Greg In The Desert

• Two hospital projects stalled as Rio Rancho’s growth projections slip – New Mexico Business Weekly: – The announcements in May 2008 seemed to promise an embarrassment of riches – Rio Rancho would go from no hospitals to two by the end of 2010.

  Then the credit crisis froze the bond market, and by the end of the year, Presbyterian Healthcare Services’ plans were on hold. And today, although the joint hospital project of Legacy Hospital Partners Inc., of Plano, Texas, and the University of New Mexico Medical Group Inc. is not officially on hold, Legacy’s CEO is acknowledging a new reality.

• Lost in Space | Articles | Features | Fortean Times UK – What really happened to Russia's missing cosmonauts? An incredible tale of space hacking, espionage and death in the lonely reaches of space.
• Mooning leads to mistrial in Willcox murder case – A Cochise County judge has declared a mistrial in a murder case because the defendant's brother dropped his pants, gestured and made threatening comments in the presence of jurors.
• Fish may actually feel pain and react to it much like humans | Science Blog – Fish don't make noises or contort their faces to show that it hurts when hooks are pulled from their mouths, but a Purdue University researcher believes they feel that pain all the same.
• The 50 Worst Cars of All Time – The 50 Worst Cars of All Time – TIME – On the 50th anniversary of the Ford Edsel, TIME and Dan Neil, Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic and syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, look at the greatest lemons of the automotive industry
• Sony’s GPS-CS3K: Your Geotagging Best Friend… Mini-Review : Akihabara News .com – The Sony GPS-CS3K GPS tracker has a tiny display that operates in three modes: displays current coordinates in big letters, exact coordinates (not rounded values) in small letters, and the current date/time. It might take a few minutes to complete the initial positioning during the first boot after not using the device for some time.
  If the device loses a satellite it usually takes only a few seconds to re-calculate its position. The device can be placed in a pocket without any problems, it doesn't need a direct visual connection to a satellite.
• Above And Beyond: T-Mobile Provides iPhone Support Despite Not Offering iPhone – When a system update caused service failures and bugs in T-Mobile customers' unlocked iPhones, the users emailed T-Mobile to alert them to the issue. Even though T-Mobile doesn't offer the iPhone, they fixed the bugs and gave the users a service credit for the inconvenience.
• Narrow Side Yard Makeover! — Eden Makers Blog – I nominate “side yards” as some of the most under-exploited areas in the landscape! What a shame, especially when every square foot of real estate is valuable, even in a down economy. Small, narrow yards can be perplexing to some homeowners who don’t know which plants and trees work in a constricted space.
• Garden Center at the Pueblo of Santa Ana – The Santa Ana Garden Center is your source for native and xeric perennials, shrubs and trees. Our plants are the natural choice for landscaping. They have evolved over centuries to survive in our unique and varied climate and are suited for low water, poor soil and high altitudes. They can be used for rock gardens, windbreaks, natural hedges, barriers or erosion control. Other uses include wildlife habitat, food and medicine, or simply to enjoy.
• The Official Site of Rio Rancho, NM – Water Watch Program – The City of Rio Rancho participates in the Albuquerque metropolitan area WaterWatch Program. This program is part of the daily weathercast on all local news stations from April 1st through September 30th. The Water Conservation Office promotes the daily watering guide by following the day’s recommended ColorDrop (see below) as well as its own seasonal watering guide.

• When Consumers Cut Back – An Object Lesson From Japan – NYTimes.com – The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

  Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

• EU denies Intel an oral hearing in ongoing antitrust case – Ars Technica – The court sided entirely with DG-COMP and dismissed Intel's argument on January 28; Intel's formal response to the EU was sent on February 5. The EU's investigatory process is much less transparent than the US model, as a result we do not know the contents of the original SSO nor do we have information on how Intel responded. One point of interest, however, is that the DG-COMP has denied Intel an oral hearing. Normally Intel would have the right to such a hearing; DG-COMP may be censuring the company for taking seven months to respond to an original two-week deadline.
• KOB.com – Jimmy Carter writes to NM gov about death penalty – As Governor Richardson weighs his position on death penalty repeal, he's getting prodded by a former president.
  Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the governor Monday. In it, he praised bills pending in the state Legislature that would abolish the death penalty and help crime victims.
• AT&T Feeling Pressure To Lower iPhone Plan Pricing – On Monday, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said the price of carrier data plans, not iPhone hardware, has caused a slowdown in iPhone sales, opening the door for Sprint and T-Mobile to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.
• Hands on with Microsoft My Phone: pretty neat, actually – Ars Technica – My Phone can sync pretty much all the data on a phone. The full list is: Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Text messages, Photos, Videos, Music, and Documents. For phones with memory cards, My Phone can be used to sync the photos, videos, music, and documents on the cards, as well as those in the phone's main memory.
• Safari 4 UI breakdown – Using it casually, I found there’s also some other, more subtle changes and additions that made me really enjoy giving this beta a spin, and perhaps will sway me into using Safari a lot more (provided I can find a working Adblock extension).

