Boost Mobile has introduced a new service called Loopt. This service allows you to see where your friends are on a map right on your phone. The system uses GPS to locate where you are every 20 minutes and updates the map.

Afraid your significant other is cheating on you? Just follow them around with your phone and see for yourself.

Granted, you control who can see where you are and you can turn the feature off from the phone. However, I can see so many ways to abuse this service. To many people are naive about what information they make available about themselves. Look at all the people who put their phone number and address on a facebook profile, myspace profile, or other web page. Combine this with the common trend to add as many people as you can to your friends list. This could easily carry over to the phone and people will be adding others they don’t really know to the list of people that can see where they are.

So, if anyone out there actually looks at my blog you may notice that is seems to change every day or so. Not to say that I’m adding new content, but rather I’m moving things around and adding other items to the sidebar. The main lings I have added in are: PhotoStream, MusicStream, and various links.

For the PhotoStream I went out and finally setup a Flickr account. It’s been ages since I took any pictures. For now most of what is there is a bit random. Hopefully, this will encourage me to get out and start snapping some shots. We got a really cool new camera at work, a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, which I am still learning to use. You should normally see the four most recent pictures in the sidebar. You can either click on them or use the “Photos” link at the top of the page to go to the photo gallery. We will see how it goes…

The MusicStream is basically a list of the music I am listening to. This is not always up to date as it takes some manual intervention to get it to log everything I listen to. I’ve become a big fan of Audioscrobbler and Last.fm. Basically Audioscrobbler is the tool that powers Last.fm. Last.fm is a social music network that allows you to track your listening habits and find new music and other people with similar musical tastes. There are Audioscrobler clients that allow you to upload what you are listening to, to your Last.fm profile. You can then pull the data from Last.fm to display on your webpage, blog, myspace profile etc. The problem arises that the combination of my computer platform of choice, a Mac, and my primary music source, Rhapsody, don’t have many options for an Audioscrobbler client.  I found a small java app called audiothinger that does a decent job.  However, it crashes on occasion and often it duplicates tracks when it posts.  As a result you might see a song in my list of recent tracks multiple times.  In some rare cases I may have just listened a single track that frequently, but not likely.  I’m not sure if this is a bug in the client or a problem with the RSS feeds that Rhapsody provides.  Regardless it works well enough for my intended purposes.

The last bit of personal touch to the blog is my list of links.   Currently the list is rather small; mainly links to my various pages with a few other blogs thrown in.  I hope to expand on this more later.  If I know you and you have a page you think deserves a link just let me know.

Now that I’ve started this blog I have realized that writing is not as easy as it used to be.  Over the last couple of years I have found my ability to articulate myself slipping away.  My vocabulary seems to be diminishing, as do my writing skills.  Is writing like riding a bike or is it a skill that dulls without use?  I hope to see a gradual improvement in my writing as I post more and more, hopefully once again doing so with the confidence I had in college.  This by no means suggests that I will have anything interesting to say.

Well, it is that time of year again; UNM closes down for winter break. This year they added an extra day on both ends. Yesterday was my first day off and I don’t have to go back to the office till Jan. 3. YEEHAA!!! However, given my common behavior patterns I will likely work a couple of days over the break.

So, what to do with all this free time? First on my list is to do a little redecorating. My room of focus will be the living room. For those of you who have been to my house, you know that the layout of the living room does not provide many options. I think I tend to shift between 3 possible setups. However, this year I’m adding in a few new pieces of furniture. Hopefully I can fill in the big open space that exists no matter how I position my furniture.

Second, on the list is to relax and have fun. I have a few movies to checkout and plan to dine out a little more often than usual. I promised to take a couple friends to Japanese Kitchen next week to get one of our last sushi fixes of 2006. I’ll probably squeeze in 2 more sushi excursions before the year runs out.

Beyond that, I’m open for suggestions.

Here is a rant I put up on MySpace today. Enjoy!

You might notice how most people on myspace have around 6,789,123,346 friends. I don’t get this! Nobody knows that many people.

One of my friends posted the following:

—snip—
People are too fake on here. They only want pic comments, or to see how many friends they can get. So let’s see who will actually repost this. This is a test to see who’s paying attention. This is a test to see how many people in my friends list actually pay attention to me. Copy and repost in your own bulletin. Lets see who the true friends are and I think I know who you are… Repost this if you are a friend…Don’t reply… just copy and paste this in a new bulletin as “fake ass friends
—end snip—

She raises and excellent point. Myspace has become one huge popularity contest. I feel like I’m back in High School all over again. Lets see how many friends I can get!!! This is not my M.O. on myspace; I would go as far as to say I am a Myspace snob. While I understand why bands and other “famous” type people have so many friends listed, I just don’t understand why Sally next door has more friends than Justin Timberlake. I’ve been on Myspace for over 3 years and only have 44 friends. Maybe I’m a big loser and nobody likes me. Everyone on my list is someone I know in one-way or another; an old friend, schoolmate, co-worker, or a creative type whose work I like. Every week I get a request from some cyber hoochie mama to be my friend and every time they get the big DENY.

I’m typically not one to post bulletins like this. So many people send Myspace chain letter and ask you to repost them; I just see that as spam (sorry to my friends who do that… I just delete them….). However, I think this particular item makes an important statement. So I leave you with one question.
What benefit does one gain by having 17 bazillion friends that you don’t know and will in all reality never know?

Last Thursday night some friends and I got tickets to Albuquerque The Magazine’s Best Of The City Party. This hip event took place at the Sandia Casino and was expected to pull over 2000 people.
The only other time I have been to the Sandia Casino was for the Fiery Foods Show earlier this year. The casino and the resort are both very impressive. I’ve been tempted to have a weekend get away to the other side of town just to try out the amenities. The gaming room is not huge by Vegas standards, but it certainly is sufficient for someone like me who doesn’t gamble much at all.

The ABQ The Mag party was held in the same room as the fiery foods show, and for all intents and purposes it was just like the fiery foods show. When someone uses the work “PARTY” to describe their event I think there is a certain expectation. When we showed up we walked through the silent auction area to see what items were available for bidding. Once we go to the last of the auction items when turned into the main door of the ballroom. It was just a chaotic mess of people. At one end they had a stage where they were giving out awards. The rest of the room was vendor booths, everyone setup and handing out their wares. We spent the better part of two hours walking around and tasting the food at different booths, stopping and chatting with people we knew, and promptly returning to the bar when our glasses were empty and the next booth didn’t have wine.

Overall it was a fun evening, but nothing like I expected. You might here other people rave about what a great event it was and how great the party was. For me, party is not the right word. Next year I might attend the Best Of The City Expo.