bit more legwork and determined it was a school employee. When confronted, the man resigned on the spot.

Most people have a perception they can function online with as much or as little anonymity as they want, that it’s up to them to decide how much they want to reveal. The truth is, though, unless you’re taking very specific, active measures to protect your identity, it’s not too difficult for someone with the the time and desire to find out who you really are. That said, there’s an trust between blogger and commenter, often codified in a site’s terms of use, that the blogger will never use the commenter’s IP, considered personal information, to identify them. Ban them, sure, if necessary, but what Kurt Greenbaum of the stltoday.com site did shattered that expectation of privacy and brought into question his integrity and that of his company.

Greenbaum has so far been unapologetic about his actions, insisting they were appropriate and that he’s not responsible for the man losing his job. He’s right about that. The man resigned, he wasn’t fired. But the first part, the appropriate action stuff? Yeah, totally in the wrong. Kurt has compromised the trust any of his readers had in him and the St. Louis Post-Dispatcher. For his efforts in undermining the trust of his readership and setting an awful precedent, Kurt Greenbaum is awarded one Fizzle-Pop™ brand Fizzle!

If you knew your employer could be contacted because of a comment you made on a blog, how would this affect your online activities? Did Kurt do the right thing here?

Catch the (Google) Wave!

"We set out to answer the question: What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?"

–Lars Rasmussen, co-creator of Google Wave

Google Wave launched today. Sort of. Google sent out 100,000 invites to folks who signed up right after it was announced, what they’re calling a “developer preview” or beta. I didn’t get one, and no one I know personally got one either, so that’s a bummer. Wait, let me back up, for those of you who don’t know what I’m even writing about.

Google Wave is a project started by a couple smart fellas that rethinks the way we communicate electronically. It does away with the back and forth of email and instead provides a constant, collaborative environment for communication. Conversations (“waves”) can happen in real time and are fully featured with multimedia capabilities. More than this, Google Wave is a framework for others to develop for. Google wants to make it easy for third parties to create apps and widgets that take advantage of Wave’s features and environment. It’s big picture, game changing stuff and it could have a massive effect on some pretty established workflows (imagine a world without emails) so a lot of folks are keeping a close eye on it. The plan is to have it released fully early 2010, but each person who receives an invite today will also have the ability to invite 8 others (what good is collaboration if you don’t have anybody to collaborate with, after all).

Personally, I’m pretty anxious to check it out. Google has an interesting track record with some major hits (Gmail) and some stinkers (Gtalk), but this might be winner, albeit one that requires a significant change of habits. Lifehacker has a good hands-on writeup today if you’re interested and want to learn more.

But never mind me, what about you? Are you willing to change the way you’ve always worked? What are the chances that this idea of constant conversation and collaboration overtakes traditional email communication? Is this something Microsoft will eventually emulate in Outlook? Does it make email obsolete?