Fables of the reconstruction

Obama's Tech Team

Profiled here. Interesting read. Impossible to tell how much of it is true or accurate, of course. They're fucking geniuses, especially in retrospect. Of course.

A couple of points:

1. They are all dudes. You could weave a fucking rug with all the facial hair. Why are they all dudes? What happens to women coders who try to get in the door? Maybe they get laughed at or subtly discouraged. Maybe it's a toxic atmosphere.
2. The article claims the tech guys didn't start out as politically engaged but ended up that way in mid-'12. They had built this great machine to do something, and that was to win an election, and then they became afraid of losing. "[L]osing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices while they coded." No mention of a single issue they cared about, so I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt. These guys make bank. Politics does not touch their lives except for things like net neutrality. Suddenly they're politically energized? No, probably, they're suddenly aware they won't be profiled in The Atlantic if they lose.

Whatever. I don't give a shit whether the people working for us actually share our goals so long as their incentives are lined up with ours. 

(Via Cole.)

My Outgoing Message is a Fax Machine Noise

Finally figured out how to stop people from leaving me voicemails.

No Next Kin

Based on the ads alone, I thought this device was doomed:

In what may be one of the biggest blunders in mobile phone  history, Microsoft has decided to immediately halt production on its line of Kin phones after it showed extremely disappointing sales.

The Kin line launched just 48 days ago and was sort of a bridge between Microsoft's old mobile phone platform and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system. However, despite a very large marketing budget and a lot of effort in research and development, sales were really poor.

The name was weird, too.  "The Kin"? Doesn't it sound like a horror movie? Maybe it was a horror movie. All I know from the ad I saw is that it was a device that allowed annoying-looking 20-somethings to post that they were going to see The Roots on all possible social networking sites simultaneously.  I thought, wow, they have as much contempt for their target market as I do - and then I remembered, Microsoft, duh.

What Your Email Address Says About You

Virtual Astroturf

Boing Boing: 

Telcos' secret plans to use fake "citizens groups" to kill Net Neutrality

Report: Army Spy Plane Helped Catch Bomber. Me: I Doubt It.

Noah Schachtman passes along a TV news report that was taken down without explanation:

“In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport.”

He then geeks out over the technology, but I call bullshit on the whole story. If the FBI had Shahzad's cell phone number, all they needed to do to listen to his phone calls was wiretap his line. It would be quick, given the state of the evidence it would be easy to get a warrant, and unlike a spy plane over a particular location, it would catch his conversations no matter where in the world he was.

The details of what exactly went down May 1-3 are still unclear, so spin, misinformation and mistakes - whichever this was - fills the void.

Sign of the Banking Times

Who uses checks anymore? Apparently, far fewer people. From my bank:

Text Me, Email if Text is Too Short, Don't Call Unless Someone's Dead, And For Fuck's Sake Don't Leave Me a Voicemail No Matter What

1o Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone.

So Real It's Fake

If you had asked me how much of the outdoor shots on TV were faked, I wouldn't have guessed 100%:

Dirty Fucking Hippie Field Trip

A bunch of liberal bloggers met with Biden's chief economist at the White House to talk about the stimulus. Looking at this picture closely, I had to laugh:

Which one of these things is not like the other? Answer under the cut. 

Fruit

Literacy Through Video Games

Tycho at Penny Arcade, on one gaming company's decision to make Dante's Inferno the basis for their new release:

What they are actually doing is reprinting the seven century old poem, appending game assets, and then sheathing the whole thing in game-specific branding.

Maybe it isn't entirely forthright, putting a crusader badass the cover of your medieval allegory - but I don't care. In fact, I support this kind of thing wholeheartedly: fact is, sometimes you got to lie to a motherfucker. If showing a dude holding a giant spine with an aftermarket scythe affixed is what it takes to get young men to read a single page of the classics, than so be it.

You could teach someone anything if you just made it part of a fun-to-play video game. If, for example, there were a RPG that required you to speak a common phrase of Japanese (e.g., "Excuse me young lady, I would like to purchase your underwear") in order to launch your devastating magic orb attack on some level seven druidic elf or some shit, you'd be fluent in no time.

Why Is There Twitter in My Google?

I just searched a name and one of the results was his recent tweets. I don't know how to feel about this. Convenience or annoyance?

