Of YouTube and Cell Phones

Sorry about yesterday guys. I'm feeling much better today though, and I even decided to start taking a boxing class at the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting next week, so that should be fun. Anyhow, anyone get the lame reference to the John Steinbeck classic? No? Yeah, I know I'm sad; deal with it. The first thing I wanted to discuss was this business with Helio and charging $6 a month to go to YouTube. There are two ways I see this. On one hand, they're providing the Internet service and can show you or not show you whatever they want, per their user agreement. On the other hand, it's outrageous, and the fact that they promise unfettered web access in their advertising leaves them vulnerable to a class action lawsuit. Hear that Helio users? It's not legal if they promised that to you! Under standard contract law, they'd have to let you back out of your contract should you choose to. The bigger issue is the moral issue of charging for a free service that is free on any other mobile phone or web browser. In fact, it's even free on the bloody iPhone! They have ads out for it and everything, and it looks better on the iPhone since it fits it to the screen. Of course, the lack of Flash support is disappointing on the iPhone, but that's aside from the point. YouTube on cell phones is about the cheapest way to get some form of television on your mobile phone, an idea that I think is kind of a big step in digital media, and they're trying to stifle it, the very thing that's meant to help them already! The very idea is baffling to me. Just wanted to rant a bit about it.

Back to YouTube real quick: the five Apple TV owners out there will be able to watch YouTube videos on their set top box via a free update that plays videos re-encoded to H.264. This is what the iPhone is doing as well. Why? The iPhone has hardware dedicated to displaying H.264 content, whereas Flash would take valuable CPU clock cycles, hence, hurting battery life on the iPhone. That's a really stupid reason to tell users they can't see Flash content on their iPhone, why not just warn them about that? There had better be a better reason for them not including it at launch than that. Oh, by the way, YouTube will get the beloved 12th spot. Isn't that a bit much for one website?

As most of you should already know, Dell has begun selling computers loaded with Linux rather than Windows at a reduced price. However, they're refusing to sell these machines to business customers. Why? I don't really know. I have a suspicion that it involves some deal they've made with Microsoft though since I can't imagine them making much more money off of Wintel boxes, but it's more likely a liability issue with support and such.

This is really interesting: Google filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft regarding the desktop searching in Windows Vista, and Microsoft budged. The complaint isn't being disclosed, but it's most likely the difficulty of changing the default desktop search application in Vista and, apparently, using another vendor's program was actually slower (presumably, from how it sounds, artificially so). No details as to what changes are being made, but whatever they are, they've kept Google quiet, who's still facing an FTC investigation regarding their planned purchase of DoubleClick.

Speaking of Google, did you know you could Google search terms from Docs and Spreadsheets from within the document? I also didn't know how many regressive copies of your documents they keep. It's slightly creepy, but more impressive than anything else (like most of what Google does).

Being a college student, I couldn't help but plug these cool bottle openers. I personally like the ring one best (my stupid keychain ones broke off).

Ok, so this news is huge! I've literally been waiting over two years for this. My bread and butter, Amazon, has listed Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair for a November 7 release date. It's a 4-disc set putting together both volumes in a nice, NC-17 package. Rest assured, I will be pre-ordering this as soon as humanly possibly; my first DVD pre-order ever.



There you have it folks! Our first look at Harrison Ford back in his fedora for Indiana Jones 4. It's nothing special, but still may send chills up the spines of true action junkies to see this classic character again.

Despite previous reports, it turns out that Cillian Murphy will actually be reprising his role for The Dark Knight according to tipsters who saw him on set filming a scene involving some sort of gang fight. Not sure why they'd want to keep this a secret, because they really have bigger secrets to keep for this one.

We've got a couple of new trailers today. One is for The Simpsons Movie, and it's better than what we last saw, but that's not saying much. I really hope that this movie is funnier than the show has been these last few seasons. The other is for Into the Wild, which I only bring up because I haven't seen Emilie Hirsch much in a while and he's a pretty decent actor. Plus, it has Jena Malone. Anyway, sounds interesting, though I just feel like it'll end up being boring.

This actually leaked a couple of days ago, but I didn't see it before it got taken down, and now it's on Yahoo Movies: the first 8 minutes of Live Free or Die Hard. To be honest, it looks pretty neat. Then again, it is dense in action, so they're catering it to look cool.

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Who?
My beautiful girlfriend
2. What?
She's freaking amazing
3. Where?
In Austin, far far away =(
4. Song
"Hey there, Delilah" - The White T's
5. Food
Pizza
6. Animal
Tiger =)

I'm going to Vancouver tomorrow for the weekend, so I don't imagine that I'll be able to post for a couple of days. Have a good weekend everyone!

