Hey, I just want to post a couple of links for you. If you are interested in seeing what I am reading, or subscribe to a list of articles that I think are important or interesting, you can do that. If you want to use your browser to look at what has tickled my fancy lately, take a look at my Google Reader stream.

If you want to cut out the middle man and make this whole thing automatic, you can subscribe to my link stream. It will allow you to have the “MurDog Approved” sites be sent directly to your feed reader.

I like to read the feeds, so it’s not a big deal to simply share the stories I find interesting. I can serve as a filter for you to help you stay up on what is really going on out there on the web.

There are no hard and fast rules to my feed… it is simply a river of links that happened to catch my eye. Have fun.

Nokia has recently announced that it is opening a new online music store called Ovi. Apparently that means something like “Open Door” in Finnish…who knows.

All this is happening at the same time that Sony has announced that it is shuttering its online music play Connect.

So let me get this straight, Sony, who has its own record label and has a lot of experience in the music business is throwing in the towel while a cell phone maker is getting started… hmmm. It sounds to me that Nokia’s music store is on death watch before it even gets started. I don’t think it will work.

If you read blogs, listen to podcasts or spend anytime on message boards you will have no doubt come across someone who is complaining about their cable company.

I listen to a number of podcasts that originate out of San Francisco. They have Comcast Cable, and nearly everyone complains about it. Comcast has a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) they make available to their customers. It has resulted in howls of pain and hours of misery. I did some investigation to find out what DVR box Comcast gives to its customers, and as it turns out, it is the same Motorola box that Cox Cable gives to its customers (at least in Northwest Arkansas). This gave me pause because over all I have been very happy with my experience.

The Comcast San Franciscans complained about the awful user interface on the DVR. The user interface on my box seemed pretty good, even polished. It works pretty well. My only complaint may be that it gets a little sluggish when the box is tuned to an HD channel, but other than that I’m happy. I was vexed.

A couple weeks back, I was down in Little Rock, Arkansas. They have Comcast down there, and the people I was visiting had the DVR in question. I asked if I could fire it up and see what all the commotion was about. I was a little nervous that I was going to see the interface that I have come to like on my DVR.

The DVR booted up, and I pushed the guide button, and it became very clear why the Comcast San Franciscans were howling. The interface was horrible, ugly, less useful and less intuitive. It’s nice to know that I am not insane.

I Like Cox Cable

I have been noticing more and more that I am increasing pleased with my cable company. I know, it’s almost unheard of these days, someone who is happy with a cable company, so that is why I am blogging it. People are very vocal when they are angry or dissatisfied. Today I feel like being the opposite of that.

Cox Cable is doing a great job of providing Cable. We have a ton of standard def channels…way up into the hundreds. We have a growing assortment of HD channels, and now on-demand programming. Lately they have had a steady stream of upgrades. I am very impressed.

There I hope that counteracts some of the negativity that is out there in the blogosphere. I am not being paid by Cox to say this… I am just pleased.

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Now playing: Nickel Creek - Stumptown
via FoxyTunes

Here is a good article about making good presentations using PowerPoint or other electronic image regurgitators. It has a list of rules that help you to think through your visual message.

I am posting this mainly so that I don’t lose the link. I like his rules of presentation…

What what?? I am posting this using my cell phone as a modem. I finally got it to work! I tried for over an hour unsuccessfully to get my computer to see the Internet through my phone. It wasn’t until I went into the settings of the phone and change the USB’s default settings to ‘Modem’ instead of ‘ActiveSync’. Here is how I did it.

Before You Do Anything…
In order to use you AT&T 3G phone as a modem, you have to download AT&Ts Communication Manager. Normally, I try not to use third-party connection management programs because they are usually poorly written. In this case, you need it because it installs the correct drivers and creates the needed dial-up setting.

I have done some testing, once I installed the AT&T Communication Manager, I connected to the Internet without it, and my Samsung Blackjack kept dropping the connection. Once I turned the Communication Manager back on and used it to connect to the net, all was fine.

After you have the AT&T CM installed, you need to make these changes to your phone:

1. Click the ‘Start’ Button on the phone.
2. Click on ‘Settings”
3. Click on ‘Connections’
4. Click on ‘USB’
5. Set the ‘USB Connection setting:’ to ‘Modem’*
6. Open the AT&T Communication Manager Program on your computer
7. BEFORE you connect you phone, click on ‘Device Wizard’ in the ‘Tools’ Menu
8. Follow the instructions in the wizard.
9. Once connected to you phone, click the ‘Connect’ button in the AT&T Communication Manager and then…Boom, you should be up and running!!!!

* If you use ActiveSync, your phone will warn you that ActiveSync will no longer work. Just remember to change your USB back to ‘ActiveSync’ before you try to sync again.

I also went into the task manager and turned off the ActiveSync program just for good measure.

After I did these things, the AT&T Connection Manager saw the phone as a Modem and voila… here I am blogging using the phone as my connection to the tubes!!!

What a deal…

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I just tested the speed, and they are comparable to what I was seeing the other night when I tested the speed using the browser on the phone itself. I am getting around 750kbps down and 120 kbps up. Plenty fast for blogging and email and light browsing. I am ecstatic!

I have no good reason, but I want like ten of these things….badly.

If you have any interest in smart phones, especially Palm-based ones, then you need to read this incredibly thoughtful post from engadget. It was posted way back on August 21st, and a lot of you who actually keep up with your RSS feeds have already read or at least heard about this post, but it is incredible.

Peter Rojas, Ryan Block, and Joshua Topolsky have done an exceedingly good job at calling Palm to the mat on their lack of innovation, and ridiculous grip on past successes.

I have a lot of friends who have Treos, and all of them have MAJOR complaints about their phone, and the scary thing is Palm doesn’t seem to know that they are quickly becoming irrelevant.

I remember 4 years ago when Treos were all the rage. They were an exceptional answer to the lack of choice in the email phone market. Blackberries were great if all you did was email. I knew a number of people who carried Blackberries and a separate phone. Treo answered that problem. The issue is Palm hasn’t done very much since then, and all their competitors have.

There are a ton of sexy, thin smartphones out there, and people would have to be stupid to invest in a Treo now. Palm has to do something, and Engadget is calling them on it, and I applaud them.

Sorry this post is so late compared to the original article. I have been incredibly busy…too busy to blog.

Now that I have all the 3G goodness, I am going to use it with my lappy (laptop computer). I figured out how to do it and I blogged about it in a previous post.

Now that AT&T rolled out 3G in Northwest Arkansas, I tried to link up with those instructions and was unable to get it to work. I just did some investigation on the AT&T site and found these instructions.

I don’t have my USB cable here at the house so I can’t give it a try, but rest assured that in the coming days I will blog about my experience. It will be awesome to spread this high speed bandwidth goodness wherever I go with my aging HP lappy.