Apr 27, 2010

LYNTC: 4/27/10

Here’s the links of the day for Tuesday, April 27, 2010.

  • My former colleague and all around great guy John Ratcliffe-Lee shares some thoughts on attitude and hard work with regard to the “millenial” generation, in response to some fairly public comments by some PR, digital and media heavy hitters.
  • For those of you reading this who aren’t into the tech world, you might not have heard about what’s gone down since tech blog Gizmodo secured what appears to be an upcoming iPhone device. Lots more at Wired’s Threat Level.
  • E. W. Scripps has sold the rights to “Peanuts” to Iconix.
  • See, Roger Federer continues to make it clear that he’s not invincible. I say this makes men’s tennis so much less boring.
  • Soundgarden played a “secret” show here in Seattle a week ago. Check out my story at MTV.com, and here are the photos I snagged on the DL while inside the show.
  • Wait, seriously? A PR person “pitched” a blogger offering a “pre-written guest post,” unsolicited, without even knowing that the blog or blogger would even care about what sounds like an op-ed? Found this via @brittneyg on Twitter.

Dec 30, 2009

LYNTC: 12/30/09

It’s almost 2010 (wow!), and here’s my links you need to click for the day. Enjoy!

  • Congrats to Ben and Abbi Wagner on the news of Abbi’s pregnancy. Of course, Ben writes it up in his news-guy style, keeping you waiting until the end, even if you did look at the photo first.
  • After Dave busted on me for my top 25-played tracks that were born in the year of our lord 2009, I just had to link to this. Rex points to what last.fm sez are the most unwanted scrobbles – that is, the ones most deleted from last.fm users’ scrobble lists – for 2009. Let’s just say you’re probably not going to be surprised.
  • For those of you that aren’t so into the cult of the blog, this post from Wil Wheaton is a perfect example of why it’s awesome that they exist in the first place. Just replace Mr. Wheaton (or don’t, if TNG does it for you) with a musician, actor, politician of your choice, and imagine that they were side-commenting their own career or history, and you’ll see what I mean.
  • A couple of weeks back, Twitter released a list of the Top Twitter Trends of 2009. Those of you who get annoyed at my non-100% support of hashtags for all things on Twitter will note that beyond the hashtag-specific category, only 7 made the charts, overall, with real-text taking the cake for the most part. Again, this isn’t to say that they don’t work, only that the “average” user tends to stick to talking in actual words. Just sayin’.
  • Check out Brand New’s Best and Worst Identities for 2009 here.
  • Did you know that you could use multiple aliases for a given email address on your iPhone? But yes, you can. Here’s the solution for this very request, via Gruber.

Nov 25, 2009

The more cellphones change, the more they stay the same

Last week, I headed out to the Apple Store to purchase the mophie juice pack air to give my phone significantly more battery than my iPhone 3Gs offers up. The mophie products had come highly recommended by iJustine when I’d had a conversation with her earlier this year in LA, and a few others have chimed in with similar thoughts on the subject.

philipssparkBut after picking it up, I noticed that the size and heft of my iPhone wearing the juice pack air had a similar resemblance to something else I once owned — my first cellphone, back in 1998. That phone, which ran on the Cellular One network in central New Jersey, was the Philips Spark. The Spark was about 5″ tall by 2.2″ wide by .9″ deep. My iPhone 3Gs is now 4.9″ x 2.59″ x .75″. Amusingly, the Spark, which I thought was mega heavy at the time, weighed 129 grams, or about 4.55 ounces. My 3Gs, without the mophie, weighs about 4.76 ounces, and with it weighs about 7.42 ounces. Back in ‘98, I was pulling in 6 hours of talk time and 350 hours of standby on the standard GSM network, as opposed to 5 hours of talk time on the 3G and 300 hours of standby, or somewhere around 7-9 of talk time with the mophie.

