Sunday, July 22, 2007

Stop


A quick job took a few days, rust thwarted Bram and I more than once... Brakes and rotors are looking good now on the Pathfinder.

=alias i-names and your digital identity

A few weeks back, I changed a few minor things on this site. You may have noticed =Amante across the top and around my blog, and wondered whats up with that equal sign in front of your name?

Well, that equal symbol followed by my nickname(lastname) is my registered 'i-name'. Whats an i-name? is it anything like a domain name or email address? I guess the best way to describe it is my 'universal login', the only problem is the universe hasn't fully adopted the standard yet. Someday it may be possible to use my =Amante i-name as a login at many different sites, like Yahoo Mail, Google Calendar, Ebay, commenting on blogs, or even my online banking account. The great part is, when I change my password for my i-name, I do it once and can still use all those web services with my new password. Over the years you may have heard about single-signon and identity management solutions, well to date, the i-name is one of the keys which may actually make this work in the future. People can contact you through your i-name http://xri.net/=amante/, but it is difficult to send SPAM, as you need to be authorized with either an i-name or through an email-confirm-click verification process. People may also be able to locate your website, blog ie: http://xri.net/=amante/(+blog), or resumehttp://xri.net/=amante/(+resume), or any other web-link you wish to provide by knowing your i-name as well.

So, in short, if you want to be a prospector and reserve your i-name now, go ahead and do so over at 2idi.com for example... but if you just want to get a feel for what it is all about, go ahead over to freexri.com and get yourself a free name within their community namespaces.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

White mountains

We camped over at Russell Pond off of Tripoli Road near Lincoln, NH. On Saturday we did a 5 mile hike, up Coppermine trail on the back-side of Cannon mountain. It was a nice hike alongside a stream most of the way, and at the top were the Bridal Veil water falls and rock-slides. A great first hike of the season, wish the weather was a little bit nicer, but we had a great day anyways...

Looking forward to a few more trips this summer!

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Happy 4th





Great views from a balcony near the prudential tower!
Day 1 of my 5 day weekend!!

Monday, July 02, 2007

i-phones

What I like about the i-phone, is what I like about Apple. They don't make the best products always, but they encourage the whole market to look at them for a minute, before they going back to creating their competing products....

Take i-tunes/ipod for example, mp3's were out for a long time before itunes/ipods came along... But back in they day, turning a CD into mp3 tracks was something that took the average computer most of a night to do... making playlists and setting up your mp3 player for a listen, took some advanced planning before you could enjoy... Then along comes the ipod, plug it in, and you have your music... (ok, almost that easy) But it encouraged the masses to move their audio from their cd-racks to digital files and competing companies to pay attention to the things they did right.

The i-phone is OK. But of course their model that worked for i-pod already may work again, incrementally make updates and people will buy the next new one when they are ready. If i-phone packed in all the features that they could have today, why would anyone upgrade next year? What i-phone points out to the masses is two things, data services are prime time with phones.. You no longer need to be tied in any way to your desk, home, or laptop to get the information you want. And secondly, multi-function devices that the whole world can use are here to stay. I'm talking about your device, which connects you to your people & calendar/music/photos/work... and that the rest of the world can use, thats right, they built it on GSM standards so you can travel from country to country and switch from carrier to carrier with the flick of a SIM card.. Sorry Verizon/Sprint, join the rest, stop being stubborn.

Honestly, my Sony Ericsson k790a is much nicer than current i-phone releases... but i'll save that discussion for another time.