Jonathan Jeter

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Waze Gets You There

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Waze community driving app helps drivers on the roadWaze is a community driving app that makes commuting easier. I’ve been a Wazer, using the Waze driving app, for a couple of years now and it has become part of my daily routine. According to Waze, they are all about contributing to the common good out there on the road and by connecting drivers to one another, they “help people create local driving communities that work together to improve the quality of everyone’s daily driving.” Waze is all about avoiding the frustration of sitting in traffic or running into a police trap and wants to help shave five minutes off of your regular commute by showing you new routes that you never may have discovered otherwise.

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Create More Value Than You Capture at #SXSW2012

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Monday, March 12, 2012 at South by Southwest Interactive Conference, Austin, TX
by Tim O’Reilly (Founder, CEO – O’Reilly Media) and moderated by  #sxsw #values

What companies have done is stopped taking care of our clients and customers and thinking of themselves first, even when it goes against the good of their customers and clients.

It is important to understand that monetization comes later, but the really good things come from people having fun or providing a good

I wouldn’t say I’m a first rate capitalist. I have more than one billionaire come up to me and say, “It all started with one of your books!” And all I got out of it was $35. – Tim O’Reilly

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Google Play – Android’s New Playground

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Google Play - The New Android MarketI’m sure you’ve already heard, but the Android Market has been rebranded as Google Play. Google Play is the reincarnation of the Android Market, which has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few months, as first music and then books and movies have been added. My only hesitation when the Market became Google Play on my phone was having to agree to the privacy policy once again, which, of course, is the new comprehensive Google privacy policy covering all properties and all accounts. If you think about it, shouldn’t it be called the Google sharing policy instead of privacy policy, since you are basically giving Google permission to share your information across every relationship that you have with them?

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Verizon Wireless – My Favorite Mobile Provider

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English: Mobile phone evolution Русский: Эволю...

I have had service with many different wireless providers over the years. My first cell phone was an early Nokia model offered by what was then Southwestern Bell Wireless, which then became SBC Wireless, which became Cingular, which then became AT&T Wireless. I used them for a couple of contract cycles and upgraded to a Nokia 6150 during that time period. I really liked the service and the coverage, but as a working college student, I was always looking for a better deal.

My next cell phone service provider was VoiceStream Wireless, which later became T-Mobile, because they offered very affordable service plans. By this time I had gotten married and paying for two cell phones was a challenge on a couple of teachers’ salaries. What we found with T-Mobile, however, was that the service wasn’t available anywhere except for large metropolitan areas and along Interstate highways. Because my wife is from rural East Texas, it was hard to have a cell phone that wouldn’t work when we would visit my in-laws.

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Non-Buyer’s Remorse – The Verizon Wireless Leap Day Sale

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Motorola Droid 4My birthday is coming up very soon and I’ve been wanting to upgrade my Motorola Droid (original) for a while. Finally on Wednesday, I decided to check out the Droid 4 because I had heard both really good and really bad things about it and decided that I needed to see it for myself. As I went through the Verizon Wireless site and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Droid 4 was $100 off and the Droid Bionic was free! Because I had heard that the screen was not up to par on the Droid 4, I decided that I needed to go to the store and check it out myself.

I went to the store and checked out the phones. They had a Droid Bionic, Droid Razr Maxx and a Droid 4 right next to each other, which was great, because those are the three phones that I wanted to compare. I looked at the phones and while they were all impressive, I REALLY like the Droid 4. Some people may not like a bulky phone or see the need for a hardware keyboard, but I immediately pulled out the keyboard to try it out. It is amazing! The keyboard is great. The buttons are larger and have a better shape than the keys on my current Droid and there is even a row of numbers at the top so you don’t have to get all ALT happy when you’re typing in an address or phone number. I didn’t see any of the ghosting issues that have been talked about in reviews. I was actually impressed with the display. I like the way it looks.

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Facebook Parenting – Father Shoots His Daughter’s Laptop

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Parenting is hard work and it’s hard to get through to your kids sometimes in a way that’s meaningful that will help them to realize what they’re doing is wrong and to learn and grow from the experience. I am not going to expound on parenting methodology here, other than to say that I think it is a good thing when parents care enough to stay involved with their children’s lives and try to teach them respect and responsibility.

The father in this video had dealt with respect issues and problems with his daughter’s activities on Facebook and when it happened again, he decided to provide a lesson that she wouldn’t soon forget. It seems like the entire world won’t forget it either.

What do you think? Do you think that the father went too far or do you applaud him for his dramatic parenting style?

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Lego Man Boldly Goes Into Space Like No Other Lego Man Has Before!

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Lego Man in Space
Lego Man in Space

A couple of teenage high school students from Toronto have launched a Lego man into space. No, really, they have! Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, 17 year-old classmates, launched a lego minifigure holding a Canadian flag using a weather balloon filled with helium and captured great video of the lego minifigure with a backdrop of the Earth. The “Lego Man in Space” has a YouTube video that has received over 2 million views, as well as his own Facebook page with more than 5,000 fans.

While some news outlets have claimed that this is the first lego man in space, according to Universe Today, several Lego toys are constantly flying even higher above the Earth at this very moment aboard the International Space Station as part of an educational outreach effort by NASA and Lego. And 3 more Lego figurines are speeding to Jupiter aboard NASA’s Juno orbiter.

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An App That Tracks Your Driving… and Sends the Results to Your Insurance Company

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A red light camera in Chicago, USA.
Image via Wikipedia
State Farm has created an app that helps track your driving habits. They’re not the only insurance company to jump into the driving app space as Progressive has created a monitoring device that bases your insurance cost on your driving habits. While the idea of an app that helps you improve your driving sounds great, isn’t there any concern that the data will somehow find itself in the wrong hands?

With red-light camera‘s everywhere and GPS navigation companies selling data to police departments, isn’t the next logical step that the data from our cars and apps will be used to send us invoices for road usage, tickets for speeding or wreckless driving or raising our insurance rates based on driving habits, regardless of who is driving the car.

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Awesome or Scary?

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Google I/O
Image by Hezi Cohen via Flickr

A lot of really cool things have been coming out of the Google I/O conference this week, one of which is zero-touch near field communication (NFC) in the upcoming version of Android (name Ice Cream Sandwich). Engadget.com has a video of the demonstration where two Android Nexus phones share things with each other without having to press anything or start an app.

On the surface, that’s really cool. You don’t have to wait to fire up an app or wait for someone else to approve your request. However, how easy is it going to be to “pocket share” a web site or your contact information with someone you’re standing next to in line at the store. Or once NFC payments are a reality, how easy is it going to be to accidentally pay for someone else’s purchase or have your credit card information unwittingly shared?

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