I then got a phone call from CNN saying they wanted to know more!  I told them some more details and a few hours later the following segment aired with part of my video!  It’s also in a video montage here http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/weather/2009/12/09/natpkg.irpt.snow.reports.cnn.html

The clip that they aired was a shortened version though. I wish they would have shown it in the center of the intersection when they all celebrate that they got it there!

This Snowman video that someone else recorded is amusing too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1grCwOWYTU

UPDATE**** They aired it again! Both clips are below!

UPDATE**** Apparently they are airing it on local news channels all over the country!

One of my Faculty just got a new iPhone 3gs and came to me to activate it and configure it with our Exchange server. No problem! I’ve done this before… He used to have the Blackberry with full Enterprise Data package. We received the phone today. I call the number on the sheet it came with to activate it. The robot says all is good. All is NOT good. Sure the internet and everything works, until I go to Voice mail. It starts dialing a number, immediately I think oh, we just have to set it up. Wrong. All attempts fail.

I stay on the line to talk to a rep. No biggie… Then she notices that the plan didn’t transfer over a data plan! He just has a voice plan on the iPhone… I didn’t think that was even possible!?! She said ok, please hold I’ll look into what i can do… suddenly the phone I called from (also an iPhone) says “Call Failed”. ughhh… AT&T fail! I wait for her to call back… then I suddenly get a voice mail with out it ringing (all bars in service) AT&T fail again! . She tells me to call back the generic 800 number, so I don’t even get to talk to her – the person who knew what happened…

I call back on a land line this time, and get another person on the phone… she seems understanding, however because my name isn’t on the business account she can’t make the change. Oh by the way – it’s after 5pm on a Friday, so the people who are on the account are all home for the weekend – and I have none of their numbers! She tries calling the numbers listed anyway but no answer (big surprise)… and won’t tell me their names out of policy… She said they would call back Monday and contact them, or I could have them call if I could get a hold of them (yeah right.. doubtful)

So where does this leave us? With an iPhone that can send and receive calls (at least it can do that) – no Voice mail and a non existent data package that will be racking up a huge bill over the weekend, because since it doesn’t have a data plan on it currently, it is set to pay per download. Which means big fee’s, because I already synced his email, contacts, and calendars from exchange. They had better take that off the bill. After-all, it was their system that failed.

OK, that’s my rant for the day. Time to enjoy the Friday night!

Dan Aykroyd is coming to Madison, WI on Wed March 25th to promote his new vodka, “Crystal Head”.  The background of it as explained at crystalheadvodka.com is similar to the Indiana Jones theme.  Dan is a long time believer in the supernatural and continues this trend with the stories of the Crystal Skulls found throughout the ages on our planet.  Each one of these bottles costs $50 and is apparently “diamond filtered”, though I’m not sure what that does other than sound cool.  Dan will be at the West side Woodman’s market from 4pm – 6pm signing the skulls.

In a phone interview Saturday from Minneapolis, Aykroyd said he is willing to sign other items, including “Blues Brothers” and “Ghost Busters” memorabilia, as long as fans arrive early, and understand his primary purpose is selling vodka.
“I’m gonna sign about 700 skulls this afternoon,” he said Saturday.

I may need to get my Ghostbusters t-shirt or pillowcase signed, hahaha.

[ digg it ]

link

MySpace has now teamed up with FotoFlexer and has photo editing tools directly on the site.  That’s right!  If you don’t have Photoshop available, you can do simple editing right on MySpace (cropping, resizing, remove red-eye, etc).  So far it is only available to users in the U.S. but will be rolled out internationally soon.

[ digg it ]

link

As reported by Brian Briggs at BBspot.com, The Twitter business model is finally changing.  Up until now, Twitter was a free service that didn’t charge a penny.  It didn’t even have ads on the site.  Today they announced that is all changing.  It’s been rumored for a while and now they are creating premium accounts in 4 tiered accounts. Though they will be keeping the basic free account as well.  Since the article didn’t have any direct links to the confirmation, I’m wondering if it is a prank or not.  What do you think?

• Sparrow ($5/month) – Users get 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.

• Dove ($15/month) – Users get 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” T-shirt.

• Owl ($50/month) – Users get 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” hoodie.

• Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.

link

[digg it]

Months before the iPhone OS 3.0 is released to the masses, one entrepreneurial developer has managed to crack into the phone’s Internet tethering capabilities. Steve Troughton-Smith unearthed the iPhone’s tethering preferences pane, connected his iPhone to his Mac via USB, and was allowed to use the phone as a modem. Problem is, he has no idea how he did it. From Twitter, he says, “To all: I have no idea how I did it. Sorry! I was hacking around with APNs in the Carrier.bundle itcc file.”

Internet tethering was rumored to be a feature on OS 3.0, and during the iPhone OS 3.0 conference, Senior VP for iPhone Software Scott Forstall said the OS 3.0 supported Internet tethering. Despite the iPhone’s capability, tethering was never made into an option.

link