YouTubing It In

Again, I'm YouTubing it in early Monday morning, but enjoy this helpful video. Try it at work today....it works, I promise.

The Future....In Pancake Form

One can't help but wonder what advances in technology are in store when a product like Batter Blaster slowly creeps in to the neighborhood grocery store. No Texas availability....yet. This stuff can't be good for you, but it's organic, seriously....and the entire can is recyclable. It's a miracle!

Amazon Kindle Probably Won't Start A Fire

The Amazon Kindle comes out today. For those of you who don't know what the Kindle is, it's the new ebook reader from Amazon. I'm interested to see how this thing will do and how Amazon will support it. I like the idea of making text digitally portable and I think the Kindle has some things worth noting. Some good, some bad (although I think the bad sadly outweighs the good in this case).

The Good

• The device is supported by Amazon which means it has a lot of money behind it and it's going to get a fair amount of coverage/hype. The online store/market should be pretty good and I imagine very robust in terms of selection (after all, Amazon started as an online bookstore).

• Some of the wireless features sound pretty cool. For example, having the device wirelessly sync content from specific blogs/news sites could make a nice, portable RSS reader for commuting. I suppose email syncing is also a nice feature except that this has already been done before (you could say the Kindle has actually been done before too).

The Bad - Look out, this list could get a little long. Where to start? I guess first impressions.

• They're important and the Kindle fails here....big time. The device looks like a failed tablet PC....from 10 years ago. Maybe the device will be sexier in person and its small size will be appealing, but for $400, a portable media device should turn heads (in a good way).

• Not only is Amazon entering a market that's already occupied, but it's a market without much interest. Sony's reader has gone nowhere near the same price point and the only thing that Amazon will have going for it against Sony is support through the Amazon store, which could turn out to be really good. Amazon has had some good services like S3 and the new Amazon MP3 store. I think the Kindle market could be successful in the same way as the Mp3 store through openness (no DRM).

• This thing must be open to any kind of digital text, which seems unlikely. In the same way that copying any text from any page on your computer and pasting it anywhere you like, the Kindle needs to be super simple in its ability to add and share text files (again, no DRM).

• No back light. It comes with a book light attachment thingy (I'm not joking).

• The nail in the coffin might be that e readers might be the wrong idea all together looking forward. Audio content has become more accessible in the last few years and there's a lot of it in the form of podcasts and audio books. Audio books really seem like they have a nice space in the digital world almost like books on tape/CD were just a beta of audio books.

• In the end, this thing is a $400 book.

The Media Revolution

A couple of my favorites....

The gPhone

All of the rumors on the Internets have Google revealing their plans to get into the mobile phone business today. While the rumors have been gaining steam for a few months now making fanboys like me drool at the thought of a cheap, open, mobile Internet device that syncs and integrates with all of Google's products, I'm getting ready for a letdown. I don't think the announcement will be bad, but I don't think it's going to get a huge reaction because I don't think there will be a phone - just a software platform for existing and future mobile phones. I also don't think this will necessarily be a bad thing, but it does mean I won't be able to go out and buy something soon that looks vaguely familiar to the thing on the right. People like to have real gadgets to play with and touch - I think the idea of a Google phone without a phone will confuse most people that haven't been following this story over the last few months.

A while ago, I had some thoughts about what the gPhone might/could be, and assuming that they don't announce an actual phone/phones today, I'll write about it later in more detail but here is the general idea that I was dreaming about (and I really mean dreaming).

The gPhone would center around GrandCentral Communications, which Google acquired in July of this year. GrandCentral Communications would just become Google Communications. With the idea of one number for life in mind (basically the premise of GrandCentral), you would sign up for a phone number within Google Communications (which would now be the backbone of Gmail, Gtalk, and any other communication platforms under Google including social networks like Orkut). Once purchased, the gPhone would not require activation like a normal phone. Instead, the phone would boot up and prompt you to enter your Gmail account name, which would be tied to your newly acquired Google Communications phone number. Once logged in, the phone's functions would be tied to your Google products (like contacts or photos). For example: Pressing the "contacts" button on the phone would essentially be the same as clicking the "contacts" button within Gmail (similar UI) except the phone would have the ability to instantly make a phone call from within the interface. The same would apply to Picasa Web Albums or Google Docs in that the button on the phone would call up a simplified web page for each, specifically designed for the gPhone. The phone could be carried by any of the cellular phone companies provided that they had the capacity for a high speed data network. Payment plans could be flat fees with "all you can eat bandwidth" similar to how we currently pay for Internet in our homes (and for the iPhone with AT&T).

The more I write about this however, the more I see how far off I probably am for a number of reasons. We'll probably see later today where this whole thing is going, but I've got my fingers crossed.

Some Good Photo/Image Blogs

Here are a few of my favorite photo/image blogs that I subscribe to. Let me know if you have any others that I can add to my growing list.

• explodingdog
• Post Secret
• daily dose of imagery
• indexed
• Diesel Sweeties