Yahoo's Blue Bar

No single news item today really grabbed me, so I thought I'd just talk a bit about the new blue Yahoo search bar. What's so great about it? That's just the thing: nothing. Let's compare it to the Google search bar, shall we?


I could've sworn that there was a time when Yahoo was actually creative. Granted, this isn't quite as direct a knock off as their Yahoo Mail chat thing or their changes to Yahoo Maps, but when I saw it I immediately was reminded of the Google search bar. More importantly is that I don't know why they even care to make such a UI tweak. It just makes it look a little more like Launch, or Yahoo Music or whatever they want to call it nowadays. I really think that Yahoo needs to get its butt in gear. They're kind of just hanging out there as a minor competitor to Google, and they haven't been on the offensive in a long time. By being on the offensive, I mean that they don't have any application that makes them better than Google, they just minimally compete. Hell, maybe they are just coming up with the same ideas but taking longer on them. Still, that's a problem. This blue bar might as well just be a blue screen of death if they don't put forth a better effort.

On the iPhone front, Apple has announced that iPhone users will be required to have accounts with the iTunes music store. Why? No one really knows quite yet. Could it be for synching data to their servers or something? Because that would be interesting, but scary privacy-wise. Even then, why require it? You're just complicating the release process. Even more interesting is that cell phone retailer Pure Mobile is selling unlocked iPhones to work on any carrier. They're a legit service, so it doesn't seem like a con, but how is this possible? Maybe it's only for Canadians? It would have to be legal, or else Apple would've already sued them. It's especially fishy though because Apple said that only AT&T and Apple stores would sell the iPhone, or at least in America.

Something I didn't really mention about the WWDC keynote is that Steve Jobs pimped out EA as providing more games to Macs now that they're on Intel chips, but it turns out that they're really just EA PC games running in Cider. And what, pray tell, is Cider? It turns out that it's a portability engine that adds a layer to your Mac to allow you to run Windows games on it. Hence, these EA games aren't ports, and won't be running natively. I'm not even a Mac user and I think that's lame. What a total cop out from the largest video game studio in the world.

Sorry, there's just a lot of Apple news today. Ars Technica tried out the new 17" MacBook Pros featuring Santa Rosa chips, and it turns out that they're really not much of an improvement over the last iteration of the 17" MacBook Pro (Revision B). It still costs nearly 3 grand, and it's still a solid machine, but you just get a faster FSB, a slighter faster clockspeed, and a little bit more battery life. So much for the hype behind Santa Rosa. Ars Technica also tried out Safari for Windows, and they weren't impressed. I'm glad that I never got it.

In an effort to be more sexy, eBay has opened up its APIs in beta for eBay, PayPal, and Skype for third-party development. I wonder if uShip is using this? In any case, it's an interesting move from one of the few companies to survive the dot-com boom. At least they're making the effort to adapt, but it's still restricted, and one would hope that that changes once it's out of beta.

I think that the Business 2.0 list of who matters is kind of funny because it has Bill Gates at #41 but Digg creator Kevin Rose at #6, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at #14, Engagdget founder Peter Rojas at #9. Yeah, that list isn't skewed at all.

It looks like Live Free or Die Hard isn't too hard for teenagers, because it has earned a PG-13 rating. There's no doubt that this will rake in more money for it, but it doesn't bode well for the quality of the movie. Not that PG-13 movies are usually bad, but this movie's action can't be too violent (it's an action movie, for Pete's sake!) and it can't be too dark of a plot either. Oh, and kiss sexual inuendo "goodbye" (except for a "brief sexual situation").

David Goyer has decided that his next project will be re-imagining The Invisible Man. Doesn't he have a better movie to do? Not to knock the original movie, but I'm just tired of re-makes and sequels.

AICN has a review of Transformers from someone whose background seems to match mine with the franchise, and I swear it sounds like they had an orgasm during the movie or something. So it would appear that the movie is more than just eye candy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. Have you ever cut or burned yourself while cooking?
Almost every time I cook, yeah! I just often cut my thumb a bit when I'm cutting onions.

2. Have you ever put in a wrong ingredient in a dish (sugar instead of salt, for example)?
I was boiling eggs once just to eat them like that, and I accidentally sprinkled MSG on one instead of salt because my room mate's mother had given him a shaker of MSG (they were Vietnamese). That was an interesting experience.

