Winter Break Projects

I've mentioned countless times before (although not necessarily on this blog) how much I enjoy my Xbox Media Center. I still find the quality of software that those open source guys kicked out to be incredible and I use it pretty much every day.

So...one of my projects that I ignored until my winter reprieve from work was to fix an Xbox of mine that didn't quite work right. Couple that with one that offered to fix for someone else, and I created the ultimate Pimp My Ride scenario in my living room:

"We put three xboxes on top of your TV!!!"
(Eat your heart out, Xzibit).

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about right now, there was an episode of that ridiculous show where they stuff 3 xboxes into the trunk of a Nissan 240SX. I was amazed to find a thread with the guy who owned the 240 today while searching a bit.

Super-cool web goodness

I always like when I run across some new web technology (no, I won't call it web 2.0). I'm still amazed daily at some of the stuff people can pull off. It's especially great when it does something very useful, in a very intuitive and clean way, and then a bonus when it is applied as a fairly old technology.

Lifehacker pointed me today to a site that allows you to take fully-interactive snapshots of any website. By snapshot, I mean it is literally as if you snagged a piece of the site verbatim. The throwback part is that it possible to create it as an image map, not just an actual graphic. All hyperlinks and images, as well as layout, are completely retained.

Obviously, there are some copyright issues to consider here. This is substantially different than just linking to a page. However, if you own the content, this is awesome. Here's a snapshot from this blog to show as an example:

Musings on Almost Anything (Occasionally) via kwout

I was initially just going to add this to my Google Reader shared items, but decided it was just too good and needed to be posted. However, I thought I would throw in here how much I am digging Google's new feature that shows your friend's shared items right in reader. It lets me basically have a feed of things I probably wouldn't run across, and they are from people who have mostly similar interests to my own. A very nice addition.

Potpourri

It's been a while since I did a post with several interesting items, so here goes:

• Completely Missing the Point
  I'm to the point where I'm almost entirely paperless with my monthly bills. I think the city water bill is the sole holdout at this point; everything else is either delivered directly to my email (fantastic), or I download from the web (better, but still not the best). I can now use email tags or folders of PDFs to store all of this data very succinctly, and in a searchable and usable manner.
  
  Maybe the biggest benefit though was time savings and reduction of effort. Quite simply, especially with automatically tagged email, there is little to no interaction with these bills any longer. I check them over and archive them.
  
  So, I was highly disappointed to receive the following email after downloading my latest telephone statement from the local co-op:

  eLation@southslope.com

  Data concerning your account was recently made available offline.
  If you didn't download this data, it may indicate an unauthorized individual has accessed your account.
  
  A PDF version of invoice 10224020 was downloaded.
  
  In accordance with an FCC ruling, you are being notified that data from your online account was downloaded.
  The text of this ruling can be viewed at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-22A1.pdf

  
  Needless to say, I was not "elated" about seeing this. What a pointless email. I can only hope they are taking this ruling too far, and that I won't start seeing this everywhere.
  
  
• Missing iTunes Feature
  Here's a sentence I'm pretty sure I've never said before: "Man, I wish iTunes had this feature I heard about in Windows Media Player." That changed after seeing a post on lifehacker today though.
  
  Basically, this is a way to put media player into a full screen mode and have it locked with a numeric password. So, the theory is that you can throw the player into party mode and go full screen with some cool visualizations. Now, somebody bumping or trying to use the computer won't kill the tunes. Simple, but cool.
  
  
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
  As always, this is a great mantra for living your life. Lately, near the holiday time especially, I have been very interested in the first. Looking at all of the pure excess and junk in the stores just leads me to believe we are wasting effort and resources on pointless junk.
  
  Without leaning too heavily into the preachy category, I thought I would share an interesting article about reducing the number of useless gifts given simply out of expectation and replacing them with things that are thoughtful and simple. In other words, something original and practical, not something overpriced and grabbed from an end cap.
  

Wiki Wiki

Everyone who knows me well, know that I love some wiki action. Usually when I say that, I'm of course talking about the super fantastic wikipedia.

However, tonight I found myself in need of just a general purpose wiki. I wanted one I could setup, with a variety of potential topics, and get a group of people together for collaboration. I googled for about 30 seconds (I sometimes forget how lazy I have become over time courtesy of Google) and had about 4 potential sites. I checked out wikisites, wikispots, and probably something else named wiki. In the end though, Zoho's wiki solution proved to be exactly what I wanted.

No ads, nice clean design, and ability to create my own sites for collaboration. Very nice.

Blowing it off

Sometimes there is nothing more soothing or relaxing than working on something completely pointless and fun. I'm trying to do more of this, as silly as that may sound.

You might notice my (hopefully) growing list of links on the side of this blog to my other various sites and projects. One of those has actually been around for a while, but I just added to it again tonight.

Here is my latest t-shirt design: http://www.cafepress.com/floydpink.105916729. In this particular case, I resurrected an old web classic, and brought it to textile form. Why? Because I can.

5 + 1

Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) - Handsome Boy Modeling School featuring Lord Finesse, Mike Shonoda, Chester Bennington, Rahzel, Qbert, Grand Wizard Theodore & Jazzy Jay - White People
I had to start with this one, as it really kicked off my listening for nearly the past month. I originally found this song when Ryan first introduced me to "Handsome Boy Modeling School". I was hooked immediately, but this song in particular is awesome. References and performances by some of the true greats of Hip-hop. These are the creators of the whole genre, and most of them still kick ass. I recommend taking down names, grabbing some Wikipedia info, and then working your way through some of their works.

Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
The song that pretty much kicked off her career (and continued to prove that Timbaland was really on to something). This track holds up perfectly yet today, I never tire of it. My kids never tire of the "Beep beep, who got the keys to the jeep?"

Shooter Jennings - The Wolf - Slow Train
Anyone knowing me or paying attention to my blog for any period of time knows Shooter might very well be my favorite artist right now. The perfect mix of country lineage and southern rock. I've been impressed as usual with his latest album, but this track with the Oak Ridge Boys takes it to another level. Nothing like working with some of the best to bring out the best in an already great artist.

