1. You know that toy you got so cheap on black friday? The race track that was less than 1/3 the price of a new one? Guess what. It’s a cheap Chinese knock off and there’s a reason they could sell it so cheap. Yes, they still are making a profit. (Cue demonic voice from Evil Dead 2: “Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!”) I should have learned after I got that $1000 scooter that seemed like such a good deal. It was great the first year and then started to break down every few weeks. Every time I’d go into the shop I’d find out some part was amazingly substandard. Eventually I just gave up repairing it.

Lesson? It’s better a few expensive quality toys than a bunch of cheaper ones. (Note: this isn’t a knock against China. After all the high quality stuff is probably made there too – my iPhone was after all)

2. You have a choice. You can put those gadgets together when it’s late Christmas Eve and you just want to go to sleep. Or you can try and get sleep, only to be awoken way earlier than you want and have to do the same thing only with a bunch of hyper kids bouncing around you demanding that it work. Trust me. Late night works better.

3. Do yourself a favor. Have a single box with receipts. Tape a piece of paper with a description (or photo) of each toy. It’ll make returning the inevitable broken toy easier. (No – I didn’t do this. But I wish I did as I vainly search for receipts that probably got thrown out with wrapping paper)

Ping is Apple’s new music social media service integrated into iTunes. The new version of iTunes, version 10, has been controversial to say the least. It made a number of pointless and arguably counterproductive UI features like making most of the icons grey. Want to fix the appearance? Check out this post of mine.

Anyway, on to Ping.

I think the general consensus is that Ping is a flop nearly as bad as Google’s attempt to make something like Twitter integrated into GMail. It’s come out that Apple had been negotiating with Facebook to have Ping heavily integrated with Facebook. Then at the last minute they had to disable the Facebook integration. (The reasons are a bit unclear. It could be Facebook just wanted too much money or potentially may be coming out with their own Android phone with this sort of stuff.)

Be that as it may, Ping seems distinctly not ready for prime time. At least the iTunes update that came out this week helped a bit. But I think this is a bit of a strike out by Apple. I think they were really counting on the Facebook integration and didn’t have anything as a backup. But honestly, if they needed Facebook they should have just disabled it and then had an other update in November with some alternative in place.

What’s interesting though is that some people appear to love Ping. And the recent changes this week really help with Ping. By default Ping says you “like” all the music in your library. However most of us have music in our library we don’t like. (My most played song is Lion’s Transformers which my five year old loves but I can’t stand) With the update you can just right click on a song to “like it.”

The downside to Ping? For some utterly bizarre reason you can only post about songs available in the iTunes store. Since major stuff isn’t on iTunes (say the Beatles) this is a bit annoying. Still this leave a lot open.

Even considering all the limits to Ping I wanted to try an experiment. Most of you guys use iTunes. Sign up for Ping and then post your user name here so we can follow you. I know most of you know way more music than I do. (In fact the past few years 90% of the music I’ve picked up is purely because of you guys on Kulturblog)

So my Ping Profile is Clark Goble. To copy your Ping user link, just go to Ping and then right click on your name at the top of the screen. Select Copy Link. I probably won’t have as much profound stuff as the rest of you. But I’ve put up a few short things. (Yes, the people I’m following is kind of embarrassingly sparse right now)

(Crossposted to Clark’s Tech Blog)

I’ve been confused for several years now about exactly how one indicates a humorous reaction in the online world–especially in IM conversations.  This is complicated by the fact that a) not all funny things are equally funny, and b) most people use multiple forms of laugh-indicators in online conversations, and I’m never sure as to their relative magnitudes.

Sometimes it’s easy: It’s certainly reasonable to assume that LOL > lol, and that ROTFLMAO > LOL.  However, what about Haha vs. HaHa? Or LOL vs. Hehe? How about a double (Heh Heh) against grammatically improper variants like lolz and Haaahahahhha?  I have come to believe that most of the humor indicators have some hierarchy in our respective minds, but I don’t think that these rankings are consistent across individuals.

