Despair, Inc. is one of the few companies (okay, the only company) that I willingly am on the mailing list of, because their, um, interesting line of products and, well, unique way of marketing them are always enough to get a good laugh every so often. But this week, they’ve released three new demotivational posters, and two of them really made me laugh out loud and think, “I gotta blog about this.”

And why shouldn’t I love their stuff, especially when 95% of their offerings have been rated as being perfect for “disaffected college students.”

A big high-five to the Despair, Inc. guys for their excellent stuff. If you haven’t seen their demotivators before, you might want to check them out.

Tags: Blogging, demotivators, despair, Despair Inc., funny, opportunity, posters

The main reason I didn’t post much of anything last week on here was because last week was my week to take over the AP Government Class Blog. And given all of the crazy stuff that happened across the country last week, it was quite a lot of work to keep it going.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s links to each of the articles that I posted last week, which gives you an idea of what I was busy with, as well why I only blog about politics on my own blog once in a blue moon. It’s exhausting to do it full-time.

Monday, September 22
What is our Problem with Taxes?
Seven Modest Proposals for President Obama

Tuesday, September 23
McCain-Palin Maybe Not Suited for the White House… Says the Media?

Wednesday, September 24
GOP Campaign Tries to Get VP Debate Postponed
McCain Hides Back in Washington, Wants to Cancel Friday’s Debate
A Look at the Candidates You WON’T See During the Debates

Thursday, September 25
Letterman Responds to John McCain’s Campaign Suspension
Was McCain’s “suspension” Just an Attention-Getting Joke?

Friday, September 26
Jon Stewart’s Birdseye View of our Economy’s “Dive of Death”
Is Palin Losing It?
Open Thread: First Presidential Debate

Saturday-Sunday, September 27-28
The Candidates Take Da Bait, Round 1
Tying Up Loose Ends

Now that that’s over with, I’m hoping to start getting a bit more regular with my own blog here. Stay tuned…

Tags: AP Government, Aragon, Barack Obama, blog, Blogging, debate, economy, Hitchhiker's Guide to National Affairs, John McCain, Jon Stewart, political, Sarah Palin, School

That’s right, I turn 17 years old today. 17 is kind of an awkward number, as it falls right between that big 16th birthday (that doesn’t really matter much for me anyway since I’m not planning to drive for a few years more yet) and that bigger 18th birthday, which is big for a number of various reasons.

This birthday, however, is big for me because it’s the last one I’ll have before I go off to college next year, so who knows where I’ll be next year when I’m celebrating, so I’m looking forward to spending some time celebrating with family tonight.

In the meantime, I always like to post a thing or two on my blog to help celebrate, so here’s some funny Happy Birthday clips from Victor Borge, the legendary pianist/comedian (whom I would never have heard of if PBS didn’t do such insane amounts of pledging). Enjoy!

Tags: birthday, college, Personal, Victor Borge, Video

Apparently Google and T-Mobile announced the first phone that will use Google’s Android mobile platform. David Pogue has a great blog post about Android and the phone, so I won’t get into many details about that–essentially, it’s a T-Mobile Sidekick running Google’s software. It’s similar in many ways to the iPhone, but also comes with a tactile keyboard, an expansion slot, a removable battery, and voice dialing. It doesn’t quite have the iPod functionality, nor is the touch screen a multi-touch screen, and it has five buttons (not one), but it still has rich apps built-in on the phone, has 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, an over-the-air downloadable App Store and Music Store, and even adds a cool feature to Google Maps that has a built-in street view that automatically rotates itself as you rotate yourself standing somewhere.

However, some of the stuff coming in this phone, which will be called the G1, blows away some of the aspects of Apple’s offering. The Android platform is completely 100% open source; you can go download the source code today and change it without Google’s permission. The App Store is completely open and will not be censored at all by T-Mobile or Google; you could even add a Skype app on there without a worry. The phone can be unlocked after 90 days and will accept any cell service’s SIM card. These are some clear advantages over Apple’s iPhone offering and, combined with a pretty nice smartphone interface, will likely make the Android platform a very real competitor for Apple’s iPhone. (Unlike the Zune, which isn’t anywhere close to being viable iPod competition.)

In some ways, it almost feels as if it’s the 1980s all over again. Apple comes up with a bunch of innovations behind the Macintosh (okay, they got a lot of it from Xerox PARC, but let’s overlook that) and releases its first Mac in 1984, and the Mac OS is specifically tied to the Mac. Microsoft is a close partner with Apple on the Mac introduction and releases Word 1.0 alongside the Mac, but that the same time works on building their own operating system which borrows lots of ideas from the Mac OS, which will eventually become Windows, and which Microsoft will license out to multiple vendors. And the rest is history. Now, we have Apple coming up with a bunch of innovations to release the iPhone in 2007, and Google indeed is a partner in this product launch as it brings its technology into the awesome Google Maps implementation. But at the same time, Google develops its own mobile phone platform which borrows lots of ideas from the iPhone OS, which becomes Android, and which Google plans to make available for phones by multiple vendors (hopefully replacing Windows Mobile). The one obvious difference here is that Google Android is open source; Microsoft Windows wasn’t/isn’t.

