Saturday, May 28, 2005

Good evening (7PM Eastern) from Cambridge, MA.  

Harold Gilchrist asks a good question. I wonder what the iPodder devs think? 

I just checked my email and then caught my breath and guess what, there's a thunderstorm brewing. Do I have the energy to do a podcast? Hmmm. Speaking of podcasts, I caught the first new Gillmor Gang in three months. Doc was great, so was Jon Udell and all the other gangsters were just perfect. Best line came at the end, Doc talking about ri ding up the roller coaster. Yeah. Looking forward to tuning in every week. BTW, the length was perfect for a flight from Pittsburgh to Boston. It finished shortly before they told us to turn off all electronics.  

Good afternoon (1PM Eastern) from Pittsburgh International Airport, where they also have very strong, free wifi. Yowowowowo. 

Mr Gutman: "Maybe there's a silver lining to this cloud." 

Good morning from Gate 54 in Terminal B at Orlando International Airport where they have a very strong, free, wifi signal. Most surprising, and most excellent! 

More thoughts on the Boston Globe article that came out on Thursday. When you look at the amount of space he had, how could he justify wasting any of it on being snarky? Does he imagine his readers have any interest in the subject? If not, why is he writing about it. If so, imagine how frustrated the reader is. The subject isn't exactly a household coversation, like the suspected murderer who was camped out atop a crane in Atlanta (a subject MSM holds in great reverence, apparently, based on the number of Very Serious reports and hourly status updates). Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the reporter has no passion for news, no respect for his readers, and certainly no respect for the subjects of his reportage. If I worked for the Boston Globe, I'd be embarassed, and would want to explain that most Globe reporters aren't like this. But then this is the second time I've been honked on by a Globe report. Another observation, even the snarkiest of bloggers would have more regard for his or her readers, yet this is totally typical for the pros who so hypocrtically claim that only they know how to report the news, that we bloggers can't possibly compete. Well, I hope I never am so space-constrained as they, and I hope I never develop the level of cynicism they've reached. 

Field test report on the new Sienna. It has great acceleration power for passing, and handles really smoothly on curves. The navigation system is a bit quirky, the route it chose for me to the Orlando Airport, through back roads and suburbania was surely slower than the freeway route, even if it was more direct. And it was bad for the driver's nerves, it was hard to tell if they were sending me to the correct airport (maybe Orlando has more than one). But I decided to trust it, I had loads of time to spare, and eased out a sigh of relief when I pulled onto a main drag, and saw signs for Terminal A and Terminal B. Whew. 

Toyota clearly has never heard of an iPod or an Archos. There's no damned way to play one that I've found. And I thought I was getting a satellite radio with the thing, but nope, apparently you don't get satellite if you get a navigation system. Now what kind of sense does that make! Geez Louise. Now I love my new car, but even an ideal lover has warts. I'll have to get my own satellite radio and dammit I keep wishing they put a mini-jack on the car. Maybe they want to hire me as a consultant for the next version of the car. Please, let's have some wifi support or how about Bluetooth? And btw, to Archos, you should really have a mini FM transmitter. Every high-end MP3 device should have a good one built in. Do the Belkin ones work worth a damn? I bought an El Cheapo brand transmitter at Target (it was all they had) and it didn't work. The signal was too weak. 

But like I said at the top of the report, Orlando Airport wifi rocks. Every airport should have free wifi. I'd choose Orlando over Jacksonville for this reason alone, and I do have a choice. One more thing, if you want to be sure to stay ahead in the power user race, be sure to have some electric outlets to recharge the batteries. You could even charge for that. (Honestly you could charge for the wifi too, but I really like that it's free.)