Daring Fireball linked to a survey report that shows that 24 percent of current iPhone owners switched from the Motorola RAZR. Whelp, I’m one of them. I had a RAZR before I bought my iPhone. I loved the RAZR due to it’s size. It was small, metal so that if it was dropped it wouldn’t crack the case, and quite thin.

Survey Claims 24 Percent of U.S. iPhone Owners Switched From a Razr

If it’s even vaguely close to accurate, that’s a remarkable number. It might also explain Motorola’s precipitous decline.

★ Sunday, 22 June 2008

[From Daring Fireball Linked List: Survey Claims 24 Percent of U.S. iPhone Owners Switched From a Razr]

My old RAZR is now being used by my wife. However, with the new iPhone just around the corner. I’m really considering getting the new iPhone. Mostly for the higher speed data connection. I use my iPhone about 4 or so hours a day checking mail, surfing the internet, reading tweet’s on twitter, etc… Plus, the $300 price tag is pretty darn good to for the 16GB phone.

If I do get the new iPhone, I’ll probably be giving my wife my current iPhone and then she will be switching from the RAZR to the iPhone.

So overall, I really believe the statistic and am not the least bit surprised.

This picture was just sent out by Chris Luckhardt on Pownce and I have to say that I never made the connection until seeing the images side by side like this:

Wow, this really makes me wonder if the Mozilla folks had seen the nebula and used the image for inspiration.

Thanks Chris for finding the comparison and posting it on Pownce!

Something must be going on at Yahoo! for all these rats to be jumping ship. First the creators of Flickr left, now I read that the founder of del.icio.us is also jumping ship. So I wonder what is going on over at Yahoo! that is causing all these older acquisition owners to leave Yahoo!.

We just got confirmation from Joshua Schachter, the founder of delicious, that he has decided to resign from Yahoo!. Mike Arrington just spoke to him and he said that the recent news coming out of Yahoo! pressed his decision to leave now. Joshua also said that the decision was made today, and that he has no future plans but will instead join the “gloriously unemployed”.

[From It Gets Worse: Joshua Schachter Leaving Yahoo]

I am aware that Microsoft was trying to do a hostile take-over of Yahoo! earlier, but I was under the impression that Microsoft gave up on that. I have heard that Mr. Carl Icahn is still in the news, but I don’t know how much damage he can do at this point. Plus, with Google helping out Yahoo!, it seems hard to believe that Yahoo! is in trouble enough to cause these guys to leave like this.

Makes ya wonder…

Electronic Arts released Spore’s Creature Creator yesterday so that the many folks that are waiting and waiting for Spore to be released is released. Spore is scheduled to be released September 7th.

I’m quite pleased with the performance of Spore’s Creature Creator on my Mac Pro. I’m using the low end graphics card that came with the Mac Pro, the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. The frame rates are more than adequate to use the creator. Mind you, this isn’t the actual game, but it’s really great looking and quite fun to play around with.

I spent about 30 minutes creating a creature for the first time. It was quite easy and pretty darn cool to mess with. According to the program, over 170,000 creatures have been created since the program was released a week ago (?) to a limited group of people and then the public release yesterday.

I really can’t wait for this game to come out. It’s going to be stealing months and months of my life and I’ll love every second.

If you haven’t downloaded it and played with it, I really suggest heading over to EA’s Spore website and pick up a copy of the Trial Edition.

Download and enjoy!

Wow, what an amazing turn of events:

Today, we announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to our AdSense for search and AdSense for content advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties. In addition, we will work to enable interoperability between our respective instant messaging services allowing users better, broader communication online.

[From Official Google Blog: Our agreement to provide ad technology to Yahoo!]

Two competitors working together! I wonder if this is to help Yahoo! fight off Microsoft from taking over.

Still, It’s a very impressive move by Google. If there are no ulterior motives, this would probably be the biggest PR move any company has ever done before. It’s going to make Google look like saints!

Anyone have any thoughts on why this is happening? It sure looks like a good will gesture to me.

I found out today, Friday 13th of all days, that I have been offered a position with a company called Mobile Armor. They do security software for smart phones and computers both notebook and desktop. A really great sounding company really.

Word on the street is that I will be starting on July 1st, but depending on Mobile Armor, it could be sooner. I can start at any time, myself.

I will be helping the company test their software and make sure that it’s working as good as possible so that users won’t find any nasty surprises later. At least that is the plan.

This has been a tough search, but not as tough as my last search after being laid off. I was 8 months without a job then, this time it was 7 months. I was a little slower getting started looking for a job since I have been recovering from Ulcerative Colitis (rather unsettling picture on linked page). I’ve still been getting sick from it, but I’m learning what I can and can not eat to avoid having relapses. Until these last few days, I have been feeling pretty healthy for about 4 weeks. The longest run in quite some time. I know what I ate to cause this last relapse to occur, so I know what to avoid, but there are probably other foods that will do me in.

Since I have had this illness, I have lost just a little over 70 lbs. It started Aug. 2007, 11 months ago, so I have been losing weight rather slowly. Which is the way one is supposed to lose weight. However, I need to be able to stop losing weight when I get to the weight I want which is just under 200. Anyway, that’s off topic.

