Since I just got a Cingular 8525 a few months ago, I've had no interest in the iPhone.  I have tried to point out all the flaws to my wife (a mac user) and my friends.  No 3g. No Exchange integration. No Keyboard, etc.  Of course, Apple knew the short comings and seemed to fix each one day by day before the launch.

So yesterday, being stuck at work the last day of the month, I was able to watch Ustream.tv and read blogs from California, New York and right here in South Florida.  It almost made me want to leave and go jump in line some where.  From watching Robert Scoble in California to reading a Pastor at my church's Blog that he updated hourly from the line made for some interesting media that the news will never duplicate.

Today I have watched numerous reviews and tests.  I'm watching two guys calling AT&T right now to fix their inactive phone only to get hung up on after 20 minutes of waiting.  I feel their frustration.  But it reminds me of watching somebody else's kids.  Feed them all the sugar you want and hand them back and forget about it.  I feel for these guys, but at least I can turn it off.

Yesterday is just the beginning of what we will see in the coming year.  If something interesting is going on, we aren't going to have to wait for CNN or the local news.  Someone is going to bring it to us live online immediately. If we want reviews or to know how a product stands up in real life we will be able to find all the data we need online. Old media is dead. 

Oh yeah, I think I want an iPhone.

What is this country coming to?  A man in Arkansas has brought a suit against XM Radio for false advertising.  I happen to have XM in my truck and, though I don't listen to it all the time, I can say that the music is basically commercial free.  Yes, the DJ may mention what is coming up on another channel, but I wouldn't call that a commercial.  This is just splitting hairs.  What ever happened to taking your product back if you were unsatisfied with it.  Instead, this guy is going to cost them thousands, if not 10's or 100's of thousands in legal fees and guess who gets to pony up the bill.  That's right, the humble customer like you and me that can stomach 10 seconds of a DJ talking between songs.  Get a life!  Quit costing us more and wasting the court's time on such frivolous items.

I wish I had a blog 10 years ago.  I used to have season tickets to the Miami Heat when I worked down in the lovely town of Hialeah.  My wife and I never missed a game.  Now granted, I was, and still am, a homer when it comes to Miami sports, but, the crap the NBA used to let their NBA refs get away with was quite unbelievable and I would have had something to post every game night.

I used to get so pumped yelling at refs during the game, I would scare my wife.  If I had a dime for every time I screamed 'where's the foul!?', I'd be typing this on my yacht. I would leave the games, drive home listening to the radio waiting for the phone call to come to the announcer complaining about the refs, and he'd always play it off as "that's the game, you are just looking at it from Miami's point of view".  And I know 99% of the time, that was true, but there were always blatant calls that would come up from time to time.

So here we are 10 years later and the NBA, who fines their employees for discussing bad officiating, has finally come out and acknowledged a problem with an official, and suspends one Mr. Joey Crawford.  The reason this one intrigues me is because last year, when our Miami Heat were in the playoffs and the finals, this ref would always cause some sort of stir.  The main one being with Undonis Haslem.  I don't remember the play leading up to it, but I remember Udonis being called for something and the camera showing Joey Crawford sitting back from Udonis with a smirk on his face waiting... Just waiting for him to make a move.  And when Udonis threw his mouthpiece on the ground, he was on it like white on rice.  He T'd him up so fast, he should have raced Charles Barley earlier this year.  Of course the announcers at the time, who I think included Steve Kerr, were all over it too once they realized what happened.

So why do I bring this up now?  Becuase I find it interesting that he has been accused of asking Duncan if he wants to fight.  That is exactly the look he had on his face when he T'd up Undonis.  How do I know?  I played it over and over on my Tivo, yelling at the TV and scaring my wife.  He looked like he was hoping Udonis would start something, say something, anything to give him an excuse to do something else.  I don't know what that would have been and I am not saying he would have or wanted to fight, but it is interesting givent the comments and actions he has been suspended for.

Congratulations to Stearn and the NBA for finally acknowledging a problem among the ranks of the officals in the NBA, and doing something about it.  Maybe they will be held to a higher standard from this point forward.

I finally broke down and got a cinular 8525 phone.  I am having mixed feelings now that I have it.  The first two weeks I didn't sync up with my exchange from work because I thought it would haunt me 24 hours a day.  Then I left on vacation last week up to North Carolina and gave in and had the phone sync to my exchange mailbox before I left.  Well, my worst fears have come true.  I am checking my mail way too often.  Since I get well over 500 emails a day, there is always something new to look at.  Driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway and checking my email doesn't make my wife happy either.  Truth is, though it forms terrible habits, I don't know how I lived without the phone.

Another great feature I don't know how I lived without is the data modem feature.  I have tethered the phone to my laptop and I am now using it for my internet connection.  (Thanks Pocket PC Central)  See, here at my inlaws' there is just a cable modem I don't feel like fumbling with.  So, unless I want to steal a neighbor's unsecure wireless link, I'm without the internet for 4 days.  Now, I realize a vacation should be just that, but I can't function without it at this point.  I think I need help.  Any way, the phone has worked flawlessly.  I have had a great signal all the way up I-95 from South Florida to North Carolina.  3G in more places than I thought I would have it.  I was even able to use the phone to download the drivers for my laptop that I forgot to bring with me.

If you are addicted to your email or can't go long without web access, this phone is a must for you.

with virtualapple.org's online emulator you can relive, play, and enjoy old Apple 2 games and other disk's, currently they have over 1100 disk images archived on the web site. and they will take contributions of specific disks,docs.

