Next time you make a run for the border don’t forget to bring along all the old decrepit cell phones from your junk drawer. As our rock-n-roll programmer Shawn demonstrates, recycling your old phones is easier than ordering two bean burritos.

Taco Bell’s new marketing slogan is “The only thing greener than our guacamole is our phone recycling bin.” Although catchy, I think “The only thing greener than our guacamole is any other restaurants guacamole” would be more accurate.

All joking aside, it’s nice to see big companies making an effort to help out the Earth, which has given so much to them.

In my ongoing series on on-line advertising faux pas, anomalies, and general weirdness, I have come across quite a few examples of what I call “competeverts”. Competeverts are ads placed in a page where the content of the page expunges about a company in direct competition with the advertiser.

One of, if not the finest, example of this was on Gizmodo today. As you can see from the screen capture above, Blackberry took advantage of some prime advertising real-estate on a iPhone article to advertise its competing device.

With opportunities like this, it’s no wonder ad dollars are transitioning from print to the web.

Well, it’s June 9th. We can expect the announcement 10 am PST (noon here in Minnesota). Will the new iPhone go on sale today? Tomorrow? This week?

Will it be cheaper than ever?

Will I buy it in white, black, or red?

Will it be thinner, sleeker, more beveled?

Will it have solar panels?

Will Twitter crack under the strain of the anticipation and excitement?

You can check WWDC 2008 live blogging coverage over at CNET for news as it comes in…

Who knew auto-fill could be so dangerous?

You start entering a name or email address in the “to” field, and auto-fill completes the rest for you. But in your haste, before you even check if the correct “Spock” is chosen from the auto-fill list, you’ve tabbed down to the subject line and are on your way to sending the email.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Spock the child-rearing guru is calling to ask why you sent him blueprints for a starship, and you sheepishly have to explain that those files were meant for a Vulcan’s eyes only.

Thankfully, I am not in the habit of sending love letters or lewd jokes via email, or I might be hiding in the server room pretending I didn’t exist. Still, auto-fill is a hazard for those who must regularly send potentially sensitive materials. It behooves us all to make sure we are actually sending our email to the intended recipient.

On the other hand, predictive text software on mobile phones now rewards those who leave an incorrect word unchanged. Presumably out of laziness, texters intentionally don’t correct mis-predicted words. Yes, suddenly it’s cool to get your mords wixed up.

Predictive Text Gives Birth to “Textonyms”

Here’s an example: You mean to write “home,” so you punch the corresponding numbers “4663″ on your cell. The predictive text feature thinks you meant “good,” but you leave it as is and continue your message. According to some sources, avid texters will still know exactly what you mean. They’re called textonyms.

I’m not sure I quite believe the apparent popularity of these textonyms. This article cites the use of the word “carnage” when the word “barmaid” was intended. I mean, really — who uses the term “barmaid” while texting? But who knows, maybe there are merely some very poetic texters out there.

Technology has really spoiled us.

CES, the largest annual trade show for consumer gadgets, is quickly drawing to a close and I haven’t seen Google’s mobile OS make much of a showing. Although it has been only two months since it’s unveiling, I expected to see a handful of companies exhibiting at least early prototypes.

Considering this is an industry only show, and not open to the public, most companies show off products still in the early stages of development. Android’s release should have lit a fire under the metaphorical butts of handset developers everywhere, and CES is where these early stage efforts would first surface.

Keep reading for a quick Android refresher and more of my thoughts on Google’s mobile endeavors.

Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of rumors about Google releasing a mobile phone. Well folks - they’re not gonna do it, they’re just going to give away the software for you to create your own phone. I’m calling mine the _Phone.

Available as of yesterday, programmers can download Google’s SDK for Android. Android is Google’s open source mobile phone operating system. This is probably a very good strategic move for Google - remove obstacles for accessing its applications, making it very, very easy to work within Google’s burgeoning framework of applications from Google Docs to Google Maps….

Anyway - I’ll let Sergey tell you all about it.

Many have suggested, and I agree, the iPhone is bad for web developers. Travel back in time with me to 1997. Microsoft releases a relatively competitive browser, for free, that can render standards based websites well.

With the help of Microsoft’s excellent marketing, the new browser quickly became a hot platform to develop for. However, some features developers were utilizing were specific to IE, and broke compatibility with other browsers.

Today a similar situation is brewing with Safari 3 and the iPhone. Although the iPhone is supposed to render standard sites well, many iPhone-only sites are popping up.

Thus, the suffering of web developers everywhere continues…

So you’ve bought the iPhone. Now you have to inform everyone your number has changed.

Or do you?

Not if you have a Grand Central phone number. The new web-based service will allow you to sign up for one number that you keep for life. It’s a pretty sweet service and as of this writing, it’s free, unless you have a gajillion phone numbers to unite. Read the rest of this entry »