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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[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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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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Do you freak the twitter scene? I thought so. Some of us use it for fun. Others to promote a business or otherwise enrich our careers. Still, many of use it for both and for this [likely] majority of twitter’s user base, it can be difficult to address all of your followers and remain relevant to all of them.

Enter blellow. It’s a “productivity microblog for professionals.” It’s a good way to share and seek out tips, best practices, leads, advice, and other information with professionals in your line of business. You can join topical groups to discuss specific issues, which is nice. You get the picture.

My take is that blellow is cool, and could definitely be useful. I’ve already got some handy tips on getting acquainted with GIMP from the group dedicated to that piece of software.

Specialized microblogging platforms are the future, in my opinion. They will prove better tools to help us find relevant people with whom to connect. BUT, there is one piece of the puzzle missing before the use of multiple microblogging platforms becomes bearable. We need an app that can sign us into multiple platforms and allow us to monitor and interact with any platforms we belong to. It’s just way too much trouble to manage more than one microblog profile, if you ask me.

Your thoughts?

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD0s7gfTotk]

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Thanks to @willconley777 for raping my time by tweeting this in the first place.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU4sBR-GCoA]

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Back on my old web-tech blog, which I’ve now dedicated to specifically career-related posts, I had posted two headlines I was sick of seeing in 2009. This was only in January, mind you. Since I thought the vibe fit this site better, I’ve moved the post here. I’ll back-date it for when it was written, and then write you all a new post of headlines we’re sick of soon. Any suggestions?

Netflix defies recession with profits up 45%!

Duh. The news has only been out for a few days now, but I just don’t understand why everyone is so amazed at the mail-order movie rental biz’ recently announced Q408 success. We’re in a freaking recession, people. A family can’t afford to drop a c-note at the cinaplex these days, or even the gas to get to the lame-o Hollywood Video (by the way, how are they surviving? No mail delivery, way more expensive than the dvd vending boxes… new post idea!) Anyway, Netflix is an awesome company with an awesome product, that happens to be perfectly positioned for times like this. (Queue Bald Brian’s drop of the laragmag.com guys: “Next story. NEXT!”)

[insert frivolous app name] for iPhone
Is this really news anymore? Yeah, we get it, there are thousands of apps being developed every day for the iPhone, ninety percent of which waste time. With regard to the aforementioned recession, shouldn’t we be focusing more on ways to get actual work done!? Do we really need a better way to plurk from your iPhone!? Is anyone missing work or failing at relationships because they can’t plurk in the most efficient manner from their iPhone? Jesus effing Christ, can you imagine having the following conversation with someone sitting next to you on your evening bus/train commute:

Torn-jeans hipster sitting next to you: Oh man, life sucks.

You, wondering why he’s even talking to you: Uh, what’s wrong.

Hipster: I’m just not happy with the way the Plurk app is handling my plurks on the iPhone.

You: I just lost my job. They took away my Blackberry, which I had used to GET ACTUAL WORK DONE. I was a good employee, dammit! I…

Hipster, interrupting: Woah, woah, dude. Stop harshing my mel. You should get an iPhone and plurk about that stuff.

You punch hipster in the face (and ironically steal his iPhone and plurk about it).

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