Balcells Blog Home

Watched the final episodes of The Beauty and the Geek recently. Kind of boring, it's all tired by now, all the same. And the characters weren't that compelling.

Also watched AI, it's the top 12. It's OK, still a few good singers. I think they'll get somebody good out of it. Kathy McPhee is starting to grow on me, she is cute and a great singer.

I'll confess I also watched The OC, if only to see Marissa - Mischa Barton. Even Bill admitted she is something

Had a chance to play with one of these phones/iPod players recently. Not very good. The interface isn't great, the mp3 player is arbitrarily limited to 100 songs, and you cannot download songs over the air, plus it takes forever to sync it via iTunes. No wonder it's been getting awful reviews, and it's most likely not going to make it.

Shame on Apple and Motorola for creating an ill-conceived product, knowingly. It's not easy to know what people want: tons of capacity, an easy-to-use interface, and a usable phone packed with features. Instead, Apple feared it would cannibalize the iPod so they limited it to 100 songs, which makes it useless. Then, Motorola developed it so that it can only load songs via iTunes and has no wireless song download capabilities, effectively pissing off all the carriers. Why in the world would they carry the phone? They all rejected it flat out, and in fact threatened Motorola with pulling ALL its handsets. After extensive talks, Cingular ultimately - reluctantly - agreed to carry the handset, and now they are probably sorry they did.

Apple won the loyalty of music fans through elegant design and brilliant marketing. Using DRM as a digital tether will do nothing to hold them. Last January an irate iTunes user put Apple in the same camp as Verizon - don't get me started on them - by filing a class-action lawsuit over the limits FairPlay puts on music bought online.

So many agendas. The music labels, the wireless carriers, the handset manufacturers, and in this case, Apple itself. It's all greed, and will most likely end in disappointment for all concerned.

I was disappointed with American Airlines on my last trip. They booked my ticket under my second last name, and stuck my first last name in the Middle Name field. It took them quite a while to figure out where my reservation was. That hadn't happened for quite some time, most airlines have caught on and realized most world citizens do have a name that does not conform to the first-middle-last format.

Their software is pretty weak. Additionally, if you stand by on an earlier flight, and make it in, the software is unable to realize you've already flown. What it does instead is cancel both legs altogether as if you didn't show up (!) - awful. I know several people who've had this problem. That is so lame.

The seats are tiny too, particularly on domestic flights, and their planes are old and run down. I guess that's why they've been under bankruptcy protection.

A site some of you may find interesting, Zillow.com.

It tracks home prices over time. Uses info from available public records, like county websites. Good idea. Everybody wants to know how much a friend/boss/enemy/celebrity/etc. paid for their last house