By now, we’re all aware of Apple’s rejection of Google Voice for the iPhone. For those of you who don’t follow such things (what are you doing

here, btw?), Google Voice gives you one phone number that rings all your phones (home, mobile, etc.), transcribes voicemail to text, and saves your voicemail online.

Apple’s official reasoning was that the app duplicates functions of the hardware and the carrier, and AT&T denies having anything to do with the decision whatsoever. Now the FCC is investigating. Yes, even the Feds are up in arms over Apple’s snubbing of the app, which is still in private beta!

What’s more, there seems to be a trending attitude of “forget Apple!” spreading like wildfire amongst the once loyal-to-the-death iPhone users. Among them is the man with arguably the most influence among technophiles, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington who recently quit his iPhone cold turkey, opting for T-mobile’s MyTouch 3G.  That phone runs runs the open-source Android operating system, where “all apps are created equal.” Google Voice is also available on the Blackberry platform as a native app, and an unofficial version is available on Palm’s WebOS. With other choices available, it looks like consumers are beginning to break free from Apple’s glossy spell.

I’m curious: if you were unbound by any contracts and money weren’t an issue, which phone and carrier would you choose today? iPhone users, are you becoming fed up with Apple and AT&T?

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Why is McDonald’s getting into the Internet security business?

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My friend Hunter asked me to record my reaction to her website, upsidedowncrow.com. It’s her site for her production company, (you guessed it!) Upside Down Crow Productions. Hunter is a talented director, so I suggest you check it out.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjDJ4SUOHt4]

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Interesting thing happened last night. After a bit too much Buffalo Grove Zinfandel (2nd most popular wine at my local Wine & More for just $6.99/bottle!) and four straight episodes of The Office at hulu, I got a little bored. I’m new to my part of the world, so I thought I’d get on brightkite and see if any other techies were out and about nearby.

I put a message out there: “Anyone want to have a brew” It was only a few minutes before I got a reply, “At [local bar]. Come on by!”

Now, I happen to live in neighborhood where the gay fellas tend to gravitate towards. I had also been noticing that most of the people on brightkite in my area were men who were checking in with messages like, “at [home address]. Alone. ” I didn’t want to get myself into a sticky situation (I know what you’re thinking and you have a dirty mind), so I decided to investigate this guy a little. A quick look at his profile page showed me that he’s in Web development and marketing so I decided to go ahead and meet the guy. I still had this gut feeling that he might be looking for something other than a friendly conversation about social networking (god, am I naive or what?), but I remembered what Sir Richard Branson said in an interview with Arianna Huffington that I had watched earlier in the day, “I’m a great believer, in life,  in saying yes and not saying no… …and not holding back because of what other people might say.” Plus, the folks in the twitter-sphere (copyright me, just now!) were encouraging me to go (likely for their own amusement). So I marched.

While I walked over to the place where I was to meet the guy, I used brightkite’s mobile service to ask the guy who he was with. “Alone. Smoking… iPhone and ashtray on table.” I started to sweat. This is not looking good. But I couldn’t get Branson out of my head. And the guy was a fellow Internet marketer, I reasoned. “We’ll talk shop,” I messaged him. “What do you want to buy? Silly guy!” he messaged back. Oh boy.

As I walked past the guy, sitting at an outdoor table, staring at his iPhone and ashing his fag (what?), I felt bad. But there was no way I was going through with it. Later on, he messaged me, “Had my nite cap. Going home.” What a jerk I was. By that time I had wondered into a different bar, made a new friend named Hunter, and was recounting the entire episode to her to see what she made of it. Of course she thought it was the funniest thing in the world. And I had to work pretty hard to convince her that I wasn’t gay, or even curious.

So, the answer to the question, “Is BrightKite a gay hookup site?” It is if you live in a gayborhood. Or is it? Now the guy has messaged me, lol. just googled “talk shop” & thx to urban dictionary got what you meant. can’t help it – i’m foreign will have a beer some next time.”  What the hell to make of this all, I don’t know. How say you, netfreaks?

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If you’re like me, you freak the red wine now and then. Yep, now AND then. So pretty much always. Anyway, when I’m writing a blog post with a nice (read: big) bottle of wine at my side, the words flow like…  milk.  Yeah they’re movin’ alright, but maybe they leave a little residue in the glass that is your computer’s… whatever. The point is, the transferring of thoughts and ideas to screen isn’t the hard part of blogging. For me at least, it’s the research. The searching for, quoting, and linking to relevant content that’s a pain. And if I’m two or more glasses of sauce deep, it just ain’t happening until tomorrow morning.

As Inc.com reports, Zemanta wants to take the work out of finding relevant links for your blog postings. Install the

Zemanta Firefox add-on and the tool magically appears in your WordPress post editing interface. (It’s also available for Movable Type

and Drupal, and also via the Opera and Safari browsers, but I’m not sure if it works the same way. Read the article yourself, for Christ’s sake!) As you write, Zemanta suggests related content, including images, for you to link to.

It also allows you to add a “re-blog” button to the bottom of your posts (see below), so that if by some long shot others think your post is worth sharing, you’ll get the link.

The service seems to work really well. As Inc points out, all images are safe and legal for the jacking, and it integrates quite nicely into the WordPress interface.

Zemanta truly makes blogging easier, and I’ll probably be using it from now on. It’s the first of such blogging aides that I’ve come accross, but I haven’t really looked. Do you use different one? If so, how do you like it?

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