RasterWeb!

Can you believe those Tivo folks? The nerve! I mean sheesh!

But what can you do? Dump your Tivo!

Here’s what you will do: You will disconnect your Tivo, you will contact me for my shipping address, and you will then ship that stupid Tivo to me.

What will I do? I will take all of the Tivo’s and make sure that those Tivo folks never get any more money from Tivo subscriptions (you can trust me, I’m cheap and will not pay for it.) I will also sacrifice (some of) the Tivo’s by destroying them, probably by running them over with my car, or dragging them behind the car, or by smashing them with a hammer, or stating them on fire. I will attempt to take photos of this, or video (once I get a new digital camera to replace the broken one, or a new video camera battery and video-to-computer device.)

Listen Tivo owners, I’m on your side, who else can say that!?

Huh? The Gmail API? That’s right… While the release of POP access to Gmail left many people yawning, or complaining, or just looking puzzled and muttering “IMAP” to anyone who would listen, I dug into Mail::POP3Client.

Mail::POP3Client is a perl module that can talk to a POP3 server. (Yes, it can use SSL so it works just fine with Gmail.) You do have to turn on POP access in Gmail, and check the Configuring other mail clients page for the proper settings. I think I had a simple perl script talking to the Gmail servers in about 10 minutes. (It would have been less, but I had to install Net::SSLeay as well.)

So while Gmail’s old web interface is nice and all, it’s really made for humans, while this POP access is made for machines. Go! Go! Machines!!!

If you can only see one movie in the theater this year, make it The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. I say this because I only have seen one movie in the theater this year, but I also say this because it was just plain awesome.

I laughed, I cried, I laughed so hard I cried! The fact that I slept just a few hours on the weekend might have helped, but the sheer awesome-ness of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie cannot be denied! At least not by me or my gradeschool-aged daughter. This is one we definitely need to get on DVD…

SMS, Baby! Also known as text messaging…

The Nokia 2260 arrived. It’s an ok phone, nowhere near as nice as the diminutive Nokia 6585 that the female has, but it will suit me fine. (Did I mention I’m cheap?) Actually, the arrival was quite amusing. Seems we missed the Fedex guy while we were checking the status of the delivery in the basement by not hearing the front door, but as luck would have it, we saw the Fedex truck 20 minutes later at the Piggly Wiggly. But! Wrong Fedex guy… :( But! He sent a message to the other guy to swing back around and drop it off, so all was well, and I don’t have to complain about Fedex. ( Not today anyway.)

I’ve made like two calls, seems to work fine. I dunno, I don’t talk much. Like I said… SMS!

Yes, this text messaging thing has opened up a whole new world. I’ve hacked up a bit of perl, added some cron jobs, and we’re on our way. I get updates on the weather. I get notified if the server stops responding. I set up a form for the kids to send me messages. It’s just plain neato. I know, this stuff is old hat to people who have been using smartphones for years, or any teens in the audience, but it’s new to me, and it’s fun.

Here’s the part I like. This SMS stuff is free for incoming messages. I got a prepaid plan from AT&T Wireless, which means if I don’t make many calls, I could enjoy this wireless notification appliance for less than $4 per month. Pretty much every plan you see advertised is for 1000000 minutes each day for $39.99 per month (roughly) and I didn’t want to pay $39.99 per month or need 1000000 minutes, or even 1000.

I can see why Russell gets so jazzed about the mobile thing, and why Scoble shows off his phone.

I saw a post on some forum where some guy said “It would be cool if you could get a text message when your Google PageRank changed.” And you know what? While it might or might not be cool, it’s entirely possible, and pretty darn easy too! ;)

The Nokia 6585 (the female’s phone) is now fully charged and ready to go. I spent some time last night getting used to the interface, playing with the settings, and testing the games. (Or is that testing the settings and playing the games? ;)

Voicemail is set up, we’ve made calls, and received calls… All is well. Ah, I did think about making my own version of the form used to send text messages to it. Unfortunately US Cellular is not as nice as AT&T Wireless, which has the text message form, but also allows you to send text messages via email. (I may have to write an email-to-http-post gateway for US Cellular…)

I’ve not been too happy with either provider’s web sites. US Cellular is running SilverStream, which I’ve always disliked, though the site seems to work, and AT&T Wireless is running Sun-ONE. I seem to get error messages from the AT&T Wireless site every now and then, but it looks like they just switched to Sun-ONE so who knows.

I did try to check on my order with AT&T Wireless, and here’s my complaint: I order early on Thurs. Nov. 4th, and now on Fri. Nov. 5th it says it “will be shipped on or before Tuesday” which I guess would not bother me too much except for the fact that there is a link on the page that says “Order today and get your phone Monday.” I guess they don’t say what Monday. Oh, there is also a note saying “We ship 95% our orders the same day*” Yeah, see that asterisk? That points to the disclaimer disclaiming that from always being the case.

So far the customer experience isn’t stellar, but I’ll try to reserve further judgement until I actually have a phone.