Pinging Europa

Well i am very excited about the news out of NASA this past week. they have decided to send a probe on a 9 year mission to the jovian moons. sticking mostly to Ganymede and Europa. the really exciting part is if you are unaware of the characteristics of those moons, they are believed to have vast underground oceans that would be perfect for harboring life. one would assume since the planets are so far from the sun that they would be frozen solid, but due to the immense gravity from its parent planet Jupiter, tidal forces cause a great amount of stress on all the moons. causing friction to heat them. it is an interesting display of exotic situations life could exist in. most assume life would be contained to thermal vents that spew nutrients into those vast oceans much like the ones on the earths seas floor. entire ecosystems built around volcanic mounds. one can not help but to think about 2010: Space Odyssey and how Arthur C. Clarke so elegantly explained how life could and probably does exist on in these places. one exciting aspect is that this will be a joint venture between NASA and the European space agency. these are the easily the best places to look for life in our solar system, and i am super thrilled we will be going there in a decade.

So Ping is pretty useless right now. kind of sad that it is among apples biggest failures. i have a concept for how it could be used for its full potential. what i would like to see is a collaboration with facebook, that allows for a seem less and instant viewing of anything a person is listening to. so lets say i am in the car with my iPhone listening to Angels & Airwaves, right now the only really good way of letting people know about that is by tweeting that song with an app. which gets posted to my wall and people can read it but that is all. the user experience stops there. imagine ping being built into the iPod app itself, a simple toggle on and off and what it does is it "pings" what song i am listening to and instantly updates a status independent of my wall on my facebook profile page. at anytime someone wants to know more about that song they can click on the track name and instantly be linked to the iTunes web store/iTunes store. one can also comment and like any song i am currently listening to, which would then place it on my wall as a mentioned item. this feature could be turned on for any device i am using. if i am at home listening to iTunes, or at my parents house using pandora with my iPad, or roller blading in the park with my iPhone. it would instantly update a "listening to" status on my facebook page allowing people to experience the music i am experiencing.

Wiki Page of the Day (WPotD)

Kingdom Hearts (キングダム ハーツ Kingudamu Hātsu^?) is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square (nowSquare Enix) in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 video game console.^[2] The first game in the Kingdom Hearts series, it is the result of a collaboration between Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company. The game combines characters and settings from Disney animated features with those from Square's Final Fantasy series. The story follows a young boy, Sora, as he is thrown into an epic battle against the forces of darkness. He is joined by Donald Duck, Goofy, and other classic Disney characters who help him on his quest.

Sony......*Sigh

Spent the day at a super fancy mall in troy Michigan today and had a chance to check into Gowalla a lot. one peculiar store we went into was a Sony store. i did not even know they existed. while we were in there we tested out the new PlayStation move. my review is that it is not very good, lol. the calibration before every game is annoying, tedious and utterly destroys the enjoyment. the sensor seemed to work moderately well, even though there was a very detectable delay between actions. worse than the Wii's delay making it very hard to get used to. controllers were Sony cheap black plastic. overall it felt very sloppy and cheap.

Moving on throughout the store we stopped by to check out the PSP Go. i was completely stunned at how incredibly cheap and flimsy that product is. it was so bad, it seemed like they literally spent 25 minutes designing and producing it. made out of the cheapest plastic i have ever seen, (milk cartons have better materials) i felt like i could snap the thing in half if i looked at it wrong. that's not even talking about the tortured interface and the more than pathetic Internet browser. overall felt very cheap.

Went over near the 3d TVs, put the glasses on and immediately remembered why 3D TVs are cliche and stupid. after that we walked over to the touchscreen computers where i typed this note out on the front facing monitor. so overall the Sony store sucks just as much as Sony does as a company.

Visited the apple store not only just to visit the apple store but also because Larry had them fix his iPod. got on the 13 inch Macbook Air and decided i should test it out on the thing i do most often these days, by booting up the browser version of minecraft. i successfully logged into my server i have running at home and played a bit with Steve. was really cool being able to remote access my server for the first time.

Went and saw The Green Hornet that night with Mark, Ryan and Joe. i thought it was very funny. although i am a pretty big Seth Rogen fan. some of the story line was predictable, but what is not these days. had some very funny dialogue parts along with some crazy action scenes. very satisfied with the first movie of this years movie release season.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Apple Accepts American Express Cards

Woke up early(11:00) and went to IHOP with Joe and josh. the crowd is completely different at noon then it is at midnight. very sharp contrast. i had to work a crap schedule today, got stuck doing rooms as an extra person. the only good thing about being an extra person is the chance of going home early which happened tonight. got home an hour early to attempt for the millionth time to setup a public minecraft server so my cousin can play with us. as usual it ended in tears. we have given up on trying to get this to work until the actual multiplayer is a finished product. the main issue seems to be the fact that i have no idea what i am doing. i am supposed to forward a port. so i follow all the instructions in the YouTube video but it still does not work. so i have no idea.

Apples quarterly earnings came out today. turns out their iPad profit is more than their entire laptop line profit. which is pretty amazing. it is only  hair short of trumping their entire computer line. as far as i am concerned that is a pretty successful product. Tim Cook the COO of apple had a funny quote about how all the other tablets are bizarre. which is true i have had the chance to mess around with the galaxy tab, and i am honestly not impressed. it is nothing compared to the iPad. i honestly think it is as simple as these companies do not spend enough time and resources into developing individual products. no other company seems to understand that when you release a product, that is your product for the next year or so. that is what is wrong with the cellphone market on a whole. every other month a new android phone comes out that is not really a significant improvement over the last, which leads to the android that came out 9 months ago being obsolete and unsupported. it is a tragedy that companies do not work like apple. when apple comes out with a  phone, or a anything really, that is their product for the next 365 days. so within those 365 days they are working on the next generation. when if you look at the android timeline they spend maybe 3 months on a phone.

I still have not heard back from US Steel up in Detroit. i was really hoping it would work out. i would finally be living comfortable for once. but no....so now i think i am going to start applying to places around here. i was looking on monster and there are a lot of drivers wanted. i do not know what this job entails(driving, duh) or how much i would make. i do enjoy driving when i have a reason to drive.

I got a credit card in the mail from American express the other day. i honestly do not know anywhere that even accepts that card, but i digress. the letter was in excited font to inform me that i had been chosen to have their oh so special card. so i opened it just to see how special it was and it has an annual fee of 95$. are you fucking kidding me?!?! who the hell would pay to own a credit card? and why would they act like it is some kind of privilege for me to have it. they are obviously sending these out knowing they will be getting a hundred dollars a year guaranteed.

Teefury is a site that hosts a t-shirt for one day only. a very cool site that helps artists because all the shirts are uploads from people around the world. the one today is awesome. it is a Mario-House mash up and i just had to get it.

I am working on a post that should clarify exactly how i feel about the video game industry. i have tomorrow off so i should have time tomorrow to work on it. i might even do a good EA post.