Anyway, here is my far-from exhaustive Funny Hierarchy.

• Haha — The basic laugh indicator for me. I rarely go with extra -ha’s on this phrase, and almost never capitalize it.

• Hee – This is a phrase I don’t see often (mostly from John C.), but which seems to indicate “mischievous glee” over the shared funny. YMMV.

• Har — Like “Hee”, this phrase is limited to a few individuals (Supergenius is the main user) and I am completely baffled as to it’s meaning. The problem is that it’s the sort of phrase I would use to indicate sarcasm, or fake laughter (as in “Hardy-Har-Har”), but I’ve seen it used after some truly excellent funnies.

• Heh/Hehe – The single snort/chuckle. This is an important entry in my Funny Hierarchy, because it holds two important meanings.  First, it can mean something along the lines of “touche” when someone zings me in a humorous way; Second, it is my go-to phrase when someone says something that they think is funny, but which I actually don’t like.  In short, it’s my courtesy laugh.

• lol — I use mostly the single, lower-cased version when I’m too busy at work to pay much attention; it’s essentially an acknowledgment of receipt of a funny, but not really a high-five.  Similarly, when I am on the receiving end of a “lol” then I typically interpret it to mean “I’m too busy to care.”

• LOL — This is something I generally use to indicate shock or surprise funnies.  While it can also be used to indicate strong laughter, the surprise element is really the key element. It also begs for continued dialog, in my experience.

• lolz/lulz – If you’re ever on the receiving end of this from me, then feel proud–it’s the highest honor in my Funny Hierarchy.  These are used almost exclusively when I am laughing at something I truly should not be laughing at; in other words, if you can elicit a lolz/lulz from me, it means you’ve made laugh against my better judgment.

Unfortunately embedding is disabled for the video, but you can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5PyIVVKoWU

Definitely worth watching. More videos from other locations around Seattle are coming soon.

What other flash mob videos have grabbed your eye? I love the Internet.

My thoughts.

First, NBC’s attempt to rethinking the network and be more like Fox with just two hours of “real” programming per week clearly has failed. Even Jay Leno is going around saying he wished he stayed on the Tonight Show. The other networks are cashing in on NBC’s mistakes. How long will this last? Put Jay out of his misery guys! And would Law and Order be doing so badly were it on Wednesday night in place of Leno rather than Friday night?

Speaking of NBC, what do you think about Comcast buying a controlling interest in NBC and the NBC controlled networks? (i.e. SyFy, MSNBC, etc.) My guess is that this all has to do with two issues. Net neutrality and the attempt to move TV to the internet. First the latter. Apple is rumored to be coming out with a $30 subscription service to all television shows ala Hulu but that which works through iTunes. Clearly Comcast wouldn’t want such a thing since it would undermine cable. Is this Comcast trying to ensure NBC doesn’t end up on the iPhone and AppleTV ? I think so. Plus Comcast wants to have more of a say in net neutrality (it’d love to be able to cap Bit Torrent, Apple movie downloads and Skype) Being a media controller probably would give them a bit more leg up here. How? By saying they are the content manager as well as the distributor.

However you look at it there’s a big fight brewing over new media. With the XBox, Roku, and PS3 doing movies on demand (with the AppleTV as, at this stage, a bit of an also ran) there is a serious chance that television as we know it would become irrelevant. So you have folks who are getting shut out right now (Apple) trying to become relevant while the old guard are attempting to protect their ancient and increasingly questionable business model.

Speaking of that, as I discussed at my blog there are odd things afloat at Dish. They are coming out with Dish Online which right now does little. But it appears to be akin to the others for downloading movies over the internet. It’s just not finished yet. What’s weird are the very big ads for downloading HD movies through iTunes. Why would Dish be doing that unless there was a chance for iTunes syncing with your Dish receiver? Cross your fingers. The best thing that could happen to media is Apple taking control of Dish. (Note I don’t think in the least that will happen, but I’d settle for AppleTV like syncing)

Going on to TV. How are your shows doing. My wife’s favorite show, Ugly Betty, got relegated to Friday night and judging by the ratings isn’t long for this world. Quick, someone explain to me why any expensive show gets put on Friday or Saturday night when the target market doesn’t watch? Wouldn’t it make sense to just put cheap reality fare there?

