OY!

I've run across a few interesting things lately, this time intangibles.

First off, highly impressed by a little deed undertaken by a good friend of mine, Justin. We were hanging out, enjoying a little lunch and he was telling about his iPod and how the click wheel no longer functioned properly on it. Instead of paying a ton of money to have Apple repair it, or worse, throwing it away, he decided to order a $4 dollar part and fix it himself. He's even taking the opportunity to customize his iPod a little. Good show, says I. I was so impressed by this small act that when I found out the pointer knob on my cell phone was broken I decided to fix it myself instead of haggling with the provider, and/or replacing it. I spent a little over $6.00 for small screwdrivers so that I would be able to open the case and get to the broken knob. A small dab of super glue and 30 minutes setting time later the phone was repaired. It's not pretty but it works.

I'm not concerned with it not looking pristine as I am looking into getting a new phone, one that has a decent camera with it. No, I don't think it will be an iPhone because the camera features on it are woeful and that includes the newly released iPhone with 3G. Front runners right now are both Nokias, the N82 and the N95, though I think I'll have to rethink several things if I were to buy it now. By far more likely is that I'll just keep gathering information and buy something at a later date.

The other thing I have run across recently is really two things: Twitter and Qik. These are interesting web tools to be sure; my personal preference to visit is Qik so far, though as far as use I think I'd probably be more apt to use Twitter. Qik is fascinating. There are thousands of short videos that people stream to the website, of conferences and vacations, parties and music practice, as well as other odd things to make the mind wonder...mostly wonder why anyone would stream that. It's inspiring in some strange ways, to me anyway. I very much like the fact that they are ordinary videos of people around the world and though the language is not understand the humanity comes through. Perhaps the beginnings of globalized thinking will spring from such things. One can hope anyway.

Comments welcome of course, you two :)