Lèse Majesté

Google loses money on investment

In AOL, that is. Old news in a way, since they took a $726 million write-down on the investment back in January. But Silicon Valley Insider is reporting that Time Warner has bought back the five percent stake Google paid $1 billion for in 2006. The price: a mere $283 million. Ouch.

Sometimes the stuff just works

Wow. At the risk of sounding like an Apple fanboi, I have to admire how well integrated their stuff can be.

I had an unrecognized number on the recent call list on my iPhone. I figured out what it was (the front door access buzzer in my building) and added it to my address book on my MacBook. By the time I picked the phone back up, MobileMe Sync had synced it to the contacts on the phone, including the custom label I put on the number. The phone was still showing the recent call list, and the unidentified number on the list had automatically changed to identify the contact.

Pretty slick.

Bête noire

I gotta stop eating late, right before going to bed. How else to explain a whole of dreaming I was stuck on a help desk, trying to help people with screwed up PCs upgrade to Vista? The horror!

On the internet no one knows you're a dog

Except the cybercafe, apparently:

Blogging from the iPhone

Just to see how online one can be from anywhere I'm blogging this post from my phone while driving down the highway, using the new iPhone app shipped by TypePad.

Ok, I'm actually parked. But the rest is accurate. Welcome to the brave new world. At least I'm not twittering. Yet.

2.0

Well, I had to do it. I upgraded my first generation iPhone to the 2.0 software, then started downloading applications from the iStore. Out of loyalty I first grabbed my own company's free app, a news aggregator that presents news stories judged to be relevant based on your location. Without a GPS in the phone it seems to do a reasonable job of triangulating my position for the purpose. Then I grabbed the NYTimes and Bloomberg apps. Gotta give them props for slicker looking presentations

The bulk delete/move function for email is long awaited and sweet relief. It's no secret they still haven't given us cut and paste. Unbelievable. Now on to explore what else is on there...

Arrrrrgggghhhhh

I bought my PS3 as a Blu-ray player. Haven't played computer games of any sort since the original Doom, and never any on a console of any sort. But what the heck - this thing was built for game playing, and the NYT of all sources gave Grand Theft Auto IV a rave review. So I picked up a copy. Now I'm stuck at home sick with a cold and can't sleep any more, so I decided to give it a try.

What do I find? The damned thing locks up starting a new game! If I stop the game, the console reboots. Sometimes. Other times it won't even boot, claiming there's no valid hard disk drive. At least I can get past that with a power cycle. But it freaked me out the first time. I'm definitely not impressed, though. A search turns up this story that Rockstar knows about the problem and doesn't have a fix yet. Various user suggestions on forums have all kinds of suggested fixes, but none have worked for me yet.

I am NOT impressed. Obviously, I have to blame Coolleen for leading me down this primrose path...

Blu-what?

We'll find out if Coolleen is reading along now... I picked up this today. Very impressive. I just have to find 10 hours to watch it now!