electron zoo

Long known as the “easy” internet — praised by grandmothers and shunned by the tech elite — AOL, at $20+ per month, has seemed overpriced for years. The free hours of internet they used to offer upfront used to seem like a steal, but they’re now as easy to come by as so many landfill-clogging promo CDs.

Which is why I felt pretty silly installing AOL 9 on my pristine and professional Shuttle XPC last week. Why would I do that? Mainly because AOL is suddenly FREE. So why shouldn’t I add it to my at-home website-testing arsenal so I can ensure that my websites and HTML email newsletters look okay for the at-AOL-dot-com crowd?

Here’s how I set it up:
1. Go to AOL’s free email setup screen and create your new at-AOL-dot-com email address.
2. Get the AOL 9.0VR software from AOL’s download page and install it.
3. Login with your new AOL account (that you created in Step 1).

Now I’m sending all my test HTML emails to my at-AOL-dot-com email account (in addition to Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, and others) … rather than just relying on my Mom to check them for me. (Sorry Mom, I’ll miss you.)

AOL didn’t seem to have taken over my computer too audaciously, but a familiar little triangle is lurking in my system tray, just waiting to say “Welcome!”. (Yes, AOL is free, so “Welcome” and “You’ve Got Mail!” won’t cost you a dime.)

Anyway, I believe that both AOL users and web developers will benefit from free AOL, because developers will be more likely to test their content in AOL now that it’s free — certainly I am — and that means less buggy internet content for AOL end-users.

And because Time Warner (who owns AOL) can still sell pricey Road Runner High Speed Internet accounts to the kind of users that have $20+ a month for AOL, the company may even have a future beyond monthly billing.

I have an awesome new gadget. This time, it’s pretty mainstream — I didn’t have to fill out any customs forms, buy off the black market, or rob any Japanese tourists. Not that I would do such a thing (but don’t ask me where I got my itty bitty digital camera).

I got my latest gadget in the USA. Well, that already knocks it down a wee bit on the coolness scale, especially because it’s a mobile phone. Or as some of you American cavemen still like to say, it’s a cell phone.

To get totally off the topic for a moment, the term cell phone is so old-fashioned that I once said cell phone to a 19-year-old hipster in the UK and he didn’t know what I was talking about. (Technically, the term refers to phones that use frequencies that few of us are using these days.) The only "cell phone" you’ll find me buying will be an actual cybernetic extension onto the cellular walls of my ears that allows me to communicate with … um … the mothership?

But in spite of being on the North American market, my new mobile phone is really cool. It’s the Motorola RAZR V3, and it’s just a little flashier than the electronics I would normally buy. I only bought a new phone because I had to change mobile services carriers, so getting a rockin’ new phone was a part of the deal. (Actually, you can buy unlocked cell phones that are carrier-independent — but then you don’t have a great excuse to upgrade your mobile technology.)

And this phone does pretty much rock. It has a huge, colorful screen, which is great for using the web, instant messaging, and emailing. The camera is pretty decent, and takes photos as big as 640 x 480 pixels — less than one megapixel, but good enough the uninspired quickie shots I’d take on my mobile phone. (Check out these shots I posted to Blogger Mobile.)

But the vanity features of the phone are what sets it apart. Mainly, the form factor — this is geek talk for the size and shape — is very cool. It’s just a little longer than a credit card and around 1.4 cm thick. (That’s just over half an inch for you cavemen reading this.) The thinness makes up for the large height and width of the phone, allowing space for the most luxuriously huge keypad I’ve seen in a pocket-friendly phone.

If the size of the keypad didn’t make it easy enough for me to enter text, the excellent predictive text feature built in to the phone simplifies things further. Turning it off and on can be counter-intuitive, but I am willing to forgive that because it has a very clever interface for guessing what you are trying to type … once you get used to it, anyway.

Plus it actually remembers what you’ve typed in the past. For instance, the name of my pet is not a real word (”shrimpi”, who lives in an Eco-Sphere), so I had to manually enter the name the first time I typed it into my phone. After that, it guessed that I was trying to type “shrimpi” after I’d entered just a few letters. Not bad.
Later that day, it suggested my password as a potential solution to something I was trying to type. How convienient. For that reason, I suggest you carefully weigh the pros and cons of this feature if you’re living a secretive double life. That’s why I had to turn it off, anyway.

Just in case I haven’t given you enough reasons why this keypad is awesome, it also glows like the dashboard of a retro spaceship in the dark. The salesman at the mobile store pointed this out to me. "It’s very Star Trek," he said. "Just like my life," I responded, and he laughed.

Oh, what little he knows.

Here’s a “joke” that reflects my present geek-life:

Q: You know you’re a nerd when …
A: You’re having a bad day because you woke up and and realized all your Sims have died.

No, I don’t usually game, but for the last few days I’ve been playing a Palm OS game called Village Sim.

I don’t play video games much, but I often wish I did. For years I’ve suspected that by not gaming, I may be lacking some kinds of intelligence — such as the ability to navigate a virtual 3D world — that a younger generation (who grew up playing the fancy stuff) has. I figure that these skills that are gained by gaming will earn someone higher productivity and understanding of the systems that will be developed by this generation of gamers.

Just as the Windows and Mac desktop act a little bit like Lemmings, future operating systems may behave like Unreal … or whatever those crazy kids are playing these days. And I don’t want to be left behind.

