If you want to hack your iPhone to work on other GSM based cell networks, and you are trying to go the hardware hack route then be careful because apparently the iPhone will quickly transform from your friendly, sexy phone into a Bic lighter.

Check out this article on Engadget about a guy who basically lit $699 on fire!

I mean… is AT&T really that bad??

I just found a great little site while looking for places to use my OpenID. It is called Menuism and it allows users to rate their local restaurants. It comes as no surprise that I was the first one in Northwest Arkansas to find the site so took the time to rate AQ Chicken House and Famous Daves.

Obviously, there are myriad restaurants in the area, so if you get a chance, put a review of your favorite restaurant… the life you save may be your own.

New iPods will be announced tomorrow, and none-to-early for me. Currently I have a fourth generation iPod that is on its last legs. Many times, I will be listening to a song or podcast and halfway through, it will simply skip to the next song. At other times, I will navigate to a song and my iPod takes forever to finally start playing. While it is searching, you can hear audible clicking as my hard drive tries and tries to find the MP3 file.I don’t know how long it will hold out. Hopefully long enough for me to save up the green to purchase one of the new iPods.

I hope the new iPods are cool….ie. have enough storage for my music collection. Apple has been edging ever closer to using just flash memory in its iPods. Right now, 8GB isn’t enough for me, and I don’t want to spend $499 to get 20GB. Also, the 5th generation iPod was the completely perfected version of the original iPod. It was as good as that form factor would ever get. I have a sneaking suspicion that the new iPod will be the first second (iPhone) generation of a new iPod interface. I don’t want to buy this one and have it be completely out-done by the 7th gen… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Whatever the form factor, I will probably be getting one.

I just deployed OpenID on my blog. I don’t know if that really means anything to you the reader other than the fact that you can sign-up as a user of this blog, and have my blog remember you to make leaving comments easier in the future.

I deployed it so that I could test it for the “professional” blogs that I administrate at the office.

What is OpenID?

OpenID is an up and coming identification technology that helps you manage your online identification. It allows you to control what different websites know about you. For instance, at the OpenID provider that I use, MyOpenID, I have a number of ID cards that I have filled out. It allows me to choose how much a website knows about me. For instance, I have an ID card called minimal that only gives my nickname and my gender. For the most part, this is the ID card that I use. I don’t want to give out large chunks of my identity to sites that don’t really need it.

I also have a ID card that is full disclosure. It is for sites that need more information, and more importantly, sites that I trust implicitly.

How It Works

Here is how it works. As I have written above, I have entered my ID info at my OpenID provider. Now when I go to a site that supports OpenID, all I have to do is enter my OpenID URL, which is murray.williams.name. The site that I am trying to enter then asks MyOpenID who I am. I am then redirected to MyOpenID who asks my permission to give out one of my ID cards, and which of my ID cards I want to give. I log in, and choose whether or not to allow the site access to my ID cards and which ID card I want to give. My browser then goes back to the original website that I am trying to enter and voila I am in.

The upside is now the site I wanted to log in to now has some information about me that I didn’t have to enter. Because I have filled in all the information at MyOpenID.com once it tells the new site all it needs to know. That means I don’t have to fill in web form after web form. It is very handy.

The Downside to OpenID

The biggest problem with OpenID is that we are still on the frontier. Very few sites have deployed an OpenID option on their site. That means that there aren’t many opportunities to actually use the system.

The Good News

There are a number of companies that are starting to investigate deploying an OpenID service. Microsoft has recently released a service called Card Space that allows you to do a lot things I have described above right on your computer. I have heard that it should be possible in the future to connect that to your OpenID service. I have also heard that Verisign is also deploying a new identification service with the addition of a keychain faub that allows you to use your OpenID with the added security of RSA numbers.

Even if you have no idea what any of that means, the bottom line is that some very well known and big organizations are beginning to embrace OpenID. Once they are on-board, slow but steady growth will begin.

If you want to read more about OpenID, check-out an earlier blog post where I wrote about my initial feelings about OpenID.

By the way… this is the first post to my blog I have ever written using my OpenID log-in credentials.

I don’t know what the origin of this post is… I didn’t write it but on a lot of the points the author is right on.

For those of you who don’t live in Northwest Arkansas, we are in a region that is seeing unprecedented growth which means there are a lot of transplants who are used to driving in the big city driving right next to locals who have never left to two county area… needless to say, hilarity ensues.

DRIVING IN NW ARKANSAS

If your NW ARK map is more than a few weeks old, throw it out and buy a new one. If you’re in Rogers or Bentonville and your map is one day old, then it is already obsolete.

Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. NW ARK has its own version of traffic rules.

All directions start with “Get on 540″ which has no beginning and no end. Everything in NW ARK is “just off 540 or 71B.”

The morning rush hour is from 6 to 10. The evening rush hour is from 3 to 7. Friday’s rush hour starts Thursday morning.

If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended, cussed out and possibly shot. When you are the first one on the starting line, count to five when the light turns green before going to avoid crashing with all the drivers running the red light in cross-traffic.

Construction on 540 is a way of life and a permanent form of entertainment.

All unexpected or strange sights are explained by the phrase, “Oh, we’re in Lowell.”

If someone actually has a turn signal on, it is probably a factory defect.

All old ladies with blue hair in tank cars have the right of way. PERIOD.

Highway 540 in rush hour is the NWA equivalent of NASCAR. Just shut up and drive like the rest of us.

The minimum acceptable speed on 540 is 85. Anything less is considered downright sissy.

If it’s 90 degrees, Thanksgiving must be next weekend. If it’s 10 degrees and snowing, it’s homecoming at U of A. If it’s rained 6 inches in the last hour, and it’s a Saturday, it’s opening day for garage sales. If it is fall Bikes, Blues and BBQ is going on everywhere at all times.

All parks, stadiums, arenas, airports, etc., are conveniently located as far away from EVERYTHING as possible so as to allow for ample parking on grassy areas.

With these simple rules in mind, you are now ready to drive in NW ARK.

Please try and keep up

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