Through the power of MINI Connected…
MINI Connected - Web Radio App
Listening to a Punjabi Internet Radio station originating from Norway, coming to me via 3G in a moving car at a stop light, by way of MINI Connected. Is it Magic? No- It’s technology!
Just to get all nerdy for a second, I have to say that the IKEA catalog for the iPad is the coolest transition-from-print attempt I’ve seen yet! While still retaining the look and feel the print version has retained for 60 years (yeah- who knew!), the 2012 digital version is dynamic and interactive, complete with video walk throughs of the sets. If you want to stick to flipping through “pages”, you can do that too!
And I’m only on page 6! I just had to give IKEA their props. (i have not tested if you can buy direct from the app- that would put it over the top!!). I might have to amend this post if I see something else super awesome.
Screen shot from iPad app.
I was reading a thread over at ModernVespa.com today about “How To Attach Your Patches To Your Jacket?” Which reminded me of how lazy and/or fickle *I* am, when it came time to affix my club patches, as shown below…
Club badge on vinyl fabric...
...attached via velcro.
Club badge on mesh fabric...
...attached via safety pins!
Once again my laziness/obstinace prevails! Plus, when I get kicked out of the club I won’t have holes in my jackets! 
As I’ve mentioned previously, I tend to cultivate my spam comments by hand. Otherwise, I’d miss great ones like this:
“Hello Blogger! I found your blog using Google and as an SEO specialist I have an offer for you that I think you will find very useful…”
Obviously, if he/she/it found my blog using Google, I don’t really need an SEO specialist, do I?
A few days ago MINI officially unveiled the for-production, two-seater convertible Roadster. After poring over numerous photos and technical data, I’ve concluded that the 2012 MINI Roadster Convertible is the most awesome worst car ever made. Seriously. I can’t even begin to go over all the details MINI managed to exceed all my expectations screw this one up on. Here are just few:
Manual Top? Ludicrous!
A manual top? Genuis! Ludicrous! Sure it lowers the center of gravity, shaves off about 50 pounds and $500 off the MSRP, but what it obviously lacks is the ultimate douchebaggery of activating the automatic top in the Whole Foods parking lot off a keyfob, or while waiting for the light on Sand Hill Road. You know- right when every one is watching. Because, that’s what you a get a convertible for, right? Without an automatic roof, one might have to actually GET OFF THE PHONE for two seconds! Heavens!
Go-kart handling, luxury styling, and great gas mileage too?! Nonsense! While no official EPA MPG numbers are available at the time of this post (the “hard top” Coupe lists at 35hwy/27city), what’s the fun in smoking TTs and leased 3-Series’ at 0-60 MPH in 6.3 seconds if you can’t complain about the price of gas when you’re done? I mean, really!
Sorry- No room for tricycles.
Another win fail for MINI is the entire two-seater concept. Without even the semblance of a back seat found in the previous Cabrios, no one will never be able to cart a menagerie of screaming adorable neighborhood kids to day care, the park, or soccer practice. MINI claims you can fit a set of skis, golf clubs, or 8 bags of luggage, but the nearly 8-1/2 cubic foot storage area is nary enough for the average trip to Home Depot, Costco, or an extended family’s worth of perfunctory inspiring holiday presents as you travel across the country to endure relish a few days of claptrap witty banter and painful wonderful memories.
MINI Roadster Cockpit
With only two seats, a Motorer’s dating pool is quickly reduced to only independently minded folks who couldn’t spec out a bedroom or appliance set if their progeny depended on it. Literally! Sorry kids- no washing machines here.
Personally, I cannot recommend anyone purchasing the 2012 MINI Roadster Convertible. In fact I will go on the record as actively discouraging it. If I had my way, no one will buy one, and MINI will be forced to lower the yet announced price to foster what little margin they can eek out. At least until a poor sap like me can snatch one up.
Note: All images in this post respectfully copied from MotoringFile.com. Because, you know, don’t wanna overload the servers by rudely hotlinking to them, right? Right? You can get all the information you’d ever want to know about the MINI Roadster and all other models at MotoringFile.com. Its where all MINI dealers go for their info, so should you!