Panic Attack

Amazing that movie tech is so cheap now. This short film was made on a $300 budget:

After 5 million YouTube views, Producer Fede Alvarez has just landed a $30 million contract from Sam Raimi to make a Hollywood film. (Via Phawker.)

Things to Do On Facebook When You're Dead

Here:

We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized.

Age Ranges

Mobile phone usage types by age, from youngest to oldest:

1. Not permitted to own a mobile by their parents (<13).
2. Use mobile phones for internet and to text and talk but don't leave voicemail messages (13-21).
3. Use mobile phones for internet, to text and talk and use voicemail (21-35).
4. Use mobiles to talk and use voicemail (36-55).
5. Use mobiles to talk (55-65).
6. Own a mobile phone but rarely uses it (65-70).
7. Own a mobile phone because a family member gave it to them but don't know how to use it (70-75).
8. Don't own a mobile phone (75+).

Categories overlap at the margins.

Source: Me.

Pickin' and a Grinnin'

It's not that I mind, really. But someone explain to me how I got a hit from the HeeHaw website today in my referrer log. Please.

Today, Asurion Kicks Ass

My Treo 700 - which itself was a replacement phone I got from Asurion last April - developed a keyboard problem and they are shipping me a brand new Centro overnight.

While the Centro is hardly a cutting-edge phone, the point is that the call only took a few minutes and the issue is going to get totally resolved in less than 24 hours. (Similarly, if I had once again dropped and broken a phone I would have received the same service, although I would have had to pay a $50 deductible.) One reason I can never own an iPhone is that AT&T does not offer insurance with it. If you break it, you have to replace it yourself - at around $500.

Facebook Relents on TOS Change - For Now

Terms of Use Update

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

The last sentence was there until just a second ago - now the blog itself is missing. Whatever, they gave up, temporarily.

Update: The ever-changing non-denial denial, er, clarification:

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of good feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Almost there, dudes. Try to get someone involved in drafting your response who isn't pissed off at your members for, like, noticing shit.

Update on Facebook TOS: "Go Ahead and Be Outraged."

Amanda French:

With today’s outrage over Facebook’s newly altered Terms of Service at its peak, I figured I’d do a quick comparison of their terms of service as regards user-uploaded content to the terms specified by other social networking sites, just to see if said outrage is fully justified. It looks as though the finger-pointing at the Bush robots.txt file wasn’t justified, for instance, and I was guilty of spreading that story.

Conclusion? Go ahead and be outraged. Facebook’s claims to your content are extraordinarily grabby and arrogant.

She then breaks down the ways Facebook's TOS is way beyond what other sites use. Her objections come down to these two:

• No one else besides Facebook keeps the license to your stuff permanently, even after you have deleted your account.
• Facebook claims it has a license to any content on your other websites if you post a "Share this on Facebook" link on it.

The way I read the FB TOS, it's worse than that: I think they're claiming a license to any material you link to from FB. But whatever; it's incredibly overreaching.

Update 2/18/09: FB reverts to the old TOS, for now.

Bloglines in Death Spiral

Bloglines, a web-based feed reader that I started using in 2003, experienced significant problems with in 2006, and abandoned early this year, is apparently heading down the intertubes:

Users who hadn’t already left Bloglines for Google Reader and other functional RSS readers are doing so now, largely because Bloglines has stopped working and the company has done absolutely nothing to communicate to users what is going on or when it might be fixed.

Even Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher, who sold the company to Ask.com in 2005, is ready to jump ship. In a Twitter message yesterday he said “Bloglines, please stop sucking. It’s been a couple weeks now. I don’t want to have to move to Google Reader. Sigh.”

Google Reader's current status: Awesome.

My First Real Comcast Internet Outage

They are the stuff of legend, though. Until now I really have had nothing to complain about.

Jury duty tomorrow. Then minor surgery Friday. Shaping up to be a great week.

Amenities

Denver International Airport has free wi-fi supported by a tolerable advertising banner. See, now is that so hard? I expect Philadelphia to catch up sometime next decade.

Ghost Surrendered

My laptop hard drive has died again, I think for the final time.

Blogging from the Treo.

