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Playing in Traffic: Speed Demons

Anyone who has driven a vehicle has encountered a driver who has a touch of road rage or is just highly impatient. These are the people who change lanes repeatedly and for no apparent reason. They try to blow through every yellow light they can. They follow dangerously close, hoping you’ll move out of their way. They seem to have no earthly idea that there are actual legal speed limits posted along the side of the road.

You, on the other hand, cruise along patiently (unless you are the speed demon). You may exceed the speed limit, but only by a bit and you don’t swerve in and out of traffic like a maniac. You know your destination isn’t going anywhere. So, in all that dodging, speeding, switching, changing, and endangering that these speed demons are doing, what always happens? When you pull up to the next red light, or the one after that, guess who is sitting right next to you?

You don’t have to always be doing something to get what you want out of life. You don’t have to always be rushing around like a chicken with your head cut off tweeting, Facebooking, blogging, developing, marketing, vlogging, parenting, downloading, uploading, meeting, greeting, and checking in so that you can reach your goals. Notice, I’m not saying you never have to do things, but most of us are just doing too much to actually be productive.

Your creative mind, that magic piece of genius where the good ideas come from, cannot operate if you are never idle. John Cleese, Brian Eno, and others agree that being idle is essential. Most people might be paying the bills and probably feel like they are getting the job done, but they are merely running in place. While you are actively doing things, your genius is on hold.

So, go sit your ass down somewhere and chill out. Let your mind be at ease. While you relax, that spark of genius grows, new ideas form, the things you really want move closer to you. Stop speeding, kick back, and enjoy the scenery.

I leave you with a quote from The Matrix:

Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?

Morpheus: No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.

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Gingerbread a Double-Edged Sword for HTC Evo. No More Netflix.

Excited about Gingerbread?! Loving the fact that you can stream Netflix?! Well, too bad you can’t have both on your Evo. The latest update to the Evo, which includes Gingerbread, apparently renders the device incompatible with the Netflix service. Netflix has even removed the device from its supported list. But you can get netflix in other countries just click here to see how to get american netflix.

Having this service available on Android is great, but it has also been a great disappointment for Android users. The fact that it is only compatible with a few devices is definitely a big issue in and of itself, but it seems like OS updates might be bringing issues as well. One does wonder if this problem will rise up every time a device receives an update. What do you guys think? EVO users, are you upset about this?

Am I upset? Nope. I’ve been running Gingerbread for quite a while using CyanogenMod 7. Rooting was painless and CyanogenMod with Gingerbread is a beautiful thing. Reminds me why I love using Android: Control. Not being controlled by a wireless carrier or a hardware manufacturer, but the ability to control my device and do whatever-the-hell I want with it.

via Android and Me

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Is The Relevant Web Really Nameless?

Holden Page at Pages Are Social recently wrote a piece about the relevant web being nameless. I can’t say that I really disagree, but it got me thinking about a few things. It’s true, services like my6Sense take the focus away from the authors/brands and place it on the actual content.

So what are bloggers and blog owners to do? While My6Sense is on the small scale of things, and the few who support My6Sense have come to love it, there is no doubt in my mind that a backlash will occur.

A number of things came to mind here. I remember not so long ago, when bloggers lamented the loss and fragmentation of blog comments. Services like Disqus came out of nowhere, giving ownership of comments to the commentators rather than the bloggers. I don’t see many blogs these days that don’t use Disqus or something similar. The blogosphere changes, content creators change with it.

I view an experience like my6sense as something like the radio for the written word. Of course, my6sense is not a corrupt industry where content creators pay the stations to play their junk, tricking the listener into thinking what’s popular. Rather, you have a channel of content customized by the reader. What they see is exactly what they are looking for.

The similarity with the radio is that, once you come across awesome content, you will want to know who wrote it in the same way that you would want to know who sings your favorite song on the radio. You will probably go further than just waiting for the radio to play that song and go buy the album. Just on the strength of that one piece, you are motivated to own tho whole shebang.

My6Sense and future technologies like it are fundamentally changing how we consume news, and its a benefit is purely for the consumers, not the producers.

Uhm….kinda. There is a saying that any blogger worth his salt has heard. Many have taken it to heart and many others write it off as bull: “Content is King.” As it stands now, you can pretty much write crap as long as you market it well. If you are awesome and networking and connecting with people, your writing skills don’t have to be that strong. I won’t point out any artist in particular, but how many have you hear don the radio or seen on stage at an awards show and wondered how the hell they got there?

Now, take the front man away. Ditch the artist and the blogger. All you have left is their content and, if it can’t stand on its own, that creator fails. This is where my6sense and the few other services like it are taking us. You won’t choose your favorite sites by how awesome you think the author is, but by how great their content is.

