The Man Wall

I think the words you're looking for are "holy shit". Four TV's (middle one's 52"), two cigar humidors, a microwave, a kegerator with tap, home theater system, and a sports ticker. HOLY SHIT. Buy it here for only $14,900.

Opera

I realize I've been a little tech heavy lately but I really want to talk about Opera's new web browser Unite. Unite is one of those really badass ideas that by all accounts should be embraced by everyone but won't because it's backed by a lesser known company that doesn't have the resources to properly market the product.


But it's awesome so I'm gonna talk about it anyway. The idea behind Unite is basically "f#$k the intermediaries". When navigating the web we've been conditioned to use different mediums to do different things; for example, if you want to post a picture you'll use either facebook, picassa, or kodak gallery. If you want to share a song, you'll email it. If you want to transfer something larger you'll use aim transfer. You get the point, we're using ten different platforms to accomplish ten different tasks- no one really complains because it's all free but it's still kind of a hassle. Not so with Unite. Instead of sending everything from your computer to the intermediary then to a third person, the Unite browser has a built in server. You just drag whatever it is you want to share into your browser and give your friends access. Easy as pie. Too bad no one will ever use it.

Putt Up or Shut Up

Why do people buy rugs? Is it because they look nice? Or because they protect your floor? Or because you need a soft landing spot for your drunk friends? Lame, lame, and really lame. I want a rug that'll help my golf game.

Zagg

First time I saw my phone after it emerged from the box I thought "wow, that is one sexy freakin piece of electronic gadgetry." Second thing I did was put it in a case. And not just any case, I'm talking "overprotective parent with first born child in the dead of winter covered up in a snow suit" case. My sweet looking phone was damn well protected but it grew like Barry Bonds head after Conte juice. Bottom line, cases suck. They're big, they're ugly, they're cumbersome, and if they clip onto your belt you're officially labeled a world class douche


Enter Zagg's Invisible Shield. Using military grade helicopter blade protection technology, Zagg has come out with a compound that's as thin as paper, completely clear, and basically indestructible. See the video below.

On a side note. I was so impressed by this product that I held anywhere between 3,000-5,000 shares of zagg stock for the better part of 8 months. I purchased the stock between .65-.75 cents and cashed out at just over a buck. At which point the stock sky rocketed to a pinnacle of $7.50.

5,000 * $7.50 = $37,500.

Sigh.

ps. The invisible shield can be purchased at bestbuy, walmart, and through their website. A few online competitors have also emerged, BestSkinsEver is a notable one because they're about 1/3 the cost for a very similar product. My Palm Pre is protected by a BestSkinsEver case, my brother's Pre is protected by an Invisible Shield. Next time I see him I'll do a comparison and post an update.

Palm Pre Update

A couple weeks back I spoke of the Palm Pre in terms so glowing you'd have thought I was on Palm's payroll. That was mostly by design. Like the NBA and their series of ridiculously hyped, but always disappointing, 'Next Jordans'. Stating a phone is comparable to the iPhone is generally not received very well.



With that said, every so often you get a player that does meet the hype- we'll call this the Lebron James effect. And the Palm Pre may have just Lebronzed us all (oh yes, I just adjectivized Lebron's name, incidentally I also adjectivized adjective). Back to the phone, the bottom line is, it's not MJ yet; however, it's so freakishly awesome it just might make the leap in the not so distant future. So let's talk about it...

Pluses:

1. Universal Search: BEST THING EVER for a phone. I don't need to do a series of swipes and gestures to get to where I want to be. I open the keyboard, type what I'm looking for, and a 'real time' list of items corresponding to those letters populate. In two seconds, I can open up pandora, do a google search, get to espn.com, or find my brother's phone number. Universal Search is awesome awesome awesome awesome.
   
   


2. Card System: Yesterday I found myself listening to music, while searching the web, and having a conversation via gchat...on my phone. I was doing all of this at the same time. And it was real easy. As in, so easy I didn't even realize I was doing all that. This is the ingeniousness of the card system.