Kanye West - Graduation - Homecoming
I've flipped on my opinion of Kanye completely over the years. I disliked him at first when "Gold Digger" was being overplayed. I slowly started to get into his music though, all the way until he teamed up with DJ Premier for the kickass "Classic" single. After that, buying "Graduation" seemed like an obvious move. I wasn't expecting it to be so good though. The Daft Punk-sampled track would be the obvious pick for a 50tn with its incredible energy. However, I went with a bit more intriguing track. His collaboration with Chris Martin of Coldplay would be intriguing by itself, but I find the lyric play in the song fantastic also.

Z-Trip - Kiss (Remix / 2006)
Raise your hand if you like free music. Okay, raise your hand if you like hip-hop and rock mashups done by the best in the business. Even if I'm the only one still raising my hand, you still need to check this out. Z-Trip invented and perfected the modern version of the rap/rock mash-up (Aerosmith and Run obviously creating the original...). On top of that though, he provides some great mixes for free on his site. His remix of Prince featuring Murs is more than worthy of a listen.
If you don't feel like browsing, here is a direct link to the song

Holiday Bonus (since I've had this post waiting for so long)
Sarah McLachlan - Wintersong - The First Noel/Mary Mary
It's that time of year, where my wife attempts to drown me in holiday music. I generally just ignore it, and sometimes become a bit annoyed. However, this CD and this song in particular are a different story. Her version of Noel is about the darkest Christmas song you will ever hear, bordering on a very Celtic sound. Incredible.
(Note: You can now get this for free right here)

Silly Bowling Team Names

A group of us at work are going to be doing our annual Bowling for Kid's Sake event again this year to help out the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program (click here if you actually want to donate to me).

In doing so, we needed to come up with a good team name (there is swag on the line...). So, we came up with the following list:

• I'm with Stupid
• Head Bangers
• Nuns with Guns
• Than we shall bowl in the shade...
• ...and the horse you rode in on
• Overstuffed Windbags
• Smoka Bowl
• Jason types like Shit
• Bowling John Malkovich
• Ebowla
• Off Constantly
• Victorious Secret
• CloscoresEX
• The Muffin Stuffers
• Shocker
• Huge Racks
• Mines in the Gutter
• RTFB
• (10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)
• Bowl Movements
• Freshly Waxed
• Snarky Self-deprecating Elitists
• The CN4's
• I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter
• Off in the Gutter
• Muppets and Naked Breasts
• If it weren't for my horse
• Richard Craniums and a Female

In the end, we narrowed it down to the following 2 choices (our team has 5 males and 1 female in case you were wondering):

• Mines in the Gutter
• (10 balls and a split) or (10 balls, 1 split)

Although I still find the 2nd choice particularly awesome, we decided on the first for a good team name. Why am I sharing all of this? Because sometimes you just need a good, stupid post on a Friday. Alternatively, why not?

Go Away!!

Before falling off the deep end and admitting he liked the blue light, Thaddeus had reminded me of a post that I had been meaning to write.

He talked a bit about the "Do Not Call" list, and wondered if it worked. While I obviously don't have hard and fast evidence, I would have to say that it has worked very well for us. I signed up on the first day that you could do so online, and within about 2 months our unsolicited calls had dropped off almost entirely. Anymore, other than the stupid political, highway patrol (usually fake), and alumni calls, we don't get any crap calls. If I could find a way to stop those entirely, I would be extremely happy.

The real point of my post though is that the list expires every 5 years. If you registered early like me, that means you are nearing the time where your number will fall off the list. You can renew your spot early, so I strongly recommend you go update your number. Actually, make sure to update ALL of your numbers.

The Future is Simple

(Click here to go straight to the webapp creation details)
(Click here to grab the template webapp file)

Web-based applications are all the rage currently (if you haven't heard, you're either under a rock or better at avoiding hype than I). Creating a functional application that makes use of HTML for a UI makes a lot of sense, and can greatly speed up development.

An idea based upon this that has intrigued me recently is the idea of SSB (site-specific browsers), and specifically Mozilla's Prism application/framework. A site-specific browser has also been called a distraction-free browser. The idea is to take the presentation aspects of a web browser, but remove all other associated web-browser nuances/distractions (i.e. toolbars, navigation controls, etc.). Basically you end up with the equivalent of a single, desktop application that still uses a web browser underneath.

I finally found the answer for how I would try this out while trying to solve a separate problem. My son (currently 7 years old) has been using email off and on for about 3 years now. I started him out with Gmail, but initially had him use a POP3 client. However, after moving the rest of the family to solely use the web interface I wanted to remove the installed client. This left me with 2 options:

1. Teach him how to open a link to Gmail, logout the current user, and type his username and password.
2. Find a way to give him his own access to the web browser interface that didn't interfere with anyone else in the family.

The first option was not a possibility. This was both too much work, and potentially too disruptive to other Gmail users in the household. So, I had to determine the best option for #2. After briefly considering having him use IE (since none of us use it), I regained my senses and realized that Prism could be the perfect solution for him.

5 minutes of learning how to create a Prism configuration file, followed by about a minute with "view page source" to figure out how to directly log him into Gmail, and I was ready to go. Now, couple that with a slick Gmail icon from one of my favorite free icon sites, zip it all up into a "webapp" file, and I was done. I ran it once to install into Prism, and then used the "Install Shortcut" option in the bottom, right-hand corner of Prism to install it to the desktop for him. It turned out very slick overall. I might yet make use of some of the scripting and styling features of Prism to automatically resize the window to a given size (currently it remembers between sessions just fine though), and remove some of the unnecessary UI elements from Gmail for him. For now though, this solves the problem very nicely.

One final tip. I wanted to host the template webapp file for all of this someplace permanent so that I could link to it. It turns out that Google Groups fit the bill very nicely for me, up to a 100 MB limit. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't handle .webapp (or maybe it is the zip file format) very well so I can't directly link to the file. You'll have to right-click and save it.


Now, for the implementation details.

