The nice people at Brand New School released their New Balance spot “Zip” online. They are a great company to work with. Very creative and still hands down and respectful to the matter. It was a pleasure to work on this job. A truly amazing team! Not sure why they wrote something about me in their copy for the spot: Everybody else deserves the praise that I got there.
Month: July 2007
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they better be right about that. I got pretty much used to all their free features and things.
Just when you thought all mashup of different cultures had been done already: something called kanye west appears.
AT&T enabled the toll free number for Interdubs:
877 837 3827
Or -if you like- 877terdubs. I never fancied vanity numbers that much. OK< maybe with the execption of 800 800 4sgi ten years ago. But these days your cellphone number is almost impossible to change. So posting that in those internets is a total no-no. A toll free number is a nice and easy solution to this dilemma. Combined with Callwave it makes for a nice system for voice communication.
So, the iOhne does not have an SDK. Instead one has to write safari web pages. Sucks, is lame. But I can live with that. Writing webpages is pretty much what I do all day. Main official cool-aid soaked argument for the lack of SDK was security.
Now somebody claims to have hacked the iOhne. In that hack they seem to have access to allot of data. It would be nice if legal and above uses would have access to that data. Maybe you can even hack to get access to the “note pad” application on that thing. Because right now the info stored in there does not go anywhere.
What revs me up about this is Apple’s arrogance on these matters. They just claim that iOhne is perfect. While it’s pretty much a version 0.5. Getting away with lying is nothing that gets my sympathy. I don’t care if it’s Apple, Microsoft or AT&T. Or the current administration. It is very wasteful to spread wrong information. Specially doing so knowingly.
Danny Boyle and his manual effects. Overdoing something new that seems to work? People would never ever do that!! All the CG in all those tentpoles WAS really really needed. As well as the other half of a movie that got shot (since they could afford to) that ended up on the floor and that would have made those stories even work.
So that Apple Phone works in europe. Choice of 4 providers pop up on the screen. Of course it’s not that easy to find out how much roaming charges they will be added to the bill. Running the iOhne on wifi only is not possible.
Everybody who chews back Apple’s PR mantra that the thing ‘runs OS X’ must be seriously on drugs or has no idea what an OS actually is. It might be that some of the iOhne code started life in some OS X libraries and routines. But calling it ‘OS X’ would be calling a radio flyer kids toy a Fire Engine. Just because they have both four wheels and come in red.
Only if should there ever be an SDK that allows the creation of standalone iOhne applications one will know better how much OS X and the phones software are alike.
I started to use the iPhone nano again, which works much better as an iPod. It will for instance play another podcast, after one has finished. Imagine that. The iPhone can not.
so, got an iPhone. Pretty much had to: one in 150 hits on Interdubs is from those devices. Wouldn’t I have been so busy with a job that could not be rescheduled then there would be a special Interdubs version for iPhone already. But at least I know now that Interdubs does work with iPhone. If you drank enough cool aid and read enough Apple press releases then you will drop ‘the’ from a sentence like then one before this one. I don’t. The, the. Just to make up for it. The the the. Take that Steve. The!
Sure, sliding your finger over the surface and the content moves along, that’s kind a nice. Of course that screen is really pretty. Really bright too. Glaring california sun? Phew, it shines right back atcha.
As a phone the Razr worked better though. Reception is not good. Bad in many cases. Not sure if it is AT&T or the device. Holding that big (and occasionaly pretty darn hot) thing to your head needs some getting used to. The head phones can be used as a headset. But I don’t want to run around like that, and they pick up a decent amount of ambient case.
Visual voicemail leaves me unimpressed, since I had callwave before. Which stopped working. And there was no way to make it work again. Thanks, AT&T! Idiots. Let’s see how roaming will do, and how much it will cost.
Telco’s in general seem to be the modern day incarnation of a Kafka book. They sell two things: technology and service. First one does not really work that well after all. Second one is a joke beyond belief. I spare you the details, but having dealt with Sprint, Cingular and AT&T as of late I think they are all the same. Verizon was not any better either.
