ZuDfunck

How Do You Use Twitter?

A digital Artist
Ultimately that's what I am
Text, Video, Audio
It's all been done by ZuD.

I think it's seasonal
Whether he'll Vlog - Podcast - or Blog
A whim - No more or less.

The weather was severe in Michigan this past Winter
Forced the boy indoors
Said what of your pursuit ZuD?
The lens will freeze.

Bump into a dude we know
Straight out asked
What do you know about Twitter
How do you use it?

I use it to deliver my posts from my blog
Oh that's a SIn
That's not using it right!

So I want to do it right - Right?
And I've been trying to do it right
Since he asked me
How do you use Twitter?

Calling All Geeks: Invent The Big Undo!

I'll probably want to Undo something someday. So geeks you all aren't doing anything this weekend. Get to work on the Big Undo!

5 Things We Wish We Could Undo on the Internet

By Owen Thomas

Gmail has a new unsend feature — sort of like the broadcast delay in case Janet Jackson shows her nipple, but niftier because it's online! It made us think of other things people should undo.

Facebook Photo Unpost Ever regret drunkenly uploading that picture to Facebook? We know a couple of people who could have used this.

Twitter Undershare: Is there something you need to tell the entire Internet about? Actually, there probably isn't. But something about the message-broadcasting service seems to beg people to share too much, 140 characters at a time. You can delete posts, but they still end up sent to people's cell phones and indexed in search engines. Where's the "untweet" button?

Tumblr Unreblog: What happens when your girlfriend follows the same cutie you do on David Karp's kiddy blogging service, and notices your habit of reblogging the Tumblrette's every last quip, pic, and quote? Ah, for a way to instantly zap all of your reblogs! It's either that, or propose a threesome.

LinkedIn Snub: So you meet a "social media marketer" — i.e., someone trying to get paid to talk to their friends on Twitter all day — at a party. You grudgingly exchange business cards. The next day, you get the inevitable connection request on LinkedIn — even though, you barely know the twit, let alone feel comfortable recommending their work. The feature LinkedIn needs: A way to politely acknowledge your interaction without actually exposing your whole list of industry connections to them.

Untexting: If AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile can shuttle text messages from phone to phone through the magical ether, surely they can reach into your friends' devices and delete that hastily sent SMS before it's read and the damage is done.

Get to work, geeks! There's too much information on the Internet as it is. Time to make the world safe for undersharing!

Super News Slams Twitter

Apparently this is a show on Current. Who knew? They slam Twitter pretty good and most of all it's Funny:

Which Is More Responsive: Facebook, FriendFeed or Twitter?

This Dude does some interesting Analysis of a Text Message he sent out on FB, FF & Twitter:

What did I do?!

I posted an identically-phrased note on Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter  at around 1:30am PDT Friday morning.  Specifically, I posted this: “Could you kindly help me with a super-quick experiment (takes less than 30 seconds)? I’ll share results Thanks!”

Why?

I was curious to see which set of friends/subscribers (henceforth referred to as “contacts”) would be more apt to read my note and reply.

What happened?

As of nearly 40 hours after posting…

Continued

Steven Johnson Describes 'News EcoSystem'

I like what this dude is putting down:

At SXSW '09, Steven Johnson sees thriving 'news ecosystem'

Steven Johnson and the growth of the news ecosystem. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

When the going gets tough, get out the metaphors. That strategy was demonstrated nicely Friday at the South by Southwest conference by media and technology scholar Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson).  In addressing the paradigm shift that's clear-cutting old, tree-based media such as newspapers and magazines, and fertilizing the many digital news biomes, Johnson developed the picture of the news as a thriving, jungle-like ecosystem:

Today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years.

Johnson began his talk by observing that when he was a college student and Macintosh computer fanatic in 1987, he had only one regular outlet for news -- the monthly issue of MacWorld magazine: in essence, one static source containing stuff that had happened a month earlier. As time went on, more current Mac and Apple news became available, first through dial-up networking services like CompuServe, then on the incipient World Wide Web. Technology news sources, both Apple-related and otherwise, continued to proliferate and diversify as the Web grew:

We all know where this is headed, but let me spell it out just for the record. If 19-year-old Steven could fast-forward to the present day, he would no doubt be amazed by all the Apple technology – the iPhones and MacBook Airs – but I think he would be just as amazed by the sheer volume and diversity of the information about Apple available now. In the old days, it might have taken months for details from a John Sculley keynote to make it to the College Hill Bookstore; now the lag is seconds, with dozens of people liveblogging every passing phrase from a Jobs speech. There are 8,000-word dissections of each new release of OS X at Ars Technica, written with attention to detail and technical sophistication that far exceeds anything a traditional newspaper would ever attempt.

