Does not compute

Elsewhere in the unintentional irony front: The New York Times "challenged" readers to go without their cellphones and whatnot for a few days during vacations. The Times then published the results with an introduction that included these sentences (emphasis mine):

The New York Times asked readers to temporarily give up their technological tethers, then make videos about the experience... You can watch a selection of videos prepared by readers here.

So they asked readers to unplug... and then plug back in again to report. I guess if anyone went permanently off the grid and made their report by longhand, we'd never know.

Still a bad idea to get an iPhone

Google Can't Handle iPhone Demand For Push Gmail

-- news story

Most stories about the limitations and network problems of the iPhone have to do with AT&T's network problems that make central functionality impossibly to use. This story is a change of pace, saying that it's GMail that can't handle all the constant requests from iPhones asking for GMail inbox updates.

I don't care whose problem it is. It's still iPhone FAIL.

technorati: iPhone, Google, AT&T

Baseball, twit by twit

I spent the afternoon at the ballgame, where Tim Lincecum gave a spendid performance, striking out 13 over 8 innings. But the Giants still lost, giving up two runs in the 9th and scoring a total of ZILCH themselves. Ya can't win if ya don't score.

I took my Peek Pronto to the game and, having figured out how to send posts to Twitter from the thing, spent the game twittering the action. It was partly a load test of the device, to see how it would handle periods of almost constant use. I found I actually lost the signal intermittently, which would seem impossible given the fact that I was high up in the stadium. But it might well be that there were simply too many people in the stadium, where 37,000 people were on hand, and it maxed out the network. (I think it's Verizon that Peek uses correction: it's T-Mobile.)

When the game ended, I found I had forgotten my cellphone at home. But at a ballpark -- especially one named after a phone company -- surely there are payphones, right? NOT. There are no payphones at "AT&T Park." How silly is that?

technorati: Twitter, baseball, Peek Pronto

'Emo jacket' should appear to makers of pr0n

German electronics company Philips Electronics has announced an "Emo jacket" that is "meant to let you more closely immerse yourself in the experiences" of characters in a DVD you're watching. The jacket is fitted with 64 thingies -- all right, "actuators" -- that are intended to give the wearer the sensation of being tapped in the spot on their body nearest the thingy. A radio receiver will receive signals encoded on the DVD and activate the thingies in whatever pattern the programmer has programmed.

For example, it is supposed to give you the sensation of having a "chill up your spine." I wonder what the German word is for that. On second thought, I don't want to know.

The story on C|Net suggests the obvious implications for porn, saying that at this point there are no plans to ship a matching pair of pants. But once the technoogy has been invented, it's only a matter of time, of course -- I'm guessing the Japanese will get right on it -- before you'll be able to watch porn with no hands.

technorati: technology, Phillips, jacket, entertainment, movies