Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  We had a lovely time with the families, and there was much gift giving, mirth and happiness.  I am pretty excited over Jillians gift of an iPod Nano to me.  Its the red 8GB model and it is super small and sturdy and holds about 48,000 minutes of song.

The latest news is that I got Jillian a snowboard on ebay and it should be here in time for us to go snowboarding next week.  We are going shopping today to take advantage of sales, and we’re gonna see about getting some boots and bindings for her while we’re out.  Y’all have a great post Christmas laze.

It has been one whole year since my first post to thebradlands, December 15th, 2005. I would like to thank my mom and dad, for bringing me into this world. Also my producer/ providor/ spellchecker/ factchecker Warren Myers. Of course I’d like to thank Jillian who has stuck with me through thick and thin and has helped me with my Spanish. And lastly all my fans who have made it fun for me to write knowing that you care enough to check by and read. Blogging has been a great way to vent my excitement in lots of different areas. Hopefully reading has energized you, and thebradlands has been an instrument to get you excited about life.

Yes, believe it or not its a Ford. Looks like a cross between an Aston martin, a Nissan 360Z, a Chrysler Crossfire, and a Mitsubishi Eclipse, plus its environmentally friendly. Introducing, the Ford Reflex:

Verizon’s answer to the “do everything” Razr: the Chocolate. First of all how the heck am I supposed to tell my buddies that my new phone is called the “choclate”, and that I have the cherry flavor. Not happening. However they do offer some nice features that are comparable to the Razr, along with a phone that looks like it is much more durable and handles like an iPod. Like I said, worth a glance.

Ok iPod hasn’t done this yet, and maybe since I am suggesting it here then they will need to pay me to do it. Zune’s big add to their MP3 player is that it allows users to share songs with other local zunes through a bluetooth link. The person you send the song to can play it three times or keep it on their player for three days, whichever comes first. The idea is that this way two people don’t have to settle for having one earbud each in order to listen to the same song together. Here is my absolute killer response:

Its called iPod broadcast. Basically every iPod can be set to broadcast whatever song is currently playing on the player, via bluetooth. Others within range see a list of broadcasting devices and what songs each device is currently broadcasting. They can then tune into whatever device they choose, and listen to that song live as its playing. Listening to this broadcast would be like listening to the radio, only your friend is the DJ and there are no comercials.

This would be such a hit feature. Imagine a crowd of school kids on the bus going on a field trip or something. They don’t want to just share the music, they want to listen to it together. Its not about listening to the same song, its about listening together real time. Basically what my broadcast feature would allow is for anyone who wants, to put their music on virtual loudspeakers. Only these loudspeakers don’t disrupt those who aren’t interested in listening. Those who are interested tune in and listen. You and 5 of your friends can be all grooving together the whole trip, taking turns playing their favorite songs. Or, one guy might have many more songs downloaded then the rest, and he basically DJs for the trip.

The other benefit is that this actually reduces pirating songs. Rather then having a policy that you can download the song to your own player and play it back 3 times or whatever, the iPods picking up the signal play the song as it is comming in, and they are not required to keep a copy on the local player. They act as a radio that just plays whatever it pics up. People would prefer this over what is being offered by Zune because its simpler and because it allows everyone to listen to the same songs simultaneously. Everyone who owns a broadcast enabled iPod suddenly becomes a DJ, and they can also tune into whatever their friends are listening to.

Yes, I will license my idea. Bidding starts a $51,111,111 and I take Visa and Mastercard, but not AmericanExpress.

I have joined lots of different sites like hover, myspace, blogger, but I never really got into them because for one thing they did not integrate with my blog, and I didn’t feel like having two blogs. I also wasn’t too into trying to find people I knew amoung a million coded names, so it didn’t really work as a social networking thing either. So basically the accounts are rotting. I am always up for giving new things a shot though, and so when I saw that facebook had opened up to everyone I decided to create an account to see what the deal was.

Three things have sold me on it. One is that when I created my account the first thing that it did was scan my contacts folders in my email addresses and tell me everyone in my contact folders who had a facebook account. I was pretty surprised to see how many people I knew who were on facebook, though I shouldn’t have been since its now associated with everyone school.

The second thing that sold me on facebook was how they automatically import all of my posts to thebradlands whenever I write anything here. It was very simple to set up, and its all done automatically so that facebook acts as an alternate interface to my blog. Rather then being a substitute for thebradlands its sort of an extension.

Thirdly facebook is clean and orderly, with people using their real names and not a lot of strangers wanting to be your friend so that they can increase their chances of winning an iPod or whatever. It allows you to have fun and stay connected with the people you know, while not pulling you into a lot of stuff you aren’t interested in.

Thank you facebook for welcoming me to your wonderful new world. I feel truly integrated into modern society now that I have embraced social networking and made it my own. Please excuse me. I’m going to cry.

For those of you who read a lot of blogs, google reader is one of the most fantastic tools you will come accross.  Basically you enter your blogs url into google reader and it pics up the RSS feed for the sight.  Every time there is a new article on that site from then on it will indicate that, and it will show that the sight is undread until you read it.  Not only does it notify you of new articles, but you can read the articles in the google reader interface, so no need to click around to a million blogs.  Its like getting email only every new email is a blog from one of the blogs that you enjoy.  It also lets you sort the blogs into folders and there are lots of interface options.  One of the most useful tools from google so far!

Wow this looks so neat. They are meals that don’t need to be refridgerated, and can be heated by just pressing a button on the box. Gadling had the link and he points out that this would be very handy for when you are hungry backpacking but taking out a stove to heat up dinner is impractical.

A while back I wrote about how work was being done on an invisibility cloak. When I wrote before all that had been cloaked was a copper rod. Now they have developed a suit that can be worn and they have demonstrated that the idea really works. Here is an article about it.

I still dont understand how it works, since if all you are doing is bending light through a layer of material, all that would be invisible would be the material, not what is between two layers of the material. But in the picture the guy is wearing it, and you can see some people walking behind the man. So the light must not just bend through the material, but must be ported around the person and allowed to exit on the other side. Weird.

So I was thinking about some applications for something like this. If they furthered the technology enough then it could be used to make solid objects into windows that are not fragile like glass. Cars and planes and ships could be made out of this to provide a 360 degree view of whatever is outside. The possibilities are endless.

Flugtag is an event held all over the world were contestants attempt to fly man powered aircraft off of a tower into the water. The idea is to fly, but usually they end up falling with style. Here is a website for the event, and be sure to check out the gallery for a real taste of what its like. I might just add this to a list of things I want to do before I die, along with the Boston Marathon. Something tells me I should do everything else on the list first however. One is comming up in Baltimore on October 21st. Let’s see. My wife wants to go to Baltimore sometime, we can visit ESPN Zone and hard rock cafe, we can spend a few days at the beach, and flugtag is now accepting applications! A perfect setting to introduce the world to my flying toaster.