Great for the consumer, but all you bloggers half-assing it better get back to basics before it’s too late.

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Amazon Giving Away Lady Gaga’s New Album to Promote Cloud Player

Well, it’s not actually free, but you probably have 99 cents knocking around under your couch cushions. Why so cheap? To get more users for their shiny new Cloud Player storage locker.

Lady Gaga Fan? Cop the album here and store it for free in the cloud. Play it on your mobile device or from your browser without ever having to actually download it.

Check out the details at AllThingsD, where they Peter Kafka goes into detail about the love-hate relationship between Amazon’s Cloud Player and the music industry.

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Amazing Danger Mouse, Jack White, Norah Jones HTML5 Experience

If a web page calls itself an “experience” and requires Chrome Canary, the “cutting-edge experimental version of Google Chrome,” it’s gotta be awesome…RIGHT?! Check out the behind-the-scenes video below, download Canary, and check out the experiment.

“3 Dreams of Black” is Chris Milk’s new interactive film, created in WebGL with Google for Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s ROME, featuring Jack White & Norah Jones. The project is a Chrome Experiment which pushes the boundaries of HTML5 and showcases the potential of video on on modern browsers. Watch the “Creation Of” video:

via hypebot.

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Google’s Movie Rentals for Android Blocked for Rooted Devices

That fancy new movie rental section on the Android Market? You can’t use it if you have rooted your device. Kinda sucks and I can understand why many rooters would be upset, but I think Android Central goes a bit overboard here:

So now people who root their phones, whether to get rid of the crap “open” that’s forced down their throats, or to have a current version of Android, are punished and lumped in with folks who steal movies. Nice move, Google. That makes me want to buy more of your products and use more of your services, so I can be treated like a criminal just because I’m smart enough to get rid of CityID, or want a safe version of Android on my phone.

There is one important point we have to remember here: Google did not create these movies. In order for Google to distribute them, they need permission from the movie industry. We’ve already learned from the Netflix launch on Android that this industry forces those distributing their content to be very careful. This is one of the reasons Netflix isn’t available on all handsets yet.

Let’s also take a peak at the new Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player services. Both operate as simple cloud storage lockers which just so happen to be geared towards playing music. Without the music industry behind it, you are forced to simply upload all your junk instead of having these services recognize and match your library as Lala has done in the past. More than likely, Apple’s cloud-based music service will have this ability. Remember? Apple bought Lala and later shut it down.

Let’s not go blaming Google and try to realize that, without these restrictions, there probably wouldn’t be any movies at all for any Androids.

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How to Import Foursquare Check-ins Into Google Places

If you’re reading this, I must assume you’re some type of techy. Who else would bother with Google Places? Facebook and Foursquare have that location check-in thing on lock. At any rate, Google just announced the ability to import any RSS feed that includes location data and I’m going to show you how to do so with Foursquare.

Google Places just announced a new feature that lets you import the places you’ve checked-in to on Foursquare into Google to rate and review. It’s as simple as finding the feed from your Foursquare profile, copying its link and pasting it into the search box in Places. It’s really easy! via ReadWriteWeb

Well, it’s not that hard, but if you haven’t a clue about RSS and all that jazz, I don’t think “really easy” covers it. Especially not with an exclamation point (Marshall, you’re still my dude).

The first thing you want to do is grab your Foursquare RSS feed. For your privacy, these feeds are available using private token URLs. This means you have to be logged into Foursquare to even see them.

  1. Login to Foursquare.
  2. Go to Foursquare.com/feeds.
  3. Copy the link to the RSS feed for your check-in history (right-click on PC, control-click on Mac).
  4. Fire up Google Places.
  5. Paste the URL you just grabbed from Foursquare into the search box and hit Search button.

Now, this will pull in some of your recent check-ins and give you the option to rate them. Here is where things get a little funky. You’re only going to get the last 10 or 20 check-ins, not much if you actually use Foursquare.

To increase the number of results you see, you have to add a parameter to the end of the URL. Try adding “?count=1000” to the end (no spaces) before you hit Search and you should see more results as you hit Load More at the bottom of the page.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Google Places is all about Ratings. If you don’t actually go through and rate the places that show up from Foursquare, you haven’t actually imported them into Google Places.

Again, if all you do is paste the feed from Foursquare and hit Search, you haven’t imported any info into Google Places. You must go through and rate the places you’ve been.

via Google Places Now Imports Your Foursquare Check-Ins.

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Are Google And Amazon’s Cloud Music Services Dead in the Water?