The Democratic Congress Takes a Stand - Against Cell Phones on Planes

Trivial, but it's got my support:

Cell phone calls on airplanes in flight are not only unsafe, they're obnoxious and they should be permanently banned, according to some members of Congress.

House members, most of whom board airplanes almost every week, traded horror stories Thursday about their worst experiences with annoying fellow passengers who talk loudly on cell phones before takeoff and after landing. One lawmaker said his wife sat next to a woman who loudly discussed her sex life on the phone.

His wife was jealous, the Congressman did not say.

Another House member topped that with the passenger sitting him behind on one flight who got a "dear John" phone call from either his wife or sweetheart just before takeoff. The begging and pleading was just terrible to listen to, he said. Finally, with the plane ready to take off, a flight attendant had to threaten to have U.S. Marshals drag the man off the plane before he finally put his phone away.

I have never understood why people beg and plead when someone dumps them. It just strikes me as utterly stupid and pointless. If you reach that point, it's over. Especially when the person breaks up with over the phone right before your plane is about to take off.

On the other hand, I tentatively am in favor of wi-fi on planes, but only if it blocks VOIP, obviously.

You know what would come immediately after that? Entrepreneurs offering on-board tech support.

Voicemail Pushing Up Daisies

I was just ahead of my time:

Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it. ...

It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily. ...

How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?” ...

Oh, also, if you want me to pick up, don't block your number. Only telemarketers do that.

Google Earth Firefox Plugin

Very cool.

(Via.)

Aluminum Foil Technology

The aluminum foil box locking tab: One of those many little things that at certain points would have come in very handy if I had known it.

(Via Interesting Times.)

Exoskeleton

This is intriguing:

The company's site is here.

(Via Noah Shachtman at Danger Room.)

I Used One of These For My First Job Out of College

The Compaq "luggable" computer weighed 28 pounds and was the size of a sewing machine:

To transport it, you locked the keyboard in place over the front and carried it by the handle on the other side, like a suitcase.

The first time I ever had to get treated for a rotator cuff injury was after traveling with one of these.

It was state-of-the-art. Nice, bright monochrome screen, two 5.25" floppy drives, and 128K of RAM standard, whether you needed that much or not.

You put the MS-DOS floppy in one drive, then you put the application floppy in the other, say, Wordperfect for DOS or Lotus 1-2-3. That's right, there was no hard drive. Everything was saved to floppy. Which could easily melt if you left them out on your carseat on a warm day.

I wrote a Lotus macro for one assignment and the chief IT person at the company - who I think was also the benefits person - called me a "power user."

It cost $3,590, I just learned, which is $7,618 in today's dollars. Wow.

Here's the review of it from the January, 1983 issue of Byte Magazine.

(Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.)

The Smart Car: Not So Smart

So, Philly Carshare has a Smart Passion (it's $8.90 an hour), so I took it to the grocery store today:

Yeah, it's tiny. Check those wheels - crying out for rims, aren't they? Do they make rims that small?

More pics and my evaluation after the jump.

Present Future

Duncan asks, "What happened to the future?":

It's occurred to me recently that all the whiz-bang gadgets predicted either already exist in some form, or are unlikely to exist anytime soon. If one were to write a technology-centric non-dystopian novel about, say, the year 2040, what neato things would we imagine?

I can't come up with much.

All the recent (post-1975) technological innovations were outgrowths of trends and cultural desires that existed long before then. Using that as a framework, I think we can come up with a few ideas about where things might go. I don't know if my predictions are "non-dystopian", but here they are:

