I am indeed alive and getting better every day. Surgery ending up being more invasive than thought. I needed a rebuild of 25% of my right shoulder and ended up staying in the hospital overnight. Still very limited in my ability to move and still lots of pain/soreness now 6 days later. Going to be at least 5 more weeks until I’m back where I was before surgery. Expect updates to be sparse over next two weeks, but I am both alive and slowly but surely getting better everyday.
With surgery looming some 12 hours away tomorrow morning the reality of things is finally starting to set in. Perhaps the biggest concern I have right now is the unknown– specifically just how much recovery time will I need and just how the Hell much will I regret this decision when I’m laying in bed 48 hours from now in complete agony? Like most things, only time can decide. I ask that you be patient and hang in there– I will be back to update the site further as soon as I am physically able to do so even if it’s just a “Hey, I’m alive” message. I’d like to also thank all of you out there who sent me get well wishes through email, via one of our social network profiles, and for those of you who know me more personally via phone. Your thoughts and get well wishes are appreciated.
Some of you may have noticed (if you live in the area of my hometown) that the recent edition of the “Warwick Advertiser” (one of Warwick’s hometown newspapers) “Where In Warwick?” feature was won by one certain history nerd you may know:
WHERE IN WARWICK?
Congratulations to Maureen Byrne, Darlene Brozowski, and Christopher Welch, who correctly identified last weekâs âWhere inâ clue. Welch provided some history with his answer: The image is from the Forester Monument found on the corner of Colonial and Maple Avenue in the Village of Warwick. Specifically it is Mr. Foresterâs mustache and mouth. âThe monument is dedicated to author Frank Forester (aka Henry William Herbert) who wrote the book âWarwick Woodlandsâ (published 1839) among other noted works. âForester was an avid outdoors-man and spent many hunting trips in the Town of Warwick woodlands. Forester preferred to stay at the old Wawayanda Hotel, which today is gone (once stood where today the Mobil Station near the monument is), hence the placement of this monument. âOne side of the monument was originally a horse drinking fountain, but today is dry– serving as more of memorial to a bygone era. There is a plaque recounting the above achievements of Forester on a rock just behind the fountain. If I recall correctly, they were erected at different times with the fountain being placed first and the stone with the Forester plaque being placed second. I believe the fountain side had ties to the Civil War and was supposed to commemorate the fallen soldiers from the Town of Warwick (who are often referred to in writings from the era as the âWarwick Boysâ).â
Yes, I have that much spare time– the verbiage is actually from our Beyond DF project on the Google Earth BBS. Check it out when you have spare time (info on how to locate my posts on that site are explained in the aforementioned Beyond DF section).
“Paranormal Activity” is now in official national release and if you still are interested in checking it out (the search results are still pushing around 25 people a day to this very site– sooooooo yeah) be sure to look on Fandango to find out where you can find it near you. The movie right now is listed as number three in active movie viewership rankings and has raked in over $20.1 million USD. Reports peg the film production at less than $11,000 and if this is the case that’s a significant return on investment. Nice job boys. Nice job.
Another article that has resonated with our viewers is our recent “Here Comes Droid For Verizon” article. Again, this is mainly driven from searches and one can only gauge the sheer buzz growing around the launch of this handset. Thanks to DJ ADD for pointing out the Moto Sholes hardware is actually globally available and that means Verizon will potentially not be the only provider with access to a Droid mobile smartphone variant of their own.
For those of you who know me very well– you know I love baseball. As such, I spend way too much effort on my Fantasy Baseball team (the Rhode Island Rabbits). I once heard that Fantasy sports is what AD&D nerds grow up to do to seem less geeky, but in all reality are only more geeky because of it. This is probably true as I was a big AD&D fan growing up and now here I am obsessing over who’s on the DL and who’s going to raise my team RBI to nudge me a point or two up in the rankings. Having said that I finished fourth in my league out of eleven. This was a big achievement considering last year I was in last place in a thirteen team league.
Now my Rabbits are moving on to Fantasy Football with the NFL season in full swing. It’s a public Yahoo! league so you can follow my stats in real time (though I doubt you have as much free time as me right now soooooo… yeah). Right now I’m sixth out of ten with a 3-3-0 record. Last place here I come!