I am far from being an early-adopter. In fact, aside from reading up on the news, issues, and short-comings of new technologies, I’m usually the last person I know to bite the bullet. However since my job gave loaned me my Macbook Pro, iPhone, *and* iPad2, I figured the least I could do is help them out.
Worth the wait? Um, yeah.
I use the aforementioned devices primarily for work, and as such, am looking at iOS5 as far as its functionally from that prospective.
Caveats:
Oh yeah- a couple mundane details that affect my experiences:
1. I’m on an iPhone 3GS. Whatever features unique to iPhone 4/4s, I didn’t get them.
2. I’m on Snow Leopard on the Macbook. Whatever Lion-only niftiness there is, I don’t have those either.
3. I have not turned on iCloud as of this posting. Why not? Because: a) I don’t care. b) These aren’t my devices and could have them yanked from my at any moment, and c) My job backs up my MacBook regularly anyway.
Part One: The Install. To upgrade to iOS5 I needed to update iTunes. Which required me to update Safari for some lame reason. I read a couple blog and Twitter posts yesterday about installs going wrong and a couple bricked iPhones. I wasn’t one of them. In fact the install process on all devices went about as seamless as possible. The only hiccup was when updating my iPhone it asked me for a password to restore the phone- only, i’ve never put a password on it. After ignoring the request a couple times my phone updated, bookmarks and all. I did have to reset my wallpaper though. (*gasp!*)
On the iPad, I have no news to report. It updated exactly as expected.
Part Two: First look. On first glance, nothing is really changed- Oh the “Music” icon is a little more orange and the Voice Recorder icon is a little more blue. Oh, and there’s a Newsstand app that I can’t seem to get rid of. If you’re not paying attention, you wouldn’t even notice the update. Then little things started to pop-up…
Part Three: The nitty-gritty. I lied about the phone update going seamless- all settings reverted back to their defaults. The advantage of this though- it forced me to take a closer look at all the new options/features of iOS. A few that stand out after just a couple hours:
Auto-syncing over wifi. You’d think this is a little thing- this is actually a really really big deal. Change anything on any device- add or remove an app or photo, make a note, start an email or podcast, re-arrange icons, etc. and the updates are made on all devices. This feature alone is worth the hassle of the update.
Push notifications to the lock-screen. I turned them all on for kicks. It got annoying this morning before I even left the house. I could see where someone might like that though.
A ton more ringtones and alert tones. One thing that always irked me was having only 5-6 alert tone options on the iPhone. If you’re into that, then you’ll enjoy the variety. If you’re like my co-worker who leaves everything on vibrate 100% of the time, you’ll never notice.
Twitter integration. I mean, “post to Twitter” is now an option in like, everything. If you’re into that, then you care. If you’re not, you won’t even notice. It will be interesting to see if Twitter use goes up because of it.
Camera. For still shots you have the option to turn on a grid overlay, if you’re into that whole rule-of-thirds thing. No noticeable features on the video side.
So that’s a look at my first 18 hours of iOS, if you count 5 hours of sleep. (me- not the gadgets)
Feel free to share any of your experiences with the upgrade, or any features you want me to test and document- in the comments!
This post started out as an attempt to merely post/share/brag/whatever my activity results on my own website. But, no matter how you slice it, RunKeeper.com makes it pretty much impossible to do so on anything other than Twitter, Facebook, or Foursquare. And if my friends on either of these services cared, they’d be out here running with me.
RunKeeper.com - mostly useful. Mostly.
After hand-editing out all the div-tags, etc. The closest I can get to “copy/paste” is shown below. Which is actually “copy, paste, swear, spend 10 minutes editing out HTML code, reformat, paste, swear, give up…”. It would have been easier to just write in the results manually. Don’t get me wrong- I’ve loved RunKeeper ever since @loic first tweeted about it, and it’s a great way to aggregate and analyze my fitness results. Over the years they keep adding features I don’t care about like alternate workouts (not just running), and pulling in data from other devices like the Withings scale and Fitbit. Although I never use them, it’s still pretty cool. For the most part, RunKeeper is a great service, except for that pesky export feature.
