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So the new iPhone came out, and with it the new update to the iPhone operating system. I haven’t bought a 3G iPhone yet (I’ll probably wait until next month), but I did update my iPhone to 2.0 and start exploring the app store. I found lots of cool apps for free and installed a few of them.

Over the weekend, I got an SMS from an unknown short code. In fact, I got two of them. Now I don’t like getting unsolicited SMS messages from people I don’t know - I’m a cheapie and currently have the default no-charge text plan that lets you send/receive 200 a month. When I upgrade my phone I’ll probably pay $5 to continue with this amount of texts. I only send and receive from a few people and I don’t want to end up paying the $.20 per text if I go over my 200.

Turns out the unknown text that I got was from Loopt. Specifically, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, because I doubt he realized this would happen) signed up for Loopt and wanted me to sign up too, so he put me in as one of his contacts. I don’t think he knew I’d get two unsolicited text messages from some weird code reminding me that I should install and sign up for Loopt (at least I hope he didn’t!). I guess I was kind of lucky, because some other people have gotten many of these unwanted, unsolicited, and potentially expensive text messages through Loopt, some of them from people they don’t know, and certainly many of them from people that they don’t normally text message with.

It’s turning into a real shitstorm, mostly because of the bland, blame-the-user attitude of the people behind Loopt. And here is where I provide you some documentation:

One of several complaint threads on Get Satisfaction

Merlin Mann’s well-written summary on Kung Fu Grippe

Justine’s summary of her own experience

A story on iPhone Alley

A CNet piece questioning the appeal/risks of the application itself

Loopt gets a big thumbs-down from me. I really don’t like these kinds of applications anyway - do I want people to be able to track my location on a map? Frankly, no. Not even my friends. That’s a little too much invasion of my privacy, so even if they hadn’t annoyed me with their spammy SMS, I definitely wouldn’t have used Loopt. Their kind of pathetic response to complaints just cements it - not only will I not install Loopt, but I’ll recommend to my friends and family that they don’t either. And you, Internet, here’s some free advice for you: don’t install Loopt. If you’re into that kind of stuff, wait for one of the other apps to be ready, and make sure they’ll handle the invite process responsibly.

…when you get a mail notification and get kind of excited because hey…you’ve got mail! And then you open your inbox and it’s just a bill.

What a downer.

The funny thing is, I remember when good ol’ snail mail used to feel the same way. Especially when I was in college! I’d head to the front desk at my dorm in the afternoon, hoping to find something cool in my little mailbox, and feeling bummed when it was a bill or junk mail, or a flyer advertising the “Spring Fling” or whatever.

Nowadays I don’t get much snail mail. The occasional bill, tax-related document, and two magazines (Real Simple and Lucky, until it runs out). Instead of regular mail for correspondence I use email; instead of newspapers and magazines I (mostly) read RSS feeds; and instead of paper bills I generally use online banking and e-statements. Junk mail still comes but not in as much bulk as it used to. The junk/spam that ends up in my email mostly gets filtered out - GMail is awesome with the spam filtering.

I still hate getting bills though - e-bills or otherwise.

Today I read this old post on Lifehacker about how to find anyone on the web. It was one of their most popular posts of 2007 and I’m not sure how I missed it the first time around. Anyway, after using a few of the sites mentioned to search for myself, I naturally started looking for old friends, classmates, and ex-boyfriends.

It was scary how quickly I was able to find people, especially on ZabaSearch and Pipl. I found one ex who I’d assumed had just dropped off the grid a few years ago. In the matter of a few clicks I was looking at his MySpace page, and reading a few of his blog posts. Fascinated, I pulled up my chair and got immersed for a few minutes. He’s a good writer, always has been, and the little glimpses I got into his life now were tantalizing - in some ways, we’re still so much alike, and in others, completely different.

But after a few minutes I realized something…I was cyberstalking. This wasn’t just casual searching and browsing anymore. This was…well, stalking. Here I was reading blog posts and looking at photos, but without any intention to leave a comment and identify myself, or send an email to say “what’s up?” I started to feel kinda skeevy, so I quickly closed the tabs in Firefox that contained all this juicy, tempting information.

To be sure, I did not have any malicious intent. It was just curiosity about a person who, at one time, was a very significant part of my life. Honestly, I would leave a comment or send an email, if I thought he’d be receptive to it. But, unfortunately, our relationship a few years after breaking up got kind of rocky, and sadly I don’t think you could even call us friends anymore. So better to leave it alone, and out of respect, to forget his username on MySpace and Facebook and the other web sites I found where he has a presence.