Because Tech news planted its online roots more than a decade ago, Johnson says, you can think of it as the news ecosystem's "old-growth forest," compared with ...

... other areas that have emerged only in the last few years. Johnson pointed to Web coverage of politics: Media-wise, the 2008 election was a world away from the pre-Web 1992 election, when news choices for consumers were shockingly limited from today's perspective: You had your daily newspaper, a few TV news shows and whatever magazines you had delivered. It was a news "desert" rather than a rain forest.

Continued

Steven Johnson and the growth of the news ecosystem. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

When the going gets tough, get out the metaphors. That strategy was demonstrated nicely Friday at the South by Southwest conference by media and technology scholar Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson).  In addressing the paradigm shift that's clear-cutting old, tree-based media such as newspapers and magazines, and fertilizing the many digital news biomes, Johnson developed the picture of the news as a thriving, jungle-like ecosystem:

Today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years.

Johnson began his talk by observing that when he was a college student and Macintosh computer fanatic in 1987, he had only one regular outlet for news -- the monthly issue of MacWorld magazine: in essence, one static source containing stuff that had happened a month earlier. As time went on, more current Mac and Apple news became available, first through dial-up networking services like CompuServe, then on the incipient World Wide Web. Technology news sources, both Apple-related and otherwise, continued to proliferate and diversify as the Web grew:

We all know where this is headed, but let me spell it out just for the record. If 19-year-old Steven could fast-forward to the present day, he would no doubt be amazed by all the Apple technology – the iPhones and MacBook Airs – but I think he would be just as amazed by the sheer volume and diversity of the information about Apple available now. In the old days, it might have taken months for details from a John Sculley keynote to make it to the College Hill Bookstore; now the lag is seconds, with dozens of people liveblogging every passing phrase from a Jobs speech. There are 8,000-word dissections of each new release of OS X at Ars Technica, written with attention to detail and technical sophistication that far exceeds anything a traditional newspaper would ever attempt.

Because Tech news planted its online roots more than a decade ago, Johnson says, you can think of it as the news ecosystem's "old-growth forest," compared with ...

... other areas that have emerged only in the last few years. Johnson pointed to Web coverage of politics: Media-wise, the 2008 election was a world away from the pre-Web 1992 election, when news choices for consumers were shockingly limited from today's perspective: You had your daily newspaper, a few TV news shows and whatever magazines you had delivered. It was a news "desert" rather than a rain forest.

Steven Johnson and the growth of the news ecosystem. Credit: David Sarno / Los Angeles Times

When the going gets tough, get out the metaphors. That strategy was demonstrated nicely Friday at the South by Southwest conference by media and technology scholar Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson).  In addressing the paradigm shift that's clear-cutting old, tree-based media such as newspapers and magazines, and fertilizing the many digital news biomes, Johnson developed the picture of the news as a thriving, jungle-like ecosystem:

Today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years.

Johnson began his talk by observing that when he was a college student and Macintosh computer fanatic in 1987, he had only one regular outlet for news -- the monthly issue of MacWorld magazine: in essence, one static source containing stuff that had happened a month earlier. As time went on, more current Mac and Apple news became available, first through dial-up networking services like CompuServe, then on the incipient World Wide Web. Technology news sources, both Apple-related and otherwise, continued to proliferate and diversify as the Web grew:

We all know where this is headed, but let me spell it out just for the record. If 19-year-old Steven could fast-forward to the present day, he would no doubt be amazed by all the Apple technology – the iPhones and MacBook Airs – but I think he would be just as amazed by the sheer volume and diversity of the information about Apple available now. In the old days, it might have taken months for details from a John Sculley keynote to make it to the College Hill Bookstore; now the lag is seconds, with dozens of people liveblogging every passing phrase from a Jobs speech. There are 8,000-word dissections of each new release of OS X at Ars Technica, written with attention to detail and technical sophistication that far exceeds anything a traditional newspaper would ever attempt.

