I have had phones from, Cingular, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon and I must say Verizon has been the worst of the bunch. It is obvious that their business model is focused on selling their own half-assed services and preventing you from using any other alternatives. I’ll admit, I love my LGVX9800 but only with the installation of BitPim. With Bitpim I am able to have a lot more access to the phone than Verizon wants you to. In other words I can finally do stuff you should be able to do with out having to pay extra for. Such as: synching with outlook, adding custom ringtones, adding custom video etc. I also pay for the extra web package which allows me unlimited access to the web but not unlimited access to their content. Those crappy videos and wallpapers are extra. The welcome web screen when I am accessing the web seems to be redesigned every few months with the addition of more advertising and less content. There is not much screen real estate to begin with. Oh and Verizon locked the phone so I can’t download cool apps such as Google maps, Google Mail and Yahoo mobile. But if I want to pay and extra 4 bucks a day I can use their map/gps system.
I’ve also noticed that Verizon likes to make the user experience deceptively difficult. All I’m asking for is a a quick summery on their website when I log in that tells me how many text/pix/flix messages total I have sent and how many I have before I go over my limit. What I get is how many pix/flix messages, how many text messages, how many IN messages and how many IN Pix/Flix I have sent. All tallied separate and nothing indicating the amount remaining. (”IN” does not mean incoming messages either, it means people in your network.) It’s all very confusing, a no brainer fix and something that would keep me happy preventing me from leaving their crappy service. Why don’t they fix it? Because they only make money on those .15 message you send after you go over your limit.
The best was a few weeks ago when I received what looked to be a piece of junk mail from Verizon in my mail box. It was so convincing it went right into my trash pile. Fortunately for me I had heard a podcast that mentioned what exactly was hidden behind this mask. In the envelope was a letter from Verizon letting me know that they plan to sell my call information to third parties unless I call and opt out. And if I don’t call within 30 days of receiving the letter they would assume I was opting in. What a deceptive piece of crap.
Early this week Google announced their Android open Handset Alliance. Essentially they are developing a a free operating system for mobile phones that will integrate with the web and other Google type web applications. I am a big fan of simple yet customizable and this has been something I have been keeping my eye on for the last few months. Sure enough… Sprint and T-Mobile Not Verizon will be on board. Come January when my painful 2 year death sentence with Verizon is up. I shall not be returning.
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A startup in California that deals with Wikis was purchased by none other than our friend Mr Moneybags Himself, Google.
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The now Google owned YouTube recently deleted 30,000 files after a Japanese company complained of copyright violations. Soon, all copyrighted material will be gone from YouTube and all we’ll see up there is lame homeade videos and anything that has been paid to be put up there such as Universal authorizing the release of thier latest movie trailers onto YouTube.
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Jeez! I think we all know what I am refering to. If not, that obsurd monatary amount in the title refers to the price Google paid to aquire YouTube this week. After paying off the VC funders each founder is going to receive something like $200 million. Gawd I wish I was part of that team. Well despite the large amount it does make some sense. Even though they had teamed up with Myspace for an ad program Google had yet to have a true social Network. They offered Friendster a bunch of money some time back but the now failing social network quickly declined (and is now probably kicking themselves) Also, Google Video just wasn’t up to par with YouTube and what do large companies do when their competition is defeating them? They buy them! It will be interesting to see what happens with this property. It is known that there is alot of copyrighted content that has been illegally posted to YouTube. No legal action had been taken because it was clear that YouTube was not making any money and really didnt have any. Companies have been waiting for YouTube to be purchased so that they could sue someone with Money. Will that content come down? We’ll have to wait and see.
In other Google News. The recently aquired Writely is offically no longer called Writely and has been paired with Google spreadsheets to be called Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Well first things first. If you plan to take a trip to a more remote part of the country… Do not, I repeat DO NOT use Google Maps. We used it to steer us towards The Graet Sand Dunes national Park and unfortunatly it used roads that most of us wouldn’t expect. After driving about 15 miles (90min) on pure insanity we had to turn back and find another way. A 4hr trip turned into an 8 hr trip. My friend looked up the directions a little more when we came home on Sunday and he sent me the following: “I looked on the maps to see where you guys would have gone if you kept following the road on the way to the park on Friday, and it would have turned into the jeep trail that snakes through the park. But get this, it would have taken you over the continental divide on that mountain we were looking at from camp Sat. night with the snow on it! It’s supposed to be a real rugged jeep trail that only very high clearance trucks can use.” … Ha! Despite that the Dunes were Awesome! I can’t wait to go back… such a sureal experience. Oh yeah we also hit up some crazy gator farm in the area and had an interesting Experience at a local Hot Springs Spa. (you’ll have to ask about that one) It was a great weekend despit the driving. I took a few pictures, you can find them here. Tomorrow Aileen, Mat and I are flying back to Ohio for Tony’s wedding. I’m looking forward to seeing the Family and spending a few days in Ohio. We’ll be in Akron, Columbus and Cincy… hmm more driving, Great!
Well apparently our friend Google is using their new game “Google Image Labeler” as a way to get proper tags attached to Images that come up via thier image search. I guess a user goes head to head against another ransom user and has a certain amount of time to give as many words as they can think of that explains a random image that is displayed. Any time a word a user inputs matches a word entered by the user they are paired up with, a point is awarded. Google then takes taht word and ates it to the image search data. Clever.
According to this article, Google is informally complaining to govts about the new Microsoft browser because of it’s a search box and by default the search utilizing MSN. Well of course they are going to use their own search engine. Come on Google! When I log into Gmail I don’t see an option to use Yahoo for my searches. Your doing the same thing. Plus, The infamous Firefox Browser uses Google as its default search. So quit your whining. Besides in the new IE you can easily swich the search engine in that box. It took me less than a minute to make Google My default search engine in the new IE. Anyway, I’m not plugging the new IE by any means, I’m still a firefox user, I’m just shocked at google acting like this. Though I guess when one gains a lot of power they like to flex their muscles.
Another app by google. It’s pretty cool and does everything I pretty much expected. Drag and drop etc etc. I was even able to (without much effort) import my outlook calendar. Now only if there was a sync function, that would be killer. That way at the end of the day I could just sync my outlook with the google calendar…. who knows what’ll happen.
http://www.google.com/calendar
UH Oh Google now has an ajax web page creator…
Only Time will Tell
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This article is almost exactly what I’ve been thinking. And the Google cube? That could be cool. Most people know i’m all about the thin client.
Industry Feeling Presence of the 800-Pound Google - Los Angeles Times
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Thanks Mat
Pretty funny. They even rap about about google maps.
YouTube - Lazy Sunday - SNL Digital Short
How long before Google (or anyone) buys this thing up.
Viva thin Client!
Writely - The Web Word Processor
And of course it Works!
(thanks jan)
Gmail Mobile
Well, I’m sure we saw it coming, Yahoo has unveiled a revamped, redesigned Maps Site which bares a striking resemblence to the new Google maps. Not quite as clean or smooth as Google But I do like the mini area map in the top right corner. The Live traffic option is real cool, Hmm No satellite view. I’ll have to mess with it more. Check it out here
We’re waiting mapquest!
A Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego type game played using Google Maps… Check it out Here