Alex VanScoy

Crystal Castles Video Courtship Dating at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2009

2009-11-09T11:18:00.003-06:00

Danzig at Fun Fun Fun Fest

2009-11-09T00:51:00.002-06:00

Nokia E71x Symbian PDA Smartphone Review

2009-08-06T14:32:00.000-05:00

Nokia's homepage is prominently displaying the the E71x banner for AT&T. I picked up Nokia's new Symbian based PDA smartphone a couple of weeks ago and here's what I think so far:

What I like:

Physical QWERTY keyboard, not a touch screen
Multitasking which allows me to keep work open in multiple apps
Holding the home button brings up all the open apps for easy switching
Music sounds great coming out of the built-in speaker
Uses wireless 802.11 hotspots when in range
Having a separate, personal schedule :-)
3.2 Megapixel camera with a tiny flash for great, sharp photos and videos
The @ symbol has its very own key

Apps that work for me:

Google mobile apps YouTube, Gmail, Latitude & GPS Maps
Gravity & Twibble twitter clients
Mapquest Navigator with GPS & voice navigation
Opera Mini web browser
Hotmail
Facebook Mobile

Needs Improvement:

Main screen should list more applications
The headphone jack is 2.5mm, not a standard 3.5mm to plug-in to stereos (adapter $5 on ebay
Gmail constantly asks to connect to the internet when running
Switching between 3G internet and home wireless internet isn't automatic in some apps
No letters above the numbers makes it hard to dial phone numbers like 1-800-CONTACTS
The zero, hash and asterisk keys are to the right of the numbers instead of below them like a normal phone
Snaptu doesn't recognize the network connection, so I'll have to trade notes with a friend

The Nokia E71x is a big upgrade from my Palm Treo 680. I recommend the E71x if you are going for a new AT&T plan or just a handset upgrade.

Now My Blogs Feed Facebook, Thanks Networked Blogs

2009-02-25T14:28:00.000-06:00

Awesome. Another integration point down in the battle to hook up all these web 2.0 technologies together. It's clear that facebook is where everybody is going to live their web 2.0 lives, so I had to find a way to get my blogs in front of people on Facebook. Looks like Networked Blogs will wrap this up nicely for me.

I tried several different apps on Facebook that basically fail for whatever reason. Talk Blog and Mirror Blog both failed. It was extremely frustrating. Talk Blog actually has so many errors in the application that you can't get through the setup. I think I also tried Blog Reader and one of the applications just called Blog. None of these busted apps is worthy of the fail blog.

I found this one on a recommendation from Savannah that she posted on a TypePad article suggesting that you post the whole blog on Facebook. I like Savannah's idea to just post a teaser and then get some eyes on your blog coming from Facebook referrals.

Fingers crossed that this post goes through to FB.

Facebook vs. Myspace: The space race for mindspace, your place or my place?

2009-02-21T14:53:00.000-06:00

Google trends picks Facebook the winner over myspace. It's literally the X of doom.

The fact of the matter is that myspace is getting cooked on the share of mindspace% metric. I'd say google trends is as good a proxy as any for what people are thinking. I mean, what is more direct than coming from my hands in to the search box?

Bubblegum, bubblegum in a dish, how many profiles do you wish?

2009-02-21T14:15:00.000-06:00

Facebook, friendster, linkedIn, Live
A plague of profiles giving me hives

Blogger twitter google and Digg
Promote yourself well and you can earn big

Wishlists YouTube Flickr MySpace
before we make more, let's stop to say grace

Amazon mp3 downloads work with itunes

2009-02-16T16:30:00.000-06:00

I've started using Amazon mp3 downloads this week and it is fantastic. The downloads work with my non-apple-ipod mp3 player. The coolest part is that it updates your iTunes library automatically. So, you get files that will work with any player including iPods. You get iTunes integration. You get digital rights management (DRM) free music that you can copy to as many devices as you want.

I Can't Blog About Dell SEO

2009-02-13T15:41:00.000-06:00

The one thing I would love to blog about is off limits for now. I just started doing SEO at Dell and there are way too many SEO bloggers already. Maybe when I grow up and become a real SEO whiz kid I can write an entertaining book. If you are reading this then you are probably a character and at least a statistic in that book.

I'll have to stick to things that I don't sit and wonder about all day long. Digging through backlinks in yahoo site explorer will not be mentioned. Setting google alerts to paranoid and staying up all night waiting will only be mentioned as an excuse. I actually get paid to google my dang head off and I can't even talk about it.

Maybe I can talk about things I used to know something about. Maybe I should spend some time in the lab with the server products getting up to speed. It just seems like I would need to spend so much time before I would have something to say. Networks, databases and servers have moved on and I don't really know the latest. I guess some of my old solutions still draw breath online. In which case, I think that renders them off limits for discussion.

How about good ideas? I could share those, but no way. Not after what happened to Uncle Dog on the brain wash idea. Robbed, I tell you.

That leaves contrived subjects like the Sansa MP3 player I traded for my iPod and Windows 7 beta. Writing about those items actually drove me to get into them. They are constructed as things to talk about on a blog. I am interested in these things, but I'm approaching them in a new way. Instead of being curiousities that lead to hobbies and hobbies that lead to jobs, they are jobs that lead to curiosities. Does that make sense? No? Good. Moving on.