My bluetooth loves to make calls. It really loves to hang up calls. It especially likes to hang up as I am in the middle of a sentence. I guess this goes hand and hand with making calls while my phone, and bluetooth, are both in my pocket.

Since the bluetooth seems to have a mind of its own, with a wicked sence of humor, I have decided that my bluetooth needs to take the blame more often.

If a project is a late, bluetooth’s fault. If I am late, bluetooth’s fault. High gas prices, low bank balance, all bluetooth’s fault. Iraq, bad intelligence via bluetooth. Ran out of weed? Bluetooth smoked it. Looking for the leftovers from last night? Bluetooth ate them. Wondering why your favorite show didn’t Tivo…bluetooth canceled the season pass.

See what I mean? It’s very easy to blame bluetooth. So the next time the cops are questioning you about that 19 16-year-old girl you met at the Hannah Montana concert, just blame bluetooth.

I have been a fan of WordPress since it’s incarnation. It was the best (free) alternative to MovableType. Back then I was a Microsoft junky and favored ASP 3.0. I wound up coding my own blogging CMS for the first 2 years of WDP. I remember the night WordPress 2.0 came out. I installed it immediately (on another blog) and I was extremely impressed. The use of AJAX in the admin panel was cool and cutting edge back then. WordPress has always been easy to install and very intuitive. 

For those of you that don’t know, What Da Phuk! is running on a patched version of 2.3.2 (patched xmlrpc). I had been keeping my eye on the development of 2.5 and I must say, moving items around the dashboard does not an update make. Especially not a major release. I guess it’s not a “major release” but the way it’s been hyped it might as well be 3.0.

A few days ago, the WordPress dev crew announced that 2.5 is stable and ready. The key features include:

1. a customizable dashboard
2. built-in tag management
3. media galleries
4. full text RSS feeds (that’s not very impressive)
5. automatic plugin updates
6. faster load times

The load times (which were fixed in 2.3.3) make the update worthwhile. The WYSWYG content editor needs a lot work. They can’t go to Beta with it in it’s current state. The additions to TinyMCE (no, not a rapper) are nice – easy image, video and file upload…but what is up with leaving the old media buttons? They need to get rid of those modules because they take time to load. If I had more “free” time, I would strip Tiny and add FCKeditor or Xstandard to the repository. Hopefully someone will do it or at least create a decent plugin for it.

Overall, I am pretty happy with the 2.5 sneak preview. One thing that desperately needs to be added to the trunk…analytics. Firestats is practically useless. Who is up for adding phpmyvisits…anybody?

In the past year I have had the Motorola V710, Motorola Razr, HTC TMobile Dash, Motorola A1200 (Ming) and now the TMobile Blackberry Curve 8320. Out of all the phones I have ever had, this is by far the best! I have heard many many many people say, get a Blackberry. Especially when I first bought the Dash. The Windows Mobile OS that thing ran was so janky it made me want to run the other direction from anything “Smartphone.” It was slow, a terrible phone, crashed constantly, had problems with txts and emails. Yeah, it was a giant piece of shit.

I liked the Ming. I still do. It’s a great (and stylish) phone. But checking email was a pain and was only pop or imap. I also had to use a stylus to type. The camera sucked and supposedly a software update was going to fix that. Ironically, the Linux based operating wasn’t compatible with Linux. That’s the kind of insane shtick that causes Indian programmers to light themselves on fire. Seriously, what was up with that? Motorola Mobile 4.0 pretty much only runs on XP. Hey Moto, what’s the point of the Linux OS then? Moto fanboys, where are the Linux apps? So all of those things I just listed, the Blackberry doesn’t do any of them.

I am on hosted exchange. All of my emails, contacts, appointments, memo and tasks are all synced, all the time, in real time. It’s phuking awesome. My virtual office world has never been so organized. It’s a fantastic phone, the bluetooth HS850 works perfectly with it and the battery actually lasts. I HIGHLY recommend you convert and get a Blackberry now. Right now. What are you waiting for? Go get one!

Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, in Iraq, you know about the iPhone Apple unveiled at CES last week. There are 15 million blogs with high quality pics so I am not going to pretend that I am trailblazing and post that. I have something way better.

It honestly feels like an SNL skit. I had a MacPlus. In fact, that was my main computer until the early 90s. My T-Mobile Dash has 64mb RAM, 128MB storage and clocks around 200mhz. My Dash is more powerful than the Mac Powerbook I had in the late 90s. Too bad it can't answer call waiting.