3. Have you ever dropped, or otherwise ruined, a dish just before serving it? Bonus points if you had a large number of people waiting to eat it.
Not that I can recall.

4. In case you aren't a cook - Have you ever had a restaurant make a klutzy move that affected your meal? Tell us about it!
Last Friday, I went to dinner with some other interns, and one of my friends ordered fish and chips, but the waitress dropped them on her way to him. Then, when she went to get a new plate, the cook dropped it. Third time was a charm though, and he got it free (plus a free pitcher of beer).

The Facebook Platform

There's really not a whole lot of interesting news today. The best thing for me to talk about is actually the Facebook API that was opened up in the middle of my little hiatus. Facebook applications, more like widgets, started popping up like mosquitoes on a humid Texas night based on this API. I never really said much about it, but I really like this blogger's analysis of the situation. I think he exaggerates in saying that it's a giant leap forward for the Internet industry, because I don't think that Facebook is that big of a deal, but fortunately he lists plenty of problems to compensate. I, for one, think that it's a double edged sword. On one hand, it's great that they've opened up and people can do almost whatever they want within the Facebook platform, including make money, and it's basically free labor to the Facebook team. They get all this extra functionality at no cost to them other than the processing power required as being a proxy. However, I think that this is just one more push that's making Facebook too complicated. True, it's a totally optional addition for you, but when it shows up on your friends' news feeds and then they invite you to install these things and all that crap, it becomes quite a bit. Plus, everyone's profiles are bound to get pretty cluttered very soon. And if an application breaks, it'll look bad on Facebook even though a third-party made it. Worse off yet are third-parties like iLike whose servers died because developers have to host their own code. Does all this mean that it was a bad move for Facebook? Not necessarily. It may need to be tweaked a bit, like they may want to support the ones that do really well, but I think it's better for them to be open than to be closed off.

There's plenty of Apple news hanging around in the aftermath of WWDC, and I'm going to shave it down to the things that you'll actually care about. The iPhone will not support the Adobe Flash Player, which I simply don't get. Is there some serious security hole that would kill the iPhone? Or did they just not have time to support it?

The bigger issue though is the issue I mentioned yesterday about not providing an SDK. You can see one example application over here that doesn't require an iPhone SDK to work, but it does need Safari. I don't have Safari so I can't use it, but maybe you can. If you're a stubborn Windows user like me, you can see what we're missing out on over here. They definitely strove to preserve that Mac look and feel, which is good and bad, but still doesn't attract me to download it. Anyway, if my little rant yesterday about the lacking SDK wasn't enough, then Gizmodo has even more to say about how it means that the iPhone is craptacular unless Apple does some really amazing stuff with it since the third party applications people were dreaming up can't happen, and that's sort of a buzzkill (but not totally, in my opinion).

Google has quietly rolled out a way to view PowerPoint presentations from within Gmail without having to have Microsoft Office installed. I don't really have any powerpoints in my Gmail to try it out on, but I'm sure that'll come in handy when school starts again.

If you want to see more pretty web pages, check out Zen Garden's top 15 CSS designs. Very worthwhile, and very cool, creative stuff out there. I wish I was that good at making nifty layouts!

That's the first look we have at Saw 4, which has started its marketing hot on the heels of the DVD release of Saw 3, apparently. That's probably better than our first look at the Hitman movie, which is just the back of Timothy Olyphant's head.

There are a number of reviews out there for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer already, but it seems to be a mixed bag. Anyway, here are a couple more to whet your whistle.

I, personally, don't watch Battlestar Galactica, but I can appreciate that it's probably a phenomenal series. As such, I felt it was noteworthy that it may be getting a film. There seems to be interest for it, so we'll have to see what happens.

Lastly, a couple more of clips for Die Hard 4 went up on Yahoo Movies.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

Two Immediate Reactions

1. When you are lied to?
hurt and offended
2. When you make a mistake?
regretful and apologetic
3. When you embarrass yourself in public?
shame and to run away
4. When you see someone make a fool of themselves?
feel bad for them and look away
5. When you realize you have hurt someone (emotionally)?
apologetic and scared

