links for 2007-01-12
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The history of AT&T’s brand name just got a little more complicated. After spending $5 billion to make AT&T Wireless Cingular, the new AT&T will start to spend billions to make Cingular AT&T.
Package tracking by address
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of package tracking. Even Google knows. My post about USPS and their terrible “tracking” service hit a chord and attracted a bunch of other haters.
What I’ve wanted lately is a reverse tracking service of sort. View all of the incoming packages from a given carrier coming to me (based on the address the carrier has on record for me). This is more complicated than the simple tracking options today because there would need to be address authentication, but it would be such a time saver. You could subscribe to one feed and see everything that’s coming. Right now I have like 4-5 different packages somewhere in the queue and it’s a pain to find the number and track any of them individually.
Albuquerque is hard to spell
I’m going to Albuquerque next week and no matter how many times I have looked it up I have never spelled it right. Only thanks to Google can I actually find the real place. It’s bringing back flashbacks of being a terrible speller growing up.
ESPN.com’s annoying video
I can’t believe ESPN.com is still putting auto-play video on their homepage. You might as well start using the blink tag or use a really lame animated GIF. Apple has some video ads out there, but you have to hit play first. Same with Google’s video ads. I just want to check a few scores ESPN, not here some video start playing over the music I am already listening to.
links for 2006-11-20
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Make Rachael Ray say all of her dumb sayings. Hilariously filled with creamy double entendres. Yum-o!
Will it sell blenders?
Will It Blend? is one of the best viral marketing campaigns ever. It’s a more exciting version of David Letterman’s extremely bland Will It Float? gag. An old man with a lab coat puts crazy things in a blender and watches the results.Crazy things like golf balls and a whole can of coke (aluminum and all!). The videos are produced by BlendTec, which sells high-end blenders for both home and commercial use. They are not average blenders, a quick look at any of the videos or a price tag (starting at $399!) makes that clear. Despite the price, I’m guessing they are going to sell a ton of them. The best part is there is almost no cost to the campaign, the videos are cheap to host and the host Tom Dickson is BlendTec’s CEO. Over at YouTube they are tearing it up.
Will it blend? That is the question.
MacBook Pro received
I got a visit from FedEx this morning and finally got to play with this. It runs like a champ. There are only a couple case changes from the 1st gen MBP, namely FireWire 800 and a hidden status light for the built-in iSight (you can only see the light when it’s on, in the off state you just see the silver bezel). Windows Vista RC1 installed like a champ with Parallels Desktop, it can even run full screen while I use OS X on my desktop screen. So far so good, but I’m still busy copying stuff over and making it my own.
New baby
Just pulled the trigger on my new favorite possession, a Core 2 Duo equipped MacBook Pro. Should be here next week. My PowerBook has put in over 3 years of service and hasn’t had any significant problems. It will be around 2010 when I upgrade the next time if I keep the MBP as long.
I also snapped up a V640 EV-DO card today for when it comes, as my old PC5740 won’t fit.
Here are the specs:
MacBook Pro, 15-inch, 2.33GHz
3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 1x2GB, 1x1GB
MacBook Pro 15-inch Widescreen Display
200GB Serial ATA Drive @ 4200 rpm
2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
SuperDrive 6x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Nokia N80i with the Gizmo Project
I got a Nokia N80 Internet Edition up and running making internet VoIP calls over SIP via WiFi through the Gizmo Project. That’s a mouthful of nasty acronyms, but it’s really neat. The phonebook has space for internet calling numbers (which are actually more like email addresses, in the format of sip:username@provider.tld) and the phone’s now configured to use my Gizmo account when I select one of these entries. It works almost instantly for VoIP to VoIP calls, but there is a significant lag on VoIP to landline calls (using the N80 to call a non VoIP number through Gizmo) which makes that function unusable at the moment. Incoming calls ring on the mobile phone really well. I’d love to get this configured with Vonage, but I don’t think they have their SIP stuff opened up yet. They are still stuck trying to sell softphone software… Ugh.
These directions worked fine, except that it wouldn’t work using a transport type of TCP. I set it to the default setting of any and it worked, I’m guessing my situation needed UDP.
Nick Denton on the Food Network
He’s not quitting blogging, but I just spotted Nick Denton on the Food Network. Not as a guest or host, but as background b-roll in the trendy Noho Star restaurant. It was during Rachael Ray (no words can explain how horrible she is, but she probably already has a stupid acronym for it… EVOO my ass).
And no worries, Denton isn’t wearing a huge diamond–that glint of bling is the LED flash on a Nokia N80.
