Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry phones, couldn’t have timed their new phone better.

I know the BlackBerry isn’t as sexy as the iPhone, but until Apple and AT&T part ways, it’s what I’m sticking with.  I’ve been using my BlackBerry 8830 since October 2007, and while I’ve loved it, I’ve been getting that upgrade itch.  As I was looking around for my next phone, I wasn’t finding anything I liked, and was actually starting to wonder what I was going to do when my upgrade time was officially upon me.

Enter the BlackBery Tour.

Also known as the 9630, the BlackBerry Tour is the direct successor to my 8830 in that it is the next generation of world phone.  This means that due to the multiple bands the phone uses, I can use the phone in 185 countries around the planet.  For those who have not had the fun experience of travelling with your cell phone to other countries… they don’t work.  The United States decided to be different from the rest of the world… just like that damned metric system.  So your phone is pretty much useless outside of our country, so this makes life far easier.  Not that I travel outside the USA that often, but it’s still nice to have.

They really went all out on this upgrade, and I am most excited about the camera as that has been one of the things I have really wanting in my next phone.  Here is the official list from the press release.

• 3.2 MP camera with flash, variable zoom, image stabilization, autofocus and video recording(i)
• Full HTML web browser, including support for streaming audio and video (RTSP)
• Advanced media player for videos, pictures and music, a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and support for the Bluetooth(R) Stereo Audio Profile (A2DP/AVCRP)
• 256MB Flash memory
• Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD/SDHC memory card slot, supporting cards of up to 16 GB today and expected to support next generation 32GB cards when available
• Built-in GPS with support for geotagging, BlackBerry(R) Maps and other location based applications and services
• BlackBerry(R) Media Sync allows customers to quickly and easily synch music from iTunes(R) and Windows Media Player with the smartphone(ii)
• Premium phone features including voice activated dialing, enhanced background noise cancellation, a low-distortion speakerphone, and Bluetooth (2.0) support for hands-free use with headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals
• Preloaded DataViz(R) Documents to Go(R), allowing users to edit Microsoft(R) Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly on the handset
• Easy mobile access to Facebook(R), MySpace and Flickr(R), as well as popular instant messaging services including BlackBerry(R) Messenger, Yahoo!(R) IM, AIM(R), Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger(TM)
• Support for BlackBerry App World(TM), featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include travel, productivity, entertainment, games, social networking & sharing, news & weather, and more
• BlackBerry(R) Internet Service allows access to up to 10 supported personal and corporate email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts
• BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server provides advanced security and IT administration features within IBM(R) Lotus(R) Domino(R), Microsoft(R) Exchange and Novell(R) GroupWise(R) environments
• Removable and rechargeable 1400 mAhr battery for 5 hours of talk time and 14 days of standby time

I am really excited about how many of the new features used to be optional applications, so nice to see they are watching how their users are really using the phone out in the wild.

Rumor is the phone will be release July 13th, and even though my 2 year contract isn’t up until October, they’ve already approved me for the upgrade price of $199 (it probably helps we have five lines on our account at Sprint…).  I’m ready for it, and thanks RIM for the unbelievable timing of the release.

StumbleUpon has to be one of the oddest sources of Web traffic ever invented.

For those unfamiliar with StumbleUpon (SU), it is a social bookmarking site that allows you to recommend pages to other users by giving them a “thumbs up”.  Other users can then discover pages you favorited by “stumbling” through pages people have saved.  While it can be a powerful tool for generating traffic, I find “the StumbleUpon effect” far more powerful than “the Digg effect”.

Ever since Digg took off, people have gone nuts trying to get on the front page of the site for the crush of traffic it will bring you for the time you are on the page.  The problem is that once you scroll off the front page, you get next to no residual traffic over the following months.  With StumbleUpon, you may or may not get the initial traffic rush, but you do definitely get a long simmering source of traffic.

