itsnotyours.com

Many many years ago… God that makes me feel old just writing that. Ok a while ago I was in a band that was mostly a percussion band. I say mostly because most of our members could play could play multiple instruments which we would work into songs from time to time. We recorded two albums and I haven’t shared much of that music with anyone. I have decided to start sharing some of these tracks. For the most part I am playing the Higher pitched Dumbek drum as is the case with this song. We didn’t rehearse any of this so it is all free form.

On this track my friend Damien was in charge of starting the beat and decided to play balls out and we spent the song playing catchup. Hope you like it

[audio:http://www.itsnotyours.com/audio/Ridilin.mp3]

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Google seems to be confused on what it places value in. They have just gone after Apple for pulling the plug on the Google Voice application and yet they are threatening legal action against their own app community. Google has issued a Cease and Desist order against the most popular custom android rom maker – Cyanogenmod.

Essentially Google claims that while android is open source that one can not use android to distribute closed source programs (such as the gmail or google maps program.). Keep in mind that these apps are included in the standard install of the Android OS for t-mobile and many of these apps are freely available on the android marketplace. Including these apps in a custom rom only helps google as it give them the one thing that makes them money, more eyeballs. More eyeballs means more eyes on advertisements and more money. The more people use these products, the more their loyalty to google grows.

The android community is pretty small, in comparison to other phone OS markets, so to piss off the 30,000 active Cyanogen users doesn’t seem like the best course of action. Cyanogenmod has brought a level of usability to the G1 that made this device a viable alternative to the IPhone. It seems pretty petty of Google to state that they don’t want someone to distribute a product of theirs, that they give away for free, that does nothing but add value to their overall product.

There must be something more to Google’s decision and it makes me wonder if they are living by their company mission statement. …”Google’s mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”. They may even be turning their back on their Code of Conduct which starts with the line “Don’t be evil.”

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I picked up a Zune HD and I have to say I was extremely surprised. From the moment I took the Zune out of the box i was floored by the design. This thing is, for lack of a better term, sexy. I had a Zune Original prior to this unit and, while it was a reliable device, it was equivalent to a small brick one might use to pave a walkway. This little device really has “it”. the size, the lightness, the display, it has it all.

Everone who has looked at the Zune HD since I picked it up has echoed my sentiment. I can safely say that Microsoft hit it out of the park with this one. The interface is easy to navigate and easy to learn. Pairing this device with a zune pass is a great way to experience and discover new music.

The zune software also received an overhaul. I think that this media software is the best media management software for windows, hands down. Even if you don’t have a zune it is worth it to give the software a try.

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One of the trending topics on twitter today is “I quit the Iphone”. At first I had no idea what this was in regards to but some digging around turned up an article by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. Now I normally take what he says with a grain of salt as he tends to be a little extreme with his views, but he isn’t the only one that has lost their passion for the IPhone.

Mike says

I was there in January 2007 when it was announced and I bought the first iPhone as soon as it was available. I happily bought the iPhone 3G a year later. I’ve proudly yelled “I Am A Member Of The Cult Of iPhone.” I’ve been an unabashed cheerleader for the device to all who’ll listen. And I’ve scoffed at developers who said they’d abandon the platform…

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone. I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle…..

Or so I thought. Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe….

I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is worth leaving AT&T for, especially when there are so many other good reasons to do so, but I can under stand why it would be a frustration. If you have a cell phone number should you not be able to use the number as you see fit, baring any illegal activity? As more and more people use their cellphones as a their main point of contact it is becoming imperative that we be able to control who is allowed to contact us and when they are allowed to do so.

GrandCentral created the solution to this problem and Google acquired it, making it into Google Voice. With Google at the helm there is a great chance of success for the program but only if you are allowed to use it. It seems to me that AT&T doesn’t want to allow their users to utilize conveniences unless they provide it and control it. I amd remindedof the list of of features that were rolled out for the 3gs that were available on networks other than AT&T. I wouldn’t want to be with a company that says “Sure your device can do this but we don’t want you to so you can’t”

Mike isn’t the only one who has had problems though. Om Malik from GigaOm also left AT&T and the Iphone for what I believe is a more justified reason.

Om Malik said

Earlier this morning, after enduring days and days of dropped calls and errant network behavior, I quit on my iPhone. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it had to be done. I depend almost exclusively on my mobile phone for my communications. Whether it be surfing the web, checking email, sending text messages or talking — my mobile is the center of my daily existence.

That being said, AT&T’s network just wasn’t cutting it for me. I even tried using a BlackBerry, but the network issues never quite went away. Then over the past few days, my iPhone was spending ungodly stretches of time “searching” for the network, the download speeds of web pages slowed down, and email — well that’s a whole other story. The static, the dropped calls and above all the shoddy call quality were enough to raise my blood pressure. And given my medical history, that’s not a good thing. The only feature that worked flawlessly: SMS.