1. Create a file named webapp.ini, mine looks like this
   

   [Parameters]
   id=gmail@localhost
   uri=https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?
       service=mail&Email=YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN&
       Passwd=YOUR_GMAIL_PASSSWORD&continue=
       https://mail.google.com/mail?ui=html&zy=l
   status=no
   location=no
   sidebar=no
   navigation=no
   icon=gmail

2. Find an icon file (in this case it would need to be named gmail.ico, but you could modify the "icon=" line if named something different. The "icon=" line can be removed entirely to use the default Prism icon.
   
   
3. Zip up the .ico and .ini files with your zip program of choice (I use 7zip). Once you have created the archive, change it from a .zip extension to a .webapp extension to have it automatically load with prism upon double-click.
   
   
4. Double-click the webapp to load it in Prism.
   
   
5. <optional>Verify that everything is working correctly, and then drop-down the gear icon in the lower-right and select where to create a shortcut.

Finally, here is a template webapp file you can customize to do this yourself. All that needs to be changed is to open the webapp file up in your zip program (again, 7zip for me), and edit the webapp.ini file. The only things that will need to be changed are the YOUR_GMAIL_LOGIN and YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD values (to your Gmail email prefix and password respectively).

One last note. I needed this to work on a Windows PC, so the instructions are very much tailored for that. There shouldn't be any reason this won't work on Linux or Mac though.

UI Consistency

Ryan had a post about "Inconsistent Time Sliders", specifically with regards to Apple software products. I had enough thoughts on it that it eventually just turned into a post of its own.

First, I think that Ryan notices UI components more than is healthy for the average human being.

This is actually a good thing though, and it usually Apple is the company who takes care of this. Is diversifying their product line taking its toll? Are they losing attention to small details such as this? Not sure.

I really don't think there needs to be more than perhaps 2 types of sliders. Shouldn't we be able to figure out pretty quickly if circles, triangles, or squares are the best marker? In reality, how does pushing a triangle or square down a round tube make sense? Stick with the round markers.

Given that we know the marker, I think the only thing that might change is dependent on whether transparency is allowed or not -- Ryan mentions this as well.

In general, these are the type of thing that get overlooked, and in the grand scheme of things
won't really hurt a product. Conversely though, paying some attention to these details can lead to a highly coherent and strongly-branded product (that which Apple has done the best at in recent years). Also, as Ryan mentions, usability can be greatly increased even with new products if a consistent UI is presented.

It takes a strong attention to detail, and some time commitment from a company to address these issues. However, overall it is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase marketability and sales of product.

In my opinion, the cover flow (and perhaps the new DVD player) slider is the best. I like a very unobtrusive slider that only shows when I need it, with the rounded slider. Buttons can be reduced to three, the play/pause, and a previous and next. Anything else is auxiliary and be hidden behind a click or menu, or perhaps available in a separate interface.

More Google Coolness - Blogger Style

Sometimes Google gets on a roll with getting new features out there.

First, this may have been there for a while, but I finally notice it tonight. You can now check a box after commenting to have all additional comments on a post emailed to you. About time, now maybe commenting discussion can being to improve on a wider scale with blogs. Blogger is at least trying now to go a little ways toward improving the poor blog commenting that some have discussed in the past.

Second, I continue to find good things at Blogger in draft. For those who haven't seen it, Blogger in draft is where Blogger first rolls out new things (primarily for blog site design for now) before giving it to the general public. To see this, just go to draft.blogger.com, rather than www.blogger.com. I noticed today that they now have available any of the literally hundreds of Google gadgets that are already available for places such as the Google personalized homepage. Now, I just have to find a way to wade through the cruft, and find the goodness.

On a separate note, as those who added it to their RSS will already have seen, I finally kicked off my financial advice site tonight. There is a link under my other sites in the sidebar, but the site is http://financiallysimple.blogspot.com if you are so inclined.

What's old IMAP is new IMAP again

Leave it to Google to make ancient software cool again. I switched from POP3 to IMAP back in 1997 while I was still going to school and working at U of I. I used it all the way up until I switched everything over to Gmail web-goodness. Most of that time, it seemed that almost nobody else cared or used IMAP, they were almost all using POP.

Now, suddenly, after Gmail introduces this feature it suddenly comes off as the newest and coolest thing around. Amazing. In my mind (and apparently a sentiment shared by others) it is long overdue. I actually wanted to switch the domain for one of my email addresses to Google Hosted a while back, and the lack of IMAP for use on my friend's cell phone was the reason we couldn't.

So, I now am so stuck on the gmail web experience that I really have no use for this feature, but since it was on one of my accounts, I decided to give it a whirl.

Overall, it looks like they have done a very good job with it. I think it appears to function well and I think all of the logistical questions that I have are now answered. Here are my thoughts.

The Good

1. Labels show up as separate IMAP folders. Better still (and to answer one of my main questions), if you tag something with multiple labels it shows up in multiple folders under IMAP. Very nice.
2. Inbox and folders are shown at the top level, and then hidden under a [Gmail] folder is essentially the folder list from the left-hand side of the web interface. Thus "all mail" and friends are available, but nicely hidden.
3. Refer to #1. Now, try to go the other way. Dragging a message into a folder will automatically add that label to the message in gmail, copying to multiple will add all of them. Very slick.
   

The Bad

1. Remember Gmail's fantastic idea that you never delete anything, you just archive it? Fantastic idea, I've raved like a lunatic about the value of data for a while now, and I use this as a shining example of how to do it right. Until you have to fetch all of those headers over IMAP... Outlook (my unfortunate choice of IMAP client) froze completely for about 10 minutes trying to pull this off. Most of that is Outlooks fault though. As long as you never fetch the headers for the "all mail" folder, this shouldn't be too terrible (maybe).
2. This actually isn't anything against Google, it is against Microsoft. It turns out there wasn't as much bad as I expected, so this is filler. I setup the account in Outlook to use IMAP, and I happen to have a gmail address that is "something.somethingelse@gmail.com". Outlook politely warned me that my email address looked invalid, but then happily continued and worked perfectly. Morons. Reminds me of when BestBuy.com couldn't handle the hyphen in one of my email addresses. Read the email RFC's guys, this isn't hard.