Because Tech news planted its online roots more than a decade ago, Johnson says, you can think of it as the news ecosystem's "old-growth forest," compared with ...

... other areas that have emerged only in the last few years. Johnson pointed to Web coverage of politics: Media-wise, the 2008 election was a world away from the pre-Web 1992 election, when news choices for consumers were shockingly limited from today's perspective: You had your daily newspaper, a few TV news shows and whatever magazines you had delivered. It was a news "desert" rather than a rain forest.

Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse

In the relationships I have had, I was the Geek/Nerd, so I have nothing to add to this. Knowing my audience, there have got to be some folks who can relate:

10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse

By Matt Blum Wired.com

Everyone has annoying habits, and a sizable part of every successful marriage is learning to live with those things each other does that annoy you. I think it's safe to say, too, that geeks have some habits that we think are awesome, but that non-geeks find a little...less awesome.

Now my wife is a geek, but she's not as much of a geek as I am, so I asked her for some help putting together a list of ten things geeks do that annoy their spouses. She was perhaps a little too enthusiastic about helping out, but here are the results:

1. Punning - I remember when I was young, and thought that I must be the only geek (well, possibly nerd at that point) who loved to pun. Then I went to my first science fiction convention, and quickly learned that not only was I wrong, but that there were plenty of far worse offenders than I. That gave me something to aspire to, of course, which I did for a while. Since college, I've scaled back on the relentless punning I used to practice, but I'm sure I'll never quit completely.

2. Using "frak," or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words - Yes, this is a marvelous way to avoid accidentally using real, English swear words in front of the kids. I suspect that's one of the reasons it can be annoying to others, though: it's like a loophole in the no-swearing-in-front-of-the-kids rule. I caught my wife using "frak" the other day, now that she's gotten into Battlestar Galactica, too (yes, just as it's about to end), but she claims to have done that just to make me smile and says is still annoys her when I do it. Still, I figure she'd be more annoyed by my using real swear words, so I think I'll stick with it.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays - Geeks rarely do anything by halves, as anyone who's ever been to a costume contest at a major sci-fi convention can attest. So if we want to celebrate something we're likely to go all-out. This can mean going to great lengths with Halloween decorations, or, as I've done several times, making tentative plans to serve rabbit for Easter dinner and venison for Christmas dinner (yes, I know, reindeer are caribou, but it's close enough). No, I've never carried through on these threats plans, but when the kids are old enough not to be upset by the joke I might just. I do insist on playing Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol at least once each December.

4. Dissecting movies - Geeks, in my experience (and myself included), have a habit of picking movies apart, particularly just after watching them. We will discuss everything from the special effects to the minutiae of costume and prop design, but what gives us the most pleasure is identifying plot holes (no matter how small), anachronisms, and goofs in general, and, in adaptations, picking apart the cuts and modifications. For some reason, this tends to annoy non-geeks who, I guess, don't enjoy the process.

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to "normal" places - Every geek has at least a few of these; don't try to deny it. We love them, because we get the jokes and we know that only other geeks will get them, too. Unfortunately, they can make our less geeky significant others feel a bit conspicuous when out with us—or maybe they feel the geekiness will rub off on them, I'm not quite sure. Still, I feel that if I have to occasionally let my daughter wear a Hello Kitty shirt out of the house, I can wear my shirts from ThinkGeek.

Continued

It's The WorldWideWeb's Birthday, Happy 20th WWW!

I didn't get a card or cake, maybe this post can suffice

Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb

On March 13th, 2009 the World Wide Web will turn 20 years old. Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented this world-changing layer on top of the Internet on this day in 1989. It's hard to overstate the impact this young technology has had already and it's even more exciting to think about where it's going in the future.

Berners-Lee has some great ideas about where the web should go next. His vision is of a major advance that could serve as the foundation for innovations that we can't even imagine today.

One year ago Berners-Lee said that all the pieces needed to build a new Semantic Web are now in place. Last month he gave an impassioned talk at the high-profile TED conference about a related concept called Linked Data, a set of ideas he outlined in 2006. The gist of the idea is that we need every institution that can do so putting raw data in standardized format up on the web.