3. Sprint's Network: ATT's network is limited because the underlying technology is dated. Do a google search for 3g speed tests. Verizon and Sprint, using CDMA technology, flat out kick ATT and T-Mobile's ass. Plus, sprint and verizon, last year, rolled out EVDO 3g. This is second generation 3g that's much faster and much more efficient than what ATT and T-Mobile use.


4. Price Points: Like the last point, this is more a Sprint Pro but it's related to the Pre so I'll include it here. Bottom line, for phones like these you need special unlimited data plans. I've copied and pasted Engadget's price point comparison. It breaks down the bullshit and gives you the bottom line savings when comparing everything equally. Read it, we're talking $1,000+ in savings over a two year contract.
   

On Sprint $99.99 gets you unlimited voice, on-device data (sorry, no free tethering here), and messaging of all types. As we mentioned before, you get Sprint's TeleNav-powered navigation at no additional charge, which most other carriers bill for as an a la carte service. On Verizon, you're paying $99.99 too -- problem is, that's only for voice. The closest thing to unlimited messaging on Big Red's going to be the 5,000 plan, which runs another $20, data for $29.99, and VZ Navigator for $9.99. All told, you're paying $159.97. Similarly, AT&T will cost you $149.99 (of course, turn-by-turn's not an option here) and T-Mobile -- commonly considered the value leader -- takes second place at $124.98. At the end of 24 months, that means you would've shelled out $2,599.75, $4,039.27, $3,799.75, $3,179.51, respectively, after you take the costs of the phones into account; Sprint wins by a country mile, and there's a stunning $1,439.52 savings against its most expensive competitor, Verizon. Sticker prices on phones are subject to near-constant variation thanks to regional fluctuations, rebates, and moon phases, but even if the Storm were free and the Pre were $500, you'd still come out well ahead.

Stepping down to more modest voice allowances, Sprint loses -- but only because T-Mobile cheats. On Sprint, you'll pay $69.99 for 450 minutes, totaling $1,879.75 over the duration of your contract including the cost of the phone. Verizon gets you going for $99.97, or $2,599.27 over 24 months and AT&T goes for $89.99, $2,359.75 in total. T-Mobile doesn't offer a 450 minute individual plan, but you can step down to 300 with no myFaves for $29.99, which means $64.98 with features added or $1,739.51 by the time your two years of indentured servitude is up. So yes, T-Mobile comes out on top here, but only because you're getting short-changed a smidge on the voice bucket.

Minuses

1. No Visual Voicemail: Come on palm, get your shit together. I hate voicemail (have I said that before?), visual voicemail would have been nice. At least then I'd know whose voicemail's I'm ignoring.


2. Battery Life: Battery life for well developed smart phones always seems to be an issue. I suppose this makes sense. If your phone is laptopesque, you're more inclined to use the wifi, stream music, surf the web, etc. The more you do those things, the more you burn through the battery. This phone is no exception. On friday I streamed pandora for a couple hours and used my itunes synced playlist for a couple more, and the battery didn't like it. But I suppose that makes sense. Still, I'm not happy about it.


3. No Indicator Light: If I have a missed call or text message I need to actually turn on the screen to get the notification. You've got a little button that glows right there on the front of the phone. Why not make that your indicator light? A small feature but an unnecessary inconvenience.
   


4. Apps: This is where the iPhone is really superior. There are approximately 30 apps for the Pre. There are 10's of thousands for the iPhone. Pre needs more apps otherwise the phone's capabilities are worthless. Now, to be fair, the Pre just came out and they haven't yet released their SDK (software development kit) yet. The SDK is the infrastructure developers need to make programs. For that reason, this is a wait and see con for the Pre, we'll have to see if developers embrace Palm's app store the way they have for Apple and Google.

For the record, my guess is that they will because 1) SDK will be available sometime this summer which suggests that Palm's striking while the iron's out, 2) WebOS is html based, which is so easy it's actually being taught in our grade schools, and 3) while the Pre may not outnumber the iPhone now, Palm isn't stuck in a long term exclusivity agreement with Sprint. Meaning, sometime next year, you'll see WebOS based phones for ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc., which makes software development more enticing because of the size of the marketplace.