So, good job Google. Your implementation of 1990's technology seems superb.

Ringtones

The introduction by Apple of ringtones to its arsenal has prompted some discussion, and made me actually think a bit about something I generally just find to be a nuisance.

The general consensus when the iPhone first came out was that the lack of custom ringtones was something Apple needed to remedy. This has been a staple of all of the other phones and providers for some time now. They did just that with their most recent announcement. However, I think many were expecting more/different since it was Apple doing it.

First, some things that I think they did right. Being able to pick which 30 seconds of the song to use is good. This is something I would have always considered a must, but it isn't available directly from any of the cell providers. Next, they don't force you to just buy an overpriced ringtone (anywhere from $2 to $5 from what I can tell most places); they allow you to make them from your own music that you already own. Yes, I know there is a catch, we'll get there in a minute. Finally, it can all be done from the safe haven of iTunes. Pick the song, pick the musical selection, and get it loaded on the device is all possible and very simple. The last one is the type of thing I have come to expect from Apple, and may be the single largest benefit. As usual, most people miss the benefit of simplicity.

Now, the things I think were not done the way I would have hoped or expected. I need to preface this by saying I don't think any of the current providers or ringtone offerings have done anything positive; they have been nothing short of horrendous. Overpriced, a pain in the ass to get or use, lack of choice, and a general annoyance is how I would summarize all previous offerings. I can't understand personally why people pay anything for a ringtone, let alone more than I am willing or need to pay to purchase a full song from the iTunes store.

Although the 99 cent price sounds about right, you can't actually purchase any ringtone for that amount. You have to already have bought the song or buy it at that time, which means there is an additional 99 cents to include. Thus, the minimum for a ringtone is actually $2. However, you do also get a full copy of the song for listening as well.
Not all songs are available for making ringtones though, even if you have purchased them from the store. This one seems confusing. You would think if you bought it from Apple, they would let you pay them another $1 to make it a ringtone no matter what.

Now, these few downsides seem to be far overwhelmed by the positives. However, I wondered immediately why Apple would put restrictions such as these on the songs. It doesn't fit with some of their past policies and my expectations of them. Coupled with the recent news that found many of these issues could be easily circumvented in iTunes 7.4 (although they have since been "patched") it made me start to wonder if Apple had nothing to do with these. Were they in fact mandated by some other entity?

I did a (very) little research on this, and came up with some additional conclusions and thoughts. Since this post is fairly long though, I'm going to make like Back to the Future 2 and leave you with this...


SEE THE EXCITING(POSSIBLY) CONCLUSION IN TOMORROW'S POST: "Idiocies of Licensing"

Pain and Suffering - Courtesy of Redmond

This one is for the true geeks, or those who just like to be dumbfounded by how bad software can go. In this case, it demonstrates how software can interact in completely odd and unexpected ways, and this is why computers are far less deterministic and stable than they should be.

I was attempting to install Silverlight. I'm not really going to even get into why, that's not important at this point.

The important part is that after downloading and running the installer, it stopped with an error at 90%. The installer splash screen then pointed me to this incredibly helpful error page: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/help.aspx?errorID=2. Once my head quit spinning, I started investigating a bit more. Obviously, the error page didn't help in the slightest, it was actually completely out of date. I tried moving the file, extracting it manually, various things did not work.

Amazingly, I did actually find the problem, thanks to a point where I had moved the installer to my root c: drive, but the temp folder still magically showed up on my desktop with a reference to s:.

It is at this point that I should mention a cool little trick I have setup on all of my Windows machines. I create a batch file that runs automatically at startup, using the old dos "subst" command to map a drive letter to my desktop. Yes, I was adept at tab-completing the full profile name (documents and settings\username\yada yada), but it's much nicer having it as my s: drive.

So, seeing the s: drive in the error message tipped me off. I deleted my shortcut drive, and lo and behold it all worked. Bizarre.

If you've read this far, you probably need professional help. I'm still in denial.

Good things are worth the wait...

Xbox media center rocks hard, I'll have more to say on that in an upcoming post. For now though, enjoy the madness:



Click on the image itself to see more details, or to see the original video that inspired all of this.

5 of the Now

Some new tunes to bump to, not really any theme this time around, just stuff I have been finding interesting. No links right now, the iTunes link maker thingy/pile o' crap is not working at the moment. I'll try to add them later when it is fixed. All of these are available on iTunes.

Scientific Lifestyle - Flight 273 - The Arrow EP
I chose this song, because this was the one that Blender was showcasing that led me to find this group. I like the whole EP quite a bit, and their other album available on iTunes as well. Smooth beats, with some interesting vocals. A good blend of mellow and beats.

Big and Rich featuring Wyclef Jean - Please Man - Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace
In this case, I chose this song to spite several reviews who have trashed it (plus I know nobody will listen to it anyway...). First, this whole album is incredible. In fact, the only songs I'm not sold on are the 2 more stereotypical-styled rockabilly songs (and the horrendous cover of "Shook Me All Night Long", that should be surgically removed from all future CD printings). Everything else on here is solid, modern country and done fantastically.
This song however, is all about just having fun. Wyclef gets it, these guys have always gotten it. Sometimes it's more important to just have fun with music, than to produce some epic. Great stuff.

Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend (Dr. Luke Mix featuring Lil Mama) - Girlfriend Single
I'm throwing this on here first because I think it's cool that this made it out as an officially-sanctioned remix. Second, it's on here because it's one of the few tracks featuring lil' mama that you can get from iTunes right now. The original song I can pretty much take or leave, but I'm extremely impressed right now with lil' mama's rap skills. She has some fierce flow to her rhymes.

Air - Alone in Kyoto - Lost in Translation Soundtrack
I finally saw "Lost in Translation" this past week (yes, I'm not sure why it took me so long). Great movie, and the soundtrack is equally on-par. I have lots of other stuff by Air already, and I think this is one of the top 2 tracks on the soundtrack. Jesus and Mary Chain would be a close second.

