Walking to my car after work today, a surreal rainbow was right above me, so I pulled out my new phone and took a picture and although it’s not anywhere close to how amazing it was in real life, it still gives a hint…

Title says it all. I found a couple of useful extensions here…

Very glad to see this finally happen…from a post on Yahoo!Search, we learn that as of today when we search for images on Yahoo!, results will include images from Flickr, aka eyes of the World. My default image search engine is now Yahoo!…

iPhone will be out in a few days at 6pm locally. I am not impressed with it nor with what I am reading in reviews. I love my iPod, so don’t get me wrong but Apple is an expert in not telling the full story on their products. Examples:

Joel writes (and I agree): “Apple is and always has been severely dishonest in all their advertising when it comes to performance. This is the company that spent years telling us that the PowerPC was faster than Intel, only, suddenly, to change their claims midsentence without an explanation when reality caught up with them, in a scene almost exactly like the scene in 1984: “Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.”

This is the company that’s about to release the iPhone on a slow, last-generation data network but is running TV ads that have edited out all downloads and waiting time that network entails.”

Further, iPhone will require an iTunes account before you can use it (I understand it for the iPod part of the phone but for the entire phone I don’t understand) but you will only find this piece of info left out and only found in the fine print of things. And while we are at it, here is another piece of info that might be interesting that I read about Apple’s control tactics.

Anyways, with increasing demand on my current phone (which I love) and the fact that 2.5 years have passed and it is starting to show clear signs of usage (including dents after many drops and some buttons not working), it finally died on me a couple of days ago, so i was forced to quickly get a new phone. The result became the HTC Hermes/AT&T 8525 (yep AT&T bought Cingular back) and I absolutely *love* it. It is a little on the bulky side but the advantages by far outweigh the the bulkiness. I also found a list of good apps to put on it, (and I also got the phone free which was a bonus). This purchase was not really planned and I had my eye on another phone that is coming later this year as well as a couple of other unannounced phones that I am excited about, but I am very happy with my new phone and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants something in between a laptop and a phone.

This is not that new, but a very handy free service. Go over to GrandCentral.com to see the demo or read this NYT article on it to understand it better.

Ever wanted to have a free phone number and voice mail service in USA? Or say you live here and every time that you are asked to give out your number (shopping, applications, selling stuff), you don’t want to give out your real home number? Then you can get a free number and voicemail (that can send your voicemails over email etc). Then go to aimphoneline.com and sign up. Skype has this feature and calls it SkypeIn, but it’s not free.

My sister sent me a link today to one of the 10 conversations recorded in the documentary called Dah (Ten in Farsi) which I have been wanting to see. The documentary as described in Wikipedia:

In 2002, Kiarostami directed Ten, revealing an unusual method of filmmaking and abandoning many scriptwriting conventions. Kiarostami focuses on the socio-political landscape of Iran, and the images are seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is composed of ten conversations with various passengers, including her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute and a jilted bride, as well as her demanding young son. This style of filmmaking was praised by a number of professional film critics such as A. O. Scott in The New York Times, who wrote that Kiarostami, “in addition to being perhaps the most internationally admired Iranian filmmaker of the past decade, is also among the world masters of automotive cinema…He understands the automobile as a place of reflection, observation and, above all, talk.”

But to the point. Seeing this scene (despite the movie being a docudrama) at first may seem surprising how the mother treats his son as an adult (as well as how the adult like the son behaves), but it reminded me how quickly you are forced to grow up in many parts of the world and in a sense you don’t experience a classically defined childhood. It was also interesting that I was taken back by this dynamics shown in the scene, whereas I am not sure if that would have been the case if I had not grown up in places where being treated as a child during childhood is a must. Or maybe it happened because I am about to become a dad and this is not the dynamics I wish to have with my daughter (that’s right, we will be having a girl).

Nonetheless, I don’t think its either or. Children definitely need to enjoy their childhood and at the same time they don’t always need to nor want to be treated as children. I love this quote from Abdul-Baha which really summarizes it all so wonderfully:

While the children are yet in their infancy feed them from the breast of heavenly grace, foster them in the cradle of all excellence, rear them in the embrace of bounty. Give them the advantage of every useful kind of knowledge. Let them share in every new and rare and wondrous craft and art. Bring them up to work and strive, and accustom them to hardship. Teach them to dedicate their lives to matters of great import, and inspire them to undertake studies that will benefit mankind. Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá pp128-129