WTF.

iphone3gsNow don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my iPhone and wouldn’t trade it in for anything at this point, but at the time, I had friends ragging the hell out of me for choosing that as my first phone. I had no problem with its heft or size – I actually liked it more that way. Soon after, I traded up for various Nokia, Motorola, or Samsung models, which got progressively smaller as time went on. But here I am, 11 years later, having spent the last two years rocking the iPhone, which absolutely slays the technology in my first phone, and obviously wins on form factor, but still takes up the same space in my pocket. Oh, and I’m paying A LOT more out of pocket to use it, and it’s become a part of my existence in some ways — as opposed to something that was helpful to have but wasn’t exactly getting abused, considering what it cost to have minutes every month.

So I guess the question is, where are priorities right now — size (or is thickness the only real measurement of importance?), cost, or straight up abilities that your phone offers? Should I be surprised that one of the parts of the phone decision-making process has come full circle, and that Apple and others aren’t worried a lick about it? What about you? What kind of cellphones did you start off with?

Sep 29, 2009

LYNTC: 9/29/09

In today’s links, we’ve got iPhone apps galore, some food news, some music, and Twitter news (shocker!).

  • Check it, Zipcar fans. Remember the Zipcar app you might have heard about from a bit back? Well, it’s out [iTunes link]. Gizmodo has more.
  • Kottke’s got more on making your own BLTs. From scratch.
  • Mashable’s got a rumor about the supposedly-coming-soon tablet from Apple – that it’s essentially an iPhone with a bigger screen. Or something like that.
  • A fantastic guest post from Matt Douglas on CenterNetworks about getting your startup going – though probably not the type of post you’re expecting.
  • Joy points to a new spin on Phoenix’s “Rome” if you’re into that sort of thing.
  • Paramore’s “brand new eyes” is out, and it’s only $3.99 at Amazon right now. And it’s good.
  • Okay, I’ll bite, with a caveat. 100 people you’re suggested to follow on Twitter if you’re into the PR thing, from Conversation Agent.
  • For those of you in the Weight Watchers tribe, there’s an iPhone app if you’re in that subsegment of our population. More here. It’s pretty darn good.
  • The Dolphins have just acquired Tyler Thigpen from the Chiefs. At least one of those two teams is looking to not go down in flames, I guess.
  • Rex informs that if you’re into Karen O or “Where The Wild Things Are” that the soundtrack is now streaming on Imeem.
  • If you haven’t already heard about this disgusting Facebook poll asking whether the president should be killed, you’re probably better off for it. Hope you didn’t vote in it, as the Secret Service is looking into anyone who might have.
  • Yesterday it was Texas Tech banning Twitter for football players, today it’s news that NY Jets’ WR David Clowney was benched for comments about playing time on Twitter. Nice.

Sep 26, 2009

LYNTC: 9/26/09

Yep, another edition of links that I’m pretty sure you should click through to.

  • Did you hear the one about the Chicago Cubs player who left a game after being slapped in the head in a celebratory manner by a fellow teammate?
  • Yay, MMS for the land of iPhone users is live!
  • Gruber’s certainly got this right re: the Gmail user who a judge ORDERED TO HAVE HIS/HER GMAIL ACCOUNT DISABLED after a bank mailed information to the wrong email address. Sorry, no. That’s bogus.
  • I guess we should look at these stats that Chris Thilk points to from eMarketer about social media measurement as a good place to start, right?
  • Wil Wheaton points to an exceptional spoof ad starring none other than Cthulhu. That’s awesome.
  • You know that time that you flew halfway across the country to make it to the U2 concert and just made it? Ben Wagner does.
  • I think it’s funny that the first thing I noticed when downloading the Flickr app for my iPhone was the “from Yahoo!” page-turn at the bottom of the screen, and was just like “oh yeah, forgot about that.” Seems like some Flickr fans aren’t so amused with the “from Yahoo!” branding on Flickr’s site, either. I say go back to gamma. Also, Dave Coustan.
  • Gothamist has a good interview with Brian Lehrer of WNYC, whom you media heads will probably be familiar with for one reason or another.
  • Great move by the Nintendo folks for adding a second MotionPlus to the Wii Sports Resort package. As someone who didn’t buy the game the first time because of this, this might make me pick it up one of these days.
  • Joy wished us all a Happy Thursday this week with a funny.
  • I love Dopplr. Not sure I really care one way or another about Nokia purchasing it though. Just don’t screw it up. [via Kottke]