I've been reading for months now (maybe longer) about web 2.0 and AJAX (wiki) etc.  I have even added a couple of AJAX 'functions' to Valor's website. I have written web apps for almost 10 years now and all the ideas I've wanted to implement over the years, but was unable to, are now becoming possible.  Most of these ideas have been implemented one way or another over the last few years, but there was always one missing ingredient, talking to the server with out reloading a whole page.  True, I could hide an iframe here or there and do some serious javascript programming to make something work, but there was no easy solution.  Now, thanks to microsoft of all people (I believe thew were the ones, I'm not positive) we have xmlhttp.

Yes, this is an old technology that was right there under my nose for the last year or so, but it never dawned on me that it was the missing link I needed.  Now everywhere you look everybody is touting AJAX as the next big thing, but the truth is, it's just one simple addition to all the technologies that were already available.  With the addition of that one little technology, now all the other technologies have been given another chance at life.  dhtml and javascript now have some usefulness besides annoying text around a cursor and popups.

When IE4 (or IE3?) came out with dhtml as the next big thing, I wrote all sorts of apps to use different dhtml effects, but it got old quick, and before I knew it, I was back to the client server type app in no time.  Most people outside of our organization were confused if something changed on their screen without a page refresh.  Just the simple task of hiding and showing some text seemed to confuse people.  Then there was the whole IE vs Netscape.  I wrote for an intranet and a website.  The intranet was great because I knew what everybody was running, if it worked in IE, it worked everywhere, but when it came to the website, I was generic as can be, because I didn't have time to test it every which way.  Even being careful, I still ran into issues.

Now, with the influx of libraries for javascript programming and AJAX programing that is truly cross browser, I have a renewed interest in building truly dynamic application that can run on a web page.  I have already rewrote some of the apps we use in house to check orders and ship orders using AJAX on Windows Mobile Handhelds and if it weren't for the browser menu, you wouldn't know you were using a web browser.

With the addition of these new, though not so new, technologies, I plan on making some of my ecommerce creations over the last 10 years available soon to the public.  Both the public website side and the backend intranet.  I believe with the features I can add now, they will be a very helpful addition to some small businesses out there.  I don't think there are many apps out there for the web that can say they have 10 years of development and use behind them.  So keep an eye here for some upcoming info and keep an eye on www.aspdesigns.com for more.

We survived the storm.  Here it is almost a week later and we have no power and we probably won't for a couple of more weeks.  The storm was worse than anyone predicted.  There is damage from the keys to Vero Beach.  I know, because the Tuesday after the storm, I drove all the way to Vero to pick up generators.

The damage is not as bad as Andrew, but there is more than Andrew.  Much more.  There are trees snapped everywhere. Not down, snapped.  Huge trees.  There are ficuses and pines, that are old enough to have seen a lot of storms that are snapped like twigs.

At our house, we lost a ton of trees.  Luckily there was no damage to the house except for the screen enclosure is gone.  We were blocked in for a couple of days due to trees down in the streets.  Luckily, my wife is smarter than me and we were very prepared.  Plenty of food and water.  We still have not had to go shopping.

I will post more when I get power back.  Next month :(.

It's nice, that after two years, someone has finally put the basic facts on paper.

http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/08/10/opinion/editorial/60edit11guns.txt

I have decided to separate Valor's new, comments etc. into it's own blog at http://bennewton.typepad.com/valor_blog/ .

I will continue this blog as my personal blog, plus some new projects I will be working on.

I have added a Clearance link for each section.  I think this is much better than the .pdf file that was down by the excel sheets that hadn't updated itself in almost a year :).

There will be more updates soon.

I can't really call them customers, because they don't place orders.  They just complain.  The web has a way of growing phenomenons way beyond their means and making them obsolete.  Much like email is being ruined by spam.  Online B2B is becoming increasingly difficult due to the fly by night 'seller'.

Everyone and their mother is selling online now.  This week it's Zippo Lighters and next week they have a Fishing Tackle Site.  I have complained about this in the past, but it just keeps getting worse.  I have made it harder to get on our site.  I have rejected plenty of 'customers' that are clearly trying to sell anything that they can get their hands on, usually on ebay.  I have tried to stop selling to anybody that is selling only through ebay stores.  But they keep coming.  The latest influx has been from a demanding bunch that thinks the whole industry should be run by their rules.

Here are some examples of the 'demands' I have had to put up with lately.

One 'customer' wanted to know how come we were always out of a particular item.  I looked, and that item had just sold out an hour before, for the first time in months.  The customer then proceeded to tell one of our salespeople that they could not make any money if we were out of this item, what was wrong with us etc. etc.

Another 'customer' couldn't buy a certain product because it was illegal in their state.  This 'customer' called and called, practially begged.  Then they turned around and wrote one nasty letter accusing us of being racist and that is why we wouldn't sell to them. (and no, it wasn't a baseball player in San Fran)

And then there are the myriad of others that don't know what a case pack is and wonder why there are items out of stock at all and compalin that we are ruining there livleyhood by not having certain items in stock, usually items that are impossible to keep in stock and items that they have never bought in the past.

At least I'm not the only one, look at this article from PC World..

But it's not all bad, we have picked up some pretty big customers online, including some big names.

Now that I got that off my chest, I hope to be adding to this blog more often and hopefully getting some more traffic.  Keep watching for more info..