Fringe has relatively low ratings right now too. Bad omens. We’ll see how the next few weeks do.

J.J. Abrams is doing a new spy series for NBC. Reportedly he’ll write and direct a few episodes. This is a pretty talented guy. Let’s hope they plan a little longer term than they did with Alias. Alias was a great idea that went astray half way into the second season as they didn’t know what to do next. (Plus they forgot a lot about what made the first season so good)

So I finally watched American Chopper. I hadn’t watched in over a year. They broke up! Yeah, the dad and son now have competing shops. When did that happen? Almost makes me want to watch regularly again.

Mythbusters has been fantastic this season. Best parts. Making a car like a golf ball. (I was shocked that they got 5mpg better mileage!) And the myth of some horror movie where a head gets dunked in liquid nitrogen and then hit. (Yuck! But what a great idea for a myth – tear up all the silly horror movie stuff.)

Dexter has been very good this season. After episode 3, which seemed like a big cop out, I was pretty skeptical. But I kind of like where they’ve been going. Nothing has added up to much yet and it lacks that flow that most other seasons have had. However a lot established in the earlier episodes is starting to become important.

So now I’m looking for suggestions. What should I download? What mp3 would you bring onto a desert island with you, assuming you had the world’s smallest mp3 player and an unlimited supply of batteries? What song gets stuck in your head for weeks at a time without bothering you?

Help me out here people. This store credit isn’t going to be around forever.

(Want your own free song from Amazon? Go here. Thanks to Slickdeals.)

This is an upgrade without the “gee whiz” features of previous editions. It’s mainly cleaning things up, making things faster and smaller, and eliminating the beachball of terror that crops up in many apps. (Finder and Safari, I’m looking at you)

There’s lots of minor fixes as well such as a dialog telling you which applications are keeping you from ejecting that external hard drive.

So are you upgrading? And, if you have, are you happy?

I personally was hoping to go Rosetta free but my fax software (eFax) and my Epson scanner driver are both PPC only. (Ugh)

The nice thing about the upgrade is that it’s cheap. ($29 list) It will also install over Tiger if for some inexplicable reason you hadn’t upgraded yet to Leopard. Pretty cheap compared to Windows 7.

A short review of the xGPS. As I mentioned in my Jailbreak post this is one of the best reasons to jailbreak your iPhone. While my posts on jailbreaking make it seem like Linux at it’s worst, that’s more because I’m interested in doing some useful scripting of the phone. Few would want to do that. However if you simply want some “unauthorized” apps that could never make it past Apple’s draconian AppStore rules then jailbreaking is a great idea. You basically download an application, plug in your phone, and click a button. You then click a button on your phone and suddenly you have a second app store. In there you’ll find xGPS in a prominent location and it’s easy to get running. Nothing technical about it really.

First let me talk about my comparison. I’ve used Google Maps on the iPhone for a year to run around. Then last fall I bought G-Map US West for a trip to the Bay Area (since there is little internet coverage in the Nevada desert and because AT&T coverage is only slightly better in San Francisco). The big news this week was Tom Tom’s release. I’ve not used it and can’t imagine paying $100 for it. However I’ve read many reviews.

First the pluses for the xGPS.

It has offline maps. You’ll have to download them manually for the areas you want though. The maps are from Google and are either their terrain maps (not available in their iPhone map program that I can see) or their street maps. Note that you have to select which to download. So to download both the terrain and street maps takes two downloads. The benefit of the terrain maps is that xGPS works not just for driving but also for hiking, mountain biking or even backcountry skiing.

