Technology

applevswin2.jpg The real issue is the phone. I am almost at the end of the contract that binds me to Verizon and to my pink Blackberry Curve. It hasn’t been a bad run; I’ve never had an issue with Verizon aside from their draconian tendency to declare a payment “late” five minutes after it’s due, and I mostly like the Blackberry. It has limits, though, the Blackberry – I would like a bigger screen, faster connections, and the ability to play music from my iTunes library. I have long dreamed of a single device that would replace the Blackberry/iPod Touch combo that I now carry everywhere I go for more than five minutes, and that dream could, of course, be answered by an iPhone. That slender, shiny object has long been the Holy Grail of technology about which I have barely allowed myself to dream; we are a Verizon family, I had A Contract, it was Terribly Expensive.

In a world filled with war, poverty and oil spills, it seemed beyond petty to spend time thinking about a phone, even a phone that would play my music, offer me Doodle Jump when my oral surgeon left me in the chair, and allow me to use my index finger to scroll swiftly to the last comment on a post. I do think about it, though, growing faintly fevered as I contemplate the possibilities. No more juggling the Blackberry and the iTouch while driving. No more endless scrolling with the little ball to get to the bottom of a screen. The end of receiving calls asking me if I had intentionally made a phone call when I had, in fact, dialed accidentally through pocket or purse.

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apple_logo_rainbow_6_color.jpgFor geeks everywhere today is the day we finally see the device we have all been talking about for the last year. For the last week I’ve seen prediction pools where you get 1 point for each correct answer. Seven or ten inches? Verizon or ATT? Stylus or finger?

All these questions and many more will be answered today at 10am when Steve Jobs strolls on stage in SF and announces to the world the product many of us didn’t think we needed in our daily life.

I’m the tech guy for all my friends so in recent weeks they have turned to me and asked what I think will be announced. “No idea what it will do or how it will work,” I reply, “but I’m saving my money because I’ll order it on the first day.” No computer company has made a tablet anyone wants, but then again no one got a phone right until Steve Jobs pulled that iPhone out of his pocket.

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iphonerecipe.jpgI can’t imagine being separated from my iPhone for even a day. Its intuitive features have become essential to my life.  But, now, with the application “Big Oven” I feel like my favorite room in the house, a kitchen, has been added to my screen. This is the BEST app that iTunes has to offer.  Of course, that is only my opinion.

Big Oven is a FREE app for iPhone users only, don’t ask me why it’s free but it is.

How about a little tour? Big Oven says they have 160,000 recipes and in another place on the site there are 170,000, who knows?  We all know how recipes collect and reproduce. (Unlike Al Gore, you’ll never get to the end!) My favorite feature is a random recipe that comes up and if it doesn’t interest you, you shake your iPhone and another one loads. Heck, I could do that all day and probably for years and never see the same recipe twice. Random recipes like Green Goodess Dressing.  Shake it again and up pops a recipe for Almond-stuffed pork chops and then a quick shake and now a recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies.  How very cool!

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boardwalk_pedicabpage.jpg Yes, a pedicab.  That was my ride home last night.  Crammed in the back seat with two friends, and leaving a party far away from downtown, the pedicab, peddled vigorously by a bearded mountain man named Declan, was our only chance of getting back to home base (by the way, I’m now convinced that pedicabs are the most expensive mode of transportation on earth).

We were a few miles away from downtown at a party given by MySpace which featured Nelly as the headlining performer.  The crowd at all convention events always seems to be a mixed bag of ages and enthusiasm, which can make it hard to select a performer who resonates with everyone. I forgot, though, that every Nelly song has been in some sort of commercial and that as a result, even your grandmother knows at least one Nelly song (seriously, try it). 

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tattoo1.jpgWhen I got my first tattoo at age 16, I pretty much knew I'd want it gone by the time I was 30. My rationale went like this: the year was 1995, and I figured technology was bound evolve to the point where, by the time I was that old, tattoo removal would be cheap, fast, and easy. Wrong! But I'll get to that.

The first tattoo was a star on my wrist. Not so original nowadays, but we didn't have Lindsay Lohan and Sienna Miller back then. And, sure, you have to be 18 to legally get a tattoo, but this was in the early days of Giuliani administration in New York, back when we were barely carded for anything (especially alcohol, I was elated to learn).

The second tattoo came about during my freshman year of college, and this one really marked some silly adolescent judgment on my part. I knew what I wanted it to say (and it's something so college, so 18, and so earnest that I can't even bring myself to tell friends what it means anymore, let alone HuffPost readers), but I didn't want it to be in English. Arabic, Farsi and Hindi looked too linear, Chinese felt too cliché. So, naturally, I settled on Japanese. I could have lived with the star for the rest of my life, but really, Asian character tattoos are a crime of fashion that should be punishable by law.

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