So, to the RunKeeper folks- I beg you- please give us an option to post results on something other than Facebook or Twitter. Because those people- well, *my* people- don’t care. A share option that reformats the data to plaintext would be super duper! Or even preformatted HTML, WordPress/BBphp markup, embed code, etc. Something. Anything.
Or, perhaps I’m just overlooking it. Anyway, thanks.
RunningDistance
4.52
mi
Duration
0:38:20
h : m : s
Avg. Pace
8:29
min/mi
Avg. Speed
7.08
mph
Burned
474
calories
Climb
119
ft
[Ed. note: This story was originally penned in full, from an iPhone on a 3G network, now spellchecked and corrected...]
As I write at approximately 8am on a Saturday, the Comcast guy is installing the biggest cable modem I’ve ever seen in my life. He is now putting a battery in it that looks like it should be going into the back of an HP laptop. Since when does a modem need a battery? I guess when it’s the size of an Xbox!?
(From right to left)- M-Audio monitor with Apple Extreme router on top, Shure Microphone, Big F***kin' Modem!
I now have internet access at the house again, and things are getting back to normal. Except for wondering where the hell to put this big ass modem.
[Ed. note: This story was originally penned in full, from an iPhone on a 3G network, now spellchecked and corrected...]
After two days with no Internet at home, and with a job and lifestyle that is frankly, 90% internet-driven, I now know what the other 30% of Americans must feel like when they actually want to get some work done. At this point I knew it was fruitless to try and get internet anywhere other than my workplace.
“But what about Starbucks, Borders, McDonalds, and the other 100 locations that offer wifi?” you’re thinking? True there are dozens upon dozens of locations that offer wifi- I counted and attempted to access many of them in my war-driving episode. However, most locations that offer wifi- free or not, close up shop around 9pm. And at 9pm, I’ve still got at least another hour of work to do.
It was right about “Day Three” when the reality of “ubiquitous, high-speed internet” as a utility takes shape, and that 9-to-5 service hours is a really poor assumption that people can just skip out of work. If your gas, electricity, or water goes out, they don’t say “oh- you’ll have to wait until the morning for that”. With most people now depending on the Internet, it’s time for the ISPs to step up their game.
And while I rant, I feel less like I’ve been personally slapped in the face for actually having a job, but more so that the reality of how people use and expect Internet access has not been given its diligence by those that are making the money off of it. Tons and tons of money.
[Ed. note: This story was originally penned in full, from an iPhone on a 3G network, now spellchecked and corrected...]
After realizing that I’m not going to have Internet for three days, and really REALLY not wanting to be at work for 18 hours a day, I remembered that I live in Silicon Valley- In my studio I see many many wireless routers (SSIDs, technically for you nerds out there). Some light borrowing of Internet isn’t a crime (depending on where you live, it might be, but whatever). However, in that I am in an area of higher-than-normal understanding of technology, all of my neighbors have their routers locked down! *sad face* As it should be I guess, but totally inconvenient for me at the time.
Free Internet!! Sort of...
But, given that I live in Silicon Valley, this is also home of the mighty Google! You may have heard that Google provides free wifi internet for the entire city of Mountain View! Of the dozen or so SSIDs I can see from my studio, both GoogleWifi and GoogleWifiSecure happily display on the list. ”SCORE!”, right?
I tried to connect to both of them- Despite “full bars” I couldn’t even get an IP address on GoogleWifi and on GoogleWifiSecure, despite obtaining an IP still couldn’t even get a ping to anything. So, what does any good wifi-seeking. laptop-toting geek do? I went a’ war-drivin‘!
No matter where I went, and despite the signal strength, I could not get any useable internet from GoogleWifi. After 30 minutes of searching I concluded that was 30 minutes I could have been working, and just drove back to the office. :(