What's so exciting about raw data? We'll defer to Berners-Lee's 15 minute explanation at this year's TED conference. The video of his talk will be posted on the TED website early Friday morning, but ReadWriteWeb readers can check it out now.

Thank you Tim, for what you've done for the world already.

iPod Touch Bursts Into Flames While in Kids Pocket

As we turn our attention to things non-twitter we see this unfortunate kid who had an iPod Touch burst into flame. We are skeptical, but hey, we all got to get along.

The mother of a kid living in Cincinnati, Ohio is suing Apple and 10 unnamed retail employees from the Apple Store in Kenwood over an iPod touch that allegedly exploded in the child's pocket. According to the complaint filed yesterday in the Southern District of Ohio, the plaintiff had the "iTouch" (as the lawsuit refers to it) in his pocket during school when the unfortunate accident happened, resulting in hospital bills and other monetary losses thanks to the disintegration of the iPod touch and, well, the kid's clothes.

As the story goes, the iPod touch was sitting in the "off" position when it unexpectedly popped and caused the kid to feel a burning sensation. At that time, he stood up and noticed that his pants were, in fact, on fire. "Plaintiff A.V. immediately ran to the bathroom and took off his burning pants with the assistance of a friend," reads the complaint. "On said date and at said time, the Apple iTouch had burned through Plaintiff A.V.'s pants pocket and melted through his nylon/spandex underwear, burning his leg."

<!--Nerd alert -->

Upon learning these facts, much of the staff here at Ars took an inordinate amount of time out of our busy day to discuss whether this was a reasonable possibility. The lowest melting point of nylon is approximately 374 degrees Fahrenheit—a temperature that an iPod touch could not reasonably reach without you noticing beforehand (that's hotter than the temperature it takes to fry an egg, by the way). However, because the lawsuit claims there was fire involved, all bets have to be off. Fire is most definitely hot enough to melt nylon, and if there was an explosion to cause the "pop," then there may not have been a way for the kid to notice the heat beforehand.

<!-- End nerd alert -->

Source

Minority Report Interface Is Here, Almost, And Cheap!

Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert! Hat tip Eric Rice

My GPS Told Me To Do It

I have a GPS unit embedded in my brain so I don't need one. For those who use them check this out:

The distress call came in to Sgt. Christopher Buckley late one night: Two motorists and their families had followed their Global Positioning System devices off the main road near Windham, Vt., onto a snowmobile trail. Though the road became narrower and the snow deeper, the two men kept driving.

"Then they ran out of road, and they sunk in the snow," Buckley, of the Vermont State Police, says of the February incident.

It's not the first time drivers have blindly followed their GPS units, Buckley says. He's assisted on three rescues since January, and others in his division have logged at least three other instances in which people drove over snowbanks onto unplowed roads and got stuck.

One Fort Drum, N.Y., soldier drove his car over a snowbank and sank so deeply onto a trail that police needed a snow tractor to haul him out, Buckley says.

"I ask them why and they say, 'That's what my GPS told me to do,' " says Buckley, who late last month issued a news release pleading with drivers to trust their common sense over their navigation devices.

Taser Launches Axon, A Headcam For Cops: Don't Tape Me, Bro!

Holy Gadget! This will be the future for anyone who deals with the public, Doctors, Teachers, Border Patrol, you name it! Man I could swear I've seen this in some movie awhile back:

Don't Tape Me, Bro! Taser Launches Headcam for Cops

Officers: Are you sick and tired of excessive force lawsuits? Well cheer up. Taser has a plan to give your police department its own CYA reality TV show.

The less-lethal weapons company has launched a wearable computer, called Axon, that will let cops record every minute of their day and upload it to a secure website. From there, they can share their favorite memories with friends, family, and jurors.

"Our Axon and Evidence.com technology will be a lifeline to protect truth," says Steve Tuttle, the vice president of communications for Taser.

For years, cops around the world have been accused of being a little too eager to reach out and stun someone. For example, a Denver Post report found that 90 percent of the subjects tased by the police department there were unarmed. Most times, the weapon was used to "force people to obey orders, to shortcut physical confrontations and, in several cases, to avoid having to run after a suspect." In Sarasota, officers recently tased a naked senior. In Wales, cops even zapped a bunch of sheep.