That's right, Embarq. I am talking about you! If you are using AT&T, SBC, Verizon, or Embarq you are overpaying for less service. These companies offer local calling, local-toll calling, ridiculously over-priced long distance and God-forbid-you-have-to-call-internationally-please-fax-us-the-loan-document-
with-a-co-signer international calling. If you are paying them, you are paying too much. End of story.

Within the past 2 years, the advancements of Smart Phones and VoIP are changing the "call me at home" mentality. Phone numbers are no longer anchored to specific phones or locations. Vonage and Sunrocket offer free call forwarding. Not at home, simply forward the call to you cell. I know call forwarding isn't really that new. It's been around on the analog lines. DHTML and XML have been around but it took us 6 years until we finally started using AJAX. VoIP has the ability to ring 6 phones at once. This is call forwarding 2.0. Do you have a business partner? Starting a small call center? Have multiple field techs? The ability to call 1 number and have it ring 6 phones all for the price of included, is the future of Telecom.

Businesses have embraced VoIP not only for the low cost but the mobility it provides. More and more hotel rooms offer VoIP. Grab your handset (home users have a small router looking device) and plug it in. Not only will your phone number travel with you, so will your company's phone directory. The receptionist can transfer calls directly to you as if you were in the office.

Embarq currently offers two DSL packages: 768kb down for $29.99/month or 1.5mb down for $34.95/month. Cox Cable provides 3 packages, 6mb $34.95/month, 8mb $45.99/month and 10mb $59.99/month (down). What was once touted as the "slower, open network" is kicking DSL's ass. Why am I paying $34.99 for DSL when I can have 4x T1 speed with a cable modem? Seriously, why? Why am I paying an additional $15 for services that are included with VoIP?

Are you doing the same thing? Take a look at your phone bill. My average monthly bill from Embarq was $145. Regardless of the mysterious additional charges, what am I getting for that each month? Vonage is $20 per month and feature enriched. After the rude treatment and lack of explanation for the mysterious additional charges, not to mention the consistent lack of connection from the DSL modem, I am done with the local Telecom company.

Wake up and bring your products and prices up to par. Your users are starting to realize and will be forced to leave you if you don't embrace Telecom 2.0.

• Lakers win their last 4. Easy 10 pt win over Philly. Down by 4 with 6 seconds left…OT and the win at Arco. Stomp on AI and the Nuggets. Dallas has won their last 13. Kobe, Sasha, Luke, Smush, Bynum, Turiaf, Famar, Cook and Evans don't care. 101 - 98

• TradeLamar.com->KeepLamar.com
• Less than 2 weeks.
• Seriously, listen to Talib Kweli — Blacksmith. You are missing out!
• TradeLamar.com TradeKwame.com

Scientist are working on

The URLs of What Da Phuk! are so ugly they be fugly. I need to change that. To the average user this really doesn’t mean anything. However, in the SEO world this means a lot. Technically, Google doesn’t care about the URL as long as it is properly HTML encoded. They want &

We all love to Digg, well now it is time to Flip. Get ready for the newest and coolest way to get your sports articles. Don’t be shy and start phuking Flipping today!!!

www.sportsflip.com

I just downloaded the new WordPress 2.0 and I must say I am damn impressed. They really did update the entire admin. The backend is SICK. All AJAX. And not just this drag-around-with-no-purpose like some stoopid blogs are doing. The sickest part is the re-sizable posting box. They also have an integrated more button. A friend of mind who is playing around on the blog I just installed for him just said "that’s phuking cool!!!"

A few weeks ago I started to debate rebuilding this blogging system — again. I conjured up the idea that I should make it the sickest and slickest blog backend there that is out there. BizBlog 2.0.

Digg has to be the coolest website I have seen all year. The concept is simple and yet it accomplishes so much. It operates on the same open source, user-controlled thinking that makes Wikipedia thrive. Users submit articles from blogs or commercial news sources. If you like the article, you simply click the Digg button and the article receives a vote. The articles with the most Diggs move up hierarchy towards the home page of its category. If an article is Dugg enough, it will wind up on the home page of the site. I quickly visit Digg a few times each day and I am always amused, entertained and informed. I would say that Digg has become RSS 3.0. While Digg isn’t replacing the current XML technology, it is the most phuking awesome form of syndication I have seen.

Tim Berners-Lee