The WWDC Keynote

There's really not a whole lot to talk about today besides the WWDC keynote from Apple, so I guess I'll just go right into that. Of course, if you're really hardcore then you can get the full video feed over here. I wouldn't bother watching it unless you're really excited about Leopard. The coolest additions to OS X were probably Stacks, the new menu bar thing that makes it easy to access your favorite programs quickly, and the quick look thing to preview files before you open them. His iChat demo looked pretty neat, too, where you can actually drag other movies onto your video chat and have a blue screen effect going on. Totally useless, mind you, but nifty. They rehashed old features of Leopard, too, like Spaces and Time Machine. Not a good sign for an exciting keynote, but the WWDC one rarely is. Leopard will sell for $129, and they rightfully took a jab at the many versions of Vista there are. I agree that that's a totally stupid idea. Anyhow, the next thing he menioned was that Safari would now be on Windows, which is totally meaningless to Windows users since we already use Firefox or the stupider ones use Internet Explorer. The thing he mentioned last was kind of interesting. He puts out this banner of a solution for developers to develop for the iPhone, but what he meant was web applications. If you create a cool site, that can run in Safari on the iPhone, but you can't use the touchscreen functionality to do anything cool, or anything else useful on the iPhone. Great. That's not much better than their no third party development stance from last keynote. All in all, a drab WWDC keynote, but at least he hit hard on the strengths of Leopard and I'm sure that Mac heads were happy about that.

By the way, Apple also revamped their site a bit. Same basic design theme, just rearranged a bit.

If you use Google Analytics, like me, then you probably enjoyed your recent, free upgrade to their fancy shmancy stuff. However, there is a lot to take in there, and this blog post offers a bit more guidance on how to use everything by adding stuff to your codebase here and there. I found it pretty educational and this is the kind of stuff that you usually have to employ some premium service to get.

Vitamin is running a wonderful article on the most prominent layout styles ever. I know I'm a sucker for the minimalist and the futurism. I know, they're kind of opposing concepts, but eye candy nonetheless. That whole article is actually eye candy in case you haven't seen anything pretty today (I know it's hard on college guys who can't scope out the number of foxy ladies they can during the long session in the summer; of course, I'm only missing one foxy lady).

In a very strange move, Weinstein Co. has decided to release Death Proof on DVD this September without its Planet Terror counterpart. Do they just like Tarantino better or something? My guess is that they're splitting up Grindhouse so that they can sell one in September, one a month later, and then a boxed set in time for Christmas. Supposedly, the 4-disc set Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair will also come out that month, but I just read that on a fan site and couldn't find any real evidence behind it other than my fingers being crossed.

In the world of animation, it looks like Toy Story 3 is on track for a 2010 release. They've only recently started on the script, but it's being penned by the writer of Little Miss Sunshine so I expect something worthwhile rather than a money grubbing sequel. Oh, and Quint at AICN has seen Ratatouille and really liked it. He praises the pacing and the animation, and I was always interested in it so now I'm actually looking forward to it.

Another movie getting underway is Indiana Jones 4 which is in the middle of an open casting call for extras willing to have their hair cut in true 50s style. That'd be a scary requirement for me, I think, but it'd be worth it to be in an Indiana Jones flick!

Lastly, Moviefone has a couple of decent clips from <Die Hard 4 (that's right, I said the proper title!).

Since we were a bit low on the tech news today, here's those pictures that I promised from yesterday from the recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park in Belltown:








Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Do you listen to the radio, or a CD, when you're driving in your car/truck/SUV?
I listen to the radio, but I switch to whatever is in the CD player if there's nothing good on, and then rinse and repeat when that track is over.
2. Do you have one of those GPS systems in your vehicle?
Nope. Too expensive! I'm a cheap Indian dude here!
3. About how many miles do you put on your vehicle in a month?
Not really sure about that. I'd guess about 400 miles if I make a trip to Houston each month (obviously not counting this summer).
4. Do you have your oil changed regularly?
Yeah, my dad is cool enough to handle that for me.
5. Do you take your vehicle to a car wash or do you wash it at home?
Wash it at home. I hate those automatic things because they leave spots and they're not thorough enough.
6. How often do you have the inside of your vehicle cleaned? Do you do it yourself or do you pay someone to do it?
I do it myself, once or twice a semester.
7. What is the color of your vehicle?
I'd say maroon, but it's generally referred to as red.