  Safari is representative of a ‘smooth’ browsing experience; it starts up quickly, and presents you a very Apple-like intro movie (yes, an intro movie, with a fancy animated Safari icon, and I’ve heard that it seems the intro is largely composed using images and CSS. Very neat).

• NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – Toshikima does not believe such a small imperfection could have caused the massive explosion. "We are still trying to determine why it suddenly burst into flames," he said. "In all the pre-fueling tests, the procedure went perfectly, but as soon as we ignited the fuel, it exploded. Why?"
• No longer a gray area: Our hair bleaches itself as we grow older | Science Blog – Wash away your gray? Maybe. A team of European scientists have finally solved a mystery that has perplexed humans throughout the ages: why we turn gray. Despite the notion that gray hair is a sign of wisdom, these researchers show in a research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that wisdom has nothing to do with it. Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair's natural pigment.
• Idaho Press-Tribune Micron slashes more Idaho jobs – BOISE — Micron Technology, the state's largest employer, announced Monday it will make up to 2,000 more layoffs.

  Already reeling from decreased demand for its specialty DRAM products and from a 15 percent companywide workforce reduction announcement in October, Micron officials said the company will soon cut about 500 jobs and another possible 1,500 positions by the end of the company's fiscal year. The cuts will affect workers in the company's wafer manufacturing operations at its Boise facility.

• Father/daughter relationships lead to more girls following dad’s career path | Science Blog – Good news, dad! All those times your daughter appeared to be tuning you out? She was probably paying more attention than you thought. In fact, a new study co-authored by a researcher from North Carolina State University says the relationship between fathers and daughters is leading to an increase in the number of daughters who are pursuing careers in the same field as their dads.

• Justin.tv Is Redirecting Porn Queries Into Cash (Update: Not Any More) – In the down economy, startups are trying everything they can think of to keep a steady flow of revenue coming in. For popular live-streaming video site Justin.tv, it looks like one of these measures is to try to capitalize on its users’ frequent searches for porn: if you run queries for terms like “xxx” or “sex”, the site will automatically redirect you to a third-party pornography page.

  Before users are redirected, they’re presented with a message for five seconds indicating that while Justin.tv has banned adult content, the site is sending them to “a site where you can find what you’re looking for”. The new “feature” may be flying under the banner of convenience, but the site is clearly looking for a new source of income. Justin.tv may well be having trouble coping in the current economy, and a porn affiliate pays far more than a blank search results page.

• Analyst: iPhone Refresh Pressuring Flash Memory Plants | Cult of Mac – Apple’s planned refresh of iPhones is putting increased pressure on flash memory manufacturers managing dwindling inventory, according to one analyst Tuesday.
  “Our checks indicate that Apple has started ordering for its iPhone refresh (iPhone and iPhone Nano), stifling the supply chain,” ThinkEquity analyst Vijay Rakesh told clients in a note.

  In the case of memory maker Samsung, Apple has allocated its inventory until April, according to Rakesh.

• T-Mobile’s Retention Pricing Goes Live – San Francisco first, other markets in March? – The new T-Mobile plans for loyal customers (customers who've been with the carrier for 22 months) we mentioned last week have gone live in San Francisco. Qualifying customers will be able to pay $49.99 monthly for unlimited nationwide minutes, or pay $84.99 for an "unlimited" (T-Mobile has a 10GB monthly 3G cap) voice/SMS/data plan. Rumors have the plan going nationwide in March, something that T-Mobile has yet to confirm.
• CreditMattersBlog.com: American Express Wants To Help You ‘Simplify Your Finances’ — Will Pay You $300 If You’ll Close Your Account – You may be wondering why American Express doesn't just close the accounts of these customers, which would save American Express $300. Here's why: the $300 prepaid card is acting as an incentive for the customer to pay down the balance in an expeditious manner. The customer has exactly two months to get that balance paid off; if he or she does, the $300 card is theirs. Not a bad strategy by American Express.
• News : Richardson announces high tech jobs on the way – Rio Rancho Observer – Gov. Bill Richardson said the first commercial partnerships with the New Mexico Computing Applications Center and its supercomputer, Encanto, will initially create roughly 100 high-tech jobs.

  DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. is teaming up with New Mexico’s Cerelink Digital Media Group to use the New Mexico Computing Applications Center’s resources to advance the studio’s digital media capability, while Insigniam Innovation Discovery Center will use the state’s supercomputer to develop solutions to improve health care quality and value.

• News : Local Civil War history? Ask Don Alberts – Rio Rancho Observer – Don Alberts of Rio Rancho probably wouldn’t know more about the Confederate invasion of New Mexico 127 years ago if he had been there.

  The 74-year-old former historian at Kirtland Air Force Base laughingly refers to himself as another Howard Cosell at his speaking engagements, and that’s appropriate: Alberts often provides play-by-play descriptions of Civil War battles.

  That’s what he’ll be doing next Saturday when the Battle of Valverde is re-enacted near Socorro.

• The Associated Press: US Airways reverses soda stance: won’t charge – US Airways is acknowledging as much, planning to announce Monday that free beverage service will resume on March 1 on board its planes.

  "With US Airways being the only large network carrier to charge for drinks, we are at a disadvantage," Parker said. "More importantly, this difference in our service has become a focal point that detracts from all of the outstanding improvements in on-time performance and baggage handling that all of us have worked so hard to achieve over the past year."

• Dumping Phelps Over Bong Rip Damages Kellogg’s Brand Reputation – Out of the 5,600 company reputations Vanno monitors, Kellogg ranked ninth before it booted Phelps. Now it's ranked 83. Not even an industry-wide peanut scare inflicted as much damage on the food company's reputation. A Vanno representative put together this chart:
• Build a Recession-Proof Body – Since most people are familiar with traditional push-ups, here are five variations to the exercise that you may want to try — all of which cost zero dollars but make good fitness sense (sorry for the pun. I couldn't resist). Oh, and by the way, click on each of the exercises if you'd like to see a video demonstration.
• Cerelink(R) Digital Media Group Clarifying Information Regarding Partnership With DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. – MarketWatch – This information seeks to clarify and outline details regarding the partnership between Cerelink Digital Media Group, the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Earlier this week Gov. Bill Richardson announced that Cerelink DMG entered into an agreement with the Glendale, California-based company.
  While Cerelink Digital Media Group will be using NMCAC's resources to explore the delivery of on-demand and scalable computing resources as a cloud service, DreamWorks Animation will not be using the NMCAC supercomputer, Encanto, as part of this partnership. While we believe the state's supercomputer has the potential to be used by digital media companies in the future, Cerelink Digital Media Group will instead be building out compute capacity for this effort using DreamWorks' standard rendering platform, Intel based c-class HP blades.

Something actually useful this week.

Free yourself from the restrictions of traditional SMS messaging. Freedom SMS will use your existing Mail configuration to send SMS messages to anyone in your contacts list. Did you already run through your allotment of SMS messages this month? Or perhaps you have an iPod Touch and want to have the ability to SMS your friends? Then Freedom Messaging is the perfect application for you!

Freedom SMS works in both landscape or portrait mode to suit whichever typing style you prefer. Simply rotate it into your preferred orientation. The application will adjust automatically!

Simply choose the contact and type in your message. Freedom SMS will try to find the carrier for your contact’s mobile number by connecting to our web service. This web service will be continually updated with the latest carrier data. Messages will be sent to that carrier’s email gateway using your iPhone or iPod Touch’s email settings. You don’t need to know the recipient’s carrier or need to set up your email settings especially for this app! Replies will be sent to your email account so you can continue the conversation.

The following carrier SMS gateways are supported and more will be added soon:

- Alltel

- AT&T Wireless

- Boost Mobile

- Nextel

- Sprint

- T-Mobile

- Verizon Wireless

- Virgin Mobile

- Metro PCS

* Freedom SMS will identify the original carrier that issued the mobile number. If that number has since been ported to another carrier, then this information may not be accurate. In this case, you can manually select the carrier to use instead.