Back on May 8th of this year I posted an article of Who Is The Best Star Trek Captain.  While the post did get some traffic during the initial few days, it quickly died off to a trickle of as few as single-digit readers some days.  Now, on Monday, June 8th, I have no clue what happened, but you can see the traffic report from during the evening below.  (click for a larger view)

I don’t normally share my traffic numbers, but this is so odd that I just had to.  What caused this explosive upswing in traffic is beyond me, but I know for sure it all came from StumbleUpon.  This isn’t the first time I have seen this happen, but it was one of the best examples of it, and with the best graphical representation of the situation.

While I have heard other bloggers talk about this bizarre jump in traffic from SU before, no one seems to completely understand what causes it, but we all enjoy it.  This is also why I have given up even caring about Digg.  Sure it’s nice to get that big bump on the first day, butI would rather continue getting traffic long after that first day, and it also tends to be traffic that will explore your site more than the typical Digg user will.

Of course this doesn’t happen to every post that gets on to StumbleUpon, but more often than not it does.  Why the bump happens in a mystery, but not one I plan on arguing with anytime soon.

Were you aware that if you go to a search engine and search on the term “porn”, you will see… wait for it… porn? I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.

Apparently some people in the social media scene are unaware of how search engines work.  You enter a term for something that interests you, you click a button, said search engine returns those results to you.  Seems like a fairly simple concept doesn’t it?  Well, apparently this was news to MG Siegler of TechCrunch and Loic Le Meur.

These two brain trusts decided to see what would happen when they went on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, and searched for “porn”.  Both Siegler and Le Meur were shocked at how easy it was to view porn, but at least Siegler threw in a disclaimer:

Now, to be fair, to see these results, you do have to manually override the adult filter on the video search, but that’s a whole 2 clicks and doesn’t require that you actually verify your age or anything.

Well, I hate to school a fellow blogger, but, has he actually gone to any other search engine and tried this?  Don’t worry, I saved everyone the work.

Well, would you look at that.  Not only does Bing have a filter you can easily disable without age verification, but so does Ask.com, Google.com and Yahoo.com.  Imagine that.

Now, on Yahoo I realized I was signed into my account, so I signed out just in case age was associated with my account, and I was still able to turn it off with no fuss.  I did the same test on Google and got the same results.  I don’t think I’ve ever had an account with Ask, so I didn’t even bother to look.

Look, I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, and I think the name Bing is so atrociously obvious as an attempt to make a verb out of themselves as to be insulting (i.e. instead of saying “I’ll Google that”, they want you to say “I’ll Bing that”… not happening).  However, to try to insinuate that they are somehow falling down in protecting people from porn when they implemented the exact same method as every other search engine is just low.  The only thing Microsoft did differently is that the videos auto-play when you hover your mouse over them instead of you having to actually click on them.  Wow… that’s… really a non-starter.

Since this “news” came out over the weekend, Bing has added an “Agree” button stating that you are over 18-years-old, and apparently some people are calling victory because you now have to click another button.  Wow, that’ll stop those pesky kids!  They’ll never think to lie and click the “Agree” button.  I mean, heck, that’s a whole extra click to get to the porn!  No one will do that!

Personally I think this is just another example of, ‘well, Microsoft made it, so it must be evil’ thinking that is so prevalent in the tech blogosphere, and quite frankly I find that sad.  As I said, I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, but to attack them for something that is really no different than any other search engine?  Well, I think that says more about the authors of the commentaries than it says about Bing.

Oprah, Oprah, Oprah.

As someone who stays on top of Internet trends during the day, I had no clue what was going on when all of a sudden the Google Hot Trends page was taken over with every imaginable permeation of “Oprah”, “chicken” and “KFC”.  Being a curious sort, it seems Oprah and Kentucky Fried Chicken (I bet they hate it when people still use their full name… tough) have teamed up to give away loads of their new “grilled” chicken.  Sure they claim it’s grilled, but I can’t help it if it looks like someone painted stripes on a piece of chicken.  Thanks Oprah for unleashing this on all of us!