 

Google Music

 

As you may have noticed, Amazon and Google have both launched cloud music services. These work as storage lockers, where you can upload music from your computer and play that music, streamed directly from the cloud, to just about any computer or mobile device.

iTunes Dominates

Apple’s iTunes, the king when it comes to buying music online, has been rumored to be launching a similar service. The main difference being that Apple will launch with support from record labels while Amazon and Google are going it alone.

Why is this important?

It all comes down to how you get started on these services. With Amazon and Google, you have to upload all of your music to the cloud. As I can personally attest, this takes for-freaking-ever even for a modest amount of music.

It’s hard to overstate how critical this is. Right now, Amazon makes you upload your own library for any song you haven’t purchased from them since their service launched those you purchase from them can automatically be added to your locker. Google doesn’t even have a music purchase option at all yet, so you have to upload music.

As Jason and I talked about on OMG/JK this week, that means hours or days of uploading — that’s what he had to go through. How many people are realistically going to do that? Not a lot.

via TechCrunch

Look Mom! No Uploading!

You see, Apple could get around the uploading by scanning your music library and simply unlocking those tracks for you in their online library. You won’t have to upload, but you’ll still have access to your music in the cloud. This is exactly what LaLa used to do.

Why This is Dangerous

We have to remember that the gate keepers are gone. The music industry is desperately trying to hold onto a revenue model that consumers and artists are just not feeling anymore. They tried to lock us down with DRM, which failed miserably, so how else could they possibly limit our music?

Oh! I know. Get direct access to all the music on your local drive. Scan it and compare it with watermarks (yes, they can do that), hashes, or whatever from “official” services like iTunes and Amazon. Maybe they even compare your library to an extensive library of pirated music they snagged from torrents.

Bottom line for me is that I don’t think I want a cloud music service that has anything to do with the record labels. A dying beast is always the most dangerous. Of course, I’ve never bought anything from iTunes anyway and never plan to start.

Back to the Technical Side

You only have to upload your music once. After that, uploading an album here and there isn’t going to be a big deal. With Amazon, you don’t even have to upload anything because they’ll automatically dump your purchases into your cloud storage. Purchases made in their store don’t count against your storage limit.

What Do You Think?

I’m not down for an industry-backed cloud player, but what about you? Why? Which company will you roll with?

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Did You Get Your 20GB of Free Music Storage on Amazon Yet?

As you may know, Amazon has introduced a new service called Amazon Cloud Player. This lets you upload and play your personal music collection from any supported web browser or on your Android mobile device. You can also purchase your MP3’s from Amazon and store them in your Cloud Player and it doesn’t count against your allowed storage.

Right now, you can sign up for CloudPlayer and get 5GB of online storage for free. Not much for you extreme collectors out there, but quite a bit for the average person. No worries, though. Amazon is running a promotion that will give you an additional 15GB of storage just by purchasing an MP3 album from the MP3 Store. Any old album will do and you end up with 20GB of cloud storage for your music.

I got mine by purchasing The 99 Most Essential Relaxing Classics [Amazon Exclusive]. At the time, it was $0.99. Lucky me, right? Anyway, there are still some great deals in the store that will qualify you for your own 20GB of cloud storage. Here are a few areas to check out:

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Angry Birds Rio is only free today and only from the Amazon Appstore

The Amazon Appstore opened it’s doors today. This should concern you, my fellow Android user, as they are going to be giving away a free app every day. This isn’t just another random free app. It’s the ability to download an app for free that otherwise would have cost you money.

Today’s free app? Angry Birds Rio. This is a special version of Angry Birds that ties into their upcoming movie, or so I hear. The Amazon Appstore works just about as smooth as the official Google Android Market, but only if you’re on a carrier besides AT&T.

For you AT&T folks, there is a work-around. My fellow FriendFeeder @rodfather points out this article on Android Central that should help you get some Amazon Appstore love.

For everyone else, check out the Amazon Appstore and grab your free copy of Angry Birds Rio….or whatever app is free for the day at the time you’re reading this.

via You do realize that Angry Birds Rio is only free… – Rah – Rahsheen – Sheen – FriendFeed

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Are there any Black owned mobile app Startups, that Robert Scoble and other pro bloggers have done interviews on? – Quora

 

 

 

 

 

I happen to be black and this is by no means a ‘gotcha’ question. I’m a big fan of Robert Scoble’s YouTube Channel and also follow major tech blogging sites such as Mashable & Engadget, but have yet to see Black owned mobile app development company interviews. This leads me to believe either they are non existent or may not be considered newsworthy by the major tech blogosphere. I am quite interest in an honest response to my sincere query.

via (22) Are there any Black owned mobile app Startups, that Robert Scoble and other pro bloggers have done interviews on? – Quora.

