Tech Evangelist Joey deVilla on Shopify, startups, software development, tech news and other nerdy stuff
Newspaper articles, pop-up ads and random number generators are a never-ending source of amusement. Consider the screenshot below, in which a Verizon pop-up ad blocks your view of an article about Verizon blocking the New York Times article Verizon Blocks Messages of Abortion Rights Group:
Image courtesy of Raypride.
This is out-of-date news now: Verizon has reversed its stance and will now NARAL to use its mobile network to distribute opt-in SMS news alerts to its subscribers.
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Say hello — and probably goodbye — to my friend, Globe and Mail writer Jeff Gray, with whom I worked at the Queen’s Journal (a.k.a. “The Urinal”), the official student paper of Crazy Go Nuts University. He BikeBerries — that is, uses his BlackBerry while bicycling:
As a columnist who has suggested that cyclists should wear helmets, and shouldn’t use iPods in downtown traffic, I can’t very well come out in favour of using cellphones and BlackBerrys on the roads. Of course you shouldn’t. And it seems that sensible people have figured this out.
Still, gliding on your bike on a little side street, with no one coming, typing “ok” and pressing send? No harm done.
Dude, it’s even easier to pull over when you’re on a bike. Just do it, or else I’m posting those photos from the Journal staff party. You know, the “tongue” ones.
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So I’m standing in the Emeryville Apple store today trying to troubleshoot a problem with a sales rep when a young woman bolts up to us saying she wants an iPhone. Like, now. After some back-and-forthing about the particulars, she says she’s a Google employee and she was going to wait for a demo of the gPhone, but it turns out Google’s only letting 30 people test it internally and she’s not one of them. So she’s going with the iPhone instead.
At which point, the Apple rep and I exchange glances and he says “gPhone? So it’s real, huh?” And the Google gal realizes she’s probably said too much and changes the subject.
Take this with a grain of salt. Spreading gPhone rumours at the Apple Store sounds like something that an ambitious viral marketer might try or something I might do if I were much younger and really, really, really bored.
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That’s the answer, courtesy of an Engadget interview with Apple VP Phil Schiller. Strangely enough, some thanks goes to those enemies of fair use, the RIAA:
Well, the RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so (surprised?), and it won a decision last year before the Copyright Office saying that ringtones weren’t “derivative works,” meaning they didn’t infringe on the copyright of the songwriter. It’s a little more complicated than that, but essentially, if the RIAA hadn’t won, ringtones would cost even more, since no one would be able to make them without a license from the songwriter.
Everything has a catch, and ringtones are no exception:
Judging from the fact that the iTMS EULA prohibits the use of downloaded files as ringtones, we’d say it’s more than likely because Apple’s contracts with the various labels represented in the iTMS specifically forbid it. We haven’t seen them, but we’d bet that ringtones — and the licenses for using songs as ringtones — have their own lengthy section in Apple’s contracts, and that Apple isn’t allowed to sell files for use as ringtones without coughing up more dough. Steve has said as much, after all. Otherwise the selection would include more than just the 500,000 songs you can get right now.
While we at Global Nerdy stress that you should obey all local laws, who’s going to know if that ringtone you made came from a ripped CD or an iTunes purchased tune?
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The phone functionality of the iPhone has been the least interesting thing to me, especially given:
I care even less about its built-in camera. I’m one of those guys who carries a half-decent point-and-shoot digicam wherever I go, and until phone cameras get better, I’m going to stick with my Lumix.
For me, the really interesting things about the iPhone have been the functions that are currently performed by my trusty Powerbook and iPod nano:
The web browser has been of particular interest to me. In the age of Web 2.0/Ajax/web applications/whatever you want to call it, having net access and a browser as fully-featured and good-looking as Safari makes the iPhone the mobile computing platform that tablet computers wish they were.
If only the iPhone didn’t come saddled with the phone (and the commensurate cost)…
Photo courtesy of Gizmodo Live.