Carbon Leaf - Learn to Fly - Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat
I would have never heard of this group if one of their videos wasn't playing on a cruise we took a few months back. More on the alternative side, but this is just generally a good song. Doesn't hurt that they cribbed the title of a great Pink Floyd track either...

Map 2 Text

So, apparently the hot new thing to do right now is send maps to your cell phone via text message.
Josh is in the middle of pulling off a nice hack to do this with weather map information. In his case, you send a text to an address, and get back a map.

Now, I see today that Google is letting you call their 1-800-GOOG411 number, say "map it", and then they'll text you a map.

Now, how about marrying it all together. Have Google wire it up so you can email like in Josh's solution, and then have Google add weather maps as a service. Best of all worlds.

Somewhere, the Bluetooth DJ is doing a happy dance...

Yeah, I would be referring to Ryan in the title. If you have read his blog at all, you'll know that he often has pined for a much simpler way of finding/communicating with people. A single contact point that can find a person no matter what.

Well Google, that no evil doing behemoth, is positioning themselves one step closer to that. There are rumors that they plan to buy GrandCentral, a service where you can call a single number and it attempts to reach the person at all of their contact numbers.

Looks promising.

Transformers Outlast the Cassette Tape

If at some point in the 1980's you had said the title of this post, I think most people around you would have thought you were crazy. At the time, cassette tapes were still unfortunately the most popular form of music around. Transformers on the other hand were just the silly toy flavor of the month (a month which somehow ended up occupying nearly all of 1985/1986 for me).

Fast-forward to the crazy futuristic year of 2007. An inbred monkey is the president, and while cassette tapes are as dead as Micheal Jackson's career, Transformers are heading back to the box office in CGI goodness. There are product tie-ins galore, lots of toys, and a blockbuster movie. At this point I declare that they have successfully outlasted the tape.

Lending more evidence to that fact was a conversation I had with my son today. First, after teaching him the finer points of Autobots vs. Decepticons, we were looking at a picture of Optimus Prime. So, of course I had to show him my original. Yeah, there it is, first generation goodness. You know you're jealous...



Now, along with Optimus Prime I had some other pretty cool transformers. They were cassette tapes that transformed into animals and robots (ahh, now you see the tie-in coming...).



I showed them to him, and after showing him how they transformed asked: "Have you ever seen tapes like these before? Maybe at Grandma and Grandpa's house?" (there was no way he would have seen one at our house). His answer was a resounding "no". Thus, he had no idea what cassette tapes were even used for, but he knew about transformers starting several years ago (thanks to my toys), and now was even interested in getting some of his own.

Now, just for the heck of it, here's a picture of another favorite kids toy (one that's been well-played with since 1982).

Light 'Em Up

This was a picture taken this past weekend while we were playing with sparklers, before our town's yearly fireworks show started. Shannon thought it looked pretty cool, and I tend to agree.

I thought it was a good way to introduce a new photo gallery that I recently created. I am going to post some of the pictures I have taken that I think work well as interesting computer backgrounds. You can find the gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/floydpink/Backgrounds.

Browser Showdown

Following up on my previous Safari post, I noticed that Ryan had compared the screen real-estate used by the two browsers.

I'm liking Safari a bit more as I use it again, but they still need to fix the font display and some windowing usability before I can test drive it on a daily basis.

Pointing out once again the flexibility of Firefox though, I thought I would post how the 2 browsers compare on my system:

Software and the idiots who use it

I needed something to get me fired up (many of you will find that hard to believe). This will definitely do it.

As many know, Apple released a version of their Safari web browser for Windows yesterday at their WWDC developer conference. An unexpected move for many, including myself, and one that spawned a good amount of discussion and pondering.

Don't confuse pondering with pandering though, which is what many in the tech community love to do so much. The bits had barely hit the web before people were trashing the release. I'll admit, I tried it immediately, and was less than impressed with the usability and visual aspects of this particular build. Guess what? It's beta. Should this be a surprise? So, rather than bitch continuously, I simply closed it and will wait for a later version to do additional evaluation. After all, Apple actually still uses beta to mean pre-release, not perpetual unwillingness to claim completion like other companies.

The worst of these were some of the security exploits supposedly found, as covered by Slashdot. The first of these idiots is the guy who supposedly had found a bug in Apple's Airport, only to be smacked down later. He claims he found a bunch of holes, but he will not be disclosing them to Apple. Fantastic, great plan. Run around, spouting off about how great you are and poking holes in software, rather than attempting to improve something. Specifically, a beta, which is released entirely to attempt to find issues and get them fixed before release. These people need to have their Internet pass revoked.


Personally, I want to see Safari not only succeed, but excel. Mostly, because I want some competition to push my favorite browser, Firefox, a little harder. At this point, I really don't see myself ever moving to Safari. I like some of its features, but I have nearly all of them already courtesy of extensions. Extensions are still the silver bullet of Firefox for me. Also, I find Firefox to still run very snappy, and I have his memory in check on my machine. I look forward to some friendly competition between the two to keep improving them both.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Well, real life has kept me quite busy (a good thing, as I have pretty much been living outdoors playing with the kids), so some of my online projects have gone a bit neglected. This blog would be one of those things.

Something came up today though that is extremely cool, and worth discussing. Google in August of last year bought a company named Neven Vision, who specialized in Biometrics. Why, you ask? Well, specifically the part of biometrics that they were interested in initially was facial recognition. Now you see where I'm going with this, who thinks that both Google image search and Picasa could benefit from being able to find photos with faces of people in them? I certainly see a large value in that.

Today (it may be gone by the time you read this), they are testing some of this functionality on their image search page. Add the following modifier "imgtype=face" to the end of an image search, and you can see what I mean. Example: change http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images to http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Search+Images&imgtype=face
and you will be greeted with the face of that billionaire who lives on that infinite loop thingy.

Very good stuff. Now, back to my hiatus status for at least a week.

5 of the Now

You'll notice a definite hip-hop flavor to this list. That's been the majority of my listening lately...perhaps MTV is to blame.