* This application only supports mobile numbers in the United States.

* A data connection is required in order to lookup the carrier for a mobile number.

Freedom SMS is $.99 on iTunes

16GB iPhones released today. Took Apple long enough. If the retail Apple Stores have them, I will be buying one today.

Update 10:15 am: I was at the Chandler fashion mall Apple Store at 10am. They had them but had not processed them yet. They said come back in a 1.5 – 2 hours.

Update 02/06/08 6:19 am: I got the phone yesterday and have been playing with it all day. I was especially impressed with the box. The whole process of setting up an account and transferring the phone number from T-mobile was a terrific experience (I assume T-mobile will automatically cancel my account?) Yes, i know this is old news. I’m late to the iPhone game after all.

I have 3.61 GB left, therefore I was right in thinking I needed to wait. I’ve also watched some video podcasts which I didn’t think I would do much of. Maybe I should have waited for the 32GB iPhone?

heard about the Blackberry Curve 8320 a few weeks and and got very excited about it. It is of course a phone with a keyboard and PDA type functionality. It has one killer feature, it can make calls over WiFi and normal cellular networks and this feature is being offered by T-Mobile (who I am already with). This works great for me since I get a very poor cell signal from any of the carriers at my house.

This week Leo Laport posted a review of the phone. Of course, he compares it to the iPhone describing the Curve as not nearly as easy to set up or pretty to look at but has more functionality than the iPhone.

It meets some of my requirements to combine my phone and PDA into one, and has the killer wifi VoIP feature but it’s missing things that I use with my current phone. Sailing Clicker doesn’t yet support Blackberry devices, instead the developers are “holding out for RIM to add JSR82-support (Bluetooth) to Java in their devices”. Whatever that means, I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I not sure how well cross syncing between Outlook on a PC and a Mac will work. Finally, can you use make voice calls over wifi systems that require browser authentication?

Amazon only has two reviews, both positive so far. This indicates that it’s a very new phone. As tempting as this phone was to run out and buy right away, I think I will hold off and see what happens in the next month.

Well, I’m close to being in a black hole. I checked out AT&T’s coverage map for my house (which I blurred to protect my privacy) and you can see that just around my house, the signal strength is “moderate”. Which to me means almost none since moderate is the highest level just above No Coverage. I can’t even get my K750i to roam on Cingular/AT&T’s network.

Even T-Mobile’s coverage map shows less than optimal coverage at my house.

Boo Who. No iPhone for me till this is better. At least I have Transformers to look forward to.

I’m considering getting a Skype phone just as Garth is. I choose to not get wired phone service at my house, I’m not paying $20 min for a phone I would barely use. I went cell phone only, unfortunately I get a crappy signal from T-Mobile at my house.

I’m looking at Skype, they have phone to skype service for $30 a year and you get your own phone number. As long as I get a internet connection I can get phone service. Plus it can do fancy things like transfer calls to my cell. I’d like to get a dedicated phone, not one I hook up to the computer. The Netgear SPH101 or the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone don’t require computers using a wifi connection instead. The Belkin isn’t yet available but is $50 cheaper.

Think Secret says:

Apple and Cingular have signed an agreement that will make the US’ largest cell phone provider the exclusive carrier of Apple’s forthcoming phone, sources report. Apple’s iPhone remains on track for an early 2007 release.

Apple’s exclusive contract with Cingular is said to be good for the first six months, sources report, meaning other providers will be able to sell the phone in the second-half of 2007. Cingular had an exclusive on the Motorola ROKR—the first phone to feature iTunes—when it launched last year.

If this is true I might be willing to switch, but I’m not going to buy a crippled phone like what Cingular does to the Motorola phones. If Apple designs the phone like Motorola, then hopefully it has a sim card and I can use it with T-Mobile. In which case I will wait patiently and buy a unlocked version off ebay.

In either case I really hate this Motorola SLVR that I bought. I should have stuck with Sony Ericsson.

More rumors about a Apple Cell Phone. Motorola innards with the Apple logo and style all over it. I’ve been thinking of buying the A630 or the Razor when it comes out for T-Mobile.

Instead I think I will wait for this…

Update: Here’s a “spy photo” which it is probably not. But hey it looks feasible.

Update 2: It’s definitely coming, from the mouth of Apple itself. Hopefully it will be here at MWSF.