Mind the Gap - Voice Over actress fired over funny recordings

Emma Clarke the voice of the London Tube was fired today for posting funny voice over recordings on her personal website. If you're familiar with the very proper "Mind the Gap" voice you'll enjoy these recordings. It's a shame people don't have a better sense of humor.

Links are below:

Emma explains her reaction to being "sacked"

The Tube Announcement Spoofs

Announcement of her termination

Vtap is here for BB

Like many of my fellow crackberry addicts, I've been awaiting vTap's mobile media browser for the Blackberry. VTap allows you to easily search major video sights such as youtube, meta-cafe and so on. I've tested it on my some what dated Dell Axim Pocket PC and have been impressed by the results. It's the iphone's youtube feature for the rest of us. In any case, it is now available for blackberry users lucky enough to have OS version 4.3.

There are handful of leaked versions of 4.3 floating in the ether but it is not yet stable for use "older" BB users. Expect a version for the pearl 8100 out on official release soon. For the meantime, you can check download and use but not view clips (defeats the point) on you blackberry. If your a lucky owner of the new pearl or curve with OS v4.3 you should be able to stream video.

http://vtap.com/blackberry_download.html

Red Light, Green Light

Recently, I've noticed a slew of red light cameras going up in and around my neighborhood. I'm not about to debate effectiveness of these cameras at reducing accidents. Running red lights is dangerous & stupid. That said, some coworkers recently pointed out that right hand turns on red can be a problem for some. If you do not come to a complete stop for at lease a couple seconds you can expect the same $75 fine. So, if you know yourself to repeat offender of the "rolling stop" here's a bit of help.

Photoenforced.com has listings of most speed cameras, red light cameras and so on for most major metro markets. For my friends in Dallas, you can check out a map of big brothers eyes here. Watch out for that camera at Southwestern/Lovers.

For everyone else go to http://www.photoenforced.com/

Drive safe,

Ian

More details about vTAP's highly anticpated Mobile Browser for your BB

Hayden admin over at PinStack.com had a chance to interview Daren Gill, VP/GM of Veveo about vTap for Blackberry. VTap is a mobile browser focused that allows user to easily access & view online videos. This would be a break through for blackberry users as access to online media currently very limited. They expect to begin working on the technical details a few weeks after obtaining access to the needed APIs.

If you have a windows mobile device you can check out the current editions at vTAP.com.

Read the full interview here:

http://blackberryforums.pinstack.com/47079-interview_veveos_vp_gm_vtap_blackberry.html
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UAW Strike Over

The union & GM reached tentative agreement this morning. While no specifics were released, the deal transfered UAW retiree health costs to the union in the form of a healthcare trust fund.

Union Members must still ratify the plan.
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UAW Strike

As soon as I finished my last blog entry UAW workers walked off the job.

I'll update my reader list with relevant stories as things develop.
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UAW Strike

It's been nine days since GM & UAW contract expired. The union strike deadline just past. Let's see what happens next.
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Finding yourself

How many social networks do you belong to? Is it possible you don't know? Here's a couple fun ways to "find yourself" or a friend online.

1) yoname.com

• This is possibly one of the single most effective social network search engines I've ever used.

2) www.peekyou.com

• Not a search engine, instead you do all the heavy lifting for big brother.
  
• It allows people to post know usernames, rss feeds, blogs & profiles of people online. Just in case you haven't published enough of your own personal information online now your friends can too.
  

3) Google Image Hack

• August last year, Google purchased Neven Vision a company specializing in face recognition. In any case, this feature is now available just not officially released. Simply type your name into Google's image search & add "&imgtype=face" to your search URL.
• Then hit enter.
  
• You'll find your search results now only include faces. Pretty neat.
  

Have fun finding yourself online.

Do you know where your Politician is?

Politicians work for us and we should supervise them as such. There is too little transparency and too much spin in local politics. Lets keep it simple. Thanks to the Sunlight Foundation's opencongress.org you can easily track your Senator's votes & bills. I'm going to help you get started.