So that's my .02.

Paint

According to Crayola there are 133 different colors (remember when it was kind of a big deal when they announced a new color? Does anyone anywhere know why that was newsworthy?). Anyway, according to Charlie at Home Depot there are 37,894,209,480,749,231,742,374- then he proceeded to show me each one. I have no idea which colors play well with each other or how to figure that out, but before moving in I do know that I want to paint my walls. And I'm determined not to mess up on color choice cause that's a long term f@%k up (I realize you can always re-paint but I won't). So anyway, I searched online for a little help and ran across the image above. That wall is composed of three layers of magnetic paint underneath three more layers of chalkboard paint. The potential uses for a magnetized chalkboard in your living are too awesome to even conceive; but, sadly, I don't have a good wall to support that idea.

So back to the color choice dilemma, one way to not get inundated with all of those options is to head over to pottery barn and pick up their Benjamin Moore Color Wheel. They've hired people with wall painting color matching skills to create a color wheel each season. You can buy the paint off this color wheel from Benjamin Moore, or you can take the color wheel to Charlie at Home Depot and have him match the paint color for a fraction of the price. Either way, you've taken those 37 quadra-penta-two-nanillion color options and reduced them down to about 30.

Microsoft

Keep an eye on Microsoft. Seriously. They recently released a new search engine- bing.com, which is pretty much awesome. Unlike other search engines, including google, Bing is "I'm tech unsaavy because I was born in the days of rotary telephone's and will do everything in my power to resist change but I've heard about this internet and will demand my kids teach me how to use it even though I won't really pay any attention to a word they're saying because of that aforementioned predisposition against change" proof. I can type in a very generic query such as 'Audi R8' and not only will I get the standard links as seen in Google but on the left panel there will be a Table of Contents directing me to specific information about R8's. For the Audi, my ToC options are: sale, specs, reviews, dealers, problems, video, images, reference. For different items, the Table of Contents is different- it all depends on what you're looking for. This added feature can be real handy when you're searching for things you have little information on (or don't understand how to properly ask Google to find what you're looking for).

With that said, I'm very committed to Google (my homepage is igoogle, my email is gmail, this blog service is run by google, the search box in firefox is google, etc.) and this upgrade isn't likely enough to really to out-convenience all of those things but it's a solid product.


Of even more interest is the new Microsoft Operating System, Windows 7. Beta Testers have been raving about the new OS and the "it just works" factor that's helped Apple all these years. Evidently it's stable, plays nice with all of your peripherals, and does all of this in a user friendly design. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that the new OS no longer consumes such a large percentage of your pc's computing power. Simply put, the more energy your pc needs to run the OS the less you have available to use itunes, mozilla, word, etc. The new Windows 7, apparently, has a slimmed down footprint, that requires so few resources that it even installs on an old school Pentium 3 (think 1995 computing power, XP won't even install on that computer).

All of this looks very promising for microsoft. As a recent mac convert I don't see myself making the switch back any time soon; however, if I hadn't already taken the plunge, this new Windows OS may have been reason enough to give Microsoft one more chance. And evidently the financial community also believes this to be the case. I've been tracking Microsoft's stock since they first started beta testing the new OS and it's run up from $16 to $23 in just a few short months. It's always a good sign for a company's upcoming product line when those that know a lot more than us are willing to bet their cash on that corp's future.

Voicemail

I really really really hate voicemail. Think about it, if you have something to tell me and wish for an immediate response, why subject me to having to call into my voicemail service, wait for the annoying automated information (in your best stupid slow robotic voice: "Saturday Three Forty Six PM, Three One Two Five Nine Five One Two Three Four"), only to listen to your message which invariably requires a call back and if you're not available the need to start this cycle again? A text or an email can be scanned in seconds and replied to just as easily. Why make things harder when they need not be?



