Best and easiest suggestion for iPhone

Apple,
After about 15 minutes, I gave up on finding a link to submit this directly to you.

The problem:
In the philosophy of the iphone touchscreen, my finger controls what is happening on the screen, a tap opens something, a flip advances the screen very quickly and a double finger motion zooms in and out. So why is it that when I press the screen and turn the iphone sideways, that the iphone - not my finger - does the controlling?

The solution:
When your finger is pressed to the screen, ASR (automatic screen rotation) is temporarly disabled. This would be great for reading in safari when you are in bed and lying to the side.

You're welcome.

Re: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and me

For some reason, you can't respond to certain Nytimes articles. I recently read this this article in the New York Times. While the underlying message is spot on, I couldn't help but disagree with two things the author mentioned. First, that Google created the Android-based G1 Phone to compete with Microsoft, as if Microsoft were the only competition (Symbian doesn't exist?). Second, this paragraph:

And don’t forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature. Microsoft and Google have yet to do something like that.

Are we to assume that Google's gmail did not revolutionize the web-mail based market? Or maybe we should assume that it wasn't mature when gmail entered, even though now, even years after Gnail's launch, Yahoo's Y!Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail are no where even close to the comfort level produced by Google's Gmail: I have lots of space, free pop/IMAP access, a working (not broken or unusable) interface, the ability to freely and easily check my email on my phone. That sounds like a revolution of a previously "mature" market to me.

Caps Lock

These are the rules:
You should always shout the first letter of your sentences, you should shout the pronoun "I" whereever it is in the sentence. Proper names should also begin with a shout. You should shout every letter of acronyms.

Spider Man 583 (26 MX)

On the cover the the English version, spiderman says "Sheesh, guy gets elected and suddenly he's everywhere".

On the Mexican verion it says "Hey, if you get to be on my cover, can I be on the dollar bill?"

Download (from) - Upload (to)

I don't usually like to talk about deterioration in language, but this one seems unexcusable. Up and down still have very very vibrant binary meanings. So why is it that the words upload and download are being used interchangeably? Download means someone else has something and you want it, you load the file from a member of a network who is hierarchically above you (you need it, they have it), you take it down. Upload means they don't have it and you want them to have it.

I uploaded my videos which I made to Youtube.
I downloaded the Windows Updates from Microsoft.

Upload and download are for internet, because it deals with the hierarchy of the internet.
Computer components such as scanners, usb drives and ipod have no hierarchical relationship: they are merely extensions of the computer itself. Here the words are "transfer" and "copy". Interestingly, transfer is a word which can be used in every situation. I can transfer files from Yahoo and to Yahoo. I can transfer my photos from my camera to my computer or from my computer to my camera. iTunes transfers files from my computer to my iPod, and data from my iPod to my computer. I don't understand the difference between trigonometry and calculus, so I just say "maths". I know that you might not understand the difference between upload and download, so why not say "transfer"?

Help me! Poison Ivy.

I'm a little dense. The medical field is always using terms which go way over my head and with the rapid pace that things are changing, who can keep up?

For example, I was using Google Trends to check out a theory I had. I thought that the lines for Zanfel and Poison Ivy would show where summer was. I was, of course, right. This was when I noticed the article in the latter entry that caught my attention: Dermatologist Debunks Poison Ivy Myths. Dermatologist? That's the skin guys, right?

Here's a bit I found intriguing, which is why I need help:
"[Dr. Jeffery] Dover said that soap and water is best. Wash your body and your clothes immediately."

Which is what reminded me of something I once read:

What not to do

Of course, I'm not dense. The above book was published by the American Medical Association in 1987. I get it - things change and the American Academy of Dermatology happens to agree with Dr. Dover. The idea is that when you hear the folk wisdom that everyone is too willing to offer, be sure to check on it yourself from reliable sources.

In a related note, Zanfel and it's generic equivalents actually do work if you shell out the $25-40 it costs and follow the odd instructions on the package. I've used it the past few times I've gotten a case of Poison Ivy and it clears up the rash in a few hours.

Fringe - The sad turn.

I love Fringe. But lately, I've been loving it less and less. This past episode almost had me give up on it. I don't want to sound picky: when I searched for Fringe and the floating letters, I was expecting to see other people just as unhappy at their decline as I was, but what I saw was just the opposite. People actually want the letters to stop!

In the first two episodes of Fringe, I thought the floating words of orientation were amazing. Particularly when the words were no longer the focus of attention but still appeared in the background. This, for me, showed that the words were actually part of the diegesis. The show is all about things you and I do not fully comprehend, so the words stood as a way of saying making you ask "Are they really there? or Why couldn't they be?"

Just as you are asked to believe that a computer program can liquefy your brains, you are being asked to believe that large gray letters might be able to exist in the actual environment of the scene. After the second episode the floating letters never appeared in the background, but you still got them. In this past episode, I had to wait about 30 minutes before the first letters appeared and even then, they only appeared twice. So if any of the producers read my blog, I beg of you, please don't remove this unique element of the show from it!

Update 05/13
The letters are back and better than ever. I love this great aspect of this exciting show!