1. Medical innovation: Americans are health-obsessed and desire both more control over and information about their health. At the same time, there are some really exciting technical developments that could provide real benefits while responding to the public's demands. For example, gene therapy, stem cell treatments and nanotech drug delivery hold out the possibility of dramatic improvements in the care of certain ailments.  The layman has the impression that the key to making these seemingly-magical treatments work is early detection, so the demand for constant or frequent, inexpensive, consumer-administered monitoring will be high. Both home-based and wearable hardware for monitoring will be developed, as well as new over-the-counter tests. Also, consumers want drugs which will improve their lives, not just cure disease. Viagra is just the start. More and more effective drugs which make us healthier and enhance specific desirable characteristics will be developed in response to that demand. All of this requires more and better information about the possible choices, a need that will be filled both online by blogs and consumer forums, and by medical entrepreneurs like independent health coaches.
2. Entertainment and communication: Take the cell phone, the ipod, handheld gaming devices and broadband internet and make them more powerful, faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous, and what do you get? Overload. Managing the data stream will be the story. That means more creative and intelligent ways of screening out unwanted contact and information, and automating the process of finding relevant data and contacts. Spam filters are the Model T. What the hell does that mean? I don't know. All I know is that people have been talking about how your toaster will have an IP address in the future, and I just don't see it happening. Geeks like to talk about capacities as if they were predestined realities, and that's not the case. What grew and shaped the internet, for example, was porn. Why? Because people wanted to look at it without buying it through the mail or at a shop. It's pretty simple: What do people want? They want to select the amount of information and electronic contact they are exposed to. Give them that ability.
3. Personal energy generation: Every list needs three items, so here's the third. High energy costs and energy-related environmental concerns are here to stay. People are working on new technologies like fuel cells, super-long-life batteries, home solar power, etc. Some of these are going to have real breakthroughs while others languish, we don't know which, but something radical will emerge. Maybe you'll be able to generate sufficient electricity to run your house by exploiting the heat gradient between your roof in summer and the dirt ten feet under your basement.  Maybe office buildings (currently the number one source of greenhouse gases) will be able to have their own fuel-cell power plants on the roof, every window will also be a solar panel and the building shell will have the ability to "breathe" or become super-insulating depending on the weather.

Perhaps all this is wrong, and the future is dystopian: personal body armor and anti-pollution full-body suits. Wait and see.

Apropos of nothing: It just occurred to me that wikipedia links are not true permalinks, because the content is by definition constantly changing. Should you have the ability to link to a specific snapshot of a page (hosted by wikipedia, of course) that existed at any given time? That would create a huge multiplier for the number of pages hosted there, which may be impossible. Also, it requires the creation of a tool that compares two snapshots and highlights the differences automatically, which is a relatively trivial task.

Spam Turns 30

This message was followed by someone emailing around a nude picture of a model:

It was 30 years ago this Saturday that users of Arpanet, a U.S. government-designed precursor to the Internet, logged onto their accounts to find what is considered the first piece of unsolicited commercial e-mail ever sent.

It was a pitch for a new computer. "We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSYSTEM-20 family at the two product presentations we will be giving in California this month," read the missive, sent by a salesman named Gary Thuerk on May 3, 1978.

Thuerk's e-mail prompted an aggravated discussion among the service's users, the relatively small number of high-level academics with access to computers that then cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"This is a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory!" one of the hundreds of users [ed: future Sen. Al Gore] on Thuerk's recipient list complained in a public reply.

Funny how spam and porn are now the biggest revenue generators on the web.

Google Maps Presentation of Primary Election Results

Google maps has been displaying the primary results.  Up until recently, the way they showed the results nationally was by coloring each state to show who won the popular vote there, yellow for Hillary, blue for Obama. When you selected a particular state, the data got a little more granular: It showed how each Congressional district had gone, again by coloring it yellow or blue.

Within the last few days, they changed it to provide more data visually. Instead of simply coloring the state one way or the other, each state is marked by a pointer of that color, and the size of the pointer is proportional to the number of votes cast in that state. When you click on the pointer, it gives you the date of the contest and actual vote totals for each candidate. And now when you click on an individual state, the vote results in every county are shown, again with a color-coded and size-adjusted marker.

For example, here's Texas (click to embiggen):

Pretty cool. Each of the markers is clickable, and it gives you the actual vote total for each candidate in each county.

Bloglines is Down; Google Reader is Not

I used bloglines as my feed reader for the past couple of years, but I have noticed in the past that it takes a while to update feeds. And today it's not updating at all. And so I also discovered how easy it is to export your subscriptions to google reader. Which is not down, and which seems to update very quickly. So, just like that, I think I've abandoned one web app for another.

Comcast Internet Update

So, at the conclusion of my tech travails in mid-December, I said:

[I]n the first I am sure of many installments regarding customer service, Comcast scheduled installation for this morning between 8 and 10. At 11, I called, and the computer told me that my appointment was for 10:30 to 12:30. Okay. At 12:35 I called and got a person - to their credit - who spoke something very much like my language and she told me the install guy was running late. Once he did show up (only 10 minutes later), he was pretty quick and thorough, despite having what appeared to be prison tattoos.