To get your coupons, simply go to unthinkkfc.com, click the button that says “Print Coupon Now”… and then download the world’s most annoying coupon printer.  Seriously, in this day and age I have to download a specialized program to print a coupon?  Thanks KFC!  It does work, though, and I will say this may actually get me to swing by KFC for the first time in 5+ years, but we’ll see.  The coupons are printable up until 9:59 PM CST on May 6th, and they are redeemable through May 19th… except for Mother’s Day May 10th.  Can’t have you cheaping out on mom and giving her free “grilled” chicken, now can we?  (yes, yes, busy day in restaurants, I know… perhaps running this promo at a different time would have made more sense?)

Duncan Riley over at The Inquisitr makes a great point about how PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is sure to have an aneurysm over this promotion. At publishing time they haven’t said anything yet, which says to me they are taking a hit off the crazy pipe before they come out with their rant that makes no sense to anyone but them.  At least they are always entertaining!

Enjoy your free chicken, folks!

CobWebs episode 1 is in the can!

In addition to the blog network, Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself are going to do a weekly podcast where we talk about whatever is on our minds that week.  It could be mainly tech related news, or it might go in to other fields, who knows.  This first episode is dominated by tech news, and with three of us involved it ran well over an hour.  Overall I think for a first episode it went well, but then again, we are all experienced podcasters at this point.

- FriendFeed changed over to what had been their Beta look, and none of us are overly impressed with the color scheme or the functionality of the site.  Honestly it was almost like launching an entirely new service.  If anything, we think it will make this site go even more niche than it already was.

- Should employers use social media to look into potential employees?  Steven brought this one to the table from a post he did, and it brings up some really interesting questions for employers and employees alike.

- Why does the United States get all the cool stuff, and other countries get shafted?  Again, this is a Steven rant, but he brings up excellent points, especially since he lives in Canada and he can’t get even some of the same features on an iPhone that we get here.

- A general discussion about advertising and Twitter, with some focus on what works and what doesn’t.

Great first episode, and well worth a listen, although I will warn readers of my blog who are used to my “no cursing” rule on Scattercast does not apply to CobWebs!  Foul language is contained… send the kids to bed.

Oh… and some Canadians may be offended as we mock Steven.

If you want to listen in live, we will be recording these episodes on Wednesdays at 9 PM EST/8 PM CST.  You can find us on TalkShoe.

A 14-year-old New Jersey girl is facing up to 17 years in prison for posting nude photos of herself to MySpace.

According to a report from the Associated Press, a 14-year old girl posted 30 “explicit nude” photos of herself to her MySpace account for her boyfriend to see.  It is unclear how the Clifton, NJ police were alerted to the situation, but they were, and the girl has now been arrested on charges of possession of child pornography and distribution of child pornography.  If convicted, she faces up to 17 years in prison and having to register as a sex offender.

However, not everyone is in favor of such crimes being punished.  Maureen Kanka, mother of Megan Kanka for whom “Megan’s Law” is named, has taken the authorities to task for charging the girl.  “This shouldn’t fall under Megan’s Law in any way, shape or form,” said Mrs. Kanka.  She went on to say, “she should have an intervention and counseling, because the only person she exploited was herself.”

This has become an alarming trend where teens feel there is nothing wrong with sending sexual images of themselves to one another.  I wrote about a while back about a 15-year-old girl in a similar situation for “sexting” photos of herself to classmates.  She was also failing possible jail time and registering as a sex offender, but I think Mrs. Kanka has it right, these kids need counseling, not having their lives destroyed.  They are not exploiting any one else, and they aren’t harming anyone else, so really what is the point of making their lives a living hell for what is essentially a youtful indiscretion?

Wouldn’t society be better served by educating these kids about what they were doing is wrong?  What if this is a sign of a possibly deeper problem than just stupidity?  Will doing 17 years in prison really serve this girl any good?  All because she took some sexual photos of herself.  It makes no sense, and the authorities involved aren’t doing themselves any good either, it just makes me resent them.

Yes, children should be protected from sex offenders at all costs, but when the sex offender is yourself?  Well, there has to be some exceptions drawn somewhere to every rule, and I think this is one of those times.

