For a long time I’ve been wanting the ability to blog from my iPhone, but with poor Safari support for the WordPress admin panel that had always proved too difficult. However, a few days ago I stumbled across a plugin called “wphone” that is a pretty fully functional WordPress admin built for the iPhone. I’m not sure of the link off-hand, but just do a Google search for wphone and you’re certain to find it easily.

As far as this blog is concerned, now that I have the ability to do so be on the lookout for future posts from my iPhone, which apart from their likely short and sweet nature, will be recognizable by their posting in the “moblog” category.

Also, for my non-WordPress fellow iPhone bloggers, Google has the ability to post to your Blogger account from your iPhone, so that might be worth looking into for you.

Now, back to my Stella…

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s the time of year again, when committed women get excited with anticipation and committed men scratch their heads in an effort to devise some sort of romantic scheme to win over the hearts of their better halves once more. Single women are likely to drink their sorrows away, only to regret tonight’s decisions tomorrow morning. And single men, well, I think today’s goal for them is pretty much the same as any other day.

Last year I wrote about how we ought to appreciate the women who keep us committed men in line. I quoted the phrase that “behind every great man there’s a woman kicking his butt,” and while I certainly do not claim to be a great man, there is definitely a great woman kicking my butt.

So to my one and only Carin, or as I like to say Carina Katarzyna Kozłowska , thank you for being ever wonderful, I love you!

A group of New Yorkers recently pulled off a stunt in Grand Central Station whereby they essentially “stopped time.” A pretty unique stunt and definitely entertaining to see the reaction of other people. Check it out:

During a recent post-game interview the basketball coach of my alma mater, Seton Hall, was wished “continued good sex in the Big East.” I’m not going to argue with the inherent implications of that statement.

Watch and enjoy:

My apologies for the crickets around here lately, I’ve been adjusting to a new travel schedule at work and writing time hasn’t been much of a commodity. That said, as you are undoubtedly aware it is primary season for the 2008 presidential election, and anyone who has spoken with me recently knows that I am way caught up into the mix of things. What I want to address today is the issue of gun control and gun ownership; more specifically, some misconceptions associated with this contentious issue.

Straight out of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the second amendment reads as follows:

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

There can be no denying — and there really hasn’t been — the rights of Americans to own guns under the Constitution. Where the debate arises is whether having these guns in homes around the country provides for a more dangerous, crime-laden society. It is here where the partisan card comes into play.

Democrats would say yes, guns make society more dangerous for everyone, and they should be outlawed. Republicans would say it’s not the guns it’s the people using them, and we have a right to own them you can’t take them away. Now, I’m not here to try to convert anyone’s political views, but let’s at least consider why the founding fathers gave us the right to bare arms.

America was a dangerous time back in the late 1700s, with the revolutionary war and fighting the Indians, but that’s not why we were allowed to own guns. Americans were fighting a war for independence from a tyrannical British government, and when they got it they didn’t want to have to fight a future one against more tyranny.

So, the ability of Americans to own guns comes from the need to prevent a ruling, tyrannical class from emerging. The right to bare arms means that Americans always have the ability to take back their government from a ruling elite, by force if necessary. Citizen gun ownership protects civilians from malicious governments intent on eliminating freedom.

One of the first things Hitler did in Germany was take away the guns from citizens so that they couldn’t rise up against him. And the Soviets, one of the first acts they would do when spreading their communism was take away guns from the local population. And we know what happened to these societies once they lost their guns.

So, whether you think guns lead to a violent society or not, gun ownership is a vital part of American freedom because it gives people the capacity to take back their government when it has gone too far.

Also, of note to fervent anti-gun individuals, consider this case study, in which a town that banned guns saw an immediate crime increase of 15% and decreased population over 25 years, whereas a town that mandated guns for all households has not had a single fatal shooting in the 25 years since the law was passed and has seen a boom in population.

Denmark-based Saxo Bank is predicting nothing short of economic chaos spanning the entire globe in 2008. The bank claims that the price of oil will surge to $175 per barrel, leading to economic collapses of 25% and 40% by the United States and China, respectively. Furthermore, they anticipate grain prices to double and one-third of large U.S. building companies to go bankrupt. All of this traced to the mortgage crisis in the US that has already slowed down the economy significantly.

Not all is lost, however, as the bank predicts Texas Republican Ron Paul to take the White House in 2008. Also, if the US economy were to slow down as predicted, oil consumption would decrease thus driving down price as well. But, if the Neo-Cons were to launch an attack against Iran — God forbid — the price of oil could catapult up to $250 per barrel.

I know what you’re thinking, as it was probably the first thing I was thinking when I read this article. However, before you dismiss all of this as non-sensical rubbish, know that most of Saxo Bank’s predictions for 2007 came true, so clearly they know what they’re doing and this isn’t some hogwash list put together by some Europeans hungover from too much Christmas Eggnog.

SpeedDate.com and Meebo have teamed up to a launch a speed dating application within Meebo. As a way to market the service, they chose eight celebrity bloggers and had them engage in a speed dating session. The result is pretty comical, especially Wired’s Aaron Rowe, who in my opinion was the star of the show.

This is probably one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever come across in my 25 years on this planet. An 11th grader at Big Spring High School in Newville, PA was given detention for using the Firefox Web browser instead of Internet Explorer.

Here is a copy of the letter, note the red-boxed area:

(source)

Update: 12/18/2007 - Turns out it this was all a hoax. Oh well, it was fun to gather the troops in support of Firefox.

Google is currently in the first phase of testing for a new tool called Knol, which stands for a unit of knowledge. The goal for the project is “to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.” They claim that one of they key ideas behind Knol is to highlight the authors, whose names they feel have been omitted from an evolving Web up to this point. Also, they believe that knowing who wrote the article will allow users to make better use of its content.

At the heart of it, a Knol is simply a Web page, with Google providing all the necessary tools for writing, editing, etc., and writers simply needing only to write. Additionally, Knol features community-like tools, such as comments, questions, edits, additional content, ratings and more. Finally, authors of Knols can include ads on their content, and Google will provide a significant revenue share from the proceeds with the author.

Here is a screen shot of Knol (click on image to view complete Knol) :

One can’t help but ponder the future of Wikipedia in the event of a successful Knol project from Google. While I don’t think Wikipedia is going anywhere anytime soon, Knol can certainly chip away at its market share. A large gripe regarding Wikipedia, particularly in the academic community (which is probably one of its largest user bases) , is the lack of any authoritative sources. Time after time my university professors would not allow Wikipedia as a source because they claimed it lacked any scholar validity. Knol would change that, as the articles are written by authoritative sources, and their names are plastered right across the page like a book. In my opinion this ought to be Google’s target niche if they want to enjoy some rapid success with Knol. Also, it will be interesting to see where Knol pages show up in Google SERPS, as typically Wikipedia pages do rather well and can be found on the first page.

In any event, it’s more information and knowledge for us as end-users, so it’s really a win-win no matter who is number one.

Don’t starting putting money away just yet, but Engadget is reporting a Dutch rumor that TomTom is working on a GPS module for the iPhone. No further details are available at this time, but from the picture it seems as though it would be an add-on device that plugs into the docking port on the bottom of the iPhone — the same place you plug in the charger.

Although there’s no hard evidence, Engadget does point out that the highway depicted on the photo is a favorite for internal TomTom test studies. Also, we know that Apple is opening up the iPhone to third party development in February, and we know that some companies have received an early copy of the SDK in order to get a jump start on development. Certainly TomTom, as one of the leading GPS companies, would have received a copy. So although there isn’t any indisputable evidence, this one is certainly a possibility.