Flametoad

I’m not exactly a cutting edge guy. I seem to be about six months to a year behind the digitari. For instance, I was dragged to Facebook kicking and screaming, and I discovered podcasts roughly 9 months after the “podcast renaissance” began. Consequently, I’m late to the party on this whole Jott thing.

Jott lets you record notes over your cell phone, transcribes them, and adds them to an online ”to-do” list. Okay, that’s kinda neat but it didn’t sound like something I’d actually use in practice. However, now thtat there’s a Jott application for my iPhone I decided to take a quick look at it. Holy moly! I can Jott to Wordpress! That means I could be in the car when remember something that I wanted to post here at Flametoad, and record a blog post which is transcribed and automatically posted here. Sure it may not have tags or categories, but big deal! (FWIW, I can also Jott directly to LiveJournal.)

Jott also can send items to Google Calendar. That’s kind of a sore subject for me. I’ve been a Yahoo Mail user for a number of years now. I manage my Flametoad, 12 to Midnight, and Yahoo accounts through a single Yahoo Mail interface. Lately I’ve started using the Yahoo calendar since it’s more or less integrated into the mail client. The problem is that while my phone syncs with YMail just fine, Yahoo calendar syncing isn’t even an option. It looks like Yahoo would just as soon pretend that their own calendar app didn’t exist. They don’t even support it in their Yahoo Go mobile application. However, I believe it does talk to the Google calendar. I already use Google Reader for my RSS feeds, so it looks like Google is slowly sucking me in against my will. I’ll let you know how that goes for me.

Edit: It looks like I was wrong. No native support for Google Calendar either. It really looks like calendar support in the iPhone, even 2.0, is crippled. Jailbroken phones have been able to sync with online calendars for at least six months now. Funny how Apply will gladly sell you a $99 subscription to their “mobile me” service that will do the same thing, though. Am I really asking that much? 

I was able to export my Yahoo calendar into Google, and Google at least has an iPhone-styled browser-based version of their calendar. So now I can at least get to my calendar online. 

Popularity: 8% [?]

Finally technology has begun to converge in the way we’ve been promised for the last 20 years.

I don’t watch a lot of tv these days. My evenings are usually spent with the family or online. I have a Tivo that catches the few shows I do watch though, so I’m not a slave to the tv schedule. Unfortunately, I’ve found that the Tivo allows me to procrastinate, and I’ve still got unwatched episodes of shows from last Fall. However, I’ve finally figured out a solution.

I shelled out the $25 to buy the Tivo desktop “pro” software, which lets me pull episodes off my Tivo onto the PC and convert them for play on my iPhone. Now I can get caught up by watching some of my shows during some of my workouts at the gym!

Oh, and I have the iPhone 2.0 update, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet. Even for my non-GPS enabled phone, the map pinpointing has improved.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Imagine my surprise when I picked him up from daycare. It was “clown day”.

Click for a larger version.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I present to you, the most awesome thing you will see today.

You’re welcome.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Quantum Entanglement. It sounds like something that happens when you ask out two people on the same night. It’s also called “ghost imaging“, and it’s a way to use tricks of physics to photograph objects right through smoke, fog, or clouds. It’s mad science, but it’s so crazy that it just might work.

What, you’re not familiar with quantum optics? Britannica Online tells you more than you ever wanted to know.

Popularity: 6% [?]