Google may have a solution. A couple years back, Google bought out Grandcentral, and is now preparing to launch the service after giving it the Google makeover. Grandcentral is basically an online switchboard for your cell phone. You tell the service your phone number (or multiple phone numbers if you have them) and all calls, texts, voicemails, etc. are first sent to Grandcentral and then forwarded to your cell phone. This may seem a little inefficient at first but by sending things to Google the service will 1) save and archive all of your texts, calls, etc., 2) convert your voicemail to text and forward that to your phone, and 3) a whole bunch of other cool stuff that I don't have the time to really delve into right now. I still hate voicemail but Grandcentral may have just made it a little more bearable.

The service is still in beta and you need an invite to join but should be open to all users soon.

Sofa

I'm officially admitting defeat with my new sofa purchase. For weeks I've been eyeing this Lounge sectional from Crate & Barrel.


This thing's a beast. It's over 10' in diameter and the Cushions are 46" in depth (a twin sized bed is 38"). Plus, it's got a chaise for sleeping those hangover days away. Unfortunately, the thing really is just too damn big. So, instead, I'm debating between this Crate & Barrel Petrie sofa


or this CB2 Movie sofa.


I still know less than nothing about sofa's but the one thing I learned is that depth is the key to comfort. And all of these sofas are stupid deep and therefore awesome.

Fire Extinguisher

Fire Extinguishers? Fires only really happen to people on TV right?


Well…picture this. You wake up one winter morning excited about your favorite football team and their upcoming playoff game. So excited that you decide to throw a little shindig. Your friend/neighbor is invited and he decides he'll contribute to the feast with some homemade deep fried chicken wings. Knowing this friend, you realize that he's probably limited in his cooking skills. You've smelled the microwaved eggs and george foreman grilled meats and you know nothing worth eating can come of this. But still, it's the playoffs, bad wings can't ruin that, right?

WRONG. This friend of yours decides to heat up the oil for his wings, in a way too small pot filled with way too much oil. And because this friend doesn't believe in fires he decides to shower while the oil heats up in the kitchen. Moments later you hear the fire alarm. Seconds after that, you see this neighbor, wrapped up in a hand towel, run in and ask if you have a fire extinguisher. But you don’t, because you're too cool for grease fires remember. So buy one. That way you get to watch the big game. Also, as an added bonus, you get a discount on your homeowners insurance policy.

Puppet Living

Living large like a puppet. Would you call this decor modern? trendy? sesame street chic? I don't know but I like it.

NeatDesk

A machine that would make the Jetsons jealous. NeatDesk is the electronic version of your file cabinet. It scans all your documents (including business cards and receipts). It intelligently labels everything, digitally recognizes text to enable quick searches, and if you ask nicely, will make your morning cup of coffee. Buy one, it's awesome.

Mais

Why buy an extra large beer mug? Why the hell not, that's why.

A few years back I spent some time in Munich and was amazed at how the locals order beer. All alcoholic beverages are ordered by way of the metric system- it's like going to your local watering hole and requesting 12 ounces of budweiser. And the most popular order was the mais- German for liter. Think about the conversion for a second, there are 33 ounces in a liter, that means our sausage loving friends order what's essentially three American beers at a time. Because my mother told me never to insult ones culture I happily joined the locals in this tradition and other than the various run-ins with the law, our bunkmate trying to puke in our luggage, and the inability to see/walk/stand/etc. the results were amazing.


So why not do as the Germans and bring this tradition to the states. Buy your very own Haufbrahaus Mais here for only $15. Or, better yet, why not do even better? Check out this beer glass that holds FIVE beers! Only $20 with shipping.

Wilco

I wasn't really planning on posting any music on this blog so the fact that I'm posting this should give you some idea of how awesome Wilco's music is. Check out the track below for yourself. The song's called, 'Wilco The Song', and it's the first single off their newest, not yet released, album: 'Wilco (The Album)'. You may be thinking, 'why should I waste my time on these jokers if they can't even come up with a proper name for their album or songs?' And if you thought that, please slap yourself immediately, then realize what you should be thinking is, 'wow, how awesome is this band that they don't even need to bother naming the album or first single?' And I'll answer that for you- this band is really really awesome. Check it out...

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Also, be sure to check out the updated Tesla post. The simpsons video clip is hilarious.