Hung Truong: The Blog!

Gmail Loves Threadless!

Whoa! I just read about this from Google Blogoscoped. Apparently Gmail is sponsoring a Threadless t-shirt contest. Threadless usually has cool entities like bands sponsor their contests. This is the first time I’ve heard of a web company, let alone Google do one! I should try and enter a submission. I think the geek points for winning the Gmail Loves Threadless might be somewhere in the infinite range…

GrandCentral Beta: Impressions

So I’ve been getting a lot of invites to random beta things recently. The latest one is GrandCentral, a sort of central hub for your phone number. It was just recently bought by Google, which is sorta neat. GrandCentral says:

GrandCentral doesn’t replace your phones; we just link them together and help them do more. How do we do that? We give people One Number…for Life – a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location – but tied to you.

With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it.

This idea is good in theory. My family’s had the same home phone number for like, 20+ years, and if we ever changed that number, a lot of people would instantly lose contact with us, since it’s the only thing point of contact they have. I signed up and chose a number in the 505 area code (they give you a bunch of choices and you pick one).

I change cell phone service a lot, which means I usually just change the number as well. It’s always a hassle to tell everyone when my phone number’s changed. With GrandCentral, I could just change the number that my primary number forwards to.

So far, the service works. I have it currently set up to ring on my cell phone, but you can also have it ring to other places as well. GrandCentral also supports things like spam filtering in case you get a telemarketer call.

I think the service is interesting, but I’m not sure I want to “change” my phone number with a service that’s still in beta. Who knows how long the company will be around? The fact that Google has acquired GrandCentral is a good sign, but I’m still a bit wary of giving people this number since it’d be a hassle to change it again.

They Might Be Giants Podcast 27A: John Henry Demos!

They Might Be Giants used to be my favorite band. I say “used to be” because their last few albums have kind of sucked. I mean, there’s still some good songs coming out, but I think they’ve jumped the shark (seriously, a kid’s album!?). Anyway, I subscribed to the TMBG Podcast since it’s free, and they occasionally play some rare stuff from their old glory days.

I just listened to their podcast 27A today, which has a crapload of demo versions of songs from John Henry. The songs are: Dirt Bike, No One Knows My Plan, I Should Be Allowed To Think, No One Knows My Plan, Out of Jail, Lullaby of Nightmares (which I think appeared on Long Tall Weekend), and A Self Called Nowhere. Unfortunately, nowhere does End of the Tour or Destination Moon show up. I guess they can’t put the whole album up…

The first real TMBG album I ever heard was John Henry. Or maybe it was Flood, but I liked John Henry more. I’m probably the only person who actually likes John Henry (it’s criticized a lot!). So it’s very cool to hear demo version of the songs that I’m really familiar with. It seems like the horn players haven’t really gotten their inflections into the songs yet, and the Johns also sing a bit more reserved.

If you’re one of the few TMBG fans that actually likes John Henry, I suggest you go grab the podcast and give it a listen. Incidentally, I’ve heard that their new album is good, but that might be only compared to the last two albums (Mink Car and The Spine) which were passable at best. I really do hope it’s good, but I’m not really in any rush to be disappointed.

For now, I still pledge my Nerd Rock allegiance to Jonathan Coulton.

Threadless Shirt That Doesn’t Suck! Boredom.

Threadless has been on a sort of non-roll of sorts. Or maybe you could call it a roll of sucking. Anyhow, this week they’ve got a shirt that doesn’t suck! It’s one of a genie in a lamp. Being bored as hell.

I actually feel bad for genies. Being locked away inside of a small lamp, released for maybe once every thousand years. Then having to give wishes to stupid people. Plus that TV is outright ancient!

Perhaps it’s not the actual content of the shirt that I like, more than the colors. Maize and Blue? Hmmm, perhaps a certain university is brainwashing me. Ah well, anyway, this is a “definite buy if a $10 sale was going on” shirt. For $15… I dunno. Maybe.

iPhone Impressions: Neat!

So I drove on over to the Apple Store today (it was on the way back from some other place I was driving to) and I tried out the iPhone. It’s neat! I tried out all the applications and they work fairly well. The typing is alright, but when you type words that are uncommon in the dictionary, for instance, “truong,” the keyboard kinda compensates in the wrong direction.

Besides that, the applications are pretty fun to use, but they seem a bit more jerky than the commercials would have you believe. For instance, I was using the google maps app and it took forever to download the map tiles! The zooming in and out using the multi touch was way cool, but it also seemed to lag behind a bit as well. I know it’ll take lag to move stuff around, but it was… how should I put it? Slower than I expected.

The iPhone certainly is a cool gadget. I just don’t know why it needs to be a phone. Apple’s created a pretty sweet PDA that includes a phone, which requires a subscription fee. If they had just called it the iPDA, maybe I’d be more willing to get one. That, and if they lowered the price, made it snappier, made the battery life longer, etc. I actually had one die while I was using it in the store. The battery ran out and I had to switch to another one.

Oh well, maybe in the next generation/iteration I’ll be able to afford one. And convince myself that I should pay the price for it.