Virginia has term limits for its Governors. Since Gov. Kaine’s term is up, he accepted as position as the head of the DNC. In addition, he recently announced he will teach classes at the Univeristy of Richmond – in the law school and the school of leadership studies.
Gov. Kaine has taught at the University before, and even practiced law in the area. I bet attendance at a few of his classes will be larger than the class roll.
Here is the email the school sent announcing his appointment:
I am happy to announce that Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will return to the University to resume teaching upon completion of his term in office in January.
Gov. Kaine served as mayor of Richmond and lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth prior to his election as governor. A Harvard law graduate, he practiced law in Richmond earlier in his career and also taught law courses at the University in areas including professional responsibility. He will hold a joint appointment in the School of Law and Jepson School of Leadership Studies and will begin teaching in the spring 2010 semester. He will also assist in advancing the University’s strategic plan, The Richmond Promise. To all of this important work, he will bring a valuable perspective from his leadership experience at the national, state, and local level.
Deans John Douglass and Sandra Peart join me in welcoming Gov. Kaine back to our community and in looking forward to the ways in which he will bring to life for our students the practice of leadership, decision-making, legislative process, and creating public policy.
Currently, different wireless companies use different types of wireless technology. Verizon and Sprint use something called CDMA (and EV-DO as the data part) while AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM (and its data flavors EDGE and HSPA). This means that their phones are incompatible. Hence why your cool iPhone can’t follow you to the superior Verizon network. GSM is also the preferred technology used around the world. CDMA is used mainly in the United States, with some small markets in Asia.
Now that all the major providers are on one standard – we could see a lot of easy switching of phones to different networks. That means that the exclusive contracts limiting phones to certain carriers might not be as important. Therefore, the carriers will have to actually provide good service to convince you to use them (or alternatively really low prices) which is good news for the consumer. And you will be able to take your phone to whatever network and it will work.
If you’ve been watching TV during the past few weeks you’ve probably seen that biting parody ad that Verizon put out attacking AT&T’s network.
It is a pretty direct attack on what Verizon must feel is their biggest threat. The tag line is “There’s a map for that.” A clear parody of Apple/AT&T’s “There’s an app for that” campaign for the iPhone. The “other” guy in the ad is also clearly using an iPhone if you look carefully.
The ad points out that Verizon’s 3G data map is 5 times larger than AT&T’s. The map they use to show that is especially illustrative of this.
AT&T has filed a lawsuit claiming that the map is misleading. While Verizon clearly states “3G” and says the same, the way the ad plays out is that that blue AT&T map shows coverage. What they don’t point out is that even if you don’t get 3G coverage in that blue map, you still fallback to the 2nd Generation EDGE data network. You have data coverage, its just slower.
Do you think it is a confusing ad? Did you understand that? If not, you are the reason AT&T is suing.
Google Voice is yet another product from the search giant (is that still relevant to what they do anymore?). I am a big proponent of Google Voice and push it on most of my geeky friends. Traditionally Google Voice is a service you sign up for and register a new number with Google. The cool part is that you get to pick your number (for example something with Jon in it, or callme, or pick a certain area code). But that is just the beginning.
You then register any phones you want – your cell, your work number, you home line. And if people call your google number it can ring any phone you register. You can set it up to call your work line from 9-5 on weekdays, home on weeknights, and your cell on weekends. You can set up different voicemails for different people. Imagine calling someone and hearing “hey Jon – sorry I can’t take your call, leave a message”. You can also have google transcribe your voicemails and email or text them to your phone. Finally, one of the features I like best – you can have numbers not in your address book go straight to voicemail, or force them to state their name before you answer. This handles telemarketers pretty well.
Plus, there are other cool features like downloading voicemails and recording calls.
If this doesn’t make sense just watch the video:
What stopped many people from using it was that they didnt want to have to give a bunch of people a new phone number. However, if you just want the voicemail features – which is most of Google Voice- Google has found a way around that. Today they announced you could simply work around your current provider’s voicemail.
After joining Google Voice you just choose that you want to keep your own number – and Google gives you a code to enter into your phone which forwards calls to your number to their voicemail system. It basically just skips your voicemail and puts any calls you miss into Google Voicemail. You get all the neat features like transcription, listening to them on the computer, having some calls go straight to voicemail- etc.
Again the video:
I’ve looked into using this myself, and found just a few caveats.
First, I have an iphone. So, I get visual voicemail already. Having them in my inbox doesn’t really change anything. In fact, I think it is easier to check my voicemail without opening the browser and navigating to google Voice first, or calling my google voice number without visual notices.
Second, the way the iphone handles the voicemail file is that it plays it as a media file. This mean the iphone plays it as a song over your speaker instead of in the earpiece. No more private voicemail listening!
Could this be fixed? Probably. The Google Voice app that Apple has so far rejected, and the FCC is looking into would probably help. If I could just go into the Google Voice app to see my voicemails that would eliminate the hassle.
With those points noted – if you are a traditional feature phone user (not a Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Phone, or Android user) then this might be really useful to you. You can have the voicemails texted to you or read them on your computer. You won’t be missing any “visual voicemail” features. It might be a great option!
How many times have you been crusing around the internet and get a blaring, loud, flashy ad annoying you while you are just trying to read a news article?
I used to have this problem all the time – until I discovered Ad Block Plus. ABP is a Firefox add-on which runs in your browser. When you visit pages it automatically removes the ads. I can’t overstate how peaceful this has made my browsing experience. The best part is if you feel like you want to see an ad, or if you suspect it accidentally blocked a legit part of a website, one click turns it off.
There has been much discussion recently concerning how computers, the internet, especially google have changed the way we think. Prior generations touted knowledge as key. The more you knew you the more “intelligent” and valuable you were. Now, we are arguably getting to the point where people can find out “facts” quite easily through search – and it could be argued there is less of a need to “know” things. More important is being about to use this information properly and creatively toward solutions.
Quick newsletter entry on the basics of using photographs in your blog. Figured it was a good post because I am a blogger and will soon be a copyright attorney (hopefully!)
No, this is not some chauvinist link that says things like “Man Law” or extrapolates the minutia of the five second rule.
Rules For My Unborn Son is a neat blog idea where the author is posting “rules” that every gentleman should know. They are not uppity by any means. They are down to earth rules that make you more like the person you want to be. I feel like George Clooney and Don Draper check this site daily.
I have literally taken an afternoon and gone through the entire list to date. Go read up. Here are a few good ones from a quick perusal to give you an idea:
392. When you’re with new friends, dont’t just talk about old friends.
310. Make time for your mom on your birthday. It’s her special day too.
305. Don’t be so eager to leave the kids table.
155. Dance with your partner, not at her.
117. Be a good listener. Don’t just wait your turn to talk.
47. Watch a lightning storm from a safe spot. But watch em.
How have I not heard of this song before? Second, thank god none of my frat brothers knew of it when I was going through pledgeship.
If I ever became a professional baseball player or pro wrestler, this is the song I would come out to. (For those who don’t know me personally, I’m short. And think this is hilarious)