Queen & Wyclef Jean - The Platinum Collection - Another One Bites the Dust
This track rocks hard. Queen was hands down my favorite group as I was getting into Classic Rock back in high school, and Freddie's stripped-down vocals own the track here. Couple that with Wyclef's smooth production, and the seriously amped-up bass, and it's a winner.

KRS-One, Kanye West, Nas & Rakim - Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been) [DJ Premier Remix]
I like Kanye, but I bought this for the wealth of original hip-hop talent that he brought along. KRS-One alone would have been enough to intrigue me, but bringing along Rakim and Nas just improves it all. Good stuff. Thanks to Blender for pointing me in the direction of this track.

Rihanna featuring Jay-Z - Umbrella - Good Girl Gone Bad
This track has grown on me a ton, and is now my favorite track that she has done. Smooth, good beat, all-around great track. This was obtained at the request of Shannon who wanted it for driving music on a trip we were taking. I would give an iTunes link, but this won't actually be released until June. If you listen, make sure you have XM, as the crap that passes for FM radio cuts Jay-Z off the track entirely.

Busta Rhymes, DMX, Lloyd Banks, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Papoose & Rah Digga - Touch It Remixes (Explicit Version) - Single
Music tips can come from unusual places. This was on Nelly Furtado's Summer Top 10 list on MTV Hits recently. I liked her quite a bit (at least her music), but man she came off dumber than hell on that show. However, her pick of this is impeccable. The video trots out an endless lip of hip-hop celebs, and Mary J throws down with some force. The whole track has a very Missy-Timbaland influenced feel to it. Great track. Welcome back Busta.

DJ Khaled featuring Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Baby & Lil' Wayne - We Takin' Over - Single (USA)
I can't say I condone the theme of this song, but screw it, I like Fat Joe and his gang. Akon's unique vocals are a great contrast to people like Joe and Rick Ross. Still can't stand Lil' Wayne, but I'll let it slide this time. This and "Make it Rain" by Fat Joe are both incredible.

Now, one last tidbit to leave you with. It turns out MTV.com has tons of music videos that you can watch on your computer. Who knew? http://www.mtv.com/music/video/

I was impressed to see they had both new and old videos on there. I also did not expect Aesop Rock to look anything like this: http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=1225460&vid=65229

This makes me sad/angry

I'll get off of my soapbox here one of these days and start posting new content again, rather than just syndicating other news items, really I will.

However, I couldn't skip this one. The original slashdot link for this story is here. The summary from there is:

"A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."

I hate close-minded people screaming terrorism, censorship, etc. and running for the hills in general. I do my best to try to educate people when this is happening, to stop it from spreading. This one hits close to home though.

When I was in high school, I made a DOOM 2 map of my high school (a wad, for those who remember). It turns out our school was old enough that it had all sorts of cool, hidden areas that I had found my way into over the years. My personal favorite is the lofts above the auditorium, where there is likely still tagging with my name to do this day.

All of it combined to make a really cool world for my friend and I to play DOOM 2 over 9600 bps modem. Good old days indeed. Would I have had an inkling in my mind that anyone would ever consider something like that a threat? Hardly, and I bet this kid didn't either.

Texas, I'm seeing proof that your education system ranks near the lowest in the country. You don't have to look farther than the political personnel that have risen from your ranks in recent (or not so recent in certain executive examples) years.

What is this number?

How DiD i come up with a Very Dumb blog post? And, Ask yourself Could Sending it to the junK foldEr be verY smart?

In either case, I have no idea why my typing was so bad on the previous sentence, or what this number means: 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Why Google, Why?

Others have talked about how they really like the personalized Google homepage, and even the new themes. I personally no longer use a homepage, I never really close my browser so it wouldn't make much sense. I tend to just bounce between a few Google applications for the most part.

However, even those I know who do like the homepage would have to question Google's latest move I'm guessing. Since its start, the personalized page was at http://www.google.com/ig (OMG, how did I just link to your personalized homepage? --fun with n00bs). Apparently, that "ig" now stands for "iGoogle", complete with an ass-tastic logo and all.

Google, you should know better. Why did you stoop to this lowness?

You Don't Care About This

I used to have a website where I posted random tidbits of information. I haven't bothered to resurrect it after I changed hosts, so I'm going to post something here instead. Thaddeus has posted random coding snippets in the past, so it must be cool.

Earlier today I found myself asking the question, "How do I tell if a statically linked application was built with glibc or uclibc?" The answers of course is:

"nm | grep _main | grep __"


Since you didn't ask, I've just told you.

Iowa, where's that?

Unfortunately, I bet that's a phrase a bunch of golf fans were uttering today.

In case you don't follow golf whatsoever (I admit, for the most part I don't either), Zach Johnson surprised a bunch of people by winning the Masters today - the golf equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Zach is a native Iowan, who grew up in the Cedar Rapids area. It turns out he is related to some good friends of our family as well. I have met and talked with him at several Hawkeye tailgates, so I have always rooted for him to do well. It's very cool to have him win such a huge tournament. Now, I hope he enjoys the media whirlwind as people try to figure out how someone from this state in the middle of nowhere can manage to play golf, and beat the invincible Tiger Woods.

Congratulations Zach.

New Music Found

I really enjoy finding entirely new music, both new artists and new forms of music. This is usually especially good when found in the context of a live show. The energy and sound from a live show is still unmatched by any recording medium I have found.

Last night, I took Shannon to a concert by Patty Griffin. I have discussed her recently in my 5 of the now album post. Her portion of the show was tremendous. Her band was awesome, the Englert Theater in Iowa City is a great place to hear a small show, and her voice made perfect use of that setting. They ranged from slow, bluesy numbers, to soft folk ballads, to some rocking guitar licks. All great stuff.

Her drummer for the evening happened to be a member of her opening act, Terremoto. I knew absolutely nothing about these guys coming into the night, but they were awesome as well. The band is just 2 guys, but they play a wide assortment of instruments, ranging from the stand-up bass to bongo drums. Their music is primarily Latin and Cuban, with strong Brazilian influences. They also did a very cool New Orleans Jazz number. Primarily their songs are instrumental, but both members also have vocal portions for several of the songs. Great stuff, definitely worth a listen.