I was actually not sure I was going to get this job. April 17th was my first interview with Mobile Armor. The interview went pretty well, and I felt pretty comfortable with the folks I was talking to. I felt that they seemed to like me. So I found out the next week that one of the folks that started the company wanted to talk to me for a few minutes on the phone as a second interview. So I called him and we had a great conversation. I think I impressed him with my self motivation and my previous job history. I really felt that I had this job. I heard from the recruiters that found the job for me that I was going to be offered the position, so I was all ready to go, but I didn’t hear anything else after that. I thought that I had done something wrong, but it turned out that they had some issues with funding and had to wait a while to continue.

I got the call last Friday that the company was still interested in me which really lifted my spirits. Then I got the call today that an offer letter was being sent today and we’ll be working out when I will be starting. It looks like it might be July 1st, but that was only the recruiters feeling. I’ll find out soon enough. I’m just thrilled that I finally have a new job.

So, now I just need to stay healthy for longer than a month…

So the WWDC keynote speech has come and gone. I have to say I was a little bored with this one. They seemed to spend way to much time talking about all the applications that are going to be on the phone. Especially the medical software.

They did announce the 3G iPhone, but it’s not going to be ready until July 11th. If the folks that were selling their iPhones actually did sell them, they now have to wait a little over a month before they can get a new phone.

I wonder if this means that Apple isn’t going to be selling iPhones until July 11th now. That seems like a really bad idea to lose a whole months worth of sales just because they came out with a new phone. Do they really think they are going to reach their 10 million units sold by not selling them for a month? Hmm…

One thing I am really looking forward to is MobileMe. That is going to be really great and make .Mac really worth having. It’s basically Microsoft Exchange for the Mac as well as Windows. That’s the coolest part about all that. MobileMac works with Outlook in Windows so that regular home users have the power of Exchange available to them on their home computers and iPhones.

So, this was definitely one of the less interesting keynotes I have heard, but some interesting things coming done the road for sure.

Lately, I’ve been reading about all these people selling their existing iPhones with the understanding that Apple is going to announce new 3G iPhones on Monday.

I would get the biggest laugh if Apple instead did not announce a new iPhone on Monday. There has been tons of speculation and rumors of a new 3G iPhone.

Now, I realize that in all likelihood, Apple will announce new iPhones. Why? Because you can’t buy an iPhone now to save your life. There are very few stores that have iPhones in stock. Why is this? Everyones guess is that Apple is holding it’s stock so that when they announce the new iPhones on Monday, they will ship those phones as well as the original iPhones to stores.

What makes me wonder though is why hold back the stock of the current generation of iPhones? I mean if they are going to have both 3G and GSM iPhones, why hold back the stock?

The only thing I can figure is that all the “sneak peak” pictures are real and they are redesigning the device. So the 2nd Gen iPhones will look different than the 1st Gen iPhones.

Ah well, It would be a pretty funny practical joke to play on iPhone owners who are selling their phones in anticipation of a new iPhone.

I was watching GeekBrief.tv this morning and Cali told us that a new study claims that PlayStation 3’s and HDTV’s take up more energy than a refrigerator over the course of a year. There was an article that she linked to that I am linking to as well:

Power bills soaring? Turn off the Playstation: study | Technology | Reuters
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Don’t blame the fridge for your steep power bills — an Australian consumer agency study has found that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by.

This article is utter BullShit! (Sorry for the language, but it’s how I feel) I wrote about this once before, so I’ll let you read that article in response to this: Absurd ad I saw on television.

I just felt that this needed to be said again. Don’t let these BS studies make you start turning off your electronics all the way. There is no need. Electronics in standby mode use very little energy and will cause more grief than good in the long run.

Think of it like turning your alarm clock off every morning after you wake up. When you get ready for bed that night, you will have to reset the clock and the alarm just to save a few watts.

For the last 3 weeks or so, there has been nothing but speculation about a ton of new products for Apple. New 3G iPhone, Mac Tablet, renamed .Mac, etc… So what is happening?

Yep, WWDC08 is just around the corner.

I just love all the rumors and speculation; “The new 3G iPhone blah blah this”, “Shipping packages labeled Electric computers…”, “Apple has changed it’s hard coded ‘.Mac’ strings to variables…”, “me.com being held by company that Apple uses for it’s domains…”, “Apple attempting to get ipod.me, iphone.me, mac.me…”.

Funny thing about all these speculations and rumors is that they are typically accurate. It just cracks me up that so many blog sites go after these including Daring Fireball, which really surprises me, I’ve always thought of Daring Fireball as being the beacon of solid information and fact.

This reminds me of a presidential election. You start hearing about the candidates almost a year in advance, and the ads on TV start getting more and more frequent to the point you just want to shoot the TV. Just before the election, there are more ads for the candidates than shows on TV. I get so annoyed by all the ads, I almost don’t want to vote as a protest.

I’ll be so glad when WWDC is over so that all the speculation can stop. Of course then it’s “See, we were 100% correct with our rumors…”, “We were right on the money…”, etc… for at least 2 weeks after the show.

Sure will be glad when it’s all over.