In an article that originally appeared on CNET.com back on September 18, 2009, Tom Krazit reported that:

Google told the Federal Communications Commission in a redacted letter to the agency a few weeks ago that Apple did in fact reject its Google Voice application from the App Store.

Google dropped its request for confidentiality in the manner concerning the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store in July, and directly contradicted Apple’s version of events Friday. In the letter, Google said Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller informed Google that the app had, in fact, been rejected, when Apple’s public statements to the FCC in that month claimed it was merely still under review.

So, what the hell is Apple even thinking?

As a die-hard fan of a few of Apple’s products I don’t understand why it does a lot of what it does. I mean, the iPhone is incredible–it’s capable of doing some amazing things that Apple doesn’t want to let you do. You can hack your iPhone to make it do some of those things anyway (I have), but why not breed loyal customers instead of loyal business partners?

You’re Apple, you don’t need to bother getting along with everyone else.

So, you lie (apparently) and make us want to avoid trusting you even more than we did when we learned you put a kill-switch on every iPhone that lets you guys shut down apps on our phones if you feel like it (dont’ worry, there’s a hack for that, too).

That kill-switch wasn’t exactly advertised on the outside of the box, ya know.

So, why try to control even more how we use the iPhones we paid for? Why not just let us use a Google Voice app? What difference does it make to you or to AT&T whether calls are initiated on the iPhone or just received?

Also, why are there no legal consequences for corporations that lie?

Today, PCWorld.com posted an article by Matt Peckham (”Apple Demonstrates Ignorance of Mobile Games Market“) that echoed some of what I was thinking while following the big Apple event Wednesday. However, I think Peckham is mistaken–Apple doesn’t demonstrate ignorance of the mobile gaming market, they are projecting what they want the gaming market to be. See, that’s how they misrepresent. Apple has a long history of insisting on a particular reality until eventually it can be said to be, more or less, true.

Take a look at this screencap from the official video of the event released from Apple:

What that graph refers to is the number of gaming and entertainment titles available in the Apple App Store and compares it to the number of game and entertainment titles compared to the number of game & entertainment titles available for the PSP and Nintendo DS. Now first off, I challenge these numbers entirely.

The PSP has a LOT of movie titles available for it. Well, it did back when Sony still thought it’s proprietary UMD (Universal Media Disk) was a good idea. Likewise, the DS Phat and the DS Lite both support Gameboy Advance games. As a result, I think both numbers are absurdly low when counting “game & entertainment” titles for the DS, as well. Sure, the DSi doesn’t support GBA games, but Nintendo has it’s own version of the App Store coming.

Next, I want to point out that the App Store has a lot of dumb-ass “entertainment” titles that aren’t games and aren’t much of anything. Would that stupid Zippo cigarette lighter app count as an “entertainment title”? I’m guessing yes.

Then there’s the fart app, the virtual bonsai tree-maker, and the lightsaber app and a lot more. Now, to be sure, I sure find that lightsaber app to be entertaining as hell, but would I compare it to Spore or Lego Star Wars, both of which I love on my DS?

Hellz, NO.

And you don’t see Apple comparing them directly, either. That’s because they know it would be like comparing Apples to oranges.

As a person who LOVES his iPhone, I can tell you that anything with as few tactile buttons as the iPhone is NOT a gaming device! I get angry with it just switching tracks while listening to music. There have been countless instances when I’ll be watching a video and try to hit pause so I can back up to catch a subtitle I missed only to find the screen to be unresponsive for 15-20 seconds. Meanwhile, I’ve completely forgotten where the subtitle was and now have to go back very slowly to find it–which, of course, I can’t do because the touchscreen controls are crap.

Sure, the DS has a touchscreen, but it’s more responsive than the iPhone’s and the DS has actual buttons I can use, as well.

I’d also like to see the hard numbers when it comes to sales figures. Undoubtedly, the App Store has sold more game and entertainment titles than Nintendo and Sony combined, but let’s look at actual dollars made.

Most games and entertainment titles in the app store trend toward the cheap. $1-$10 or so. The only game I have on my iPhone, I Love Katamari, was $8, if memory serves. That’s a good deal cheaper than just about every game I’ve ever bought for my DS. So my guess is that Apple wants to convince everyone that the iPhone and Touch can rock as gaming devices, when really, the gaming experience you’ll get on either device is entirely different from the one you’ll get on the Sony PSP or the Nintendo DS.

But then, what else are you going to talk about in your keynote when the biggest thing you have to announce is a camera in an mp3 player?

