Markasaurus

It hasn’t rained since March but today it is back.

Selling jeans with architecture, originally uploaded by mark.hogan.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House fills the background of this billboard in San Francisco’s Union Square.

Safety first!, originally uploaded by mark.hogan.

I waited in line to be one of the first people in the country to try out Google’s new mobile operating system, Android, available for the first time on the T-Mobile G1 phone. The photo above was taken with my new phone, and the photo was posted directly to Flickr via email. The camera is decent, you can press the shutter button halfway to focus and it’s 3 megapixels- not professional quality, but as good as my previous digital camera that originally cost more than this phone.

The most amusing thing that’s happened with the phone so far includes a piece of software I tried downloading called “iSafe”. It’s supposed to tell you how “safe” your current location is based on allergies, crime, traffic and a variety of other factors (I downloaded it because it sounded bizarre, not out of paranoia). It turns out one of them is the location of registered sex offenders. I’m not sure how being 1.5 miles from a registered sex offender makes someone “unsafe” but the second I booted up the application, the speaker on my phone boomed in a loud synthetic woman’s voice, “Warning, sex offender nearby” or something to that effect. Then I couldn’t get it stop announcing it, over an over. I’m glad I was at home, I can only imagine how that would have gone over in the 24 Hour Fitness locker room this afternoon. Needless to say, I deleted iSafe five minutes later.

The integration with Google is great, especially if you are already using Gmail and Google calendar. You never have to sync it to your computer- it is always synced via the internet. Web browsing on it is fantastic, especially with the inclusion of a trackball. While having the touchscreen is nice, it is often hard to navigate closely spaced links with your finger- but easy with a trackball.

The keyboard is a bit hard to use because it is so small, but infinitely easier than the iPhone’s onscreen version. The G1 is obviously not as slick as the iPhone either, but I think that’s a small tradeoff for having the keyboard and smoothness of the integration with my Google account. I am looking forward to seeing what new software appears in the Android market.

It’s blog action day again.

###
is the cost of the Iraq war
so far.

What could we have done with this money? Think of the number of people who could have been educated in our own country, the things that could have been built, the healthcare we could have and the poor people in the Middle East that could have been helped instead of turned against us.

To put the cost of the Iraq War into perspective (and the cost of the $700 billion bailout passed more recently) the entire New Deal of the 1930s cost approximately $500 billion. This included “8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings, 72,000 schools and 80,000 bridges” not to mention the fact that it put poor people back to work.

Think about the consequences when you vote in a few weeks. Look at every person you vote for and issue you vote on and ask if that choice is merely good for your wallet, or if it will make our society a place where more people can succeed.

You can work from your favorite chair!

Or your easy chair, if that’s your preference. Thanks to The Bed Tray Shoppe and their fabulous website www.breakfasttray.com, you can find products to support all your resting/working needs. If I ever decide I’m going to run my own business from home, please send me email reminders to roll over so I don’t get bed sores.