How did I miss the latest (and possibly greatest) in current mobility hoaxes? This one is a doozy…

There seems to have been a buzz on the internet about popping corn using the radiation of mobile phones.

It turned out to be a hoax but still the videos are funny to watch.

Continue Reading

In case you were trying to access any of the Thoughts Media sites (Pocket PC Thoughts, Digital Media Thoughts, Zune Thoughts, Smartphone Thoughts) or Mobility Site this weekend, you most likely noticed that you couldn’t. Evidently there was an explosion at The Planet’s Houston data center. According to a letter sent to The Planet’s customers, “three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed.” But that’s not all.

Read the letter* I’ve posted below, and tell me if the idea of this type of catastrophe doesn’t totally freak you out. Of course there are a lot of smaller hosting companies who resell Planet server space; I think this may turn out to be an even larger problem than initially thought. :-/

I hope that the 9000 servers affected are soon up again, and I hope a bare minimum of data (if any) was lost; what a mess.

Dear Valued Customers:

As previously committed, I would like to provide an update on where we stand following yesterday’s explosion in our H1 data center. First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks for your patience during the past 28 hours.  We are acutely aware that uptime is critical to your business, and you have my personal commitment that The Planet team will continue to work around the clock to restore your service.

As you have read, we have begun receiving some of the equipment required to start repairs.  While no customer servers have been damaged or lost, we have new information that damage to our H1 data center is worse than initially expected. Three walls of the electrical equipment room on the first floor blew several feet from their original position, and the underground cabling that powers the first floor of H1 was destroyed.

Continue Reading

If it a sign that you have actually “made it” when your name is incorporated into a song, then I would say that Google is there…not that there was really any doubt. I heard Teyana Taylor’s new song “Google Me Baby” on MTV Hits today, and thought it would be fun to share…

It’s kind of catchy!

If Teyana looks familiar, it may be because you saw her on MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen. Maybe she’ll pay mom back for that outrageous party now.

CNN caught wind of our unique blogging practices here on Gear Diary; I think someone on the team must have wanted some extra attention…

Continue Reading

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read the title of Nick Denton’s “Eleven Ways the Internet Can Kill You” this morning; filed under “Webtards”, his choices used to make the point did live up to the hype. Included were the following items: YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, pornography, SPAM, blogging, eBay, drugs, webcams, chat rooms and his number one item, which I will leave for you to discover.

Among the gems, item #6…Blogging.

At risk: Those already at risk of dying
Case 1: There’s a trick to making listicles like this: Put the weakest item in the middle. Unfortunately the New York Times spent an entire trend piece on the bogus idea of “death by blogging.” But Gizmodo editor Brian Lam tells me, “Only bogus to lazy bloggers. I did 75 hours this week and anyone over fifty would die doing that.”

Continue Reading