Israel

Spending the week in Israel for work, so have a few photos of the trip so far. It’s been a great experience so far, perfect weather, and lots of good stories.

Greatest Living American

The power of SEO for good! Fans of Stephen Colbert have done a very good job getting some of Colbert’s trademarks ranked well.

• Greatest Living American
• Truthiness
• Giant Brass Balls

Thanks Ben.

Second Ave Subway Market Forecast

On April 12th, ground was broken on the Second Ave Subway line, a much promised new subway going up the east side of Manhattan.

SeekingAlpha looked at the Second Ave subway as a leading market forecast, and created the graph above. This all started with the Post’s Curse of the 2nd Ave article.

In order to test this argument, we did a news search dating back to 1925 of all times where either funds were approved or construction began on the Second Avenue line, and as the chart shows, more often than not, the periods coincided with short (or in some cases long) term peaks in the market.

Doubloogle

As a follow-up to my DoubleSoft post, looks like Google beat out Microsoft for Doubleclick. Looks like Real Media Open AdStream just got a bigger competitor. You have to wonder how serious Microsoft is about getting back in the game. It’s not like they don’t have a sizable war chest, but I guess it comes down to their ability to make money on a deal, and I’m sure Google has a higher threshold.

I am not concerned yet over the size of Google. I have not seen the predatory practices that I saw from Microsoft, that created my great dislike for their monopoly. More power to Google and Apple.

Hoboken Flood

or Have Boat will Travel

For the close to six years I have spent in or around Hoboken, flooding is nothing new. After any decent storm it is common to see many intersections a big puddle. This is partially due to Hoboken being at sea level (the area used to be an island surrounded by swamp) and the complete lack of infrastructure building by the city. This is Hudson county by the way and huge amounts of luxury development don’t require city services it seems.

But this morning was something special, I have never seen so much water in this Mile Square. Some photos for your viewing pleasure:

Alanis Morissette “My Humps”

A cover I would of never thought of…

Thanks to julioangelortiz.net.

Audiovox SMT5600

I just got the Audiovox SMT5600 to use as my business phone. I got used to using the Crackberry (Blackberry 6280) at my prior job and liked the handheld net and email access (and the worst possible IM client I have ever seen). I have been pondering the Blackberry Pearl or Samsung Blackjack. I was also thinking of the Cingular 8525 given the full keyboard. I didn’t really want to spend the $500-600 for any of these, sans contract, since I would like to save up for the iPhone when it gets out.

But for a phone from 2004, I am impressed with the SMT5600. It is a the perfect size that I was looking for, about the same as most candybar phones (4.2 x 1.8 x 0.6 inches) and much smaller then the Blackberry-sized phones above. It has a nice big and bright screen and powers with USB/Firewire (like the Blackberry). The downside is that its not a full keyboard but the predictive T9 system seems to be pretty good and figuring out what I mean. I feel a little dirty going to the Windows Mobile darkside, but being able to navigate the phone as a USB drive is handy.

The Exchange Server integration is great so will handle my needs well.

Review on MobileTechReview for the HTC Typhoon 5600 (OEM maker).
Some Tips for the SMT5600.