Not long ago, the less-lethal weapons company started offering a camera accessory that sits on the bottom of its people-zappers, but those devices could only record the drama that takes place once the weapon is drawn and the safety is off -- so it could miss some of the most important moments.

The new camera is head-mounted, so it will record everything the user lays his eyes on. Each headset plugs into a Linux-powered computer that looks curiously similar to a PlayStation Portable, which has an LCD screen so that officers can watch instant replays of their favorite tackles and shakedowns.

When the day is done, just plug the recorder into the Synapse docking station, and all of the evidence will be automatically uploaded to Taser's pair of data warehouses via a 128-bit encrypted connection. Well, most of it, anyway. According to the Axon brochure, the system features a "One-Touch 'Privacy Mode'" which "temporarily suspends recording." In other words, cops can still work the streets -- without being caught on tape.

Images courtesy of Taser.

Tweetie 1.3 Rejected for Offensive Twitter Trends

The App store must be managed by different folks than the dudes that built my MacBook. I just can't imagine the same people who design and manufacture such a beautiful machine could make such uninformed and ignorant decisions such as these:

Apple Trying To Catch Up with Palm & Windows Mobile On Stupid Decisions?

Oh boy.  We’ve known for quite a while that Apple has been making some inconsistent (and often absurd) decisions within their approvals / rejections process for App Store apps.  We’ve even seen recent anecdotal evidence that the approvals process in fact has no system at all, and decisions are subject to the whims of each individual reviewer.  Today we have news of probably the worst example yet of dumb decisions in this area.

The latest update to Tweetie – a hugely popular Twitter client for the iPhone – has been rejected on the grounds that it displays offensive language.  But … the language in question is found in Twitter trends search results displayed in the app.  In other words, it is found in a web search of a popular social network.  It is not language that is integral to the app itself.  As many others have pointed out, you could easily find more offensive words (and more) via searches in Apple’s own Safari app on the iPhone, or the much-loved Google Mobile app, and plenty of others.

Just a ridiculous decision.  An indefensible one I would think, if even a small amount of logic and knowledge of how the web works is applied.

I think Nilay Patel at Engdagdet has summed it up perfectly …

Look, Apple — this is a nadir. Rejecting a Twitter client for Twitter’s content is simply indefensible, and it’s a sign that the App Store approval "process" is broken beyond repair. It’s time to drop the seemingly-random black-box approach — which has earned nothing but well-deserved scorn — open up, establish consistent, easy-to-understand rules with a well-defined appeals process, and actually work with innovative developers like Tweetie’s Loren Brichter to push your platform forward in the face of newly-stiff competition. The massive popularity of the iPhone and the App Store may prevent a mass exodus, but the best devs are going to leave if they feel jerked around, and we doubt a store full of fart apps and misogynistic jiggle apps is really the vision you had for your platform. Think about it.

Continued

Apple MacBook Touch: Rumor or Reality

Although you all read Engadget I had to have this post on ZuDfunck just to capture the moment I heard  about this. I have been dreaming about a touchscreen MacBook forever!

Yesterday's Apple netbook rumor courtesy of the Commercial Times / DigiTimes combo just received a boost of credibility by sources (presumably independent) speaking to the Dow Jones Newswire. Citing "two people close to the situation," the DJ pretty much regurgitates the same info: Wintek will provide the touch-screen display which Quanta will manufacture into an Apple netbook as early as the second half of the year. The only new bit of information is the screen size said to be between 9.7 and 10-inches.

[Thanks, Sam; Image courtesy of Frunny]

After Reading This You'll Throw Your SmartPhone In the Toilet!

I know you know Technology will take over our lives more and more. But I didnt realize we are at a point now, I mean NOW, where it tracks your every move! Check this Business Week snippet I grabbed and tell me your not thinking of throwing your fancy iPhone or BlackBerry in the nearest toilet:

"INCREDIBLY RICH INFORMATION"

Every time a user clicks on an application, whether it's to turn a phone into a radio or make a bid on eBay, the time and place of the event zips straight to the company selling the service. Certain phone manufacturers can also peek at this data, depending on the handset. Naturally, the wireless service provider also sees it and can place it into the context of the user's other behavior, from physical movements to calling patterns. While phone companies have long had a line on customer behavior, the applications add crucial perspective by pointing directly to each person's interests and needs. (Barflies, Sense researchers found, spend more time than others playing an alcohol-themed game on their handsets.) "All of a sudden we have this incredibly rich information on how and where people use their mobile applications," says Ted Morgan, chief executive of Skyhook Wireless, a provider of tracking technology.