These suspicions found some ground when I read an article in Discover magazine about some new brain research. This research concludes that playing video games is like going to the gym for your brain — it builds problem solving ability.

Additionally, some virtues can be learned by gaming, such as patience. As an adult who stopped gaming years ago, I completely agree. I can pick up a game and put it down again faster than a baby with a business management book. Why? It takes a lot of hard hard work to master a game — in fact, just learning the controls can require major effort. (This research was about video games, but I would argue that Linux users also demonstrate extreme patience!)

I know I’m not going to master these skills by playing a Sim on my Palm Tungsten, but it does take some patience and problem solving ability to keep my group of virtual islanders alive. To all you grown-ups out there who haven’t been giving video games a chance: try to endure one for a little while, and you might learn something new.

Or maybe you’ll kill off a bunch of innocent Sims in your sleep. And then when the robots rule humans in 2015, you’ll pay — oh yes, you’ll pay dearly for what you did to the ancestors of your new computer overlords.

Uh oh …

I was powerless on vacation in Washington last week — well actually, it was just my camera. Too prophetic that I posted about double-checking on my chargers just last week, huh?

But let’s say you’re on a week-long vacation and you leave the charger for your super-cool, ultra-portable, beloved digital camera at home. If you need help deciding whether to simply purchase a new charger while you’re out of town, I can help.

Just review this easy-to-follow questionnaire:

1. Do you have lots of unneeded money ($20-80 US) to spend on something you already have at home?
2. Would you like to spend a half a day of your short holiday bouncing around an unknown town in order to locate a rather obscure, proprietary device that is not likely to be in stock at most retailers?
3. Do you happen to be an a burgeoning metropolis that boasts multiple well-stocked electronics or digital camera stores?
4. After you’ve located a charger for your digital camera, would you like to spend a few hours indoor juicing up your camera?
5. Are you totally friggin nuts?

Did you answer “yes” to all of the above questions? Great, then I suggest you go out and get a new charger for your digital camera right now. But why take a vacation in the first place? Couldn’t you have just as much fun sitting around your darkened geek lair installing new software on your Palm OS wristwatch or something? (Okay, maybe that’s not fair. You could just be wholesomely watching TV on your wristwatch instead, you nerd.)

Since I failed my own simple five-point survey, I just smacked myself in the head a few times when I realized I’d forgotten my charger. Damn. Just thinking about it made me smack myself again. Damn.

So I went to the five ‘n’ dime and got me one of those old-timey disposable film cameras. Cost me a whoppin’ four bucks, it did. Whoo-wee. Now I can get my pictures developed onto shiny paper and I can send ‘em to my kin using an envelope and a stamp.

Or, I can send the camera to be developed at a service like Snapfish, which will put the photos on the web and send me prints. It’s a good option, but they also charge you if you want to download hi-res prints. And if you use their site to send photos to folks, they have to register for a free account on Snapfish — but is giving away one’s email address really “free”?

But instead, now that I’m home and have been reunited with my good ol’ digital camera charger, I’m taking care of my photos the real old-fashioned way: I haven’t had the film developed at all, and I probably won’t for weeks. And probably, just like the good ol’ days, it won’t bother me a bit.

Yeah, I have a history of trying whatever new thing Google is doing. Sometimes it’s just a coincidence — like when I started using Picasa, Google bought the company a few months later.

This time I stumbled upon Keyhole, a program that provides satellite maps of the world to its users, when I read some business news discussing the acquisition. I figured that if Google bought the company, they must be doing something right.

So I checked out the website. It turns out that Keyhole is not free — it costs about $30/year for consumers and much more for business users. Its website explains that the program costs because it is a service which spends large amounts of resources sending geographic data to your computer. There is software involved, but the software is only an interface between you and the Keyhole service.

However, Keyhole offers a free one-week trial. So I downloaded the application and checked it out. I was definitely impressed — I could see familiar places in enough satellite detail to say, “dude, there’s my car!” But how big a deal is that?

Then I tried checking out other places. I realized it is somewhat limited when it comes to non-urban areas and locations outside of North America, but quickly realized how much fun it is to “fly” to other parts of the world and just zoom in and look around. I went to Tokyo (where I’ve never been) and found some random hot pink building. I went to China (looking for the Great Wall) and flew over Being. I went to Las Vegas and saw the big sphinx in front of the Luxor. I flew over Niagra Falls. Suddenly it was way past my bedtime. My findings: Keyhole is total crack!

The following night, I opened Keyhole again. This time, I found even more crack — the Keyhole user forums. Here I could actually click on links that would open in Keyhole to transport me to crazy new locations: Paris, Hawaii, Disneyworld, and even Mars.

The bulletin boards actually do more than contribute a “wow” factor to the program. Like a lot of map software, Keyhole has integrated city guides so that you can use the application to find things from restaurants to hospitals by checking off what you’re looking for on a category list. One category you can check off shows you bookmarks that have been added by the Keyhole community, which adds to the programs usefulness and cool factor, because the comments range from expanded details (”MGM Casino”) to useful information (”good campground”) to fun trivia (”guess which TV show was shot here?”). I think that Keyhole’s ability to attract a community is what attracted Google to purchase the company — hopefully a smart move.

Needless, to say, I will not be purchasing Keyhole when my trial has expired. I can’t afford it. No, I don’t mean I am too cheap to spend the $30 — the program’s just too addictive, and I can’t spare the time!