I’m sure many of you have seen the prime time TV commercial for the upcoming Verizon Droid mobile device. The majority of you though have probably had no idea what the heck they were even advertising, much less what it does. As reported by CNet, the new Droid is nothing; but a relaunch of the existing Motorola Sholes mobile phone. The unit is a major upgrade to the cell phone that takes the existing T*Mobile Android phones called G1 and MyTouch; moving it to a more robust processor and memory level. So there’s the long and short of it– Droid is a cell phone/mobile device in the vein of the Black Berry Storm or Apple iPhone. I’m sure at this point you have two questions you’d like answered:
Let’s first explain what Android is. Android is an operating system (software that runs a computer or OS for short) similar to Windows XP or Mac OS X. It lets the hardware (the Moto Sholes in this case) do things like make calls and connect with other devices. It also runs applications (or in cell phone lingo– apps) on the phone to make it more than just a mobile phone. The apps enable the phone to do things similar to computers or laptops like calculators, games, and office programs amongst other things. Android is free and built by Google. Its distribution model is similar to Linux in that it can be openly both added to and used without license fees.
This is different than the iPhone model, which uses open source (freely developed and freely available for use) components from its Mac OS X desktop OS; but relies on proprietary closed source applications to present those applications and run the hardware. The summary version is you can freely use and build off of Android, while with the iPhone Mobile OS X you need to pay license fees to do the same thing.
While iPhone does let anybody freely build apps and distribute them on their network they must be reviewed, as well as, approved by Apple to be offered to the general public. This allows things like the recent blocking of Google Voice’s VoIP service application from being available to the public at Apple or AT&T’s whim. AT&T and Apple claim this was to protect their network (Apple solely offers the iPhone on AT&T cellular service) from the saturation of phone calls that could freely occur on the network. Specifically they cited that the application would allow for a wholesale workaround of termination charges being paid to AT&T by local telephone companies for costly rural land line telephone calling areas. AT&T and Apple state this is the main reason for blocking the app. What it shakes down to is that having app approval allows Apple and AT&T to control what a user can or cannot install on their phone not to mention what they can or cannot do with the phone itself (including how they can or cannot call someone in this case).
The Android OS is different. Because it’s open source; anybody can build anything for it and release it through their own distribution channels including hacking up the underlying OS itself. The idea is Google plans to garner revenue from introducing hardware tuned for the core OS and to offer advertising within the browser through its Google Ads services that target users.
To get an idea on where Google is headed with this concept you merely have to glance over this Business Week interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. To quote Schmidt on where mobile data usage is headed and how Google plans to reap revenue from Android (including the Droid handset itself):
What are the biggest challenges the mobile Web presents?
Let’s start with the fact that the phones are not fast, the networks are not as capable, the ad formats are not standardized. But on the other hand it’s very, very important to solve those problems because a phone is very personal. And so if we know a fair amount about a person, with their permission we can target a useful adâyou know, “It’s Eric. You had a hamburger yesterday, do you want pizza today? There’s a pizza store on the right.” That kind of ad is likely worth a lot of money to an advertiser because it will generate a sale.
In other words, you send a message to the person’s cell phone, saying: “Look, we know you had a burger yesterday. If you want pizza today, just go around the block”?
Right. It may sound creepy, but it might also be quite valuable. People could use advice as to what to eat and where the food isâand of course you can turn it off. So the important thing here is advertising that has value to the person is advertising that is a valuable business. That’s the business we’re in.
With that you can see that Android is not built for revenue generation within the OS itself, but the underlying applications and services Google plans to build into the OS as “must have” features to extend that OS into every day life. The hamburger scenario is just a smaller manifesto for a bigger plan that quickly builds with a little extrapolation on the overall vision and direction of Google expressed by Schmidt above.
Apple is reaping profits hand over fist on hardware and software from iPhone not the month to month service. By limiting the supply of iPhone to AT&T though the carrier can make up the service costs by shear volume. The idea is that the iPhone is so hot it will drive both customers and minutes of usage (on voice, video, or data including text SMS) through the roof. In short, with lack of true alternative you have to use the iPhone and because you have to use AT&T to get the iPhone you’re going to terminate information on their network. That means revenue for both parties.