It's also becoming easier to pick up a handset's digital trail. Traditionally, wireless carriers have marked our wanderings only by the nearby cell towers receiving our signals. Each phone, even at rest, stays in touch with those towers so it can send and receive calls. But the towers can miss a person's location by several hundred yards. Satellites are more precise, but they often don't work when people are under roofs. Many of the latest phones, including the iPhone, have Wi-Fi, the radio signals used in home networks. These signals often can pinpoint someone within 33 feet.

On a stroll through a mall, a phone beams its presence to dozens of Wi-Fi networks in stores. Skyhook, which locates millions of wandering customers for companies offering mobile services, has tied together 100 million Wi-Fi access points around the globe. It'll have plenty of machines to track: Some 56 million Wi-Fi-equipped handsets were shipped in 2008, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Even with a slow economy, that figure is expected to balloon to more than 200 million this year, with Nokia alone producing four-fifths of the handsets. The upshot? Increasingly, even phones that look run-of-the-mill will trace users' movements with greater accuracy.

Continued

Safari 4: The Day After It Killed My Cat

Well it is the Day after the Beta Rollout of Safari 4 and boy are my arms tired. If you monitored the twitter search here you can see where I got the inspiration to proclaim:

But Seriously, I loved that cat! He use to crawl in bed with me and...

The release of the Safari 4 Beta yesterday has generated a massive number of comments. Here are a few interesting tips, tricks and observations.

CNet benchmarked Safari 4's Javascript and found it to be 42x faster than IE 7, 6x faster than IE 8 and the fastest compared to any browser:

Javascript is a key scripting language that is heavily used in interactive websites such as GMail and MobileMe.

We previously discussed the inclusion of CSS Animation into Webkit and its long term implications. Well, the latest Safari 4 beta incorporates these new features which allows you to view these impressive demos that use CSS/Javascript (Safari 4 or comparable browser required):

CSS Animation: Falling Leaves, Bouncing Box, Pulse
3D with Canvas: JS Cloth, Miku, Touch (via Kawanet and Ajaxian)
Presentations: Sample slideshow (use right/left arrows to advance)

Finally, those who are still trying to get used to the new Safari 4 changes might want to follow these tips:

Safari 4 Hidden Preferences - how to move the tabs back to the bottom, restore the blue loading bar, turn off URL autocompletion, Google Suggest and more.
1Password - How to get 1Password to work in Safari 4

Via

Some Caveman Dropped This USB Drive

I couldn't believe it either. But apparently caveman had computers! Who knew?

Via

Shaq Is On 'Twitteronia' And Wants You To Say Hi

Shaq is so cool, why? Keep reading the snippet below from some dude who's blog is sub titled:
 'A how to guide on how not to interact with women.' Does that say it all? Anyway let me tell my joke then to the piece. Shaq was asked where he got his Google Phone he replied, "Don't Worry About It!"

Sean informed me a few days ago that he had been following "The Real Shaq" on twitter. 

"You realize that 'The Real Shaq' is probably a 5'4 White, 14 year old emo kid who's getting his jolly's from the attention, right?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I think it's really him"

Today Sean and I were discussing rumored trade situations over IM, and the possibility of Shaq being traded to Cleveland.

"Well, I just got a twitter from The Real Shaq, and he's at 5 & Diner right now," Sean informed me.

"Let's go then" I said, assuming that I'd finally put this "Real Shaq" crap to rest.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling up to the restaurant and looking for the big black truck that he's rumored to drive around town. "Maybe that's it" Sean said, pointing at an older, but nice Van and laughing. As we pulled up I saw the Superman symbol on the grill.

Maybe that is it?

We went in, and to my surprise the MDE(Most Dominant Ever) was sitting in the corner booth by himself. We gave the man a nod and "Hey" as we walked to our table and were soon whispering back and forth like 12 year old girls at the 7th grade dance.