So, a week ago I come home and the internet connection is not working. Here we go, I thought, and called Comcast. Here's the timeline:

4:18 p.m. Placed first call to internet tech support.

4:20 p.m. Call disconnected.

4:22 p.m. Placed second call to internet tech support. Reached James, who tells me my account is not active because my installation was canceled. I tell him installation took place on December 15th and I had been happily using the service until that very day. He is nonplussed, then offers to transfer me to billing.

4:30 p.m. Am placed on hold as I am transferred to billing. I emerge in billing's voicemail system, but eventually reach Tiffany. Tiffany also says my installation had been canceled, and I explain that is not true, the install guy came out, he installed it, and I paid him $33.  That's when she stopped me.

"He asked for money?"
"Yes, he said I had to pay $33; I gave it to him in cash."
"Oh, no," Tiffany said.

You know, other than the prison tattoos, the install guy did set off my alarm bells. First of all, he looked like an opiates guy; maybe heroin, more likely oxy. Second, he said he had been doing this for 15 years, but he didn't look a day over 30. Third, he was very concerned I secure my password "because there were a lot of people out there who would rip you off." Fourth, I hadn't expected to have to pay, so I had only $32 in my wallet, and he started to say "Oh, that's alright" while reaching for it, when I produced the last dollar in change. Now, what bill collector accepts a payment that's a buck short? So should I have known? Yep. Did I care? Nope, because the internet was working, and that's all I wanted. What apparently happened is this guy got a job with Comcast, then did a sort of bust-out operation where he installed people's cable and collected cash, but didn't turn in the paperwork on the installation.

4:40 p.m. Tiffany corrects my account info and very apologetically explains she has to transfer me back to internet tech support to turn the connection back on. Places me on hold. Comes back a minute later to again apologize and say it would be just a little longer. Back on hold another minute, then returns to hand me off directly to a live internet tech support person, Tiu (or Tu, I didn't get a spelling).

4:48 p.m. Tiu walks me through setting up the modem and making sure my account has the right MAC address.

5:02 p.m. Internet connection working again.

I don't blame Comcast at all for the perfidy of the install guy; on the other hand, they corrected the problem in less than 45 minutes, and aren't charging me for the first month. Plus, the 6 Mb service has been awesome.

Grade for the incident: A.
Overall grade so far: A.

Gmail Hacked! Read This and Check Your Settings - Now

If you use Gmail, read this guy's story and check to make sure you haven't been hacked, too.

(Via Adam Pash at lifehacker.)

Technological Meltdown Epilogue

So after a few years of putting up with DSL, because I am a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I finally got cable internet today. The only reason I realized that my former ISP (a) had one-tenth the speed of cable and (b) cost twice as much was that it went out, then in, then out, then in .... so I said screw it and found an alternative.

But in the first I am sure of many installments regarding customer service, Comcast scheduled installation for this morning between 8 and 10. At 11, I called, and the computer told me that my appointment was for 10:30 to 12:30. Okay. At 12:35 I called and got a person - to their credit - who spoke something very much like my language and she told me the install guy was running late. Once he did show up (only 10 minutes later), he was pretty quick and thorough, despite having what appeared to be prison tattoos.

So, that fixes the desktop. My laptop was in the shop for a week, and for $40 they told me the hard drive had failed, although it can boot up and load the safe mode introduction screen. For a mere $355 more, they say they can fix it and retrieve my files. I sought a second opinion and will be attempting a life-saving procedure myself in the next few days. That porn on there was free to begin with and it's going to stay that way.

Technological Meltdown Part the Third

I am in full-on internet withdrawal. My laptop is probably dead, as is my DSL service for the desktop. I am scheduled to get cable internet on Saturday morning, but in the meantime can only post this from a friend's place, like some kind of web vagabond.

Technological Meltdown Part II

So Thursday, as I was heading out of town, my desktop's DSL connection went down, my laptop died, and my Treo started acting up. Today the phone is fixed, the laptop is in the shop, and the DSL - well, it's up sometimes, down others, and I am going to bite the bullet and switch to Comcast. Hell, Verizon's EVDO would probably be faster than my crappy DSL provider.