Enters the iPhone. And everything was supposed to get better. Yeah, right. Still a cellphone. Edge is pathetically slow. While it’s taking a minute or sometimes 3 to get my gmail email people calling will get voicemail. Which I will receive. Maybe an hour later. Using Wifi is kinda ok. Other things aren’t. I have allot of international numbers. Those start with +. At least they did on the Razr. Not so in AT&T land. Even though they get recognised as caller ID I have to add 011 in front of them. Maybe there is a setting for that, but why should there be??? Changing a number is not possible where you have the interface. You have to go back into contacts. Not even Microsoft writes such cumbersome interfaces these days. There are countless examples where the the iPhone (double the on purpose to rub in) is more stupid than -let’s say- a zune. Which is supposed to be pretty dumb+dull.
Then I dropped it. In a way I dropped my Razor daily. Of course it hit the little volume up button. And now the button is stuck, which means that I have the ‘Volume up’ overlay on the screen. I went to the apple store. They told me that I could by a new one. Such were my options. They are all gluttoning about ‘their’ success these days. Apple people are pretty full of themselves. Some are. Well, they don’t have to use that darn phone, since they will wait since they get their free one that Herr Jobs has promised to them. When they have one, there might have been even be an update that fixes all those idiotic problems. Like safari crashing. Like trying to make a call and the thing jumping into your face like a bad windows popup asking which closed wifi network you would like to join. Like not being able to bookmark a location in Maps that you have navigated to. Like Weather information going away if you are not connection to Edge. Like not being able send to photos with one of these Apple error messages telling you: “An Error has occured”. No shit. Coverflow, great. Actually not. It would be nice if the stupido phone would play podcasts one after each other. Like all the iPods do that I owned. Battery life? We need shorter days. Like 18 hours? So that the phone lasts a full day. Wifi seems to be biggest battery eater, followed by listening to the iPod. Not sure about Cover flow: I don’t use it. And frankly I think it’s pretty darn stupid. Like so much on this phone. As I am writing this aapl is at 138. I will not give the phone back. But it aint so great – right now. It just gets to show how low the phone bar actually is. Oh, on my razor I was able to change ring tones. The camera in it is a joke. They are all bad. But this one in particular. The Razr could record video. Maybe the iPhone should have an audio recording capability?? or how about GPS? At least via triangulation. It’s pretty lame that I have to tell it where I am. Since it knows, when it has connection to cell towers. The calculator? Another Dieter Rahm rip off. But, please, can we have a bit more functionality? Maybe if people turn the phone they get a scientific one? The stop watch if ok. I need one. Of course it is dumbed down like crazy.
Overal I would say that the iPhone is about 17% there. Make that 17.3%.
Before 2003 there was no connection between Al-Quaida and Iraq. Of course now that the war drags on in that country, it sounds real great if ‘our troops’ fight ‘those terrorists’. After all: the 9-11 shock can justify allot of stuff in many peoples minds. So the news sounds often like US troops would be engaging Al Quaida Terrorists. Since there were not any before 2003 those people have to be either Iraquies that became terrorists during the occupation, or they come from the outside. One of these arguments that can often be heard is “fight them over there, instead of here”. This article focuses on the origins of those foreign fighters. What I found more shocking is the number: 135 of them are being detained right now. So it takes more than 1000 US troops to detain one of these foreign fighters??? If capturing terrorists would be the goal then the US would have spend 3.2 Billion dollars to get one of those detainees. Of course these numbers are simplifications. Of course the situtation in Iraq is probably complicated. Much more complicated than most USAmericans would understand. Wether they are here or fighting over there.
Wired writes a little about Nigeria’s film industry. It is nice that technological advances allow for local movie production to flourish. Might be also a little bit of wishful thinking on Wired’s side: Nigeria has allot of sketchy aspects in it’s economy. 419ers aside the country makes around fourty billion a year in oil revenue, but manages to keep most of that money away from it’s 150 million inhabitants.
Compared to those oil revenues the 250 million film industry dwarfs in size.