Seriously though, get up in front of everyone and claim the iPhone and Touch are comparable to the DS and PSP??

Way to misrepresent, Apple. Not to compare Apple’s deceptiveness to that of an orange juice company’s but the whole thing reminds me of how Tropicana’s “Trop50″ drink masquerades as orange juice when it’s actually a watered-down and re-sweetened substance. Much the way real video games are watered-down for the iPhone and Touch.

Click the pic to try it yourself!

The above image was created after entering my name into an online art piece called “Personas.” After hitting “return” on my keyboard, a series of interesting things happen. It’s hard to really express what happens–nothing mind blowing, but you watch as the above image is created based on data culled from the Internet. The piece was created by Aaron Zinman and the idea is to point out both how capable and how flawed the Internet is in determining who we are as people. Here’s what I found on the official project page for Personas:

WHAT IS PERSONAS?
Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

PHILOSOPHY
In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Pretty neat idea considering just how much faith is put in this giant network we call the Web. Seems we humans are still necessary pieces of the information-gathering puzzle. Check it out for yourself and see what you learn about the Internet or about yourself (or folks with your name):

personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

OK, my buddy @Krownz recommended this site Blippr.com after I Tweeted to @Netflix about wishing I could easily Tweet a link to a movie I saw through Netflix. In theory, Blippr.com is a site that allows you to share your opinions on various types of media easily. Well, “easy” is subjective, apparently. Either that, or “easy” is defined by the folks behind Blippr.com as “without any control by you.”

But rather than get too detailed, I’ll just paste the text I entered into the “other comments” field on Blippr.com’s “delete your account” page. Check it out:

I’m VERY upset that by connecting this account to my Netflix account, your site assumes I want to import everything on my queue, both present and past, and (I assume) share it with everyone. NOT COOL. All I wanted was a service that would allow me to share my feelings on certain media with friends on Twitter. I don’t need to alert the world that I’m watching porn or pilates or anything else UNLESS I WANT TO.

What’s extra nice is that even after I disconnect Netflix from my Blippr account, the content that was imported DOESN’T GO AWAY, which means, I must delete my Blippr.com profile. Good one, guys!

Plus your interface is confusing–I couldn’t work out where the hell my “blips” are listed and don’t know how I came to see “blips” from some dude called “JC” who apparently really liked “Funny People” which happens to be a film I NEVER WANT TO SEE EVER.

My experience on Blippr has been overwhelmingly negative and I will be honest if anyone ever asks me about your site.

Also: When I “blip” something, I think of Blip.FM. You guys should really come up with another made-up verb to describe the act of posting something on this site.

All right… I’m done.

Gah. I don’t blame @krownz for this, since he’s perfectly happy with the site. I’m a Twitter addict, though. I like simple, basic, easy, low-maintenance. Ideally, I’d love to see Netflix add a simple “Tweet this” link or a “share this” button that allows users to post a link to a DVD on Netflix in their Twitterstream, or Facebook profile or where ever else. I don’t need a whole third-party site for managing my media recommendations since I really don’t recommend stuff that much and when I do, I post on my old fashioned blog.

Ah well.

#PanasonicEmailFAIL: Trying to Contact Panasonic About my Comatose
HD Cam and Look What Happens…, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

So, my HDC-SD9 HD camera started flashing the dreaded "PUSH THE RESET SWITCH" error that plagues so many Panasonic camcorders old and new. It happened as I tried to shoot footage of the 4th of July fireworks over the Hudson, too–gotta love that timing! Anyway, so couldn’t get it to go away permanently, so today I emailed support as I’ve had my SD9 for all of six months.

The image attached to this post shows an annoying inconsistency on Panasonic’s website.

Turns out, they trick you into thinking that email might get you a perfectly timely response to your question, by saying up front that you’ll hear back in a day. Then, once you’ve submitted your email, they inform you that you should expect a reply in 2-3 days.

Well, crap, for that long I’ll sit on the phone and wait on hold for a while.

Thanks Panny! Wasting my time with a gamey cam and now getting warranty support. Hooray!

So, I was a GrandCentral.com member since way back. In case you weren’t aware, GrandCentral was a service that gave you a free phone number that aim at all of your phones–work, home, mobile, Skype, etc. So, all of your contacts call one number and voila, which ever phone you’re at will ring. Bestest service EVER!

Shortly after I signed up with them, they were bought by Google. After years of no improvements whatsoever, GrandCentral was finally folded into Google and were then reborn as “Google Voice.” Very exciting! They even had new features and services. My favorite is that I can tell calls from some people to go straight through to my phones without me having to answer my phone and then approving the call. YES. Simple = good!

