Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall

So occasionally I’ll come up with these ideas that I wish were implemented in real life. The only problem is that I’m too lazy to do it. So here we go, free ideas:

Cell phones should have away messages. Push a button, record a 10 second message (”I’m at the gym”), and that will be the default voicemail until you turn it off or change it again. I figured this was a pretty obvious idea, but after running it by a few people, I guess it isn’t as obvious as I had thought.

#2
This is an idea that I started thinking about more and more as debate over Net Neutrality heated up. It is a little out there, but stay with me. I would like to see someone build a browser network that would sit on top of the existing internet. That is to say, A browser that in addition to viewing normal webpages, could also view pages located on someone’s computer (another user of this browser). “Well,” you say, “that’s just stupid - you’re just adding a worthless layer to the internet! That is exactly what the internet is.” The thing that makes this idea unique is that this browser uses bittorrent’s protocol to serve up files and information. So instead of a website having limited bandwidth, a site’s bandwidth is only limited by it’s popularity. Of course, it would still need a server (or just a computer) somewhere to serve up the original files. But as more people view that site, they can take the burden off the original machine. So I suppose this is really more of a P2P app that serves webpages, instead of a browser. Although I want to keep the idea of a browser, because it should not feel any different than using a browser. If a standard website is called (from the normal internet) this should still be able to fetch it.
(I concede that this is not perfect, and there would be some problems with server-side scripts and/or databases. I have a few ideas about how to fix that, but I’ll leave it to a smarter person than I to solve)

I don’t think either of these ideas are original, and I’m sure someone out there has thought them before, but they are currently not implemented, and extremely feasible. Take these ideas and run. I don’t want credit, I just want to use them.

After Midnight by moe. w/ John Medeski, Trey Anastasio, Sam Bush, and Jennifer Hartswick

Follow up to Don’t Be Evil

So for about a week now I’ve been using Gmail for all of my email (5 addresses, one place to get em all), Google Reader for my RSS feeds (34 of them), Google Calendar for events (there isn’t much happening, so there is very little there), and Google’s startpage as one stop for all of that. Google has some other nifty services, but either I already used them or I don’t need them (like Google Earth and Maps, which I’ve used since they came out).

As a startpage, Google works pretty well. I’ve got semi useful widgets and links to places I want to go. One cool little thing they’ve added is page themes, which actually change with the time of day. I like that.

Gmail is incredible. I don’t know what more I can say about it. That’s untrue: I recieve email from 5 different email addresses (three of which Google checks and recieves via POP3, the other two are fowarded), automatically sort them with filters, and can search through them easily. I can also send email from each one of those email addresses, including my uconn address. And all this is available to me anywhere with an internet connection. I only wish I had done this earlier.

Reader is another story. Google Reader needs more work before I can sing its praises. It does adequately replace Sage (the firefox extention I had previously used to view RSS feeds), lets me organize feeds into folders and allows me to read more posts quicker than before. But it is in sore need of some features. I’d like to see a search, so I could find specific things in my feeds quickly. Maybe even a smart folder feature (a la OSX).

But my main complaint about Reader is one that I’ve already complained about before. I feel even more distant from the sites I’m reading. Even more so than when I was using Sage. As a result I read my feeds less. I don’t know what Google could do to help this, or if there is anything they can do. But that doesn’t make it any less of an issue.

Google Calendar seems nice, but I haven’t had too much of an opportunity to play with it, being summer and all. It will be tested more in the fall.

As for the other services Google offers, they mostly don’t do anything for me. I don’t use blogger because I’ve got a blog that I can hack here, I don’t much like Picasa (viva Flickr!), and although SketchUp is fun, I have no use for it.

I’ll make new posts concerning this as things change.

I’ve also tussled a little bit with the Google Apps Suite. Since that is a bit more niche, you’ll have to check the extended to read about that.

(more…)

Better Change Your Mind by Apollo Sunshine

So the schedule for Bonnaroo 2007 is up, and it gives me a pretty different impression than what I got from just looking at the artist lineup.

There are a number of conflicting sets, so I’ll either need to miss some or all of a large number of artists. Which is probably ok. I knew it would happen, coming to a festival as large as Bonnaroo, but I’d rather see entire sets. There are a few bands who I’ll see no matter what. But otherwise, it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of tent-hopping.

Here is what I’m planning on seeing, but I’m going to try and be as flexible as possible.

A few comments:
- I will see The String Cheese Incident and Keller Williams (WMD’s) no matter what. This is SCI’s last year touring with Bill Nershi, so I want to see them while I still can. And Keller is touring with his ‘dream band’ so I’m not going to miss that either.
- The first conflict on my list is The Black Keys vs. an acoustic Tea Leaf Green set. I’m leaning towards TLG, because the tent is going to be packed, so showing up half way into it isn’t a great option.
- The next conflict isn’t one that I’m debating, just one I’m upset about. String Cheese vs. STS9 vs. TBD (superjam?) vs. Mago featuring Billy Martin & John Medeski. I’ll stay for the whole SCI set, because its likely that STS9 will still be playing. If that other set is indeed the superjam, then I shall be sad. But not too sad, because SCI, Martin and Medeski will be on stage at that same time, so the superjam won’t be too amazing. I’ll keep telling myself that.
- Next is Hot Tuna and Ziggy Marley vs. Railroad Earth and acoustic Warren Haynes. I’m thinking I’ll end up at the later, because they’re both in the same tent, and Railroad will be good, but Warren Haynes will absolutely pack that tent. It would be good to be there early.
- Keller Williams vs. Spoon vs. Ween vs. Ben Harper vs. Franz Ferdinand. I’ll see Keller but I’m sad about the bands I’ll miss.
- The Flaming Lips vs. Gov’t Mule vs. Galactic w/lots of guests. Fuck. These were three bands I really wanted to see. Odds are I’ll make TFL my priority, and check in on Mule once its over. They’ll still be jammin, I’m pretty sure of that. I’d like to see Galactic, but I just don’t think it’ll happen.
- Wolfmother vs. T-Bone Burnett vs. Flight of The Conchords plus Demetri Martin. This one is really damn hard. I have no idea what I’m going to do here.

I think those are the big ones. Otherwise its just overlap, and I’ll probably just catch a little of this, and a little of that. All in all, if it works out well, I’ll be seeing over 30 artists over the course of 4 days. :D