Inventing The Wheel Without A Chisel

So, uh, wow.

It’s been a while since I’ve written much anything – I’ve been really busy in the last couple of weeks with work, the girlfriend, and one of my best friends moving back home after a year-long stint out in Calgary. But that’s neither here nor there.

I appreciate the comments pertaining to my previous post on getting a new phone…but I decided not to go with anything that was suggested. A couple of the phones that were suggested to me via e-mail were CDMA only, unfortunately (I suppose I should have specified that I’m on a GSM network), and a couple of others just didn’t really look to suit my needs for what I was looking for. I ultimately decided to go with a Blackberry Pearl due to the discount I get from work on the phone itself, and the discounted Blackberry data plan I was ultimately offered from Rogers. So, ha.

Anyway, while goofing around with my new BB, a lot of cool potential features came to mind, features that I ultimately haven’t found through the stock software or third-party applications. I’ve noticed that this has become quite a trend as of late. Facebook applications, phone applications – all kinds of ideas for applications just pop into my head, and I get frustrated with the fact that I can’t just open up some text editor and get to work on it. As much as I’d love to learn some more in the way of programming and development, I feel as though I’m already having some difficulty with what I’m trying to learn and retain, knowledge-wise. IT is just such a wide and diverse field that it’s impossible to be good at everything, and it’s just starting to frustrate me.

Is there any such thing as spreading oneself too thin? Comments?

CNet bought for $1.8B

Interesting news that I just caught wind of. CNet has been purchased by CBS for $1.8 billion, which is a 45% premium on what their stock price was the day before the deal was announced. Probably one of the more ballsy and aggressive acquisitions in recent years, and in my opinion, a rather smart one by CBS. CNet will definitely add a lot in the way of digital content - GameSpot.com, News.com, ZDNet.com, among other rather large online brands. They’re definitely on the up and up, and bring a lot to the table in the way of both media and potential advertising revenue.

Kind of funny that they thought Google’s price of $1.65B for YouTube was too high, though.

The reason I’m trying to find a replacement for the HTC Touch…

So, I’m in the market for a new phone to replace my HTC Touch, the most recent reason being that it has now started experiencing memory leaks within applications and has started hanging, even after reloading the original OS from firmware. To be quite honest, I’m not really going to miss this phone very much. For what I got, I feel as though I overpaid, and I’m rather glad I purchase unlocked phones rather than getting myself locked into a contract. I think I’d be far more annoyed with this phone if that were the case.

Before I get down to the nitty gritty, which is (unfortunately) mostly negative, one thing in the Touch’s favour is that this phone is pretty sleek looking at first glance. All of the corners are rounded on it – there’s not a hard edge to be found on the entire thing, and it kind of reminds me of a smooth (and flat) black stone. The touch screen is flush with the facing on the unit rather than recessed like all of my touch-screen phones have been in the past. I’ve found this to be both a blessing and a curse. The flush-mounted touch-screen makes it far easier to get into the corners with a finger and is more aesthetically pleasing, but completely eliminates what little scratch protection the unit offered (stock that is, I’m aware you can purchase screen protectors – my Touch even came with one). My Touch’s screen was getting small surface marks within 5 minutes of use. To me, the screen feels as though it offers no real resiliency, not even against the stylus it came with. Within 3 months of use, this thing has got wear marks in the screen from tapping out letters on the OSK, and before you go saying, “Well, you’re probably tapping the screen too hard!” my HTC Prophet went for almost a year without receiving any marks on the screen aside from the ones caused by my own clumsiness/stupidity.

The processing power in the unit was another thing that left a lot to be desired. WM offers plenty in the way of multitasking, and the Touch even offers a quasi-Task Manager found in the upper right corner on the Today Screen. It’s a shame that a phone that evidently was designed with multitasking in mind performs so poorly. This poor phone can barely handle using WMP and IE at the same time – it seems that as soon as WMP is open and playing music in the background, the touch screen loses about 60% of its responsiveness, resulting in a lot of misspellings, typos, and a lot of irritation while tapping the backspace. I’m not really sure why this happens, but it may be to do with the fact that the GSM version of the phone has a rather modest 200MHz processor (but includes WiFi), while the CDMA version of the Touch has a 400MHz processor. For a guy like myself that is constantly commuting and is looking for an all-in-one solution, this serves as a real swing-and-miss. I guess it’s back to the ol’ “iPod in one pocket, phone in the other” scenario.

I wonder when we’ll finally see an nVidia-based phone. The few videos I’ve seen slip of their interface look pretty slick, and very promising.

ASUS EeePC!

You know, since I ditched my laptop a few months back, it’s been sorely missed on commutes to/from work and when I’ve had some free time in some of the local coffee shops. It was growing to be too cumbersome to constantly be carrying around with me, so I’ve been trying to make do with my HTC Touch in its stead, but trying to get by with a WM6-based mobile phone in lieu of a fully functional laptop can be quite aggravating, especially for longer e-mails and blog posts (not to mention poor multi-tasking capability, which I’ll address in a later post dedicated to the Touch). Well, after all of the positive reviews I’ve seen on the EeePC, I decided to go ahead and place an order for one. While waiting for its arrival, I’ve taken the time to see what else this fantastic little unit can do.

It appears that the most fascinating thing, to me, is not what it comes stocked with (which is plenty for ~$300), but the after-market potential. I’ve seen posts with mods ranging from touch-screen additions to integrated 3G HSDPA connectivity.

I can only hope that the EeePC also fits in my pocket. That would make it ideal.

Liberty Bay?

Perhaps I’m reading a bit too deeply into it, but based on reports of The Pirate Bay’s recent (and temporary) name change, I can’t help but wonder what the modus operandi is behind it. Given The Pirate Bay’s target market, we’ll just have to see where this goes. I know I’m a bit perverse, but I know I’m at least a little tempted to see a long, bitter legal battle between these two – a company that has prided itself on giving the finger to old-fashioned, outmoded ideas such as values and morals, and another company that…well…has prided itself on giving the finger to old-fashioned, outmoded ideas such as values and morals. Aren’t you? ;)