Maybe it’s better just to treasure the good memories, golden and happy and suspended in my heart like a timeless scene in a snow globe.

Just recently I’ve been obsessed with buying a new digital camera. It was hell! So many choices, so many reviews, so many "deals." Just when I’d decided that I desperately needed the Canon Powershot SD1000, a friend convinced me that I really needed image stabilization which the SD1000 doesn’t have. So I decided I needed a Sony Cybershot DSC-W80, but I couldn’t find a good deal. I started thinking maybe a Nikon, and Costco had a pretty nice Kodak Easyshare, with a coupon…then suddenly the Canon SD1000 went on sale in a big way, and I was once again sorely tempted. I knew I wanted a point-and-shoot, not a DSLR, and my budget was not huge. I combed over digital photography web sites, looking for guidance and hoping someone would tell me what camera I could get that had:

1. At least 7 megapixels
2. Image stabilization
3. A price tag at or below $200

It wasn’t going well until yesterday, when I finally found a great camera for a great price (and it wasn’t one of the models I’d even considered previously). But first, my digital camera history.

My first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 880. A really really nice camera at the time (I received it as a Christmas gift in 2000, I believe). It was more camera than I probably needed, and while it was smaller than the Sony Mavica I used to borrow from a previous employer, it was still on the bulky side and not fun to take on vacation or to special events. Still, I took a lot of very nice pictures with it. But eventually I decided I needed a "pocket camera" to carry around with me. Smaller and lighter was what I wanted, so I went a bit cheap and got my next camera…

The Nikon Coolpix 2500. I went down from 3.3 megapixels to 2.0, and worlds away in quality. I don’t know what it was about this camera, but I really should have returned it. It took the shittiest, blurriest, most horrible digital photos I’ve ever seen. I was so disappointed in it. Yes, it was small and kind of cool looking, but the quality just wasn’t there. Mediocre camera (this one) + not very talented photographer (me) = digital photography hell. This is the camera that soured me on Nikon for years to come, probably unjustly. Next up…

I did something smart. I did lots of research, read reviews, and bought myself a Canon Powershot A80. Although I wish I’d converted to something that used a faster media type sooner (the A80 still uses CompactFlash), I otherwise have not regretted this purchase. Almost all of the pictures in my Flickr pool and on this blog were taken with this camera. I love that it uses AA batteries, even though that makes the camera a little bulkier. It’s still smaller and lighter than my original Nikon. I don’t use the swing-out capability of the LCD all that much, but it’s nice to be able to flip it over and click it into place to protect it when I take the camera somewhere. This is a GREAT camera. But I still yearned for something smaller and lighter, with more megapixels, and that holy grail of image stabilization. Enter…

The camera I ordered yesterday, the Pentax Optio A30. Reviews have been good, and the feature set is pretty outstanding for the price (I managed to get a great deal - just under $200). It has 10 megapixels, a brilliant LCD, image stabilization, and a lightweight, compact form factor in a sturdy, all-metal body. In short, everything I was looking for, and more. I’ve been so nervous to choose cameras ever since the Nikon 2500 fiasco. I hope this camera turns out to be as awesome as it seems from the description and reviews that I’ve read.

I also ordered an extra SD card and battery for it. All of this should be here by the end of the week. I’m so excited! I’ve mostly been taking pictures of my daughter, but my hope is that with a smaller camera that’s easy to slip in my purse and take anywhere, I’ll take more photos. Maybe even some pictures of adults or landscapes or objects! You never know.

HOLY CRAP! I just watched the trailer for Beowulf. Who is playing the title character - is it Gerard Butler? Brad Pitt? Daniel Craig? No. It’s Ray Winstone. Ray Winstone? The guy who played (excellently, by the way) a pudgy, wanting-to-retire gangster thug in Sexy Beast? Yes, that Ray Winstone. Except, I think they rebuilt him or something, because he is now SUPER SUPER HOT. Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?

Here’s a pic of lovable, teddy-bear bad guy Ray in Sexy Beast:

And here’s how Ray looks in Beowulf:

I mean, Christ on a cracker, what the hell happened here, am I right? HOT HOT HOT!

Except…it was done digitally.  They’ve used some kind of digital mapping to turn Ray into a hardbody, which is…intriguing. Apparently the same technology is used to turn the weirdly fascinating (or perhaps it’s fascinatingly weird) Crispin Glover into Grendel, and Angelina Jolie into some sort of hooved temptress who rises out of a pool in a cave.

Far out.