Spam, bionic, Treo 2.0, Bots
I have a plug in for my blog that protects against spammers that like to put links to things like penis stiffening drugs, porn and casino web sites into the comments of my posts. It’s amazing how many attempts are made as you can see from below:
Akismet has protected your site from 26,598 spam comments.
Last night I watched The Bionic Woman. Growing up I was a HUGE Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman fan. I used to think how amazing it would be to have bionic limbs. It was another way to become a super hero, what I always aspired to be, just like most little kids. Well, welcome to the 2007 version of Bionic Woman. I liked the premiere. I thought the groundwork that was laid will make for an interesting series. This Bionic Woman has more of a hard edge, more of a bad ass attitude which plays out better in today’s day and age. If you like super hero stuff at all, I would recommend the show.
The contract on Ali’s Treo 650 with Verizon ran out this month and I have been looking around for deals to replace it. I was surprised when viewing the “deals” Verizon offered to renew, they just weren’t good. They basically knocked 100 bucks off the phone price. The 650 uses the Palm OS which is simple to use and has tons of applications available for it. However the main thing Ali needs to do is sync her email, calendar and contacts with our home email which I run with Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003. The Palm OS is buggy at best when doing this. So for her new phone I was looking into one of the newer Treo’s that run Windows Mobile OS which is has much more seamless integration into and Exchange/Outlook environment.
I stumbled across a deal on ATT/Cingular’s site on a refurbished Treo 750. I could step into that for only 99 bucks. It runs Windows Mobile 5 and supposedly a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 is being released any week now.
It also supports the higher speed 3g network which will result in much better wireless browsing speeds. The monthly charges were inline with what we are paying now through Verizon. After checking briefly with Ali whom didn’t really care what she got as long as it worked better. I started the purchase process. Shortly after I started, I stopped when I saw the little box to enter a promotional code. My online buying experience has taught me that promotional codes are often quite easy to find and are normally quite a good deal. Hell a simple code saved me 100 dollars and got me free shipping on my Scooba. So I opened a new browser window, did a quick search for “att promotional codes” and within seconds found a code that knocked an additional 50 bucks off the price!! Sweet! So if I bought this phone brand new, with no plan it would cost upwards of 500-600 bucks. Getting a refurbished model with the code I paid 50 bucks for it. I mentally patted myself on the back for that one. It should show up on our doorstep Monday, I’ll have a full review next week.
Irobot, the company that makes the Roomba and Scooba robots that I love so much has recently announced two new robots to add to their line called the Looj and the Connectr. In my opinion, they missed the boat with both of these. The Looj is a gutter cleaning robot. It basically will creep back and forth along a straight section of gutter (no it doesn’t do turns) and flip stuff out of it. To me, gutter cleaning, unlike floor sweeping/cleaning isn’t done nearly often enough to justify using a robot to do so. Plus you still have to get the ladder out, throw it in there and move to various straight sections of gutter, not a massive time savings either. I think this thing will sell very poorly.
The Connectr looks like a Roomba with a webcam attached to it. They are pitching it as a home surveillance/ virtual visiting robot. At first glance it seems cool. The unit will allow you to wirelessly monitor or communicate over the internet via this bastardized Roomba, kind of nifty, until you start seeing the numbers. They are talking about $500 dollars for this doodad but that isn’t all. It will only work through Irobot’s proprietery VPN which you get free access to for the first year. Although they haven’t announced it, it is assumed that after that they would charge you a fee to use this network. Nice try, thanks for playing. It seems that every company is all about dipping into your pocket on a monthly basis after the sale somehow. If the unit was a couple hundred dollars less and I was able to tie into my own home WLAN with no strings attached it might be a viable purchase. Being able to drive the robot over to Nicki or Tuki at home while I was at work and being able to talk to and see them would be kind of cool. But I’m not going to pay a monthly fee to do so.
I think they really shit the bed with these two offerings. I would much rather see them crank out robots that wash carpets or mow grass.
This weekend will be busy with working house chores around visiting with my sis as well as me driving out to the middle of nowhere Sunday morning very early to help with a 20k race.