Well, yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of the iPhone. I can confidently say that it was the best $600 I ever spent (yes, I did buy it for that much). I use every single feature of the phone regularly: maps, YouTube, calendar, iPod, Internet, eMail, camera, photos, stocks, weather, calculator, clock, notes, and iTunes store. If you haven’t bought one and are looking for one device to take care of all your digital needs, this is it.
As we get closer and closer to the release of the App Store and its thousands of awesome applications on July 11, I thought I would post a little preview of what’s coming up:
Super Monkey Ball: Oh yeah!
Spore: This looks pretty fun, actually.
ePocrates: It’s not just about the games. The stock will fly once this gets moving.
There you have it–lots of reasons to be excited.
Before leaving for Maine tomorrow, Eric, Marcia, and I tried out Evergreen Country Club. It was my first outing of the season and I was a bit rusty, but finally started getting things worked out by the end. The course was quite long and enjoyable, although the sand traps needed work and the holes were a bit too straight. All in all, it proved to be an enjoyable experience with good company.
This iTunes Single begins with a great atmosphere–pulsating beat, airy tones, eventually complimented by Sparro’s smooth funk styling. Nice start!
Funk is a genre that gets a bad rap a lot of the time–there’s a lot of good stuff if you give it the chance. Black Gold is a perfect example–great arrangements, excellent vocals, and relatively interesting lyrics (well, not really, but they’re not bad).
One recurring complaint though–does this song need to be 4 minutes long? Could we have gotten away with a 2-minute single? Certainly. Still, not a bad single.
Grade: B
When I was first told by Charlie (boss) that I should go to conferences/seminars to get some more training, I immediately knew that I should brush up on my marketing skills with the Direct Marketing Association.
After signing up for my first conference, Advanced Copywriting, I noticed that the DMA offered a Certificate in Direct and Interactive Marketing. To complete it, I just needed to complete two required courses (the Direct Marketing Institute and Database Marketing) and two electives (Web Marketing and Advanced Copywriting).
Well, after finishing up the first 3 courses, I’m spending the first half of this week participating in the Direct Marketing Institute. Since it’s sort of a cover-it-all marketing course, it would have been better if I could have done this one first, but things didn’t work out that way. Even though it’s only introductory, I feel like I’m walking away with a few very important points:
I’m excited to almost be done with my certificate, but enough about marketing. Here are some photos from my trip so far:
Well, I had my first celebrity spotting of the weekend: American Idol winner Taylor Hicks coming out of the theatre (he’s currently in Grease) while I was out looking for pizza. Got pretty close for a picture.
Wow, this Jayville place has quite an interesting past. Thanks to the New York Times for having the smarts to open up their archive to the Internet world for free instead of charging for it (which I would have never paid for), I was able to browse some old stories about Jayville, New York.
So why were some 200 people in Jayville in the first place? Apparently they were there for vonsenite.
I find it fascinating that just 12 days after the New York Times published its piece on Jayville opening up to the public, a devastating fire crippled Jayville. The only time it would talk about Jayville again was to discuss a woman who was tarred and feathered just for eloping. Sounds like the New York Times cursed Jayville…
Emily’s parents took us in an excursion to Jayville, NY this weekend. Once home to almost 200 people, the “town” is gone except for some old foundations and a few camps. Apparently, Jayville once had its own post office and hotel. Amazing how things can change in less than 100 years!
Here’s a picture of one of the remaining in-use camps near Jayville.
As I have grown more accustomed to living in New York, I’m occassionally reminded of how weird some of my Maine(iac) ways are.
Take, for instance, duct tape. To most, it is simply some heavy duty tape used for solidifying old cardboard boxes. But to me, it has a great variety of uses–none of which involves boxes.
In high school, someone hit Freddie in his rear while I was in class (Willy Gramlich, if you are Googling your name and come across this post, can you please let me know if it was you?). At first, the crack in his bumper didn’t look half bad. But after a few weeks, it had grown in size as I hit faster speeds. A couple weeks later, my bumper was dragging on the ground between Bangor and Orono. I pulled off the interstate, not sure what to do. I pulled open the glove compartment in desperation and BINGO!–duct tape. 15 minutes later, I was back on the road. 3 years later, I was still using the duct tape to keep the bumper on, albeit with some nice white house paint to cover up the greyness of the tape–classy.Now that is a legitimate use of duct tape.*
*I should point out that most Mainers would refer to it as “duck tape,” but I guess I’ve been in New York too long.
Hey all you Mac users–I have a download suggestion for you. The brilliant minds behind FireFox just released the newest version of their popular browser (version 3). There are some great interface changes, but, most importantly, a very good plugin for us Mac users. One of the reasons I didn’t love using FireFox before was the lack of an in-browser PDF viewer. Well, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Download the Firefox-Mac-PDF plugin from Google now and you’ll be able to view PDF files without opening Preview or Adobe Reader.