"You go talk to him" I said, while tugging nervously on my dress.
"No, you go talk to him" Sean replied while flipping his hair.

We placed our order, and spent 10 minutes trying to work up the sack to go say something.

"Should I tell him I'm glad he's sticking around?"
"Go tell him you're his twitter buddy"
"Should I ask for a picture?"

Given another 2-3 years, I'm sure we would have worked up the nerve to go talk to him, but before that could happen Sean's iPhone buzzed with a "tweet" from Shaq.

I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say somethin

iPhone Users Can Vote on Who Will Win the Oscars

Macworld covers the Apple World like no other, so please don't come after me for ripping this article:

Slumdog Millionaire, please collect your Best Picture Oscar.

Here’s how the Best Picture race is shaping up, according to Sonic Lighter.
Sonic Lighter users can use the color of their flame on the virtual lighter app to register their choice for Best Picture.

Oh, sure, the 81st Annual Academy Awards won’t be handed out until Sunday night. But if the users of the Sonic Lighter app for the iPhone and iPod touch are any indicator, then the makers of rags-to-riches story of a Mumbai teen might as well start memorizing their acceptance speech.

Sonic Lighter is a $1 novelty app that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a mobile lighter. There’s a social network aspect to the app, too, as its developer, Smule, can track wherever someone “ignites” Sonic Lighter anywhere in the world.

To that end, Smule puts out Sonic Lighter updates that let users weigh in on issues of vital import—in this case the winner of the Best Picture award. As of this writing, Smule’s Sonic Lighter map shows Slumdog Millionaire leading the way with 37 percent of the vote. The lamentable Curious Case of Benjamin Button is in second right now with 27 percent, while Milk is in third with 16 percent.

Skeptical about the wisdom of iPhone-toting crowds? Smule notes that past Sonic Lighter surveys have correctly predicted the U.S. presidential election and the outcome of Super Bowl XLIII. (Though to be fair, barring a surprise surge by Ralph Nader either at the polls or on the gridiron, Sonic Lighter really had a 50-50 shot at calling either event correctly, didn’t it?)

Other Oscar-themed iPhone apps available for download in advance of Sunday’s festivities include:

• iSlumdog Millionaire : Speaking of Best Picture contenders, this $1 offering from CyberNet Consulting lets you listen to the movie soundtrack and look at production stills of the multiple Oscar nominee.
• Movie Challenge Oscar Special : Redwind Software produced a $1 Oscar-specific version of its Movie Challenge trivia game.
• Awards: Oscar Edition : The $1 app from CoreyDale offers Oscar history as well as a way to mark off and share your predictions for this year’s awards

TrapCall Pulls Back The Curtain on Blocked and Restricted Callers

Is there no end to the tricks Technology can perform? Just when you thought you were covered, Snap:

Application Stores for Nokia, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry

Yeah so you didn't get the iPhone and you got the other guys product and your wondering where are my Apps? There coming dude. You just gotta wait a bit longer. Or go the Apple store and get a real phone.

Nokia’s Ovi Store. An online app and media portal that comes “pre-integrated” on Nokia’s (NOK) new N97 (right), but will be available for download on a slew of existing Nokia phones come May. (link)

Windows Marketplace. Along with a new version of Windows Mobile, Microsoft (MSFT) announced Monday that it will open a new Windows Marketplace offering — you guessed it — 20,000 apps, some of which actually run on mobile devices. (link)

App Store for Symbian. PocketGear, which had previously built its own Palm App Store and an App Store for Windows Mobile, unveiled an App Store for Symbian, the operating system that runs Nokia’s smartphones. How it will compete with the Ovi Store remains to be seen. (link)

Android Market. Google (GOOG) opened an application marketplace for the Android platform last October, but so far it has only accepted free apps. Look for an announcement from Google this week about how that’s going to change.

BlackBerry Applications Center. Research in Motion (RIMM) invited developers to submit programs to its forthcoming Applications Center in October. We may be hearing more this week about when that will open for business.

Palm Software Store. This one went live in December with 2,000 apps and 1,000 free games available for download to both Palm (PALM) OS devices and Windows Mobile.