The popular micro blogging service Twitter turned 3-years-old today.

I had no clue that today was the third anniversary of the service (I have enough trouble keeping track of my own important dates!) until I read it over at Mashable.  Considering some of the rough patches they have had with down time over the years, it is amazing that the service has grown to an estimated 6 million users.  The service seems to be growing each day, and attracting more and more mainstream attention with celebrities jumping on left and right, mentions in the media and so on. The service is everywhere these days it seems.  Even in the doctor’s office yesterday, the doctor was asking me what it was.

While I use the service on a regular basis (@seanpaune), I constantly worry for its future.  To date they have still not monetized the service in any way, and their only money seems to come out of endless rounds of venture capital financing.  With the economy in the stat it is currently, it is hard to imagine that VCs are going to continue to be so free with those dollars for much longer.  Considering the number of ways you can access Twitter (text, API calls, web interface, etc), they have to burn through an enormous amount of bandwidth, something that is never cheap.

So, three years on, where is the monetization plan, Twitter?  Why aren’t you at least doing some text ads of some type?  I think if they were tastefully done, something that would not be that difficult in my opinion, I don’t think you would run into too much user resistance to the idea.  We want Twitter to keep moving along and existing, if it means ads, it means ads, we honestly won’t be that upset with you!  Heck, I think we might all welcome it as it would mean that we can continue to enjoy your service!  And we all know what happens when we have to go without Twitter for too long…

Any business making it past its first year is always something to celebrate, but I honestly worry if Twitter will be here for number four… and number five… and so on.  Even if you don’t want to implement the plan yet, could you at least tell your user community, “Yes, we have one, and we will begin it when the time is right.”  For now, we don’t even know if a plan exists!  It’s not that we want you to spill secrets, it’s your business and you shouldn’t compromise it, but come on, just give us some sort of reassurance as to what the future is like for your service.  The community is investing a lot of time and energy into you, and I would hate to think that we are doing all of this and will wake one morning to you just not being there.

Barring all of that… HAPPY THIRD BIRTHDAY!… now go make some money!

If you’re considering using DreamHost as your web host… don’t.

Back in August of 2007, I wrote a post singing the praises of DreamHost, and how for the first time I ever I had actually stayed with a web host through an entire contract.  I was really happy with them, and I was acutally renewing my contract for another two years of service.

Well, that ended up being one of the most frustrating decisions of my life.

The Bandwagon Debacle

Previous to that post, I had written about DreamHost partnering up with Bandwagon to allow you to backup your iTunes libraries to their servers.  It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I for one couldn’t wait to give it a try once there was a version of the software for PCs.  They were even giving a free year of hosting away if you signed up for the service, that’s how into this idea DreamHost was.

Well, at some point shortly after that (I can’t find the exact date), DreamHost said this was a violation of their Terms of Service, and you would not be allowed to store your files there.    Never mind they had promoted this idea, and told all users it was okay, but they were suddenly reversing their decision, and any and all files on their servers had to be served to the web or it would be considered a violation of their ToS.

Fine, I hadn’t done the uploading yet, but I did think it was a rather poor decision on their part seeing as they had promoted it.  I had saved other files there over my time with them, always with the understanding it was allowed, but now, suddenly, it was no longer that way.  They have every right to enforce their TOS, but to get people to sign up for one thing, and then strip it away with no grandfathering of those new accounts just seemed sleazy to me.

Strike 1

The Billing Debacle

In January of 2008, DreamHost was upgrading their billing system, and somehow messed up the date, telling the system that it was in fact December of 2008.  The system kicked in automatically, and all customers were billed for 12 months of hosting in one shot.  Those who had credit and debit cards on file were automatically charged for one year of hosting.  Seeing as I had a business account with them that was nearly $100 a month, I woke up to $1200 missing from my debit account I used just for paying bills.  This completely drained my account and made several charges not go through, causing me to be overdue on some bills.

How did they handle the situation?  By writing multiple snarky blog posts about it that laughed it off in a “Oh, our bad” tone.