I love my iPhone — but AT&T’s network has failed me.

He isn’t alone in this issue, not by a long shot. Before the Iphone was even in existence I jumped ship from AT&T for the exact same reasons. My calls were consistently dropped and the service just wasn’t reliable. This seems to be a regional thing. I was in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time so, of course, I think that this is a pretty important area to have reliable service in, as egotistical as we all are.

Two of my friends on twitter have weighed in on this subject to say

tremorx: yeah.. and I think the network issues are entirely locational; AT&T has vastly better coverage where I am than anyone else.

squash86: @tremorx this is very true in Buffalo. I get great signal and data (1200/300).

It definitely seems that this is a case of “your mileage may vary” but I for one am happy to see some negative press for the IPhone every once in a while.

You can read Mike Arrington’s article Here

You can read Om Malik’s article Here

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Today Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos sent a letter to employees saying that they had been acquired by Amazon. Well almost. He actually said”

Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say “Amazon acquires Zappos” or “Zappos sells to Amazon”. While those headlines are technically correct, they don’t really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”)

Essentially Amazon is going to become the sole shareholder of Zappos stock. It seems that this is a weird time for acquisitions, what with the economy and all, but who knows. Maybe they got a good deal. You can read the full letter from the CEO at the Wall Street Journal

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This week I have noticed one of the annoying things that happens to most people with an address. I have started receiving a newspaper. I don’t read the news paper and I don’t think I will any time soon. Every year it seems that for a few weeks these lumps of paper clutter up my driveway. It seems like a pretty desperate attempt to garner subscribers but I have to wonder if there is much success. On the one had one could theorize that, since the newspapers continue to clutter up driveways with their free papers, there is a measure of success in this tactic. On the other hand we all know that the newspaper industry is failing and failing miserably.

Old media needs to embrace new technology or be run over by it. Personally I will continue to get my news online.

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What an exciting few days. Yesterday Google decided to remove the beta tags from several of their products and now today they announce an OS. I was excited 9 months ago when Google announced they had a web browser. I also heard a few analysts who thought that this was a stepping stone for Google to enter the OS market. I agreed completly mostly because I thought that it would be important for Microsoft to have some competition.

Today it seems that those analysts were correct. Google Announced that they will be releasing a light weight open source operating system.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

I like that last sentance. It should just work. In my opinion that is how most Google Products function. They just work and they work beautifully. Google does make a point to state that the new OS will be separate from Android. As a person with an Android phone, I hope this won’t cause Android to be left in the cold. If I know Google I think they will be able to handle both as both of these products offer a lot of promise.

You can read the full blog announcement here

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Its been about 5 years since I first starting using gmail and about 2 since I have been using it exclusively. It was the product that was, in my mind, a foreverbeta. It seemed like Google was never going to release the product and remove that pesky beta tag.

Google suprised me, pleasantly, today when they updated their blog:

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk — both enterprise and consumer versions — are now out of beta. “Beta” will be removed from the product logos today, but we’ll continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there’s a small “beta” beneath the logo. Indeed, today we’re also announcing some other Google Apps features that we think will appeal to large enterprises: mail delegation, mail retention and ongoing enhancements to Apps reliability.

You can read the full release here

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So summer is well underway and one of the things that peopel hate about the summer is pesky insects. I read a pretty interesting article over at Lifehacker that had an interesting time on how to repel housefiles.

Evidently, houseflies, being highly edible and defenseless, are nervous types, and don’t like to sit still when they see something moving nearby, because it could be a predator. The water bag acts a bit like a lens—try it some time—in which the movements of people in the area are reflected. Even if the fly is too far from the action to see it directly, it can see a shifting of light and dark in the water bag, which it interprets as nearby movement, and it will fly away from the bag.

You can read the full article at Lifehacker

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Well today I have decided to reclaim this blog for my own devices. For quite a while now I used it to promote a podcast but i feel that I should really start using this for myself. I am not sure what I will use it for yet, probably some writing and general musings, but we will see how it goes.

Of course the day that I decide to embark on this endevor I have very little to talk about. Its the day before a 3 day weekend and no one is calling into the office for support. As such it leads to a long, mind numbing day where forming a simple thought requires every bit of concentration I can muster.

Having  just returned from the glorious land of Las Vegas, I am looking forward to the opportunity to recharge my batteries. Vegas is a vacation that you have to work at. There is so much to do and see. I could not help but be in awe at the sheer grandious-ness-ity (I can make up words if I want) that one can find everywhere they look. It seems that every time you turn around some different attraction runs up and kicks you in the nuts to say “HI I AM HERE LOOK AT ME”. It was quite an adventure.

The only celebrity news of any importance:

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