I've gone ahead & created Senator widgets for Texas, Michigan & Mass. Just click "get widget" box newt to his or her name. It took me less than 5 minutes to create each of these widgets. I'm going to give you step by step instructions on how you can do it in 2 minutes.

Step 1)
Find your Senator or Representative.

Step 2)
At the top of each politicians is an orange feed button. Click it.

Step 3)
Copy the feed's URL.

Step 4)
Go to Widgetbox.com Select Create Blidget

Step 5)
Paste feed into blidget pop up & customize.

Your done. Now add your "favorite" Politician to your facebook page, myspace or so on.

If your looking just to track & not share. I recommend going to your your Senator or Representatives page & selecting one of the options below:

track Sen. Kerry:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I've gone ahead & created Senator widgets for Texas, Michigan & Mass. Just click "get widget" box next to his or her name.

If there is any interest in other states, I'll create other widgets.

For those of us in Texas:

Sen. Kay Hutchison [R, TX]

Sen. John Cornyn [R, TX]

For those of us in Massachusetts:

Sen. Edward Kennedy [D, MA]

Sen. John Kerry [D, MA]

For those of us in Michigan:

Sen. Carl Levin [D, MI]

Sen. Debbie Ann Stabenow [D, MI]

Opencongress.org will be added a new contact feature for all politicians soon. Keep an eye out.

Southwest's Sixth Grade Lunch Line

I never flew Southwest Airlines until today. It doesn't make too much sense. I fly a lot. In the past couple years I've managed to average somewhere between 10 to 15 flights a year. In any case, I'm waiting at the gate passing time by watching the infamous Southwest cattle call boarding system. Now that I've experienced it for myself I have a couple observations:

At times boarding lines will split between seating rows. Either there simply isn't enough space for everyone or some splits the line intentially in hopes of securing a better seat. This is when the tension mounts. As a southwest passenger you position in the boarding line dictates everything about your flying experience. If you end up too far back you'll find your self wedged in second worst seat in the plane the middle seat. What's the worst seat? The coffin-like lavatories.

Here is why a line split is dangerous and more often than not entertaining.
Let's say, you may waited

An extra 30 minutes longer on your feet making decidedly a the head of the line. When a family of six splits the line at a break created by the gate seating. As soon as a new (and shorter) line splits off of your line the authanticity and position is called into question. What follows makes any layover an entertaining experience.

In order to reclaim and their rightful position in line passengers (read: total strangers) will posture through a variety of bodylanguage. You've seen it before. Remember, the sixth grade lunch line.

In the sixth grade, cutting in line "matured" from a basic series of lyrical name calling to a social cast based system of winks and nods. Only the privilaged were able to "ditch" line. It appears twenty to thirty years later most of us are unwilling to give up the "ditch" perk. Despite all the not-so-happy bodylanguage the whole process is very efficent.

The truth of the matter is despite whatever the boarding process reveals about human nature it sure helps pass the time. It's going to be a fun trip.

Note: I made it to the boarding ramp. (See picture)
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Iphone Bill

No I don't own the "Jesus" phone; however, blogger Justine Ezarik does and just received her first bill for $275 for somewhere between 30000 to 35000 text messages. That's not the shocker. Her bill came in a box and was 300 pages long. She strongly advocates ebilling.

Read more at britcrit.blogspot.com
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Mobile Blogging

I started this blog a way to share the news stories I find important with my friends, Family, and coworkers. The trouble with most blogs I've started and abandoned in the past is the lack of engaging content. Frankly, although my life can be exciting at times its not the engaging drama needed to draw a strong audience. I think I've found a loop hole of sorts. I'm not interested in driving obscene amounts of traffic to this little blog. In stead my goal is to share knowledge and ideas amoungst friends. So if you're reading this the is a good chance your reading it through a RSS widget on some social networking site. My plan is to share what I consider news worth stories (see shared stories on blog). These stories are the products of the various blogs and online magazines I read (which are all catagorized and available in a pull out widget on the blog). I hope you enjoy.

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