Aug 23, 2009

Links You Need To Click: 8/23/09

As I’m cruising through the old RSS reader on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve got some stuff that is (hopefully) worth your click-through time. Now if only my fantasy baseball team would make the time I put into picking lineups every day worth my time.

  • Rex points to an interesting feature that the Silicon Alley Insider sites have begun using, the ability to have posts embedded on other sites in a nifty little window. As most of us bloggers know, the number of people who’ll actually click through to a link and the number who SEE the link are not always the same thing, so this is an interesting way to get around the ‘ol blockquote, and let someone like Henry Blodget actually see how many people are reading his text elsewhere. Or something like that.
  • Danny Sullivan has a thing or two to say about the contention from someone at Fox News that SEO is “scamming.” And he couldn’t be more on the mark – and amusing – in the way he does it.
  • Max Damage. Say goodbye to the rest of your day. Thanks, Kottke.
  • Jeremy Pepper drops dime on hip-hop maven Talib Kweli’s “guidelines” (my words, not Kweli’s) on using Twitter. Great linkage and roundup. Enjoy it, social media “experts.”
  • Jenn has founded a little group called “Code She Wrote” for women who are in the NYC-general area who are – you guessed it – into design, gaming, gadgets, and so on. Knowing a few people who would definitely dig on this sorta thing, I thought it wise to pass it along. Go Jenn!
  • If *anyone* is surprised by the stats that 45% of employers are not “screening social media profiles” for potential hires, then I’m not even sure what to say. Or maybe I’m just being social media snotty.
  • A week or so ago, gruber pointed to something extra awesome, the lowdown on how the iPhone Sudoku Grab app works. Equal parts OMG and WTF, all at the same time.

Aug 20, 2009

Links You Need To Click: 8/20/09

We’ve got a mixed bag today, which I guess isn’t totally surprising.

Bonus link: Do you think my rice is happy about its current state of affairs?

Aug 5, 2009

Links You Need to Click: 8/5/09

Here’s a batch ‘o’ stuff that you probably should check out.

  • I’ve been sitting on this one a little bit, but Annie Heckenberger has some smart advice for people in the blogosphere / online who are looking to step it up when it comes to journalism and getting better at what they do.
  • Politics aside, the photos that Jeff McMahon posted at True/Slant are kind of terrifying. Forget Global Warming, Global Cooling, whatever the hell you want to call it. Stuff’s changing. [via 00boyina on reddit]
  • MWW’s Thea Haigh shares some thoughts and POV from the agency after its “situation” with some moms at BlogHer. Kind of happy to see some good progress and growth across the agency (read: outside of just the DialogueMedia team I founded at the agency), and I’m thrilled that they and Nikon continue to move on in the digital space.
  • Why is it that I keep forgetting to try out the iPhone tethering technique? Dammit.

Links You Need To Click: 8/3/09

  • Mike Davidson points to the new Inrix iPhone application that “predicts” traffic. I’m so checking this out to see if it works.
  • ReadWriteWeb sez that it looks like MMS is back on in the next rev of Apple’s iPhone software, 3.1. Fingers crossed.
  • If you’re friends with Radio Shack, you call it “The Shack,” apparently. [via gruber]
  • Wondering where you’ll be able to stream your Netflix account from next? Multichannel’s Todd Spangler has some ideas. [via Hacking Netflix]

Oct 25, 2007

Gmail IMAP is my friend

Absolutely thrilled with how Gmail IMAP works on my iPhone.

Thanks, JRL!