Just Say "No"...to Pretext

I'd like to get to bed in the next 30 minutes so that maybe my mind can wrap itself around the 15-Puzzle tomorrow. Clearly, however IDA* is supposed to work here is lost on me (drop me a line if you have tips). I don't know if anyone will get my topic, but I meant it to plan on the old campaigns to get kids to say no to drugs. No? No takers? Hey, it's been a long Tuesday! Anyway, the MPAA and RIAA are fighting to amend a bill in California that strengthens federal regulations again pretexting, or lying to obtain information about someone, from phone records to all kinds of personal information, including stuff vital to your identity and your financial records. I know we're not in California, but this is still an important topic. What you have to wonder now is how many piracy cases have been won by these guys through information obtained by dishonesty. Even if it wasn't illegal at the time, I'd still call that pretty despicable. It's not like you're lying to catch a killer or a child molester or anything like that, but rather you're lying to appease your own greed. They should be forced to go through lawful channels to honestly get the information they need, otherwise they kind of get an unfair advantage. Not only that, but if their amendment is tacked on there it would give any copyright holder complete access to all your information since they could say they're Jesus Christ or something and that'd be ok, even if it's something like your Social Security number. Doesn't this scare anyone else? Maybe if they narrow their amendment a bit, it would be something we can reasonably debate because they could argue that there's certain information that they may have a right to get to much like an undercover cop would (not that I agree with that logic, but just playing devil's advocate), but they should not get a free pass to our identities. Again, it's California, not national, but that doesn't mean that this shouldn't be a concern because it just means that we're already vulnerable in the other 49 states. Kind of creepy, no?

Apple has now sold 100 million iPods in 5 and a half years, which is right up there with the PS2 and Walkman. It's a pretty big feat, and it makes you wonder when the iPod will lose steam. This streak can't possibly last forever, so what will be the nail in the coffin? I guess it'll stop being a hot item when their new generations become expensive and/or burdensome in features. It just seems like every iteration of any product has more junk you can do with it, and people eventually get tired of that. Or maybe people will get tired of having to replace the whole damn thing when the battery or hard drive fails. Maybe they should just quit while they're ahead and design an insulin pump instead. I must say, that's kind of an interesting concept. What if Apple stopped being selfish (no, product [Red] doesn't count as being altruistic, sorry) and tried putting its powers to good to help with a product that benefits the good of humanity, like a better insulin pump? Who knows, maybe Steve Jobs will eventually grow the heart Bill Gates has.

We have an actual insider rumor regarding the next Zune, or rather several small bits of information. There's to be a new Zune and a Flash Zune, both with the doubleshot design, video functionality, and WiFi capabilities. If the price is right, Microsoft could end up giving the Nano a run for its money. It's not that special, after all. It's just a cutesy, expensive iPod.

Back to Apple real quick: their first Apple TV television spot is out, and it's slightly less creative than what I would've expected. It's very literal, which is nice, but does it really make anyone want an Apple TV? It's like they're saying, "Yes, we now have a product that will let you watch movies on your television! Isn't that stellar?!"

Wired interviewed Eric Schmidt about Google and the whole "Internet operating system" gossip that has gone around for the past several months, and I like his thoughts on everything. He sounds very genuine. I like that referring to server-based computing has having information "stored in the clouds" has now become technical jargon; it sounds like something a tech blogger inadvertently invented.

One-liner: there's an awesome list of online converters here. Some of them are random and kind of useless, but there's a lot of awesome ones, like for PDFs and images.

If the visual effects in Grindhouse look cool to you, you'll enjoy this article on the pre-viz process. A lot goes into making the film so clean and yet so vintage grainy at the same time, so it's fun to see concept art become reality and how.

The UK trailer for Live Free or Die Hard (again, it's called Die Hard 4.0 there like is in every freaking country except here) is a lot better than ours in that it actually tells you what the premise is. Obviously, I have to criticize that premise as being totally far-fetched because it makes it sound way too easy to bring down the country's technological infrastructure. Granted, things like RSA encryption can technically be compromised, but that doesn't mean that all Hell breaks lose all at once. With action movies though, suspended disbelief is a necessity, so I'll forgive them.

Lastly, basically the same team that brought you Da Vinci Code (including Tom Hanks) is coming back together again for Angels and Demons, that other Dan Brown book that every other person has read. I can't say much because I haven't read it myself, but it sounds like they just want another cash cow, in my opinion. Let's hope the movie quality doesn't suffer (I personally enjoyed Da Vinci Code, actually).

I'm going to do Ten on Tuesday this week:

10 Highschool Memories
10. The pep rallies that never got anyone pepped up, just happy get out of class.
9. Going to Bellaire Broiler Burger for awesome milkshakes.
8. Being in a ton of clubs, most of which did nothing.
7. Worrying about AP exams and college like constantly!
6. Stupid crushes.
5. Playing guitar nearly every night.
4. Being accused of cheating and burned at the stake for it.
3. Sleeping about 5 hours a night.
2. Prom sucking, like hardcore.
1. GRADUATING! Thank God it's over!