Selecting the maps to download is easy as well. You go into a map menu which brings up a Maps Manager. You can zoom in or out and move anywhere. You then use a two finger gesture to create a red rectangle. Clicking download then brings up an option of at what resolution you want to capture. If you’re hiking or driving around a city you’ll want a high resolution download (0-2). If you’re just driving through on the freeway you’ll want a low resolution. (3-6) The numbers correspond to the “ticks” on the zoom in Google Maps (the desktop version). Be aware that while cities often have a resolution of 0 out in the country the highest resolution is often 2.

You should also be aware that the download can take a while if you’re downloading a large area of high resolution maps and isn’t something you’d want to attempt on battery power. Plan ahead and download the maps of where you expect to go. Chances are you’ll not be able to do it on the road.

Alternatively you can just use a desktop app, xGPS Manager, to download maps and then transfer them to your phone.

The other big plus of the xGPS is spoken turn by turn directions. Just like the Tom Tom. I had to drive up to drop off some chocolate today and this was surprisingly useful. The problem with the other GPS programs I’ve used is that you basically have to have the iPhone in your hand and be fiddling with it while you drive. Not the safest thing. The xGPS speaks out in a synthesized voice, “turn left in 100 feet.” I suppose folks used to dedicated GPS units expect this. Since my only stand along GPS unit was one I had from 10 years ago for noting climbing spots this is all new to me. I can but say I really, really like it. The xGPS also turns off iTunes so if you are listening to music you’ll still be able to hear the directions. The downside is (at the time of this writing) that it doesn’t turn iTunes back on (unlike the Tom Tom). So don’t expect to listen to music and use the xGPS’ turn by turn instructions at the same time. (If you turn off the turn by turn then of course there’s no issue) Phone calls though aren’t blocked. (The xGPS will just talk over the person you are talking with — which is actually how I’d want it anyway)

A nice feature is a little speedometer/compass unit in the lower left corner. It’s not that great for driving but is for biking.

The biggest plus is that xGPS autorotates the maps. That’s really a feature Apple ought add, at least as an option, into Google Map. When you can only glance at the gps being able to get useful information quickly is crucial. The GUI also adjusts for any orientation of the iPhone. Many have a landscape or portrait mode but have a preference for up — a problem given where Apple put the connector for charging. So being able to have the power cord “on top” is a huge benefit for comfortable handling while driving.

There’s a tracking mode so you can record your routes. (I’ve not tested that extensively) That could be useful for hiking, skiing or biking. It’s stored in gpx format which many programs can manipulate.

Like most map programs on the iPhone it prevents the phone from going into lock mode — that way the map stays on the screen.

Finally there is a night mode which dims the screen so you aren’t distracted at night. (This is less of an issue on a jailbroken phone since there are lots of utilities that’ll also do that)

Like Google Maps (and thankfully unlike G-Map) xGPS lets you type in a simple address, look it up from your Address Book, use your current location, and so forth. It’s basically the same gui as Google Map with the addition of a “Manage” button that lists your recent routes. (I really like that)

It also optionally give “wrong way” warnings but is smart enough to tell when you are back on route.

The downsides.

First there is the “turn off iTunes” if you use the turn by turn directions. I really hope that gets fixed soon.

Next is that unlike Google Maps there is no “show me where I am” button. However it tends to “bounce back” in the display centered around where your present location is. This means you can’t easily explore maps of where you are going rather than where you are. So let’s say I’m planning a trip to Glacier Park up in Montana. There’s no easy way to scroll up to Glacier and see the maps of the area.

The way around this is to go to the maps menu and move around there. (The maps menu is where you bring up the display for downloading maps)

Zooming is by hitting the faint + or – buttons. There isn’t pinchability as with Google Maps. Some might see that as a plus though since it’s pretty difficult to pinch while driving.

Searching for a location seems to privilege your current region. So if you type in a city, state it tends to find locations around you rather than what you are really looking for. Effectively the search location feature is so broken to be unusable (unless you’re looking for a name within 75 of your current location – in which case it works great) You can examine other locations in the Maps Manager but then you can’t type in an address. You’re choices are to “fake” a route or just go use Google Maps.