One feature I didn’t ask for, but do think is pretty cool none the less, is voicemail transcription.

The idea is this: you can miss a phone call that then gets sent to voicemail, but maybe you’re busy in a meeting or (like me) on a subway and can’t call to get your messages. So, Google Voice will transcribe them and then email them to you. Pretty neat, huh? The only catch is, their voice recognition software, as you might expect, isn’t quite there yet.

This afternoon after leaving her temp job, my wife left me this message. Well, according to Google Voice, my wife left me this message:

hey it’s mike i am just now getting out of the library and i’m slightly calling the right but i will jump on the a from with united soon i love you and i hope to be home around six forty five seven operator love you bye bye

Yeah, I didn’t know my wife’s name was “Mike” either. Not sure why she’d be “calling the right slightly” unless she’s curious about converting from the Democrats. “The a” is a reference to the A-Train, so that makes sense, but why she’d do it “with united” is not a question I can answer. Nor can I tell you why the operator might love me.

So, sadly, Google Voice’s transcriptions end up reading a bit like a poorly translated VCR manual.

Ah well, Google knows they own my soul, and I know all my base belongs to them.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

OK, for years now, it’s been easy to see why Apple does so well. The only time I’ve ever really wondered what drugs they were on was when they introduced the first iPod Shuffle. With no display screen I was puzzled as to just what I was supposed to do with the thing. Years later, a friend gave me his since he wasn’t using it and I realized that, for me, it was perfect for listening podcasts. Who needs a display when you can listen to the podcast and know what you’re listening to? Songs, however, are a different story–but now Apple wants to think it has that problem beaten–by having the iPod Shuffle talk to you. That’s all fine and good, but wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just throw a display on it? And how the hell do you hit play? And what’s with the posing of the hand model in the pic on Apple’s main page right now (see above)?? The way the hand is holding the super-smooth Shuffle with it’s rounded edges suggests the form factor of a suppository.

Seriously, Apple has taken a cute little player with personality and made it a faceless, boring slab that could easily be mistaken for a tampon (ladies, back me up on this!).

So, sad. Please get better soon, Steve Jobs!

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

UPDATE: I just read the product page again and it turns out the play and skip buttons are on the earbud cable. Wow, so now I can’t use my own headphones with the flippin’ thing! That is even more lame now.

thepete.com on My Kindle 2, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Here’s the very first screenshot taken on my Kindle 2. It’s of my
website, thepete.com. You can take a screencap on the K2 by holding down the alt and shift keys while pressing "g". Then, the next time you connect your Kindle 2 to your computer, check it’s "documents" directory. Inside will be a gif. That’s your screengrab.

As you can see, web browsing on the Kindle is pretty rudimentary. However, it’s almost on par (minus the color screen) to the Sidekick 3’s browsing experience, so if you’re in a pinch, it’ll do. Now, I have an iPhone, too, but that damn touchscreen is sometimes hard to type on and since the Kindle 2 rides the Sprint network for wireless, I might find my iPhone uncovered by its network of choice (T-Mobile for me AT&T for most folks) and when that happens, I can check the old K2 to see if Sprint can let me Tweet.

So after a few hours of playing with the thing, the Kindle 2 seems just fine. There was a minor hickup while trying to buy a free copy of the Bible from the Kindle Store (it didn’t like my credit card!)–after the second attempt it let me download it with no problem. I tried to open it (I assume) before it finished DLing. As a result it hung on opening. It was no big deal, I just pressed the "home" button and opened the Bible again and it worked. I also converted one PDF with meh results, but I’m learning, still. I’ll post more about my experiences, soon.

Watch for the Kindle 2 unboxing video shortly at tv.thepete.com.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the subject matter of the book it listed amongst the other results a couple weeks back while I was comparison shopping for “electric razors”–it’s just DEFINITELY NOT what I was looking for. You would think Amazon MIGHT have a protection against this sort of thing.

Just another episode in the never-ending adventure show: “Perils in Online Keyword Usage!”

For the last episode, go here:

http://thepete.com/how-keyword-targeted-ads-are-far-from-perfect-why-does-facebook-think-im-christian

Catch a clue, oh, Masters of the Internet! Sometimes keywords aren’t everything!

GASP… I know it’s practically blaspheme but, sadly, it is the truth.

I really wasn’t looking for a novel called “Razor Burn” from a company called “Romentics”.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous