Umm, cute.

Nothing says good taste and prestige like a diamond encrusted skull.
Elegant, refined, just shy of terrifying…

Y! vs. G

I couldn’t believe my eyes – bleary as they were – when I read the Wall Street Journal this morning at the gym. Some crazy individual was saying Yahoo! Mail, finally out of beta, crushes Google’s Gmail application. “What?! Stop smokin crack, home slice!”, is precisely what I thought as I carried the B section out to my car. GMail is da bomb! I love the IMing from the app (not to be followed by the corporate gestapo, thank you very little), I love the quasi-tagging capabilities, (improvements need to be made here, admittedly), and plus it has super-human spam blocking. This reviewer obvs was cornfused, I chortled, as I sipped my Starbucks and drove home.

[side bar: don't do core exercises the day of a move, my abs were KILLING me today and also don't even bother doing legs the day after a move. I could barely move 70 lbs on the leg press this a.m. Weak.]

I avidly read the article and was DYING to see what all this Yahoo! Mail buzz was all about. Finally after what felt like endless meetings this morning, I logged on to Yahoo! and I’ll tell you what, I think I might migrate to Yahoo! which has always always been my junk receptacle. In the spirit of full disclosure, like many who have a full blown love affair with the Internets and all things webby, I have at least one email account with every major webmail carrier and have never really been able to choose my favorite since they all had such disparate functionality and dicey UIs. No more. I think I am freakin in loooooove with Yahoo! Mail. Frealz! It isn’t slow and jumpy like the new hotmail, it has better funx than GMail, Outlook web access is ridonkulously bad…so I can’t even compare that…I haven’t logged on to my Caramail.fr account in like 100 years – perhaps they’ve closed it for me – so I don’t know about that one.

My dear readers, if you haven’t already, please go check your Yahoo! Mail – and (gulp!) I take back all the nasty things I’ve said over the years about Yahoo being behind the 8-ball. I was so wrong. This so totally ups the ante for the next GMail release (who has been in beta since 2004).

Snappy Snapperson

Well well well…I have just gifted myself with a new digital camera for my big weekend getaway! I’ve been shopping around with a certain budget in mind for a pretty good camera – obvs. I found just the camera: Canon PowerShot A640. WOOT! I heart it already.

Ok, it lacks the flexibility of higher end cameras and SLRs – clearly, AND it isn’t a hot little purse camera. HOWEVER, it takes cool ass pics and has a bangin pivoting 2.5-inch LCD. The screen can tilt up for shooting at chest level, tilt down for shooting over crowds, or even flip all the way around for taking self-portraits (heh heh – gratuitous self-lurve). I was torn on its size as it runs on AA-batteries (gross, but can be charged via DC adapter), but I really really loved all of the functionality. Really, it is a baby step for me to the pricier, more intimidating SLRs. In an attempt to take a wider variety of pictures, I feel I need these features. Not that I am tired of taking sloppily framed snaps of drunken friends in bars, I just want a little variety. So, I’ll probably be taking my cousin’s Casio Exilim 10 mega pixel camera off his hands for just that very purpose.

Anyway, this dang thing is a bit on the complicated side. We’ll see how I do. Stay tuned.

My first pic!

BlogDay, T-Minus 5 days and counting

Are you ready for BlogDay 2007??

What is BlogDay?

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs. I already have mine picked out!!

BlogDay posting instructions:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2007
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link:
http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2007 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

YAY, bloggers! Be prepared for a fun opportunity to learn about blogs all around the world!

Unlocking the iPhone

A lot of noise can be heard today regarding the unlocking of iPhones – which is to say, jimmying the iPhone so it can run on a network other than AT&T (blech!). (source and source)

Locking popular phone models is reasonable to a consumer when that consumer gets a price break on the phone. Often times, there is a choice to buy the same model directly from the manufacturer at a much higher price point and activate the phone on the network of your choice. The Motorola Dolce & Gabbana Razr comes to mind. Phone model subsidies – great way to incent consumers to use your network.

Why can’t I buy an unlocked iPhone for $499 from Apple, and a locked iPhone from AT&T for $299? FOR EXAMPLE. This trend in unlocking the iPhone is just another example of the erosion of control of the carriers over our technology. What if my high-speed internet provider (in this case, Comcast) said, “Hey you can only use IBM computers on the Comcast network – Macs will cost you another $20 per month”. Everyone would be laughing at the ludicrousness of that idea. Yet, no one laughs when our mobile phone carriers apply that same logic. Odd. Kinda makes me feel like my rights are being infringed upon.

I was not planning on getting an iPhone for several reasons, including the AT&T network and the poor battery planning on the part of Apple, but now I want to buy one, unlock it and use it on my T-Mobile network as a simple expression of my consumer rights.

Pile of Poo

Hilariousness! When coming to my blog people have used this popular search term today: “Pile of Poo” or “healthcare pile of poo”…Inneresting…

Speaking of, my cousin (left) taught me how to play a funny game: Poodolla, or Poo Dolla. This is how you play:

Take a dollar bill (this is of course a hypothetical game because it is a felony to ruin American money) and put poo (yours, a dog’s, whatever, it doesn’t matter) on the back side. Place the dollar poo-side down on a side walk. Hide. Watch when people pick up the poo dolla. Try not to give away hiding place by laughing too loudly.

Mom is on a podcast

Ok….so my MOM is on a podcast! It is true! So cool and tech-y of her, considering she isn’t very webby. Well, I can’t seem to download the video clip as a podcast yet, but you can watch the streaming video on demand.

Click here and then scroll down to “Inside Mansfield City Schools”. Click on the August 9th episode! YAY MOM!

Summer In the Corps

Well, when I was home this weekend for my parents’ 35 wedding anniversary (YAY!), my sister told me she wants to volunteer next summer in the Peace Corps. She is a teacher at South High School in Ohio and spends 9 months out of the year helping her students. Why not help other kids the other 3 months out of the year?! I think it is a great idea and I am so proud of her!

She was a Rotary Exchange Student, like I was, but didn’t like being so far away from home for a full academic year (unlike me). So this summer program is a perfect fit! PLUS she would go some place really interesting like China. HOWEVER, since it is a summer project, she would have to pay for her flight and her accommodations. WHAT?! That is bunk. So, I’ll be setting up a blog for her to talk about her motivation and her trials and tribulations online and to collect donations by inserting a PayPal donate button on her blog. That way, family, friends, dear anonymous internet donors, can help her make a difference not only in her community but in a community on the other side of the globe.

Stay tuned – I’ll link to her blog here when we have it up and running. The hard part will be to get her to post stuff to it. LOL. I guess I had better start by donating a digital camera to her cause!

Dx: Healthcare is messed up!

This is what consumer driven health care (CDHP) will lead to…pay for performance, doctor ratings, etc. Hey, I am all for it, since 50% of all doctors graduate at the bottom 50% of their class…but that doesn’t mean they are poor physicians. Clearly, many brilliant people are physicians, but have grave deficiencies when it comes to compassion and communication.

On a brighter note, this is a very cool cool cool demo of clinical software to be introduced by Microsoft! The UI is awesome from what I can see in this demo and it is so relevant: real-time charts and graphs from the patient’s monitors. Cool.

What if you combined that data and provided trend graphs via a wiki or something (very web 2.0 meets enterprise software) on the hospital intranet / sharepoint?

Duke is SO Jealous

LOLOLz – so obvs that Duke is jealous of our MBA program. I had to share this. Makes me laugh hard. GO DOREZ!