Update: Ryan nicely points out that their music is available from iTunes.
I believe their next album will be on CDBaby as is their current one, so I may go that route to try to pad their pockets a bit more.

Negative Feedback

No, not Ebay, a bank. I do plan to create a financial advise blog very shortly, as I have a fair amount of experience in that area. Until I do, I will have to let some of it leak into this blog.

For tonight, enjoy my response to a certain large banking company who requested that I fill out a survey after a recent loan application. Keep in mind that I am glad to see companies requesting feedback of any kind, but I was particularly annoyed with them.

I did not have any problems with a recent mortgage through Countrywide, so I assumed I would not have problems with an equity loan either. Since I had the offer on my online account, I assumed it could be done more cheaply and easily than somewhere else also.

Instead, while I wanted to be closed within 2 weeks of my loan application (about 2 weeks before the end of the year), it was a few weeks into the new year before I received anything in the mail.

Once I did receive the package, I was expected to fax/mail an exorbitant amount of paperwork. My emails to my designated loan officer about this went completely unanswered.

Moreover, the closing costs were $600, compared to my local bank, who were able to close within 3 days, who had costs of $48.

So, a company that had just recently obtained all of my information and advertised this service to me (Countrywide), was completely inattentive, slow, and wanted to charge me over $500 more than my local bank for the privilege.

Congratulations. That is a spectacular formula for generating negative word-of-mouth and pissing off existing customers.

5 of the Now - Long and Varied

Something different this time. 5 albums rather than songs (that's the long part), and in a progressively different range of music (that's the varied).

This will start with rock-influenced rap, to rap, to rap + orchestra, to folk. Dig? (I aplogize, I can't get iTunes to very elegantly link to just an album. I did try to link to my favorite songs on each of these.)

1. Lyrics Born - Overnite Encore: Lyrics Born Live!
It's no secret that this guy is hands down one of my favorite performers. This performance blows the doors off about anything else you might hear too. Find somebody else with more energy in their performance. Seriously, because I want to hear them if they exist.
I would suggest listening to some of his other stuff first though, as this is almost better as you hear him improvise with his existing material. Rock/rap cannot be combined better than this.

2. Dilated Peoples - Expansion Team LP
I discussed in a previous 5 of the now track how I found out about Dilated thanks to Evidence being on a track with Lyrics Born (check out that smooth segway..). Shortly after that, I actually bought all 4 of their albums, mostly unheard. I liked their stuff that much.
I'm actually recommending their initial release from 2000 as the one to get if you can get only one. Check out the final track, "War", especially. The 'Dubya should be required to have this as his bedtime music (or the asshole from Diebold...but I digress).

3. Nuttin But Stringz - Struggle from the Subway to the Charts
This stuff is crazy good. These brothers are equally adept at rapping or playing classical violin. I first saw them while watching Noggin with the kids, but it turns out they were recently in the movie "Step Up" which I watched as well. Fantastic stuff.

4. Phish - The Story of the Ghost
Time to chill. Most people would not be surprised in the slightest to see a Phish album pop up on the blog of somebody with some pretty obvious interest in Pink Floyd. However, I'm actually not a big Phish fan. This is one of the few exceptions. I recently found this CD buried in a box, and began listening to it again. Smooth, flowing tracks.

5. Patty Griffin - Flaming Red
Shannon was the one who found this, which makes sense because this is very much her style of music. A cross between Sheryl Crow and more folk-influenced singers such as Loreena McKennitt. Very mellow music. The track, "One Big Love" was the one I originally helped her track down, and is probably my favorite as well.


Let it never be said that I don't listen to a wide range of music...

Random Dumbness

It's Sunday night. Bear with me as I hit you with some mostly random stories of stupidity.

I was going to post about the stuff on Slashdot from today that just plain made me angry. Especially the comment from the guy who said, "I'm smarter than most other people (98th percentile)...", but I just couldn't contain my rage long enough to write about it.

Instead, I'll start you with this gem. This guy lives near an International border and doesn't bother to check if he can build a 4 foot wall? I would check on that for my own private property lines, which come nowhere near the border of even a small municipality. Moreover, why did they need a $15,000 wall to contain erosion? I could have set them up with a few hefty bags strung together like the DOT uses, and pocketed the rest.

Next, less pure stupidity, and into the scary stupid category. How do we have government agencies that are setup to be so dumb? "Hey, let's kill the golden goose, because that's what our process says to do." I'm sorry (not really), but I completely disagree with this type of thinking. This is wrong and should be stopped/blocked/killed immediately.

Man, I see why Lewis Black finds it so easy to come up with material and get worked up over it. Because of that, I will leave you with some great quotes of his:

"Metal detectors don't work. I went through the metal detector and they said, 'we're gonna hafta check you.' 'I just went through the metal detector. That should be it.' Then they check you again. That means, that doesn't fuckin' work, does it? All right, so then, they got a thing called a wand. It's the same thing. It's like a metal detector for your hand. And they go, woo-wooo, and then you're clear and then they say, 'well, we'll pat you down.' Well that didn't fuckin' work either then, did it? And if what you really need to do is pat us down, then pat us down. Pat us the fuck down. Don't do this bullshit. Don't send me through two fake things that don't work."

and now a long one...

"When from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.' I'll repeat that. I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here, and we may die.' She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddy up, giddy up, let's go - 'I wouldn't have spent that year in college,' a degree-granting institution. Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apparent reason. There's a reason. You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works. So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' then it'll go away. But they're gone. And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away. Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right. But every so often, somethin' like that happens: 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.' So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a bitch! I wonder what that's about!' I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school. Maybe it was a polo pony; she had a polo pony scholarship. Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she - she was betting on the horse! WHAT THE FUCK?!! And then you realize that anybody who went to college would never say anything that stupid in public. And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."

The Missing iTunes Feature

I know I've posted about this in the past, but I'm far too lazy to find the reference. I'm guessing it was either in a five of the now post, or simply in a post about how to improve iTunes.

