I have a new favorite gadget. Together with the iPod they are a formidable team. It’s an Alpine head (CDA-9847 if you’re interested) together with their KCA-420i iPod adapter. I plug my nano into into the head with a dock connector cable in the glove box. From then on I have instant access to any of the songs on it via the head unit. Artist names and what not can be displayed right on the screen and since it’s a direct connection it sounds amazing. Also a plus, since it’s a dock connection the iPod always stays charged. Viva la Best Buy.

This read more like a ProBlogger post than most of my typical content, but I think it’s worth saying…

I didn’t tell too many people, but for the past 2 months, MobileTracker has been absent from the vast vast majority of Google search results pages (SERPs). I wasn’t trying any crazy blackhat optimization techniques–I just rely on having great and timely content–so it came as a complete surprise. I talked around a bit and consulted forums and found out that for whatever reason this can just sometimes happen. I’m happy to report that it looks like the dark days are over and the goodtimes are back.

Luckily, I had some great exclusive content pieces that went up during the outage, as well as a lucky uptick in placements at Yahoo. Still visits were down about 25% overall–missing a few thousand visitors that average a few page views apiece is a hard thing. Advertising revenue was down, but was still at a decent amount (very livable). Personally I would have thought AdSense would have seen more of a dive since search engine viewers click ads more often than daily visitors.

Traffic is now higher than ever and the future is rosy.

While it wasn’t fun, it’s nice to know that it’s possible to continue with the site and income if there is a big (permanent) shift at Google. This experience reaffirms my goal to not depend on any one source of traffic or revenue.

And that makes me happy. Arrested Development is one of the most original shows I have ever seen. It was renewed despite (yet again) lackluster ratings. The episode tonight featured a website several times, and in typicaly quirky AD style the site is live for all to see: ImOscar.com. If you haven’t seen this show before, there is no better time to start than a fresh season. Get on it!

Time to start reading the Observer-Picayune
again.

Every 10 Minutes, the new under the cap game from Pepsi, Yahoo and Xbox is genius. They are giving out an Xbox 360 every 10 minutes for nine weeks (24/7). According to my math, that’s a tad over 9,000 units in total which is a heck of a lot.

The website, www.every10minutes.com, allows you to enter in the codes from under the cap and select what 10 minute slot to place your “chips” on. You can put any number on any single contest, as long as you have the green. Even better, you can see how many others are currently in the running.

I just put 1 cap on the 7PM contest and played againt 750 of my closest friends. I didn’t win, someone in KY did, but I was very very impressed with the website. Even more impressed at the odds–1/750 is doable and seems almost too good to be true. Kudos to Pepsi and Yahoo (who made the website). Even if you don’t like soda you should buy one and enter just to see the website in action.

I made my second dive today–this time with my girlfriend Samantha. It was to celebrate her birthday which is neat because she’s going to remember this forever (it was her first jump). We went at SkyDive City which is one of the largest drop zones (DZ) in the world but is also only 40 minutes away from my house. I got the picture/video set for Sam, linked below. What a rush!

• Photos
• Video [QuickTime req, 20MB]

UPDATE: I replaced the H264 codec video with an MPEG 4 version. Evidently QuickTime 7 isn’t yet widely installed (I got four or five complaints that the file didn’t work).

I have been digging Phil Hendrie quite a bit lately. I have listened off and on for years (probably six or seven now, I grew up on the AM radio dial) but now I have been catching the shows I miss online. Hendrie is the most talented personality currently on radio, bar none.

For those not in the know (something I suggest you change) Hendrie has a few interviews per show. Usually they involve an insane guest and irrate callers. But as LA Weekly puts it,

The hook — the kicker, as they like to say in Hollywood — is that Hendrie does the voices of all his guests, some 40 regular characters in all, while the callers themselves are real.

Hendrie ties in the characters amazingly well. They come in different races, sexes, ages and political stances (and are performed in real time without the aid of anyone else). The only uniform fact is that they typically say very offensive things. The first time I listened, when I was a mere tween, Ted Bell of Ted’s of Beverly Hills was on to talk about his policy of reusing food from guests at his restaurant. Why would we throw out half a plate of good food? That’s what stir fry is for. I was hooked even though I wasn’t quite sure what the schtick was (that in fact it was an interview with one man).

I watched a webcast of his show to see him in action and it’s quite the workout. He uses a regular phone to voice the characters (to simulate that they are calling into the show) and a regular radio mic for himself. He is almost flawless in delivery.

Here’s the first hour from a recent show to illustrate what I’m talking about. Hendrie is both characters in this conversation and it was performed live (just from notes). In this clip: Brad Rifkin’s Hollywood Party Experience company sent a Natalie Holloway impersonator to a little girls bats mitzvah. If you’re easily offended, steer clear. The last half of this clip involves Phil just driving the caller crazy, making absolutely no sense.

Start listening!

I found a neat Dashboard widget thanks to Gibbons: Radar In Motion. For those of us in Hurricane country (he’s in New Orleans and I’m in Tampa) it’s great. Not to mention for the afternoon t-storm that define my errand schedule. Great stuff!

My buddy Larry is sporting a new site called Uncrate. It’s a little too feminine for me at times (metro!), but has some great pictures and a fun attitude. It also makes me feel poor because I’m not the type to drop $200 on a pair of pants. It’s all American Apparal and Dickies for me.

I got a new phone today, the Sony Ericsson K750i. I’m a big fan of Sony Ericsson because they seem to get design more than any other handset maker (even Motorola, their OS is poor). I lost my K700i a week or two ago on a roller coaster. Lost and found didn’t work out, though I’m sure it would have been in a bunch of pieces that would have made me even more sad. I was looking for an excuse to splurge on the K750 anyway, so maybe it was my unconscious?

Back to business–it’s a gem. The camera quality is fantastic for a camera phone. It’s 2 megapixels but with the all-important auto focus. Here’s a quick test shot in my front yard.It has a memory stick duo slot (came with a 64MB card) which can be used to store tunes or other media like photos. The K750i loses points for not having a real headphone jack, just some Sony Ericsson port, but I have an iPod for tunes.

Full review on MobileTracker shortly.

I thoroughly enjoyed Steven Berlin Johnson’s latest book, Everything Bad is Good for You: How today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter. It was a fast read (about a day and a half), but mostly because I was motivated. The basic premise is that popular culture, such as TV and video games, have drastically increased in complexity and as a result have helped us sharpen our brains. IQ scores have steadily increased which offers some support for the theory.

Johnson also includes several comparisons of media from yesteryear and today that show support for massive increases in complexity. A single episode of 24 is a byzantine mash of relationships that would give a healthy novel a run for its money.

The idea that mastering a video game like Grand Theft Auto can foster intellectual acumen isn’t terribly popular, but extremly interesting. Johnson notes that there are several types of intelligence, so say having increased exploration skills from video games won’t help you write a better paper. It will help you program your TV though, which is a skill that even many snobby english majors can’t perfrom.

Another point I enjoyed was that as a whole we are reading novels less, we are writing more. With the advent of email, IM and bulletin boards, the average person has many more options when it comes to writing. Being able to hold three IM sessions at the same time is a whole other matter, and surely a type of skill that previous generations lacked.

If you haven’t already, go buy this book. I have a feeling older readers will be more likely to object to the book’s main point ("I don’t care what he says, pop culture is taking us to hell!"), but it’s worth a read.

Next up on the reading is is either Freakonomics or The Selfish Gene. It’s a tossup.