Technological Meltdown

So my home DSL went out, rendering my desktop useless, and then my laptop died, and then my web-enabled phone developed issues, just before I left town for the weekend. I am posting this from an internet cafe in the Chicago airport. Don't think I'll be around much for a few days/ But really is that all that different from the usual?

Google Sketchup

This is pretty amazing:

Google SketchUp 6 is a 3D modeling software tool that’s easy to learn, simple to use, and lets you place your models in Google Earth. Are you remodeling a kitchen, landscaping your back yard or adding a deck to your home? Google SketchUp makes it faster, easier and a lot more fun. From simple to complex, from conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp helps you see your vision before you build it.

To get an idea of how powerful  and simple to use it is, someone has a bunch of demonstration videos up.

(Via Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing.)

TomTom One GPS $200 $160 at Toysrus

Back in mid-August, the TomTom One GPS was on sale at Toys R Us for $200, now it's at $160 (and possibly even less; read the link). In-store sales only.

How to Make a Hyperlink

I notice a lot of people in blog comments still paste whole URLs rather than trying to create a text hyperlink. Is it laziness? Against their religion? Lack of knowledge?

In case it's the last, here's the format for a hyperlink:

[a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com"]Your text here.[/a]

Except use angle brackets <> instead of the square brackets [] .  It's very simple.

TomTom One GPS $200 at Toysrus

Until August 18, Toyrus has a printable 20% off coupon (in-store only), which gets you the TomTom One GPS for $200.  I bought the same unit last year and I love it. It paid for itself in the first month, when on two different occasions I was on the highway and heard about accidents ahead. I hit the "Avoid part of route" button on the TomTom and it detoured me around the traffic jam on the highway on surface streets I was otherwise totally unfamiliar with, saving me hours of being stuck. The other really cool feature is the unit is slim enough to fit in your pocket, so it works just as well when you're hiking in the country or navigating a city on foot as it does in a car.

(Via SlickDeals.)

You Know What Seriously Sucks?

Comedy Central's online video player.  It just never works right.

Spotting Online Scams

Ten out of ten. Pretty easy, really. I think my mom shouldn't do online banking, though.

(Via Gina Trapani at Lifehacker.)

T-Mobile Cell Phone That Automatically Switches to Any Free WiFi Connection

NYTimes.com:

It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.

Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

These phones hand off your calls from Wi-Fi network to cell network seamlessly and automatically, without a single crackle or pop to punctuate the switch. As you walk out of a hot spot, fewer and fewer Wi-Fi signal bars appear on the screen, until — blink! — the T-Mobile network bars replace them. (The handoff as you move in the opposite direction, from the cell network into a hot spot, is also seamless, but takes slightly longer, about a minute.)

T-Mobile gives you a router for home for free, and the service works at the 8,500 T-Mobile hotspots in places like Starbucks and Borders. Now, as the article admits, T-Mobile's regular network is not exactly the best, and this move is a way for them to avoid the cost of upgrading that network. That undercuts the competitive pressure on Verizon Wireless and the other leading carriers to offer the same thing. Still, this is a good development.

(Via Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing.)

Street-Level Google Maps

I don't understand the mild freakout that people are having about street-level google maps. They've been perfectly happy with geotagging flickr photos for a while, so what's the difference if - eventually - there is a picture of every foot of every street in every city in the country?

More the Blog Petri Dish

It's based on Technorati links, so take this with a large grain of salt, but here is Discover Magazine's visual depiction of the blogosphere:

The white spots are "hubs" around which various communities revolve:

1. Daily Kos, in the liberal blog area, is the biggest blog in the world, bar none. Note that it's off to one side, which is consistent with the fact that Kossacks read (and link to) Kos pretty exclusively. I imagine the smaller white dot is Duncan.
2. BoingBoing at the center of a cloud of gadget/tech blogs.
3. Livejournal .
4. Michelle Malkin (not instahack?!) and right-wing blogs.
5. Porn blogs.
6. Sports blogs.

I was suprised that Kos was more popular than gadget blogs. These stats are based on links, so would still think a traffic-based map would show a different result. I was also surprised, as I said, that Reynolds is not the center of the right-wing world, and also surprised how many right-wing blogs there are. Intelligence is a normal distribution?

(Via Luke at The Blog Brief.)