Wow. Were episodes one and two of John Adams good or what? I’m digging around for history books…
April Update: I was moved by the Declaration of Independence scenes in Episode 2, but I haven’t thought much of the following episodes. Current rating: “Meh.”
I’m reading around about the iPhone SDK announcement, and I see people making a big deal about ActiveSync and ‘Exchange Push.’
My web-based mail client pings home frequently (a couple of times a minute, perhaps) via AJAX techniques. Phone apps have the same HTTP connection available. If you’re curious, keep Gmail open with the LiveHTTPHeaders addon installed and watch the request/responses stream by. Isn’t frequent pull the same as “push?” I’m having an acid flashback of the Wired hype about Push in the mid-90s…and the PointCast screensaver, which “pushed” a bunch of information to you while you were away from your computer…
I guess I’m just annoyed that “Push Technology,” in 2008, is still being called out as something customers need…
Update: Since Third-party apps appear to be limited in that they have to terminate when the user switches apps, this probably makes a daemon harder to run on the iPhone. I’m starting to understand the announcement.
Over at GigaOM, Android’s ‘web-like application’ functionality is covered. I believe there are reasons that a web browser in the phone isn’t the answer to everything-apps for a while (read: Flash on the iPhone), so this wonderful new era of competing phone UIs and functionality is great and long overdue. If one is unsatisfied with a web app in phone-based browser, it’s good that Android (and, I’m presuming, the soon-to-be-revealed-in-detail iPhone SDK) will allow lively parallel apps that work much better in the phone operating stack. And all-you-can-eat phone plans are becoming the norm (the iPhone plan already has unlimited data).
Good times, good times.
Lucky you, because you’ve got five seasons waiting to be watched!
The Wire is now my favorite show, maybe all-time. The series concludes with this Sunday’s finale. I’m bummed about that, as it’s been a torrid affair with the show in the last few months. Despite having been an HBO subscriber for years, the ads for the show never compelled me to watch. I think my mistake was mixing up Oz with The Wire adverts, and I remember thinking that Oz looked interesting but was probably too gritty. Also, I can only have a certain number of shows in rotation, as time is limited. The buzz caught up with me in December, and my girlfriend and I got immediately hooked. We binged on four seasons in eight weeks.
The good news is that you probably haven’t seen The Wire, according to USA Today, as it had a peak viewership of only 4 million.
One thing the falling numbers can tell you is that The Wire simply went on too long, outrunning its audience’s interest. It’s wonderful to have the luxury and ability to structure your series like a novel, and then stretch it out over a six-year span. But if Simon wanted viewers to get to the end of the story, he clearly needed to get there faster himself.
This won’t matter to you if you compress your viewing into months instead of six years by watching seasons back-to-back, like we did.
I’m guessing that a cult following for the show only grows over the years, not unlike Firefly.
The third season (Hamsterdam) was probably my favorite, but the fifth is equally compelling. I won’t spoil anything for you, head over to NetFlix and queue it up.
Rand’s going to be on the Oprah show, and writes:
We had the Oprah film crew spend 4 hours here this morning (before we went caucusing for our candidates of choice) and it was a bit surreal - the sad part is that TV, particularly of this type, is not interested in the real story - they’re interested in creating a story that they think will fit their audience. The “coaching” of the producer made for some very odd tape - she literally just wanted me repeating what she said, not putting out the story as it is.
This is not necessarily about Rand’s business, nonetheless–while a lot of Search Engine Optimization is about getting to the truth of a client’s site, some of it ain’t, and the irony dealt me a haymaker. Then again, I spend a lot of time looking at webspam 
That said, kudos to Rand and Geraldine!
Rock Band has, literally overnight, become the newest glue that ties together even the most videogame-resistant in my group of friends. We played Friday night well into the wee hours and met up on Saturday and everyone couldn’t stop talking about how much fun was had. The last people you’d expect had the strongest grips on the controllers and the drum sticks.
The beauty really is in the mixed difficulty levels. Easy bass mixed with Hard drums, and people crying to start the song over because dammit, they’re going to nail it this time!
Sony has to get on their horse and get orders of magnitude more songs into the system for those who aren’t fans of Rush, the Police, or Black Sabbath (which we happen to be). It also needs a smarter system of payment and download to deal with the 2am song purchases in which, I’m guessing, alcohol consumption will be a factor in a large percentage. It’s pretty cumbersome right now but could be better integrated with the game.
Get to work, Sony! The dollar bills were being thrown around faster than a West Baltimore street craps game! “Here’s two bucks for My Sharona, buy it now!” We need more songs, like yesterday! There’s a lot of people ready to fork over those bills for all manner of shredditude.
