Since FriendFeed’s launch of a new still-in-beta redesign, there’s been much debate over some of the features and style changes – both on blogs, and within the service itself. While any change is sometimes met with reluctance and skepticism, as Facebook has realized with their latest changes, there’s a number of reasons why the aesthetic and functional revamps of FriendFeed are helpful for both its users, and for the proliferation of real-time data on the web. Here’s a breakdown of why I believe FriendFeed has made a lot of correct choices in their transition from data aggregation, to a broad conversational hub for the web.

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Now that music has become mostly a commodity in the minds of consumers, music industry companies are having to think of new solutions in order to stay relevant and profitable. While they struggle to figure out how to reach those consumers, companies like Last.fm, Pandora, and Slacker are exploring today’s real innovation in music – customized and personalized listening experiences.

While all three services offer their own unique implementations of online radio, there are a number of ways that each solution trumps the rest in features and user experience. Let’s dive in to a comparison and find out what makes these services so slick:

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credit: CATR

Twitter is now all the rage. Your friends are doing it. Your mom is doing it. Even educated fleas are doing it. Microblogging is here to stay, and it’s caught on in a big way. According to Wikipedia, there are over 111 different ways to let everyone know what you had for breakfast online! Now the question is – how do we update them all at the same time?

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Well I have decided (in less than 1 day) to return the Helio Ocean.

It has some really nice things going for it. The next Sidekick could benefit from incorporating the following features:

• Much brighter and higher resolution screen – this was a joy to look at compared to the SK3 screen. Even though the size was slightly smaller, the quality really makes a tremendous difference
• 2MP camera – the image quality from the camera was very high quality, both in high and low light situations – puts the SK3′s to shame
• GPS – the ability to have the phone know exactly where you are, and then with a single button, automatically search for businesses or locations and give you a turn-by-turn map is really incredible. There’s an obvious opportunity for Danger to create a 1st-party app that does just that
• Video – As much as I am not a fan of poor quality cellphone video, the ability to playback video was quite nicely done, and gives the Ocean a near-YouTube esque feel by being able to quickly stream viral videos, movie trailers, etc. I have a feeling that the iPhone is going to be a clear winner in this space in the near future
• Album Art in Music Player – There’s no reason SK3′s player can’t support this, even with an OTA software update this could be reality
• 1st party webmail application – The availability of having actual Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail/Live Mail on a phone is really appealing to me because I have never used my Tmail accounts, ever. I always use the POP function to send my Gmail to my SK3. However, the Ocean is unable to do a push of the mail to the phone. I had to manually tell it to “send/receive” to find out if there was no mail. That’s unacceptable.

Now for all of the things that convinced me immediately that the Sidekick 3 is a superior phone:

• The first thing was a defect with the device – the ear speaker/receiver didn’t function, thus rendering making calls with the phone impossible without turning the speakerphone option on – I’m sure a new unit would have solved this, but it was the nail in the coffin
• Interface/UI – With the SK3, it’s a breeze to get right to what you want – either using the scrollwheel, or a key combo. With the Ocean, it’s cumbersome and awkward. They have the options grouped well enough, but even though it’s in a circle, when you press down, it doesn’t always go down. As soon as you let up for a second, down suddenly means go backwards. Same thing with hitting up. You hit up a few times, wait, and now pressing up goes the opposite way. Terrible usability. It’s also difficult to find where you want to go. With the SK3, it seems much more intuitive and well defined; more like a Windows/Mac interface and less like a normal cell phone interface. The Ocean definitely still feels just like a souped up RAZR or some other “normal” phone. Nothing “smart” about it.
• No Multitasking – I had no idea how truly important this feature of the SK3 really was until today. You can’t do two things at once. Playing an mp3? Can’t go and read an email. Checking a website? Forget going to check an IM someone sent you. It’s infuriating as a longtime SK user to give that up.
• Keyboard – The slide out keyboard is decent, but it pales in comparison to the SK3′s. No dedicated number keys. No equals sign!? No backslash? and the form factor of it makes it very strange to have to hit the keys on the outer most portions of the keyboard. And the spacebar. It’s tiny. And I hated it.
• Web Browser – Although the browser had a well defined start page with an excellent list of well-designed mobile versions of popular sites (MySpace, Digg, NY Times, etc.), the rest of the web ended up being slow, and either with scrollbars appearing (Horrible!) or just as a mess. The SK3 has plenty of room to improve in their rendering of the web, but it really has a serious leg up on the Ocean’s implementation. I’ve said before, the #1 thing that I think the iPhone has going for it, is the browser. The demo of their solution for mobile browsing makes anything else seem primitive, including Danger’s current methods.

There are plenty of other smaller features that I liked and disliked – but the above sums up the things that really made my decision for me the most. The Sidekick 3′s trackball still is the best interface on a phone, hands-down. And it will remain to be seen if the multitouch iPhone really surpasses real physical buttons as the ultimate interface. You can rest assured that when the iPhone does hit stores, I will be visiting my local Apple store to kick the tires on it.

I have the type of headache that surrounds your forehead and tightens up your neck to where it hurts to face any direction but straight ahead – and even that still hurts pretty bad.

I’m pretty disenchanted with the results obviously. Even nearly all of the local state candidates and amendments ended up to be the opposite of the way I voted. But there’s nothing anyone can do now. I hope the nation made the right choice. It could very well be our death knell.

They’re already raising the debt ceiling.

I think it might be interesting if Hillary runs in 2008. Would she get a lot of female votes just because she is a woman? Or would it have the opposite effect? Would the self-described non-sexist males of America stray and vote against a female president? Would be an event like none other.

In other news, Abagnale rehearsals are going well. Lots of writing. Shows coming soon. I’m looking forward to playing a show again. It’s been a while.

Also will be getting together with “The Scientists”, Josh and Omar’s new group, to do some percussion styling. I’m trying to keep myself busy.

worst headline ever.

But I’m still pissed. Ice cream is my biggest vice and I would definitely put it at the top of my dessert list. This saddens me to know that I am going to have to pay top dollar for my next scoop.

Kill Bill. I watched the first movie on DVD borrowed from Josh yesterday morning, and then went after the show with Josh and Jerry and Amber to see part 2. I am pretty impressed with the two films put together. On their own, the first film is better, but as a whole of both parts it works well. Unfortunately for Tarantino, I think the film would have been a more cohesive film if it was edited as one rather than split. There are scenes in the 2nd film especially that could be omitted with no detraction from the story (*cough* strip club scene *cough*) and there are long sequences from both films that could have been trimmed enough to make the movie a lean 3 hr. 10 min. film. If Titanic can do it and make mad cash, then Tarantino should have been offered the same discretion.

The best scenes from both films are:
The House of The Blue leaves fight sequences between The Bride and the Crazy 88.

The fight with Go-Go. Hottie!

The fight with O-Ren Ishii

The training of The Bride by Pai-Mei

and the fight with Elle Driver

There were also some other great moments, the buried alive sequence, the superman talk, and the entire anime sequence from part 1 describing O-Ren’s parents massacre.

I think if I could take both parts and edit them together as one it would be a much leaner film. But I’ll have to wait until Kill Bill Vol.2 comes out on DVD to do that.