Something stupid (but funny) for your memorial day

I wish I had something of substance to write, but I don't. Instead, check out this uneasysilence post about stupid warnings included with Sony laptops. You need to read the explanations to make it even better.

Opt-In

It's late, I'll keep this one short and simple.

Why do I need to receive 3 dead-tree versions of the phone book every year? Better yet, let me ask this, why do I need any? Google can find pretty much anything, if not, I can probably find it online somewhere else such as the dreaded QwestDex. I don't need this fat books duplicated and sitting on my shelves anymore.

Thus, I figured I would hop online and find how to stop receiving them. Turns out that isn't really easy to do yet though. This group is trying to get it done, but they really haven't gotten anywhere yet.

I do like their push to make it opt-in, rather than opt-out though. This is how everything should be. Don't assume you have my implicit permission, come and ask for it, or wait for me to ask you. Opt-out is only slightly better than having no choice at all.

In the meantime, if someone knows a trick to kill off some of these phone books, let me know.

Lists

I've always been a list type of guys (and piles). My method for remembering and organizing things falls into those categories. I create piles sorted by where things need to go, or what needs to be done. These usually are just short-lived, but have been known to stay around longer than they probably should.

When I need to actually keep track of things to do though, I make extensive use of lists. They lists have taken numerous forms over the years. Pieces of paper, written on the back of my hand, in a text file on a computer, on a web page on my computer, etc. Paper is where I almost always end up at again though, although usually accompanied by at least one list as well.

Recently, my number of things to do has increased exponentially, while my time to do any of them has decreased to almost nothing. This led me to having far too many lists. Being a lifehacker reader, I realized I needed to find a way to let technology help me solve this.

An online list program would solve many of my problems. I could have a single list, in one location, that I could reference and work on from anywhere. It could be dynamic by being computerized, and perhaps I could even find some cool software that helped me in other ways I had not yet foreseen. After a very brief bit of searching, I determined that remember the milk had all of the features I wanted, and had a very nice user-interface.

So far, I am incredibly impressed with the ease-of-use, and the ways that I am finding to group my data to make it simpler to digest. I knew for certain that I was in the right place though when I added my first todo item to my personal list. I had an item that needed to be done by tomorrow. So, when it asked for a due date, I typed "tomorrow". Lo and behold, the software actually translated it into tomorrow's date. Freaking fantastic.

So, how does everyone else out there keep track of all of this crap, and have you come up with any other interesting tips or tricks?

Q: The opposite of Microsoft Derivation?

For nerds at least, the answer would be Google Integration (okay, it's a stretch, and barely qualifies as funny, too bad, I liked it).

Google today rolled out yet another pretty slick feature by allowing pictures to be added to contacts in gmail. That alone sounds kind of cool (not on my account yet, can't say for sure). Something new they have added that I haven't seen done before is the ability to suggest a new photo for people in your contacts to use. Just imagine the great conversations that could spawn: "Hey, Suzie, you should use this upskirt shot I have of you from last night at the bar".

Anyway, all of this leads me to a topic I meant to discuss some time ago. These features and apps that Google are writing are often nice (yesterday's announcements: trends, co-op, and desktop4 do not fall into this category). However, most of their new releases are simple incremental things, or stuff I find less than useful.

Instead of looking for new things, I would really like to see them do nothing but focus on integrating and tying together their existing services. I should have a single Google account, with varied levels of services and privileges. Why the hell should Blogger have its own login, or a separate publishing space even for that matter? Same goes for AdSense. The idea of a gmail account needs to go away, replaced by a generic Google account. That way, when something sweet like Calendar comes out, I don't have to tell people they need a Gmail account and have them stare at me like something out of V. Instead, I tell them they need a Google account. They nod their head and go, "Yeah, I like that search engine. I think I will."

There are some really killer integrations that a few of us have thought up. Imagine if Talk and Calendar were fully connected. When you were in talk and someone had a status of busy, you could hover over and see exactly what they were doing from their calendar, or at the very least how long they would be doing it (ceiling cat, you know what I'm talkin' about). Things discussed in chats, such as events, could be turned into appointments and added to Calendar just like that.

How about this, integrate Blogger, make it look like Google instead of ass, and instead of making templates something no mere mortal should try to create, use that simplified new Google Pages template creator to make the site.

Here's my favorite that I just came up with. All replies to my blog posts should be dropped right into my gmail account as well, as an unread, labeled thread. Then, when I reply to them, my comments can go directly back to the blog. Drooool.

Basically, I think Google has compiled enough good apps for now, but they could really make them unbeatable and draw in many more if they just spent the time to create some synergy out of what they have (yes, I used a marketing buzzword just now, but I used it correctly, so meh).

My Hat Rack is Coming Along Nicely

ClearChannel, I Salute You!!

I salute you for sucking so severely, I'm amazed that physical properties of the universe have not caused you to implode on yourself. I must really have been sleeping in my Physics lectures in college, because I thought sucking that much would create a vacuum that nothing could escape.

Where does the hatred for the c-squared come from? Years of annoyance actually.

1. Buying up all cool local radio stations and turning them into corporate schlock playing whatever artists had enough payola to make it happen.
2. Censoring songs because you know what the American public should be allowed to hear. Similar to only playing songs we should hear as in #1. Whether true or not, creating a list of songs that were no longer kosher to be played after 9/11.
3. Now, the best of all, forcing commercials down the throat of XM, a service that has boldly stuck to the subscription vs. ad-sponsored format on music channels until now.

Some background information on this. ClearChannel was one of the backers of the fledgling XM satellite radio company as it was trying to get off the ground. Likely to make sure that if it started cutting into their terrestrial schlock profits, they could find a way to either capitalize or kill it. It appears they are aiming for the latter. XM has fought it as much as possible, but they are forced to allow ClearChannel to have 4 (or 5 depending on where you read) channels where they can completely control the programming, including sticking commercials on there.

I hate commercials. I can't stress that enough. That is probably the single biggest selling point of XM for me. This is just plain evil. The other portion of XM that I really like is the artist info, similar to RDS. The ClearChannel channels (at least as of today) do not have this information either. Boom, you've pretty much just killed everything I like about XM.

Now, the good news at least is that XM is doing as much as possible to minimize this evil. They have created 4 new channels that are essentially exactly the same programming that formerly was on the ClearChannel channels. These will be commercial-free. The ClearChannel channels now carry a nice little "cm" after them to indicate commercials, much like an "xl" signifies explicit language. In the published channel guide, these channels are now grouped over with talk radio channels as well.

So, all I am really wanting now is a way to delete channels from my XM dial, similar to my TV set. I could delete some entire groupings/genres that I care nothing about, one of them being the ClearChannel stations.

SWEET, SWEET, SWEET! I just found out that I can block them from my entire subscription. I'm doing this as soon as I get home tonight. Also, until I tried to find the links for this post, I had no idea how many sites were dedicated to discussing how ClearChannel sucks. Rock On.