Google and Verizon are using a different model. They plan to make the revenue off what Verizon does best, loading applications and services on top of the base service. Verizon does this by offering sheer service availability with top level saturation of signal. AT&T’s 3G (fastest speed network) is available in most metropolitan areas, but once you get into the suburban footprint that service quickly degrades hobbling the usefulness of mobile connectivity.
Verizon in comparison has near ubiquitous availability of 3G through the continental 48 states in the USA. The result is that the primary functions that people do on their mobile device work fast (web browsing, email, text SMS, and voice) and seamlessly site to site. This is where Droid comes in.
With a 600MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM, the Droid will reach the computing power of your average desktop in 1998 running Windows98. Granted you weren’t going to play DirectX 10 full screen video games, but you were able to play the likes of Doom and Hexen. More importantly you could multitask between two or three applications (check email, surf the web, and chat for example) with ease. This circa 1998 web experience is the exact target Verizon, Google, and Motorola are after. In short, with 80% 3G coverage and infrastructure scaled for broadband anywhere– they hope to make a huge dent in the mobile device market and finally bridge the gap towards Netbooks.
And this is where that second question comes in, Droid is trying to head off iPhone at the ultimate goal; which is to supplant Netbooks with true mobile in your pocket broadband connectivity to voice, video, and data. More appealing to Verizon is that it can leverage the same OS to deploy in home premise equipment as well (Verizon IP set tops and home phones particularly) so users can seamlessly move from phone to home TV using the same interface. That in turn will allow them to reach where their land line FiOS service traditionally cannot. All this with a platform OS not owned by Microsoft or Apple delivered to 80% of the population. The majority of that population that has some other TV or telephone land line service provider outside the traditional Verizon telephone footprint. All without the fees and regulatory requirements of other carriers to do so. It’s not about ubiquity of the hand set at this point. It’s about ubiquity of the service itself. Seamless service delivered from end to end. From home, to road, to work and back. All using one OS platform (Android) to pass that experience along during the trip. A trip not limited by wires, distance, or line of sight.
Now all they need is a media/content partner to provide them their video. Oh wait– Google owns YouTube… never mind. The announcement of YouTube partnering with the big content providers is only a hop, skip, and buffering message away. Then we play the waiting game. The rest is history.
WWE Hall of Fame wrestler and manager Captain Lou Albano has passed away. He was 76 years old. Albano is best remembered as the loud mouth manager of fifteen different tag team championship teams during WWE’s hey day in the 1980s and the Dad in Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video. Albano was also the voice of Super Mario on the “Mario Brothers Show” and had roles in TV’s “Miami Vice” among other appearances. He was a classically schooled wrestler whose career spanned back into the late 1960s. Albano will sorely be missed for his over the top bigger than life personality, which in classic Captain Lou style provided some of the best (if not the best) WWE interviews on TV ever.
Catching up on our earlier article about Drew Carey saying he’ll donate a $1 per Twitter follower to the LiveStrong Foundation, Carey’s profile is up to 95,332 followers at the time of this writing. If you have a Twitter account please be sure to add Carey. To recap, if Carey reaches 1 million followers befor 1/1/10 he will donate a million US dollars to LiveStrong. This is a big deal and every account counts. So be sure to add him and help the cause out (because after all it’s free which is win-win for everybody).
Comedian and Game Show Host Drew Carey has announced that if he gets over a million Twitter followers for his site (http://twitter.com/DrewFromTV/) he will donate a million US dollars to the LiveStrong Foundation. In return Drew Olanoff, cancer-fighter and blogger, will give Carey his Twitter username of “@drew”. Olanoff has been auctioning off that account to the highest bidder in hopes of raising funds for LiveStrong. He did not expect Carey to come to the plate, but that is just what Carey did when he initially offered $10,000 for the account. That offer has escalated (with the backing of his employer CBS) to a cool million recently. This is a huge chance for you to help out a worthy cause at no cost to yourself. LiveStrong was founded by professional cyclist (and Cancer survivor) Lance Armstrong as a non-profit organization whose primary goal is to educate the public on preventing cancer, as well as, supporting the medical and emotional needs of those with the disease. Log into Twitter and add “@DrewFromTV”. Let’s help this great organization continue to do great things.