Oh no! I’m going to let the geek side of me show and say that I was very saddened today to hear that Majel Roddenberry died. She was the wife of the creator of the Star Trek series. She had a role on the show and she was the computer voice since the beginning.
We’ll get to hear her one last time though, as she will be the computer voice in the upcoming movie.
This was a genius gimmick on the part of the mall. Their theory: put some snow machines inside a mall in a city that almost never sees snow (well except this week) and people will flock there. It worked. And I have to admit it was a cool effect. I heard rumor that it was actually dry ice flakes so that they didn’t have to clean up anything afterward.
I can’t believe I haven’t posted about this. The geek inside me is shocked I took this long. Two weeks ago, I broke down my resolve and joined the iPhone crowd. I had been holding out this long due to some important features that I needed. However I was finally able to work around those issues. It did necessitate hacking the crap out of it to get those missing features, but if it works it works.
Here are some of my favorite features:
The biggest plus goes it it’s web browser. It’s as close to browsing on a real computer as you can get. Obviously it’s lack of Flash support is annoying, but other than that it’s great. By the way the lack of Flash is because of Apple’s SDK rules, NOT Adobe’s fault.
I also love the programs other people have created for it. Here’s a VNC app, that allows me to control my main machine from the little screen no matter where I am:
Another great little program is air hockey. You can even play two players over a network!
Some other great features: I found that I can type pretty darn fast, because I’ve learned to trust the phone to correct all the mis-typings. So as long as the letters are in the general area of where I typed, it will usually figure out what I meant to say. Also it connected to all my email accounts with almost no work on my part. I didn’t have to know all the stupid server settings or anything.I also love the Shazam app, that lets you hold the phone up to anything playing music, and it listens to the song and tells youwhat it is. 10 years ago, people would equate that stuff to witchcraft!
I don’t like: I would really like to tether my phone to my computer so I can use the phone’s network connection for Internet access. I also miss some of the more PDA-type functions of my old phone, like the ability to snooze event reminders and set more meeting details and privacy settings.
All in all, a great little pocket computer!
Please disregard my previous post. Apparently we are in a recession. Today was NOT a good day at work:
Adobe cuts jobs, lowers revenue outlook
600 people were laid off today. Luckily I wasn’t one of them, but it still really sucks.