Thursday, February 14, 2008

iPhone autocorrection ubiquity

I want all word processing apps to do the same autocorrect that my iPhone does. It just lets you fly on teh keyboard (it would have correctly "teh") and words and ideas would flow far better. It's different that MS Word's autocorrect, though. It just freaking knows that "yjod ,rsmd" = this means. That's because it know that yjod ,rsmd really IS "this means" just typed one row over. It's a brainy no-brainer.

Reparations Idea

I think in light of Australia's recent apology to the Aborigines, the USA should apologize for their part in the enslavement of Africans in a very direct way: They should pay for the detailed genetic report of anyone who wants one. Right now, it costs $1000 to have your entire genetic ancestry worked out, and I think we owe it to the ancestors of those people we kidnapped and brought here as slaves. If it's good enough for Chris Rock, it's good enough for everyone else. What tribe am I from? Whose blood courses through my veins? Who are my people? Where did my great great grandmother come from? We owe it to them, and then some.

Friendster Mind Map

Okay, so I'm still on Friendster. Shoot me. I'd improve it with a cool interactive (So Web 2.0!) mind map tool. Your picture in the middle, with your friendsters floating around you in 3D space. Bonus: you can program the tool to give you a "friend fly-by" where you virtually fly through your friendspace in slide-show mode with a cool soundtrack from your iTunes folder.

I suppose it might even look like all those camp movies made to be shown at the last night of camp where people can laugh and be embarrassed at the crazy stuff they did all summer. Who knows. I just want more than text and photo interactions.

scooters, vacation, fall

Labels for this post are not exactly random, eh? Scooters need to be cheaper.
They shouldn't be relegated to vacation runabouts. Myself, I rented a scooter in Vancouver and within minutes I had lost my balance turning at about 3 km/h and gently laid the thing down, costing me $150 and wrecking my fun. That fall was due to my lack of skill, and that lack of skill is clearly due to the cost of scooters!

If we had cheaper scooters and small motorized bikes available, perhaps we'd opt for downsizing more often. As it stands, a Vespa is thousands of dollars and much more of a car rather than a common person's commuter. Check out China, India, Europe. They have lots of choices in scooters and lots of people use them. More inexpensive but good quality scooters and people will stop falling off them during summer vacations!

Guitar dreams come true for kids

Okay, not everyone is going to back me on this one. I don't care. There are WAY too many guitars out there, and most of them are not being played. Knock that crap off, guitar hoarders! I'm sick and tired of seeing hundreds of perfectly good electric guitars sitting the in the basement of some retired rocker's Beverly Hills crib. If you own an electric guitar that you are not playing (or any instrument, really), you are doing music in general and kids in particular a huge disservice. Use it or lose it!

Think of all those kids in band, praying someday that the school will magically spring for a new electric guitar that they can practice with, only to be told that they need to learn music first on a plastic recorder purchased in 1982. If you still rock out with your guitar, you are absolved. If you have more than one guitar, though, give it a thought. This world needs more music and more musicians, and you could just become some kid's freakin hero! What would Les Paul do?

Lower VOC, Better-smelling Dry Erase Pens

PLEASE. Someone at the FDA said they are "certified non-toxic", but man do they smell to high heaven. I want a pen not a piece of chalk, so that's where I'm going and I want it to be much less chemically offensive. I can't quite get with the concept that just because it says it's non-toxic that it's good for me to huff...