True, DreamHost had always had a joking tone to their blog posts, but when you’ve completely drained people’s checking accounts, caused them to miss other bills and made us jump through hoops to make sure we got our money back, now was not the time to be making jokes.  I did eventually get my money back, but not before numerous headaches and troubles.

Strike 2

The DMCA Debacle

On April 18, 2008, I posted G.I. Joe Cast Pictures from the upcoming movie.  As these had appeared on several websites, I believed them to be okay.  On April 21, 2008, I received a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) from Paramount Pictures informing me they were in violation of their copyright, and to remove the images.  Within 45 minutes of my receiving that email, I had the pictures removed from the site and server as they requested.

Feeling I had satisfied the request, I was shocked to find my site closed down by DreamHost shortly after that, and it remained closed until the next morning.  I made multiple attempts at contacting DreamHost to discover what was going on, but I had to submit them via their support desk as DreamHost refuses to supply a phone number where you can actually call them.  Yes, I could request “call backs”, which I did multiple times through out the night, but I received no calls or replies.  Never mind the fact I actually had two accounts with them, and was paying them well over $100 a month for hosting, I couldn’t get them to say so much as the word “boo” to me.

By the next morning, I still had not heard from them, and I went so far as to call the lawyer from Paramount who had sent me the DMCA.  He was very understanding of the situation, and he felt DreamHost had over reacted to their letter.  He sent them an email, which he copied me on, telling them that Paramount was satisfied with my compliance and they saw no reason for my site to be down.  Dreamhost still would not reply.

I finally got a terse email from a man in customer service telling me I could reinstate my site and they hoped I had learned my lesson.

I fired back with an admittedly angry email which resulted in me being lectured by the same DreamHost employee, and essentially telling me how I should consider myself lucky they didn’t do worse to me.  He also informed me that my “righteous indignation” was misplaced, and he hoped I had learned my lesson about respecting copyrights.

Don’t get me wrong, yes, I violated a copyright, albeit unknowingly.  That, however, does not give you the right to speak to me like a child and scold me.

Strike 3… you’re out.

A Total Lack Of Communication

I already mentioned that a DreamHost phone number is non-existent, which is bad enough, but when they won’t even reply to support requests for a simple answer as to what happened, that’s too much.  I am writing this post nearly a year after the mess because I still had data on their servers, but that is now all gone.  As I parted, I wrote them a lengthy email about why I was leaving… and not one word of response.

While my anger had cooled over the past year, and I had not planned on saying anything about them publicly, their lack of even acknowledging my complaints just fueled me up again.  If you’re looking for a host, I would recommend that you look at options other than DreamHost because, from my experience, they apparently couldn’t care less about their customers.  I pulled two hosting accounts and dozens of domain name registrations I had through them, and still not so much as a word from them.  And if they make a billing mistake, that ends up costing you money and troubles, they think it’s okay to make snarky jokes about it.  Changing TOS in mid-stream of a promotion?  No problem!  DreamHost phone number?  Oh… er… well… small problem.

I ended up moving to BlueHost, whom I have been very happy with thus far… course, complimenting hosts seems to lead to problems, so maybe I shouldn’t say I’m happy with them… -knocks on wood-

Oh, and by the way, when you leave DreamHost, they prorate what you’ve paid them and keep the unusued portion “on credit” with them should you ever choose to come back.  HA!  Oh well, there’s some money I’m not sure I would ever even want to see.

I think they may have been victims of their own success.  I think they always had some problems, but as they grew more and more, the problems with their customer service were just that more exasperated. I have no clue if they have fixed any of these problems, or their horrendous attitude, but seeing as there is still no customer service phone number, unlike pretty much every other web host in existence, I somehow doubt it.

Of course these are all just my personal experiences with them, and I am sure some people have had flawless runs with them, I just wasn’t one of them.  Based on my time with them, and how it so quickly degenerated, I wish I had thought twice before signing up with them.

