Guess who has an iPhone?

Me!

Your favorite Blackberry lover got an iPhone. Don't go crazy or anything, someone stole my jacket and ipod over the weekend and a friend had a 1st Gen iPhone laying around for me. (Thanks Rabe!). So, now I'm carrying around an iPhone without service and a Blackberry Curve. I find it hard to imagine myself dropping my Curve for the same reasons I've been saying (mobile IM it better than SMS in almost every way, real keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, etc.)

But, most interestingly, I'll be trying to get it to work well as a remote for my computer. I already installed Mocha VNC Lite (which is awesome, if not a bit slow). Obviously, I installed the remote program for iTunes. As I've written recently, I'm excited about Boxee and I think the iPhone could be a great remote control (hence the installation of Mocha VNC). And, according to Avner at Boxee, they are working on the app.

Some of the other great apps like Pandora or Shazam won't be as useful for me, because I rely on wifi only. I'll be focusing on free apps though, because without the internet with me all the time, I don't think it's worth it to pay for apps. However, tons of other programs in the app store have potential for me. The instapaper free program looks to have tremendous potential to keep me up to my ears in content to read on the subway (auto downloading like I've been asking for from my mobile RSS readers). And, urbanspoon makes choosing where to eat downright entertaining.

So, friends with iPhones/iPod Touches, let me know what apps you've downloaded that make your experience amazing. In the meantime, I'll try to get used to the fake keyboard.

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Palm Pre premiers at CES, people love it

I have to admit, I'd given up on Palm as a cell phone leader. I didn't even really know that this phone was going to happen.

Then, all of a sudden it's here. The blogs are going crazy right now. I haven't had a chance to read in-depth about it, but it definitely looks cool. Full QWERTY and mult-touch...nice.

The links are below if you want to give it a look yourself.

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Hype Machine: Just let music bloggers influence you!

There are a bunch of music sites trying to introduce you to new music and stream it to you for free. They use algorithms based on the characteristics of the music (Pandora), on what your friends like or on what people you don't know but who like the same musician also like (last.fm). There are a bunch of others, too (like tumblr, 8tracks, Shazam with its iPhone app, and SeeqPod).

There are also a lot of people deliberately trying to influence your taste in music. Tons of them are blogging about songs they want you to like. Hype Machine pulls these blogs into one place so you can let these bloggers be influential. You can listen to the music, and if you want to read the review, you can click through to read the blog post.

I'm not sure what the legal requirements for them are, but these bloggers write about songs and add tracks to their posts. I'm guessing some get taken down and a lot are remixes (which may help avoid some copyright issues?). But you can listen to the site like a radio station, add songs and blogs to your favorites (and tweet about it) and connect with friends, or you can click through to buy the track from Amazon, eMusic or iTunes (which is how they make money).

What's great is that right now, they're rounding up the top 50 artists, albums and songs of 2008 and releasing them over the course of this week. The 2008 Zeitgest is available here, powered in part by imeem, and embedded below. Though, not all albums are streaming full versions of every song from imeem.





I'd love to know what music sites you use. I'm bballan on basically all of them, so hit me up with a friend request.

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A Young Daffy Duck

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Cartoons were a major influence in my life. They helped me learn to think creatively (Wile E. Coyote might have been my biggest influence in becoming an engineer). I'm pretty sure that cartoons are the reason I constantly have big ideas, they may also be the reason I haven't yet had one hit the big time. Anything is possible in a cartoon.

This cartoon, Daffy Doodles, is from 1946. It's my favorite of all time. Looney Tunes made some of the funniest cartoons ever. I don't know when exactly it happened, but it seems that short cartoons like these are gone. They're still doing a good job selling Happy Meals and Trix. At least we can still dig these shorts up on the internet. If only it was on Hulu.

Young Daffy Duck cared about one thing: acting daffy. Older Daffy got too worried about his legacy and was constantly jealous of Bugs Bunny's fame. It's interesting how that happens. If only he could have stayed the same care-free duck, these short cartoons might still be around.

I guess even cartoon ducks get old.