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Leads are Unproductive and a Waste of Time

Business folks put a lot of focus on leads and sales. Sales are important, that’s how you make money, but leads are usually pointless. Think about all the methods you’ve used to generate leads. They probably worked great for creating a list of random names and contact info, but how many sales did they lead you to?

Leads don’t mean sales. What you need are fans. Fans will buy whatever you put out just because it’s you. They think you are the best artist, writer, brand, blogger, leader, and software developer on the planet. Fans mean sales. When you need venture capital on your developing company, click this site for more information.

Instead of following the mantra that sales and marketing is a numbers game, try becoming valuable and visible. Instead of Always Be Closing, how about always be informative? Always be helpful? Always be real and keep it 100? (that’s “one hunnit”, for the uninitiated)

When you work to make yourself an asset instead of just an ass, people will seek you out. Instead of you asking for the sale, you may find them asking to be sold.

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How I Accidentally Upgraded to Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread

 

It was just another day in the office, I was sipping my coffee, going through emails, and trying to get re-acquainted with Feedly in between taking tech support calls from clients. Eventually, I stumbled across a post from MobileLuv talking about the latest CyanogenMod 7 RC2.

I knew I would probably want to install that, but I got to thinking about my original rooting experience. My Evo had been running Myn’s Warm TwoPointTwo for a little while after I’d used this handy-dandy Rooting for Dummies thread a few of my awesome Twitter friends sent me (sorry, don’t remember who it was, but big-ups). I won’t say it was a harrowing experience, but I was definitely on edge with my baby on the operating table (if you don’t think of your phone as a close friend, relative, or partner…you have the wrong device).

So, anyways, you’ll have to remember that I’m doing a million things at once. I’m not really reading as much as scanning and my eyes fell on the phrase “ROM Manager.” I’m thinking, “Oh yeah, I have that. Let me fire that puppy up and see what it do.” ROM Manager came as a package deal when I rooted my phone and I’m glad it did. I went in and first tried to Check for ROM Updates, at which point I was reminded that I hadn’t paid to be a premium user.

Mind you, I have no idea what I’m doing at this point. Just randomly hitting buttons. Download ROM looked like a winner, so I hit and, CHA-CHING, there goes CyanogenMod right at the top. Tapped that and found the link to the RC2 ROM I’d just read about.

Now, here is where things get a little fuzzy because I think I was trying to walk someone through something on the phone while composing a blog post and playing Lord of Ultima. I know I hit the button to download, and I think it said something like “Prepare for Flashing.” I obviously switched into 12 o’clock flasher mode and just kept hitting buttons.

The next thing I know, my phone has rebooted into Recovery mode. I’m busy with a client at this point, so all I saw were green progress bars when I glanced over. I tried to pay attention to what the client was saying, but the sinking feeling in my stomach was a bit distracting.

A short time later, my Evo rebooted again and spent an excruciatingly long time on the “htc Evo” boot logo. I thought it was a wrap, but I eventually saw the CyanogenMod animation spinning on my display. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to get excited about what gems I’d find in Gingerbread. I was not disappointed at all. It was like I had a brand-new phone, which may be a story for another day.

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HTC Thunderbolt: First 4G LTE Smartphone for Verizon Available Today

The HTC Thunderbolt, The first 4G LTE smartphone for Verizon, arrives today, March 17th. The Android 2.2 device features the latest version of HTC Sense. The new Sense experience includes new personalization options, consolidated email inbox, and camera effects and filters.

The ThunderBolt comes with all of the standard apps you’d expect from Google and HTC, but also comes with some extra goodies. These 4G LTE optimized apps include EA’s Rock Band, Gameloft’s Let’s Golf, Tunewiki, and Bitbop.

Additional features include:

  • 4G LTE – customers can expect download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G Mobile Broadband coverage area
  • 4.3” WVGA display
  • 8- megapixel rear facing camera and HD (720p) video recording
  • 1.3- megapixel front facing camera with video chatting capabilities
  • Newest generation of the 1GHz Snapdragon processor
  • Mobile Hotspot capability – share 4G connection with up to eight Wi-Fi-enabled devices
  • 8 GB of onboard memory and a pre-installed 32 GB microSD card (Actual formatted capacity will be less)
  • Built-in kickstand for easy media viewing

Plans for the Verizon Thunderbolt start at $39.99 for Nationwide Talk and access to the 4G LTE network starting at $29.99 for unlimited access. Obviously, both the talk and data plans are required to use the device. The Mobile Hotspot feature will let you connect up to 8 devices to the Verizon network via your Thunderbolt. Hotspot will be free through May 15th, but will cost $20 for 2 GB of data per month after that.

You can get your Verizon HTC Thunderbolt for $179.99 on and individual two-year customer agreement or $679.99 with no contract.

get yours from Amazon