My wish has been granted! At the “The Beat Goes On” event held today, Steve Jobs announced the iPod Touch, which for all intents and purposes is the iPhone minus the phone and camera. There are two models:
I’m sure you’re going to see lists of its features all over the Web, so I’ll skip that part. Instead, I’ll simply list some thoughts on this nifty new gadget:
“JavaScript is probably the most important language in the world today. Funny, huh? You’d think it would be Java or C++ or something. But I think it just might be JavaScript.”
Given that the iPod Touch is a very portable Ajax platform and likely to influence the design of other mobile browsers, if JavaScript wasn’t the most important programming language in the world when Steve said so, it is now.
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According to a Harris Interactive Survey, 9 out of 10 Americans say that texting while driving should be banned. What I want to know is what the other 1 out of 10 are thinking.
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Here’s a story contributed by Dave Stolte who wrote in to BoingBoing:
I have a caveat emptor to top them all. I purchased an iPhone on opening day to use in lieu of a cumbersome laptop while traveling in Ireland and England for two weeks in early July. AT&T promises “easy, affordable, and convenient plans” in their advertising… turns out I got two out of three.
On the way to the airport, I activated the per-use international roaming data plan – the only one offered to me. The rep quoted me $.005 per KB but did not disclose what that would translate to in layman’s language (i.e., X amount per e-mail, X amount per web page, etc.). I’m a web developer as part of my career and I couldn’t even tell you how many KB the average web page is, no less a text message to my son, an e-mail with a photo to my mother, or a quick check of Google Maps. That’s part one of the trap. However, I now pay $40 per month for unlimited data usage on the iPhone, so really — how much could it be? $100 at the most, right?
Keep reading.
As we know, the iPhone can’t be unlocked to use a European provider’s SIM card for more reasonable rates while traveling. There’s part two of the trap.
To be safe, I went online to My Account at AT&T a couple days into the trip and again a week later and was told “usage data is currently unavailable”… and that’s part three. I had no way of knowing specific usage data until I received my bill over the last weekend.
A bill for $3000.
There’s more — click here for the full story.
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It was the geek party trick of the evening. I was standing by the beer fridge at Friday’s b5media office-warming party when someone asked where the bottle opener was. Not seeing one in sight, Chris whipped out his Blackberry and used it to open a beer bottle. I had my camera handy and shot this video:
Chris says that Blackberries are tough. Once, in a fit of anger, he hurled his Blackberry into his truck — he cracked his windshield, but the Blackberry was unahrmed. After opening a couple of beer bottles, he showed me his Blackberry: it had some gouge marks where it had made contact with the bottlecap, but it was working just fine.
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Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
For reference, see:
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You shouldn’t worry at all about the alarmist report in the Telegraph claiming that relying on your mobile’s address book to remember all your phone numbers and email addresses is “dumbing us down”. Reading and believing it is a far bigger threat to your smarts.
I’m not worried because I remember what a guy named Plato said about writing: that by writing things down rather than committing them to memory, we’d create forgetful people and everything would go downhill from there:
If men learn [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.
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Well, this beats my hand-drawn iPhone or Jason Kottke’s carboard iPhone: it’s a hand-knit iPhone created by Greg’s (from the blog DaddyTypes.com) mom!
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Whoo-hoo! I got an iPhone! See?
I can dream, can’t I?
Okay, I didn’t. I’m holding off for a while:
But that doesn’t mean that I’m missing out on all the iPhone niceties. A kind soul just sent me a .zip file containing all the default iPhone ringtones [2.1 MB], and I now share them with you. Enjoy!
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My co-worker James “Yes, that’s my real name” Koole pointed this out to me earlier this week, and now BoingBoing is pointing to a blog entry that does a bang-on comparison of earlier and later iPhone ads. In the later ads, the iPhone looks smaller because the hands holding it are larger. Almost freakishly so, in fact:
You know what big hands mean…
Here’s what we imagine the hand model for the “Rev B” iPhone looks like:
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