Not A Dollarshort

United Airlines Spam

I'm a United Mileage Plus member and I'm a pretty frequent flyer (I've amasedd about 50,000 miles these past three months) so I am a frequent visitor to the United site and happily receive the mailings. So, it gives me great pain to see that -- starting yesterday -- my inbox fill with spam with the unique email address I signed up with.

I'm not going to completely jump to conclusions and say that United sold the address (because I genuinely don't think they did) but I wonder how this email got discovered.

It's pretty easily solved. I'll just change the email address and direct mail to that one as junk.

I'm just saying...

DropCash Me

Ben writes about dropcash and I take the time to set up the most obnoxious campaign ever (not that I don't want that purse). Anil joked that when people start liking me too much, he'll be sure to hold this auction over my head as blackmail. I say, I've got nothing to hide. Afterall, the art of online begging is one that should never be too subtle.

In all seriousness, Andre and Jason have cooked up something quite cool. And, using TypeKey for authentication is particularly cool.

(Oh, and buy me that purse)

Bling Bling Bonds

It is a rare occasion that I attend a lunch or dinner with people from work and some portion of the meal isn't spent playing with camera phones, PDAs, cameras or computers. It seems as if most of these meals are usually heavily documented with countless photos taken on our phones and sent to our moblogs.

So, yesterday, eight of us from Six Apart were out eating lunch in San Mateo and situated in front of huge windows looking onto the street.

As we waited for our lunch to arrive, the bling bling of all bling bling Hummers drove into the spot exactly in front of our window. We all just stared -- in shock -- at the spectacle of this Hummer. It was all chrome and mirrors and represented excess on so many levels.

And we sat and stared.

And then, Barry Bonds get out of the Hummer and proceeds to walk over to the cell phone store across the street.

And no thinks to take a picture. It the sort of "oh my god, who or what is going to get out of that thing" shock that rendered us photo-taking inept.

And then when he came back, Ben shot this pitiful picture with his phone. (The white sweater inside the car is Bonds).

Clock Tower

It looks like David Siegel is selling his Clock Tower loft.

The downside?

The bookcases are held up by spacer gifs.

[groan]

Anyway, Ben found that listing tonight while looking for a new place for us to live. Yeah, I can make a joke about spacer gifs but who's got a loft to sell and who's renting an apartment. (And I've always wanted to live in the Clock Tower.)

Here's a fun fact that I'll probably receive grief for mentioning. When Siegel held his High Five redesign contest in 1996, Ben entered. The Wayback preserves his presence, but not his entry for future generations. Note Cameron Barrett is listed below Ben -- I assume that this is the same Cameron Barrett. Cam, correct me if I'm wrong.

You know, those were much simpler times.

iBoom III

Apple has wisely decided to offer an iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program. This, of course, makes me extremely happy that I decided against turning my iBook into an art installation.

For those not familiar with the issues iBook owners were having with the laptop, you can read my entry from September 2002 and July 2003. Apparently a lot of people were experiencing this failure and were getting a bit vocal.

Even though I replaced the iBook with a PowerBook, I'm going to take advantage of this extension. Those with iBooks with the serial number range of UV220XXXXXX to UV318XXXXXX can take advantage of this as well.

The Samsung E715

Ever since I bought my new mobile phone -- a Samsung E715 -- about two months ago I've been meaning to write a post about how much I absolutely adore the thing. The biggest con is that it, like most (all?) Samsung phones is not Bluetooth enabled. Also, it's only dual band. The lack of Bluetooth support wasn't that big a deal for me until I saw this device and thought it was pretty darn cool. See it in action here and here.

So, back to the phone.

It takes pretty good black and white photos and decent color ones. And, there is a really cool multi-shot mode that allows you to take rapid fire photos (6, 9 or 15 shots at a time). There's a "flash" which is more like a little glowing light and there is the ability to digitally zoom into your shots. Additionally, one has the ability to take shots with the camera closed. It's being advertised in Europe (not sure if there are ads here) as the sort of function that allows you to take self-portraits -- an odd little sell.

What I like most about the camera is its svelte shape. It's small, but not too small and the keypad has been improved (in comparison to Ben's phone, the Samsung v205). My last phone, a Sony Ericsson T300, was too small and I never was able to get used to the keypad. And since I never remembered to lock the thing, I was constantly calling random numbers. I've decided that after the E715, I'm a flip phone fan.

So, if you're in the market for a new cell phone, definitely check this one out.

Six Apart Gathering Photos

If you were one of the forty people that attended the Six Apart gathering in New York last month (that was moved to the Push Cafe) and you took photos, I'm sure you have at least one shot that is better than this one. Please let me know if you took any photos. I'd love to see them.

iBoom II

Ten months later, my iBook is crapping out again with this same exact problem. This time, however, I'm not under warranty and I don't have the energy to send the laptop out for repairs. Perhaps I can just put the iBook in the pile next to my Hiptop which again stopped working two weeks ago.

Supernova Attendees

I have an oft-repeated joke that I love going to technology conferences because it's one of the few times that I can count on having a public women's restroom at my own personal disposal. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's not a complete exaggeration.

Supernova, for being a smaller-scale conference, feels different. Not only did I run into another woman during a trip to the restroom (during a panel, no less), but there also appears to be a fairly significant present of woman speakers (myself included) -- from a quick glance of the conference schedule, it seems as if about 17% of the speakers are women. Kevin's clearly put work into making this conference more inclusive, and it seemed appropriate to congratulate him on his success in the effort and to express some appreciation for his having taken the effort in the first place.