Nevertheless, it feels to me like history is repeating itself. Will Google’s Android turn into the Windows of the smartphone world, against Apple’s Mac-based iPhone OS? More interestingly enough, will Apple make the same mistakes with the iPhone? They’re kind of in an oddball place right now, particularly given all of the anger and bad press that their App Store has been getting.

All I can say is that Google Android looks like it will become legitimate competition to Apple’s iPhone. However, I applaud Google for their efforts, both as a fervent supporter of open source and someone who believes that competition is a good thing because it keeps both competitors innovating. Perhaps if Google’s approach is successful, Apple will reconsider the whole “exclusive AT&T agreement” thing, become more open with their App Store, and do a few other things better. At this point, we’ll just have to wait and see…

Tags: Android, Apple, cell phone, competition, Google, iPhone, open source, smartphone, T-Mobile

I think we can say with some amount of certainty that we’ve now got a third Stevenote that we can count on each year. Macworld, WWDC, and now an annual fall Special Event for Apple to unveil their holiday 2008 iPod lineup. However, this year’s keynote really didn’t deliver that much overwhelming or mind-boggling or anything like that, as Apple’s lineup appears to have taken its respective stereotypical roles.
Continue reading »

Tags: album artwork, Apple, Genius, iPod nano, iPod touch, iTunes, Keynote, Special Event, Steve Jobs, visualizer

Don’t ask me why cartoonists have such a clear view of reality, but the folks at the Joy of Tech prove themselves again and again. While the non-tech world may be busy grappling with whether McCain/Palin are telling the truth about that “Bridge to Nowhere” thing (Spoiler Alert: they aren’t), the tech world is trying to figure out Apple’s conflicting rules with the App Store. And the Joy of Tech folks have got it perfect.

It’s funny… because it’s true.

Tags: App Store, Apple, comic, developers, Joy of Tech

Now that the conventions are over and the campaigns are in full swing, it gets to the point where probably the best way to digest everything is through comedy. This funny sketch on Saturday Night Live responded to the constant cries of “sexism” that the media suddenly cares about so much McCain’s pick of Palin.

Tags: campaign, funny, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live, sexism, Video

Please don’t ask me why that’s the title. I had nothing to do with it at all. Let’s just say 42, and leave it at that.

However, I did want to bring a special mention to this blog, since it’s one that I’m going to be directly involved with for awhile. It’s actually a political blog that is being cooperatively run by all of the AP Government classes at my high school. Each week, a group of two to three students is being given the task of taking over the blog and posting articles on political news, analysis, etc. (My week will be coming soon, so stay tuned.) At the same time, all of us are being expected to contribute thoughtful comments to the blog throughout the year (not at any set time, just a decent amount of participation through the course of each semester), which we will be graded for. Nevertheless, with the 2008 election fast approaching, it’s certainly going to be an interesting ride to see what kinds of things are going to be posted on there. So if you’re looking for a blog with thoughts on our U.S. politics from the ever-so-elusive student point of view, I definitely recommend that you check this blog out. I’ll be commenting frequently on there, and may often repost the comments that I make on there into blog posts on this blog (yes, my blog may start taking on a little bit more of a political feel moving forward).

So anyway, be sure to go check it out! As for this blog, I will start being a bit more regular with my posting–I’ve been busy with a lot of things recently, but I’ll start catching up soon. Until then, so long, and thanks for all the fish!

Tags: AP Government, Aragon, blog, Blogroll, Hitchhiker's Guide to National Affairs, political, School

Lorelle VanFossen has just written a great blog post about using blogging as a communications tool during natural disasters–particularly relevant given the recent landfall of Hurricane Gustav. Her blog post is a bit long, but certainly worth reading, so I won’t take the time to summarize what she wrote. She does, however, point out some of the many ways that blogs were used both in Gustav and in Katrina back during 2005 to provide local information about the storms, to provide communication to others about the local situations there, as well as providing other kinds of vital communication. (And, this year with Gustav, Twitter also played a major role in that as well.)

However, a lot of this ties into what I really think is going to become more and more commonplace as the internet continues to evolve and mature, and quite frankly, this really is what blogging is about. In my opinion, one of the biggest aspects of blogging is that it provides a medium through which independent people can become journalists in their own right. If you were to just watch the news media to see the latest on Gustav or any other local disaster, you’d only get to see what the news media would want you to see. But go onto Technorati or Google Blog Search and start searching the blogs, and then you get to start getting reactions from actual people, many of whom were actually there and can give their own unique perspective. And that really is one of the ways that blogging is helping to rejuvenate the First Amendment here in our country: it’s allowing ordinary people to provide resources and information and opinion and other kinds of things that the national media wouldn’t be able to give us.

This is one of the many things that blogging is all about.

Tags: article, Blogging, disasters, Gustav, hurricane, Lorelle VanFossen