vlingo is the… it’s cool.

Thanks Lance for pointing me towards this one…  Vlingo is an application that converts voice commands to handy dandy commands for your smart phone.

If you’ve got a BlackBerry or an iPhone, you need to get vlingo.  It’s available for BlackBerry’s free (point your browser to vlingo.com and follow the instructions – have your model number and OS version to spped things up).  You can get it at the app store for your iPhone, but since I’m not that cool I don’t know whether it’s free or not.

I think those are the only phones it’s on at the moment, but I’m sure it’s being developed for Android and maybe even HTC or Windows Mobile.

What makes it so cool? I can ask it to call people in my address book.  I can ask it to email people in my address book.  I can have it do a search on specific search engines for whatever.  I can even have it Twitter directly from voice…  It does more that I’m not going into here…  It’s very cool for a free application.

No, I’m not getting paid blog this…  I just think it’s pretty darn cool.  Get it if you can…

posting on crack

This is kind of a test, kind of a post… I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to post from the included browser on the BlackBerry… If this posting works, then it works…

Otherwise, I’ve been doing some twittering and posting directly to flickr from here… Here’ to hoping this also works.

odds and ends

So as a friend brought to my attention over the weekend, and as I read later that day on Gizmodo, there’s a Knight Rider themed GPS unit coming out from the manufacturer Mio.   The original post is HERE, and the most recent post with video is HERE.

A site that I’ve been hugely addicted for a few months is www.fffound.com – which is an image aggregation site catering to more “artistic” images, and it also makes suggestions on other images.  It’s still in beta, but I came across this image…

It’s from the film production seeking to further the ruining of my childhood – GI Joe.  It’s slated for release in August 2009, but already in post production. Wasn’t the cartoon with Don Johnson and Sgt. Slaughter enough? The cast on this new interpretation seems quite intriguing… Here’s the cast that gives me reason to raise an eyebrow for one reason or another: Brendon Fraser, Sienna Miller, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Quaid, and Marlon Wayans.  I was very happy to see Ray Park cast as Snake Eyes (the character in the picture). Then there’s Jonathan Pryce, who is famous for his British accent here in the states (aka when he was the Infinity spokesperson, will be portraying the President of the USA. Maybe it’ll be payback for the Kevin Costner accent in Prince of Theives – or maybe payback for Kevin Costner in general.

In case you didn’t know, FireFox3 is out. As a Mac user, it’s much more stable for me so far. Download it HERE. They established a record last week by getting 8-million people to download it in a single 24-hour day.

Had some fun with ring tones on the CrackBerry (very easy process if you’re so inclined).  It’s so nice when a phone company doesn’t intentionally lock everything down (yeah, I’m talking to you Verizon). Now if I could just find someone worthy of the Airplane quote “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines” as a ring tone.

happy accident a la iPhone

So monday June 9th, I was celebrating the birthday’s of my sister and half-brother by spending a few hours in the local Apple store.  Why would I do such a thing?  Because the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) was going through it’s keynote speech where they outline new products to come to market – most of which are usually available for purchase immediately after the speech is done.

I’m sure you can guess it, I was waiting for the second generation iPhone.  However, I didn’t get one then because it wasn’t released…  and I won’t get one in July because Apple pissed me off.

Before I get to why I’m pissed, there the whole reason why I was there.  iPhone shortages began popping up worldwide sometime in May.  The tech reporting world was very much buzzing about what was going to be included in the new iPhone which would probably be announced on the 9th of June at the WWDC.  The shortages increased to the point where you couldn’t buy an iPhone from Apple’s site.  So it’s logical to assume that not only would the new one would be announced, but that it would be immediately available.  WRONG!  Those of us who like Apple enough to go to the store to buy the new phone were rewarded with the announcement that it would become available on the 11th of July.  So in many markets there will be between 1 and 2 months of zero iPhone sales for Apple – which is about one of the stupidest things I’ve head in awhile.  Maybe they’re taking a hint from the automakers in hybrid production.

Anyway, so the big news about the iPhone that I didn’t get was the drop in price as long as there’s a 2-year initial contract to go along with it.  The caveat being that there would be changes in the plan.  So for myself, it would cost me more over the term of a 2-year contract to buy the new iPhone at the lower initial cost than if I would have bought the outrageously expensive one last year which has a more reasonable plan price.

I was annoyed.  In a way I’m glad they are retarded in terms of their inventory control, or else I would have ended up with one on the 9th of June and paid more over time.

So what did I do with my annoyance?  Went and joined the CrackBerry army on T-Mobile (Blackberry Curve, or 8320).  The picture above is one of the first images I took to make into my current screen background.  Sure, I may not be able to browse as good as the iPhone or have that social status that seems to exude from iPhone owners – but I can do everything I set out to do and type a much easier.

Soon I’ll figure out how to blog from this thing…  I have started a new set in Flickr for the images I take from the phone and can send directly to my Flickr account (it’s a handy feature that I’m liking)… It’s also a phone that makes it easy to make your own ring tones unlike anything from Verizon or the iPhone. In short, I’m liking the CrackBerry…

Sorry Apple, I was rooting for you.  But it’s your own fault.  Don’t worry though, there’s gonna be enough suckers on the 11th blinded by the lower price.

Advertising Disapointment

So when looking at one of my routine blogs, I unintentinally rolled over an expanding ad for BlackBerry and thought I saw something familiar. It took a few more times activating the ad, but one of my worst fears were realized when it became apparent that Douglas Coupland had become a paid endorser of a mobile phone. He’s coming down a few notches in my list of all that is just and right…

Just another time I shake my head and say “f***ing BlackBerry” – not because I don’t have one, but because of so many other reasons which now includes corrupting one of my favorite contemporary authors…