Week 1 of the college football season is over and the Cal Bears should be moving up in the rankings from their pre-season number 12 spot thanks to a great performance at home against Tennessee. I was at the game with a few friends and I have to say I have never seen our stadium so packed, so loud and so intense. Not even when the #1 Washington Huskies came into town in 1991 or even when we beat USC in 2003. Great job Bears fans. Next live game for me will be at UCLA then back up to Berkeley for the showdown with USC for all the Pac-10 marbles. Here’s to the Bears best season ever!
Today, I found 2 interesting tidbits of information about the iPhone:
1) Mashable is reporting that a company called iphonesimfree (I think they are a company because their website claims they will sell individual licenses of the software) claims to have developed a software only hack to unlock the iPhone for use with a carrier other that AT&T which uses SIM cards (T-Mobile here in the US) anywhere in the world.
This makes me want to buy an iPhone. As a staunch supporter of Apple products, I haven’t been able to justify putting down my BlackBerry for an iPhone. The BlackBerry handles Microsoft Exchange email, contacts and calender so well (all wireless) and the iPhone is not yet reported to provide such a seamless solution. That being said, I would consider buying one as an iPod, WiFi/wireless browser on the go and guess what, my phone will still ring because the SIM from my BalackBerry will be in the iPhone when I’m using it. Why the hell not. Tons of people carry around 2 devices. Why not have one of them be the most versatile and useful devices ever built? Besides, I have a BlackBerry Pearl and its very small. The only drawback I can see right now is that I think it will be a pain in the ass to constantly switch the SIM back and forth.
2) NewTeeVee is reporting that a company called Veveo has created a very good video search engine for mobile devices. That is great in and of itself but the best part is that the service also decodes videos in all formats and converts them to mp4 files so they can be played on the iPhone. Now all of the video sites have a shot at dominating mobile….yeah right.
I have always wondered what the 11-99 Foundation meant on the license plate frames all over the place. Well, I finally decided to Google it and found the answer. Check it out here.
I have bought four of Apple’s mighty mice and three of the four have had the scroll ball completely die or at least temporarily stop working. Sometimes the scroll ball on the mighty mouse works for scroll up but not down and sometimes vice versa. Sometimes it does not work at all. I really like Apple’s products but I think they have done a great job at creating perception that their products don’t break or malfunction. I must say though, that the folks at the Apple retail store have been good to me. They have replaced two of the three mice that malfunctioned (I have not taken in the third mouse yet). Also, a little story that I’m sure Apple will not be happy about my sharing: Last summer I bought the 17″ MacBook pro with the Intel Core Duo processor and had it about three months. Then the new MacBook Pro came out with the Core2 Duo and I took my MacBook Pro into the Apple store in Fashion Island in Newport Beach and told them I would have waited the three months had I known that the new processors were coming out and they gave me a new MacBook Pro with the Core2 Duo right on the spot. Pretty awesome.
Well I’m back from my 2 week whirlwind tour of Europe and I must say it was awesome. Started out in a city in the south of Germany called Freiburg then on to Berlin. Next we moved on to Rome and finally London. London was my favorite place of all because the City is very alive, like New York but with great history and sites to visit. I took a ton of pictures in all places. I had about 150 pictures of Freiburg and I accidentally deleted the entire memory card on the camera - oops. That was a huge bummer. I took a bunch more pictures in Berlin and posted them on Flickr here. We bought a new camera in Berlin and started using it in Rome. We took about 350 pictures in Rome and London and then the memory card on the new camera (Formel1 brand - piece of shit) went haywire and the camera kept saying “memory card error”. Shit. I took it to a computer store and was not able to get the computer to recognize the card. Shit. Then some guy tried it in some special machine and could not get it to register. Shit. Now the card resides at OC Data Recovery where I will have to pay several hundred dollars if they are successful in getting my pictures off the card. Shit. If they get the pictures, I’ll post them to Flickr too. I’m seriously thinking about buying a regular film camera - not really but at least I could not delete the photos or fuck up the memory card and loose everything. So I bought another SD card (SanDisk this time) in London and took a few more pictures there. I’ll post those tomorrow.
What is up with the comments? I have only got 2 comments on my blog so far and they are both fairly harsh. I think its pretty funny actually. Funny that someone is taking the time to read my blog and even funnier that they would take the time to post a comment. The most recent comment had a link attached to the post. You will be asked “Are you ready to get pumped?” If you click “Yes” you are in. If you click “No” you are redirected to Oprah.com. That is pretty funny actually. Are you kidding me? The Official Ninja Website? I did not realize that the ancient ways of the ninja promoted hosting internet sites. Times, they are a changing. It used to be that ninjas hovered in the shadows of the dark forests, only coming out to fight evil or whatever they do. Apparently, ninjas are up on web 2.0 tech and play video games too. Interesting. Here’s a little quote from his “about the author” page:
Robert Hamburger has a black belt in Street Fighter 2 and a second degree black belt in Mortal Kombat 1-3. He can kick or punch the wall without feeling pain. He has studied ninjas for several weeks and has watched a bunch of movies about them. Robert lives with a bunch of hot babes and porks them whenever he wants.
I can’t believe this guy of all people is giving me shit. Classic.
Update 8/14/07: This clown Robert Hamburger keeps posting comments on this blog. I think I’m getting harassed by a 12 year old kid. Again, classic. The internet at its core.
It sure has been a while since I wrote something here. I spend so much time reading other people’s blogs that I don’t take the time to update my own. Well, since my last post I have resumed my life full time in the real estate business. I have two guys in the office training to be brokers and I have high hopes for their success. They are both smart guys and seem to be working hard. The hardest part is maintaining the time to focus on my own business opportunities. I knew that training two agents and running an office would deplete my deal flow some but I need to obtain a better balance between business generation and business operations. I do feel that I have gained some clarity on the short-term future of the business: direction and goals. Two pretty big things in my book. I think my vacation in Hawaii helped to clear my mind and allow me to refocus on the task at hand.
I have been staying up to date with the tech news lately. Some interesting new companies coming up and some interesting deals have gone down lately. Particularly interesting is Google’s acquisition of Grand Central. It will be interesting to see where they can take it. One phone number for the rest of your life + gmail + google calendar - Google is well on their way to be a one-stop shop for all of our communication (and information) needs. Google will soon be in a position where they know more about each of us as individuals than our spouses do! Also of particular interest is Brad Greenspan’s recent bid for a 25% stake in Dow Jones. I’d love to see it happen because it will make for a good story and certainly be more interesting to follow that a Murdoch operated entity. Not to mention a more tech-savvy operator with a strengthening Asian presence.
Okay - got my new (revised) header up. Changed “Win Something” to “Say Something” to go along with my mantra of “attempting to SAY SOMETHING that hasn’t already been said”. Hopefully you like some of the things I have to say and if you don’t, then post a comment and tell me I’m off my rocker. Many of my posts will pertain to the commercial real estate industry because that is my area of expertise but I will try to cover some of my thoughts on internet and mobile technology also because I love the space. I know nobody is reading this at this point so if you happen to find me on Technorati, stop by and say something. In the meantime, here is a cool video of The Wedge in Newport Beach on a big day! These dudes are crazy!
Hey - I’m just getting started on my blog again. I needed to clean up my hosting server and decided to trash all of my old files and start from scratch. Not sure if that was the best idea but I don’t have a choice at this point. Here is my standard internet picture so you know what I look like.