The “celebrities” for season 8 of Dancing with the Stars have been announced, and what an odd crew they make.  From computer makers to formerly jailed rappers, they seem to have covered all of the bases this time around.

• Belinda Carlisle (former front woman of the Go-Go’s)
• Chuck Wicks (country singer and boyfriend of dancer Julianne Hough)
• David Alan Grier (comedian)
• Denise Richards (actress)
• Gilles Marini (actor)
• Jewel (singer, girlfriend of fellow competitor Ty Murray)
• Lawrence Taylor (football player)
• Lil’ Kim (rapper)
• Nancy O’Dell (host of Access Hollywood)
• Shawn Johnson (17-year-old Olympic gold medalist, youngest ever competitor)
• Steve-O (from Jackass)
• Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple Computers)
• Ty Murray (rodeo star, boyfriend of fellow competitor, Jewel)

While I have discussed the show a few times before, I have never had a mad urge to blog about the actual non-pros that go on the show. However, when you throw Steve Wozniak on there, I almost feel obligated to do so.

For those unfamiliar with “Woz”, he co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Jobs, but he left the company to pursue his interests in being a philanthropist.  While I have a feeling he will be one of the first eliminated this season, there is still something oddly compelling about seeing one of the “Kings of the Geeks” out there dancing away.  I also think it is an interesting testimonial to how important computers have become in our lives that one of the original home computing people is now considered a “star”.

As for some of the others, I’m not that surprised by them, most of them are low tier celebs, but Jewel?  What the heck!  And Lil’ Kim?  Will she be able to stay out of jail long enough to finish the season?  Steve-O, well, apparently he’s sober now, but we’ll see.  While they grabbed some more recognizable names this time, they sure went with ones with checkered pasts, too.

I am also hopeful that perhaps we can skip all of the insanity over Cheryl Burke’s weight that we suffered through last time.  How dare that woman balloon all the way up to a size 4!  I am also sure Harold Wheeler and the Dancing with the Stars Band will be there to make me miserable with their butchered versions of songs.  Either way, I am sure I will “watch” (more like I only look up when someone is actually dancing) and find something to complain about.

There has been much debate over whether one should monetize their message stream on Twitter, and I think I have finally come down on the side of “no”.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a popular microblogging service that allows you to share with your followes what you are doing at any given time in 140 characters or less.  What started off as a niche product has turned into a mainstream hit with mentions on The Big Bang Theory, being used by celebrities (Stephen Fry in particular enjoys using Twitter), playing into political campaigns and a whole lot more.  As you gain more popularity on the service, and people find you interesting to read, they will “follow” you, meaning that your tweets, slang for the short messages, show up in the friend’s are of your account.

While many people have puzzled over why Twitter itself has still yet to place any advertising on the site in hopes of making money, that hasn’t stopped people from trying to monetize their accounts on their own.  While some are using affiliate links, others are selling their background images via companies like Twittad (full disclosure: I have, and do, sell my background through them for my @seanpaune Twitter account), and others try to sell actual tweets though companies like Ad Cause.  This is to say that when you sell tweet advertising, an automated system will place an actual ad in your tweet stream so that all of your followers can see it.

This is where I draw the line.  I am obviously not adverse to advertising as I have admitted to selling my background, and this very blog carries ads in the right column, but I am opposed to ads being forced on a person.  When I sell my background, it is just that, a background image.  It does not change the way Twitter works in any way, and no one has to read it that doesn’t choose to.  Selling an ad in your normal Twitter stream, though, totally changes the user experience for your followers.  As the site is built around conversation, imagine what would happen if you started randomly shouting out advertisements as you talked to one.

Steve: So, Bob, I heard you went out with Stacey last night.  Lucky dog!

Bob: Oh, yeah, thanks Steve, it was a pretty great evening.

Steve: Where’d you go?  Somewhere nice?

Bob: Yeah, it was pretty swanky.

Steve: I hope it goes well for you, she’s quite a catch!

Bob: VISIT SHIM-SHAMMY.COM TODAY AND RECEIVE 10% OFF YOUR ENTIRE ORDER!

