How to use your WiFi SSID to promote your message

Made this short how-to video with Camtasia Studio. Except I don't know how to upload this in HD. So you'll probably have to blow this up to full screen to see how it's done.



Free speech, baby, YEAH!

I thought about this after eating Chinese takeout tonight. Two of my sons got the same fortune in their fortune cookies and we all had a big laugh about it, especially since it was grammatically incorrect. Suddenly I imagined some moderne chick sauntering into a Starbucks with her brand new iPad and deciding to hook it into the WiFi there. So she goes to the Setting page, turns on the WiFi option and immediately sees the phrase Abortion is Murder staring up at her. Maybe it's because I just read that big piece on Randall Terry in the Weekly Standard. I mean, the guy is a complete nut, but he's freaking Beethoven at what he does.

UPDATE: OK, you can watch it in HD, just click on the "gear" shaped thing at the bottom and select 720p-HD. Obviously a fast connection helps facilitate that.

Great App: TuneIn

If you have $0.99 and an iPhone/iPod, check out TuneIn, a great app for listening to radio stations on your device.

I bought it because the free apps I had to listen to WHK1420 and KRLA870 just quit working after I upgraded to iOS 5.1. But this app is even better than I*Heart*Radio, imho. It does background playing, plus it immediately starts playing the station when you select it--there's no delay. Plus you can record audio, which is something you can't do with iHeart, as far as I know. Great app.

WHK has a great iPhone app

This is cool for iPhone users. Go to the App store and search on "whk". You'll see the search result come up "Newstalk 1420 WHK". Select it and download it for free. Then you can listen to all the stuff I listen to and be cool like me.

The engine behind this is AirKast which specializes in mobile phone broadcasting. There is a great feature that allows playing the station in the background via Safari and Quicktime. I haven't seen that feature yet on the other radio apps I have, one called iheartradio which I use to listen to Rush on WTAM 1100 and another generically called "Talk Radio" which is very clumsy to use and which I haven't use much as a result. But anyway it is nice being able to use the phone while you listen to the station in the background. It has been a complaint by users and developers alike that it's next to impossible to get apps to run in the background on the iPhone. Airkast deserves credit for finding a way around that.

Now I'm going back to listening to Michael Medved and Jeffrey Lyons argue about movies.

Wait a second...

I didn't know about this new model, probably due to my deep-seated hatred of everything smelling of Sprint. From Jan. 8:

At a CES presentation today, Palm announced its next-generation smart phone platform, called WebOS. "It was built with developers in mind," said Palm CEO Ed Colligan in describing the new platform. Any web developer can use CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to develop applications for the OS; there are no new languages to learn. Palm would have appeared to have abstracted the hardware in some manner to allow for JavaScript developers access to nearly every feature of the phone, going in a direction that some had initially pushed for Apple to pursue before the Obj-C iPhone SDK was launched.

Palm also announced a new phone, the Palm pre, set for launch in the first half of 2009. It features a 3.1-inch multitouch screen with 320x480 resolution over a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, all squeezed into a small, 4.8-oz package.

But here's the part which piqued my interest.

As nice as the pré's hardware is, Palm's WebOS is where the real action is. As a dedicated iPhone user, I experienced something very strange and quite unexpected while watching Palm demo the new OS: my iPhone suddenly felt old and played out. It's like Palm started with the iPhone, copied all the best ideas, and then made the whole package better.

So I guess I have to wait for it to be available on AT&T or go to Sprint... yuck.

This looks pretty cool

Take it from a Skype junkie. I'm putting off buying an iPhone, but I'm starting to feel like resistance is truly futile.

Here's the slideshow and review of their iPhone app.

Skype continues to extend its smartphone mobile platform reach with the latest iteration for the Apple iPhone. Skype for iPhone users can conduct chats, control presence and edit profile information, as well as place Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls. However, calls can be placed only when connected via Wi-Fi; EDGE or 3G users have to settle just for chat and presence.

Skype might be to phone companies what Google was to Microsoft. Who knows, but their app is simply too slick. The iPhone is slick, too.

Simultaneously, Like, Brilliant and Dim

Plenty of people are brilliant in some areas and downright stupid in others. When you're a teenager, it's merely more common. Take George Hotz, age 17, iPhone cracker.

The hack, which Hotz posted Thursday on his blog, is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software. It takes about two hours to perform. Since the details are public, it seems likely that a small industry may spring up to buy U.S. iPhones, unlock them and send them overseas.

"That's exactly, like, what I don't want," Hotz said. "I don't want people making money off this."

But George, dude, don't you know how economics works? People are always trying to make a buck off something. You just handed them a goldmine!

My first IT job in the 1980's saw me soldering at least once every 2 weeks. Now it takes me 2 hours to find my soldering iron at home, and I've never even seen one at any of my clients. And I'm willing to bet the faster you can find a soldering iron at your house the less likely it is that you own, or will ever own, an iPhone.

If Hotz really doesn't want anyone to sell their mechanic services performing this mod, then it's yet another example of how the "livin' out loud on the 'net" mentality can be detrimental to one's goals.