William Frantz Elementary School Address

William Frantz Elementary School is located at 3811 North Galvez Street, New Orleans, LA 70117. While we share the same name, I'm not related to the school.

Lee Harvey Oswald was born October 18, 1939. He lived on Alvar Street, across from William Frantz Elementary which he attended with his brother.

Decades later, 6 year old Ruby Bridges also attended William Frantz Elementary marking the end of segregation on November 14, 1960.

3 years later, on November 22, 1963, Lee assassinated one of the biggest proponents of civil rights, President John F. Kennedy.

Apple Teaches People

By now there are a few million iPhone users compared to hundreds of million Windows Mobile phone users. Yet, in The Seven Biggest Mobile Content Stories of 2007, Fierce Mobile reported that iPhone Safari browser usage has dramatically exceeded Windows Mobile Pocket Internet Explorer.

I find this astonishing. Apple overcame a 100:1 disadvantage and a several year head start. Then again, I'm often taken aback when "average users" believe some feature is revolutionary when in fact it has been available for years. Now I realize that Apple's skill is not simply making good products but actually promoting their use. There are no commercials on TV that show happy Windows Mobile users scrolling around web pages on a phone, so I guess nobody realizes its possible until Apple runs an iPhone ad. Suddenly everyone thinks only an iPhone can do this, that or the other thing.

Wish List

In case you want to buy me something, here's a few things I like:

Fire Map

The KPBS Fire Map has been a great source of information during the San Diego fire. It's a Google Map with icons and boundries drawn by a local San Diego PBS station.

There's also a good KBSP News Feed on Twitter that gets updated regularly.

Here's another Map at Live.com

You Can't Resell That CD

The RIAA won a $222,000 lawsuit against an individual woman in Minnesota who was using a peer-to-peer network. As absurd as that sounds, it didn't alarm me much until I read more of the details. Apparently, the woman wasn't found guilty of downloading copyright music. She was guilt of making copyright music available for download.

DV to MPEG4

Recently, a friend asked how to convert video from his Sony camcorder to his Motorola Q phone. I wrote a short primer on MPEG video and figured I'd just post it here.

YouTube iPhone not the only H.264 player

The Associated Press reports on the iPhone quote Apple as saying, "The iPhone will be the first cell phone to use H.264." That's kind of a stretch since there are media players available for Palm Garnet OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian that can play H.264 videos. The OEM phones may not ship with the capability pre-installed, but for years it's been a fairly easy addition.

Ducks Win

After 4 rounds of playoff series, I was elated to see the Ducks hoist the Stanley Cup in celebration of winning the NHL championship. When I bought a 13 pack of tickets for the regular season, I never expected to also attend 12 playoff games that ultimately lead to the cup and these great pictures.

NYC Cab Caption Contest

I enjoyed this giant taxicab photo from Engadget and added my own caption.

Cool Toys for Grownups

If anybody is looking to buy me birthday gifts, check out these Cool Toys for Grownups.

Steve Jobs Inadvertantly Kills iTunes

I found Steve Job's open letter (Apple - Thoughts on Music) kind of funny.

What I'm laughing about is that Jobs is basically calling for the destruction of the iTunes Music Store. Think about it. If the record labels decide to just sell open, MP3 files; why do they need iTunes? Wouldn't they just create universalmusic.com, bmgmusic.com, etc. and start selling directly to the consumer? Why make Apple the middle man?

The ONLY reason the big four work with Apple is because iTMS is the ONLY way to sell DRM content to 80% of the portable player market. Heck, anybody can sell content to iPods if you remove the "DRM" requirement. Look at Podcasting. Without DRM the labels would eliminate as many middle men and competition as possible in order to maximize profit. Bye, bye iTMS, Napster, et. al.

I don't think Steve thought this one through. Without DRM, iTMS is only useful as a promotion tool. That might help smaller labels, but the big four don't need a promotion tool. Music promotion is their core business.

DivX at CES

Pure Pwnage visited the DivX booth for 45 minutes to give a rare, insider's commentary on the evolution of the show. The video is also available in HD on the same Stage6 channel. Don't forget to watch Jeremy and Kyle play Wii with Gej and pwn noobs from the CES audience, in part 2 of this video.

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Alternatives to Apple iPhone

If you were excited by the iPhone announcement, you may have missed photos of the LG wide-screen smartphone,LG KE850

The Sony w880 also looks promising.

The OpenMoko FIC Neo1973 Smartphone was announced several months ago and will be available in February, 2007.

As I've pointed out in previous postings, I'm not a big fan of all-in-one devices. Yes, the iPhone includes a camera, a music player, and PDA functionality. However, the 2 Megapixel camera isn't likely to replace my 10 Megapixel Pentax, the 8 Gig music player won't replace my 30 Gig iPod, and iPhone lacks the applications available on the iPaq. I expect my PDA to include Word, Excel, handwriting recognition, DivX Mobile Player, removable memory cards, IRDA, and maybe most importantly, the ability to install 3rd party applications.

Funnier with a Duck?

The Laugh Lab was created to analyze humor among various cultures. Researchers collected a lot of jokes and visitors rated them. Among the findings, ducks were concluded to be the funniest animals. Furthermore, statistically, the best jokes have an average length of 103 words.

However, I noticed that the funniest joke the lab uncovered was only 102 words long and had no mention of a duck. So, by adding the word duck, I have attempted to improve upon the world's funniest joke. Here it is:

A couple of New Jersey duck hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?"