Steve: … You sold your conversations again, didn’t you?

Bob: I had to pay for the dinner somehow!

Not so pleasant, is it?

Even affiliate links don’t bother me so much if you are talking about something relevant.  Say you send me a tweet about a DVD you loved, I have no problem with you making an affiliate link to that DVD, but don’t just think it’s okay to randomly have messages show up that are nothing but a blatant ad.

I know full well that this post won’t stop people who are determined to use their Twitter streams as advertising revenue, but I also hope you understand when I unfollow you for doing it.

I am really getting fed up with cell phone exclusivity.

While cell phone manufacturers have been signing exclusivity deals for years, I don’t think it really got into the mainstream consensus until Apple made the iPhone exclusive to AT&T in the United States.  They then followed this up with exclusive deals in every country they launched the phone in, and it seemed to send a whole new surge of interest into cellular carriers getting the latest handsets exclusive to them.

While I still love my BlackBerry 8830, I have been using it 16-months now, and it is about that time your eye starts to wander around to changing your phone.  The BlackBerry Bold (AKA BlackBerry 9000) certainly has my attention as a handset I would like to upgrade to.  I’m finding myself more and more wishing I had a camera phone for blogging reasons, and this one has a decent one.  Add in Wi-Fi, world portability, streaming media capabalities and so on, and it is a good phone by any ones measure.

So, what’s stopping me from getting it?  Well, the same thing that stopped me from getting an iPhone; it’s exclusive to AT&T.

Say what you will about Sprint, my current carrier, but I am currently happy with them.  It doesn’t change the fact they are currently missing handsets such as the Bold, the BlackBerry Storm, the G1 and, yes, the iPhone.  Rumor has been that the Bold exclusive is a limited time deal, but there hasn’t been any word that I can find of it moving to another carrier yet.  I haven’t heard a peep about the plans on the Storm or G1 (or a similarly Android-powered phone) as of yet, and Apple re-upped their exclusive deal through 2011.

In the particular case of the iPhone, I know that AT&T has paid a premium to Apple for the deal, so technically they are coming out on the positive side of the arrangement.  What I question though is if it is enough to make up for the lost sales from people such as myself who refuse to change carriers to just get the latest shiny new gadget?  Sure I would love to stop carrying my BlackBerry and iPod Touch with me all the time and just carry one device, but I’m just not going to do it and be tied down to a company I have had less than thrilling dealings with in the past.

Hopefully the BlackBerrys will come off of their exclsuive deals by the time I really need to upgrade, but for now, well, Sprint isn’t offering anything that is really an improvement over my 8830, and I feel kind of stuck.  Come on cell phone makers, stop playing games and let people buy the phones they want from the carriers they want.

I don’t know why I never checked out Google Trends until recently, but now I am hooked.

I have known about this tool for ages, but I only recently started using it seriously.  Essentially it allows you at any time to see what the top 100 most searched on terms are on Google.  Click on the search term and you will see the top results people are seeing when they look it up.  It also gives bloggers great ideas for something to blog about… unless you are me, and then you just say, “why not blog about the actual tool?”

… not that I have ever done that.

The thing that always gets me is how the top results are almost always soemthing that has recently aired on television.  For example, the first two entries in the pictured results relate to tonight’s episode of Kitchen Nightmares.  While the Hudson river plane incident from today is mixed in, you can also see tonight’s episode of Smallville being looked up for information about the Legion of Super Heroes.  All of this is quite common: if it’s on TV, it’s on Google trends shortly thereafter.

It isn’t just for blogging reasons I find this fascinating, but it’s almost a form of people watching rom my perspective.  I have always been fascinated by people and the things they do, and this is like a window on to the Internet at large, and what it is that interests them.  It also sometimes reveals our stupidity as Adam Ostrow, one of my editors on Mashable, pointed out the other day on Twitter.

that’s pretty sad … “American Idle” is the 54th most popular search term on Go ogle this hour

That kinda sums up the day and age, doesn’t it?