There’s also no 3D mode. This is because it’s just using the maps from Google Maps. Both G-Map and Tom Tom give you a kind of faux perspective. This really isn’t a big deal to me. Honestly I find it harder to use while driving. It may be an issue for some though.

A big problem is that you can’t put point of interest pins in. That would be very nice, if only to mark things like gas stations, stores, and so forth. Some mapping programs, like G-Map, actually come with an existing database of stores and gas stations which is actually surprisingly useful at times.

Is it worth it? Certainly the price is right. (Free) You do have to jailbreak your iPhone which can be intimidating to some. However it’s vastly superior to G-Maps, which I paid about $40 for. It sounds like it does much of what Tom Tom does for $100. And it’s a definite step up from Apple’s included Google Maps. There are a few serious flaws I’d like to see addressed. The nicest thing about it is that unlike most GPS programs it’s pretty useful for backcountry play. (Outside of the battery issues – GPS does drain your battery fast)

I’ve only had a short time to play around with it and here are a few thoughts.

1. It seems faster. I suspect that this is some of the Snow Leopard technologies making it into the version of OSX on the iPhone. (This shared OS is now called by Apple Core OS)

2. Notes and we have voice memos! Finally. I had a mic for my old Nano and used it a lot. It was the one thing I missed with the iPhone the most. And not syncing Notes and To-Dos was just brain dead. However while maybe I’m just missing it I don’t see To-Do items from Apple’s mail program syncing. If you put a To-Do item in an IMAP account (which is what I do to sync between computers) it will show up but the fields like Due Data, Priority and so forth don’t. There’s a little “mime-attachment” icon which I suspect has that data in it. This is a glaring omission by Apple.

3. Copy and Paste was amazing. Wow. I really grumbled that the iPhone didn’t have cut and paste. I didn’t need it often but when I did I really needed it. It works with most applications to. It’s so intuitive that it really sets the bar. I suspect everyone else will copy Apple’s implementation. I’ve used Copy and Paste on other smart phones and while I was glad to have it the implementation was typically very kludgy and a bit of a pain. The neatest thing about Apple’s implementation is that to undo you just shake the iPhone.

Note that you can copy and paste from anywhere and not just text fields as with the Pre. So you can snag that address out of Safari and mail it to someone.

4. Calendering is still the weakest aspect of the iPhone. This is one place the Pre really shines. Lots of little annoyances such as still not being able to put in a custom alert sound.

5. Search is very nice. I’ve not played around with it much. It will search GMail for all of you who don’t use IMAP. The downside is that it doesn’t search address book for addresses or the like. The UI is kind of cool. It acts as a 0th pane. So take your first pane of applications and try to swipe to the left and you get the search pane. Unlike the old 2.x address book search this does search both names and company names – but only displays one. (So if you have something as a company with a main contact it displays only the company name rather than both)

6. Everything has Landscape mode finally. This makes writing emails much easier.

7. Mail is basically the same. There’s no unified mail box or any of the many other features many were hoping for.

8. Safari lets you open up a link in a new tab. It also has an “autofill” option which, by default, is off. Probably it’s a good idea from a security POV to keep it off. But it’s there if you want it.

9. The iPod program is basically the same from what I could see. There is a “shake to shuffle” option which is nice when you’re driving in the care and want to skip a song you don’t like. Sadly there is still no way to turn off Coverflow in landscape mode. I never browse by album and 90% of what I listen to on my iPhone are podcasts which don’t work right with Coverflow. I wish, wish, wish there was a way to turn this off.

10. Google maps now has some extra functionality for finding bus, train or subway routes for any city. (It even did Provo!) I doubt I’ll use this but I could see it being useful for travelers.

That’s it for now. I suspect as I use it more I’ll find new things that I like or that annoy. Honestly, this is what Apple should have introduced. A lot of the features like better syncing or copy & paste were glaring omissions. There still are some flaws (To-Do’s I’m looking at you) but overall the best smart phone got mature. I’m really curious as to the 3gs and if it’s improvements are all that. I’m hearing that the speed bumb in practical use is very apparent.

(Crossposted to Clark Tech)