Using Jott to send emails from a phone call

You don't need a blackberry to have a multimedia phone - lately I've gotten in the habit of using a voice tool called Jott. Jott enables me to call in and voice a command of a location, such as "myself" or "calendar" and then leave a voice message. When I hang up, a transcription of the message (and a link to the message recording) is sent to the location I directed. Through the Jott website you can link email addresses, calendars, blogging tools, and more. Right now I have it set so when I call Jott I can leave a message for myself and it sends an email to my work e-mail address. This way when I am out at night and remember something I need to do the next day, I make a quick phone call and have it waiting for me in the morning. You can also set up a text messaging option, for when you can't make a phone call. On Jott itself you can keep track of your to-do's that you've sent to various locations, listen to your messages, organize them, set reminders, and more.

New restaurants I love in New York City

This Sunday I ate at two fantastic restaurants:

Flea Market Cafe for brunch
Il Corallo Trattoria for dinner

Both meals were delicious, and both were incredibly well priced. I've reviewed them on Yelp and on Google Maps, which is redundant, but I haven't given up yet on Google Maps as a community. Until I see a clear winner, I'll be double-posting.

Miguel Tejada never watched Baseketball, promises sick child a homerun

Apparently before last night's Astros game, Miguel Tejada promised a sick child with muscular dystrophy that he would hit him a home run in the night's game, and he actually made it happen- the first home run in a back-to-back-to-back string of 3 home runs in 3 hitters along the way to a 7-4 win over the Brewers.

Watch the clip on ESPN and see the child repeat Tejada's promise

All I can think is how this sounds right out of Baseketball, where the Southpark guy promises a kid he'll hit him 3 home runs, doesn't get it done, and then fears his let-down will cause the kid to be so dejected that he doesn't come through his heart transplant. Luckily Tejada only promised one, and was able to deliver!

Google's outdoor art show in the meatpacking district

Last night Angela and I stood out in the rain (she's a good sport) around 9PM to see Google turn the buildings on 9th ave and West 12th Street into art canvases. The event was done in celebration of their new online exhibit that allows you to skin your iGoogle homepage with famous artist renderings, from the likes of Marc Ecko, Radiohead, and more. I grabbed a few videos that don't really do the event justice, so if you're interested you can check it out yourself tonight (5/2/08) or tomorrow night (5/3/08) at the same spot.

Iron Man Gets Rave Reviews

I went to see Iron Man on Wednesday, a few days early as part of the Marvel premiere in New York City, and loved it. Sometimes comic movies come out cheesy, lack plot, and go so over the top that you can't get immersed into film whatsoever (Fantastic 4, Electra, etc..). Sometimes, though, they get it right, and the movie is compelling and engaging - X-men 2 and Spiderman 2 in particular were fantastic. Iron Man was the first film Marvel produced by itself, without another studio's partnership - it has good directors and good actors (I'm a big Robert Downey Jr. fan for some reason), and given that it was Marvel itself, I have to guess that they stuck well to the comic vision. I didn't love the final battle, if only because I tend to feel the endings of these things are usually anti-climatic, but the rest of the movie was great and I was completely engaged the entire time. Also, Stan Lee makes a great a great cameo, as he always does in his films.

RottenTomatoes Reviews (95)
MetaCritic Reviews (80)

Content Is Becoming a Commodity - ReadWriteWeb

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting article discussing the commoditization of content, which essentially means that online content (think blogs, etc) is going the way of music, where since anyone can produce it and anyone can (more or less) copy it, there is an economic drive towards of supply and demand leading all content itself to be valued at zero. Bloggers, then, are increasingly facing what musicians are facing, which is that they need to bring more to the table than just content itself. Some things that bring visitors back: the resources, the community, the first-to-print, etc. This is a powerful principle that is changing and tearing down traditionally monopolistic industries in the digital age.

"I believe in god but not in religion organized by man"

"I believe in god but not in religion organized by man. And I think the men (and women) who have cloaked themselves in the name of god have often done great harm. Religion is not the root of all evil but the people who traffic in it sure can be"

This is a very poignant quote by Fred Wilson that I will be thinking more about today.

Fighting Spam

After changing my password a couple of times, this blog has still been hit with a significant amount of post spam. I wrote blogger twice about it, but they have yet to respond to my inquiries, in really poor taste. Yesterday I noticed the spam posts were suggesting you open the attached file, which suggested that the post was actually an email. Blogger actually has a feature which allows bloggers to post articles via an email to a secret email address, and I had turned that feature on years ago but never used it. Yesterday I turned off that feature and set all incoming emails to save as a draft, hopefully cutting off the source of spam postings. For any of you who follow this blog regularly, sorry about the trouble, and if anyone has suggestions that might help, definitely leave me a comment.