One thing that has annoyed me about iTunes in the past was that I couldn't export a playlist, smart or otherwise, in a standard playlist format (I'm calling m3u the de facto standard here). If for no other reason, than it would be nice to have the ability to backup my playlists should my library ever decide to crash.

So, I was very happy to find this morning that someone wrote the program that I had on my "to do" list. Here is the iTunes playlist exporter. It will allow you to export your playlists in .m3u format, just as I wanted. Sweet.

Awesome Artwork

I created an artwork gallery for some of Cale's work today. I will periodically be featuring a piece from that gallery on here.

Today on our agenda we had, "Decorating the House." This involved him drawing, coloring, and cutting some pieces for us to hang around the house.

From Decorate the ...

These items cover several spring and holiday items. Contained within are: heart, tree, flower, heart with arrow, 4 leaf clover, cupid, butterfly, groundhog, and hippo (because everyone needs a purple hippo).

Needle in the haystack (aka the ballad of strstr)

Slashdot over the years has degenerated to the point where I expect nearly no value any longer. However, I keep it around just for the rare times where it finds a gem. This is one of those cases.

Any readers of this blog should already have a pretty good idea what I think about Digital Rights Management (DRM). (sidenote - what a nice spin of words to try to make it sound like something non-evil, was Digital Handcuffs (DH) already taken?).

This blog post, courtesy of Slashdot, is just about perfect. Fantastic read. Macrovision sucks.

Sleazy

I don't usually make this blog a spot for gossip. This one's too good to pass up though.

If you haven't heard about the Joe Rogan vs. Carlos Mencia showdown, you need to check this out (original YouTube clip in case it drops off the frontpage of his site eventually). Obviously this is only one side of the story, but the video linked alone pretty much tells it all.

I never really cared for Joe Rogan as a comic, although I always found him somewhat interesting back on "News Radio". However, I never found Carlos Mencia funny in the slightest. In either case, Rogan threw down on him like no other and it is funny as hell.

Must Know for Gmail Users

I've wanted to post about this little tip that I find incredibly useful for some time, but hesitated until I had a good reference link. Well, no better than Google themselves to talk about it, I suppose.

The Feature: Gmail has a way that you can "mute" a conversation. All additional replies to that thread will skip your inbox entirely. Fantastic for off-topic mailing list posts. The weird part is how hush-hush Google has made this. There is no mention anywhere that I could find, other than this help page, that even mentions this. It is a keyboard shortcut, "m", but it isn't documented with the other keystrokes.

Perhaps they are just trying to not clutter the UI with a feature many will not use. Perhaps it was created in the apartment of one of their employees again. Who knows?

Another New Endeavor

It's been a while since I created anything new online. I always seem to have tons of ideas, but as with many people, I lack the time to actually get them out there.

Well, this one is out there now. I have a CafePress shop where I will be featuring pieces of apparel that I have designed. There have been countless times in the past where I have come up with ideas for clothing, and now I have an outlet for them.

Check out the Floydpink Originals shop. It's just starting out, but expect it to grow slowly and steadily.

If anyone has ideas they would like to see, feel free to send them my way.

Update: Some have asked for better pictures of my first item. Here they are:

Weekend Tidbits

Some interesting sites I stumbled upon today, to occupy (I.E. waste) your time.

The first is an interesting concept albeit a bit too focused on the MySpace generation. Share2me is a site that lets you add your contacts from email, IM, and other places. Then, if you have something interesting to share with people, you can automatically add them from a list of contacts and send it to all at once. Regardless of whether that means it sends by IM, email, or posts to a MySpace page. I dig the concept of send once, regardless of mechanism. Go check out the demo on their page.

Second, is something even more tailored to me. A site that exists simply to allow for debating various topics. There are 3 different methods for presenting and arguing a topic. You choose one, make your case, and then attempt to with the debate. I know at least one person who reads this blog fairly regularly should be as interested in this as I am. I smell a new time waster...

Ah, less clutter

Update: Ryan pointed out that my code got eaten

This one should have been obvious to me, but then again, my mucking level on my blog hovers at or around 0. This tip cleans up the overall page, lending itself very much to my goal of letting content (hopefully) rule this blog, rather than lots of formatting or clutter.

Here is the simple way to do this, that doesn't involve editing your stylesheet at all:

1. Go to the template tab on blogger.
2. Click "Add a Page Element".
3. Choose the "HTML/Javascript" type.
4. Cut and paste the following snippet:
   <style>
   #navbar-iframe {
   height:0px;
   visibility:hidden;
   display:none;
   }
   </style>
   
5. Click "Save Changes".
6. Rejoice as the top of your page is now uncluttered.
   

Fun Task for the Day

Music by color.

Go into your iTunes collection, type a color into the search box, and hit play.

Tonight's playlist for me: Green.

Tired. Dog Tired.

Yes, I am. I have actually wanted to get some posts out here several times already this year. Just too tired to make it happen until now.

However, I'm not nearly as tired as a technology/idea that I realized today I want to see die off much quicker then is currently happening. Voice mail. When I say voice mail, I'm using it as a general term to refer to answering machines, and any kind of voice mail such as those at offices, or used by cell phone providers.

They are all flawed. Steve Jobs obviously (to anybody not hiding under their rock) pointed out in his keynote that navigating in a sequential fashion is horribly outdated. That is just the start though. How much time each day do you waste listening to the following:

"I can't come to the phone right now, please leave your name and number after the beep and I'll get back to you"

Were you really wondering what to do when that person didn't answer and this mystery device started talking to you? Multiply that times each person you can't reach per day and you are just burning away minutes of your life. Put the 2 previous examples together, and now both parties are wasting double the time just trying to achieve asynchronous communication.

Why? We have already defeated this problem. It is called email. While not perfect, it is hands down better than anything voicemail has done.

So, we need smarter phone systems. Do like Vonage and send messages as audio clips via email (or optionally do speech to text as well). Then you don't need Job's iPhone, you simply need a phone that can do IMAP/POP.

Next, the stupid greeting has to go. Let your phone display a status on the screen, just like IM. You can quickly find out that I'm away, busy, screening, running from the plague, etc.

Make it so.