Luke ‘n’ Bill

I have ran into this issue a few times.  My TV is starting to literally not be big enough.  I don’t mind watching movies on my normal sized TV.  Granted it’s not the total immersion you get from a big screen HDTV, but it still works.

The problem that I’ve noticed recently though is that font is starting to get way too small to read.  I first noticed it a while back when I tried downloading some new baseball game.  I hadn’t played a baseball video game in years…except for my wii baseball and was dissapointed that I never actually got to play the game.  The on screen tutorials to show you how they had made normally easy tasks such as hitting the ball, impossible were also written in impossibly small font.

The next time I noticed it was when I was playing my Shaun White Snowboarding.  The font was again small..this time just barely readable.  However, now I have the black bars across my screen…reminding me that “HEY!  YOU DON’T HAVE A BIGSCREEN TV!!”

The most recent example off it was something new that I haven’t seen.  I was riding my trusty “go nowhere” bike at the gym the other day and was watching the Wild game.  Up by the score, they unravled a very well placed add up by the score/time boxes that are constantly on the screen.  It was about the same dimensions of a banner ad, however the text was so small that on this normal sized TV, you literally couldn’t read the text.  I could tell that it was advertising Dodge trucks…and that’s probably all that they cared about me getting out of the ad, but it was a bit annoying being reminded again that hey…you’re being left behind!

In the end, it’ll probably be a while before I end up getting a big HDTV, but right now I feel like the guy running the 800×600 resolution screen, wondering why he has to scroll sideways on the new website.

I noticed this first and most obviously with the iPhone.  Whenever you’d get an e-mail from someone on their iPhone it would say “sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of the e-mail.  I thought it was kind of odd and just looked past it.  However, I knew people who couldn’t get an iPhone, because they were outside of the coverage area and who REALLY WANTED one and it would definitely irk them!  It’s the old “look what I’ve got!” that makes all the kiddies jealous!

My first thought was, really?  That’s a big deal?  But especially for Apple, that fits right in line with their marketing strategy.  (especially their new direction)  From what I can tell (and I’m not “in the know” or pretend to be with marketing) Apple has based their marketing on two things.  Originally it was, all about filling the schools with macs so that macs was all the kids new coming out of school.  It showed kids that you could use macs for “anything” and it got the macs to feel like home.  So when college came and it was time to buy their own, macs was the familiar choice.  Heck, even in a recent post out on Gadgetopia, Deane showed a homework assignment from his daughter that was on how email works and the window was a window from a mac.  So we know that they are still sticking with that plan.

The second type of marketing is the most recent.  From what I can remember it all started with the iPod.  It is all about status.  You’re cool because you own X.  That’s where this new “nana nana boo boo” marketing comes into place. You see someone else has it…and you really want it too.

On a side note…I noticed blackberry started doing it too and it kind of made me laugh.  Although in all fairness, there is a bit of the “I’m cool I own a blackberry” going around, but that’s more in the “I need to look important (and possibly conservative)” crowd.

It couldn’t be enough for the guy to win the Tour de France 7 times…or even that he overcame cancer, that was suppose to kill him in order to do it.  Now, Lance Armstrong has to steal my thunder by breaking his right collar bone too!

I knew he was secretly jealous of me!

(ok and in all seriousness, this guy’s a stud and I’m surprised he even used an ambulance.  I would have thought he would just finish up the race quick, get first place and swing through the ER on his way back to his hotel)

I enjoy reading the Cool Tools blog.  It’s nice and low volume so you don’t feel over run with posts.  On top of that it has interesting tools for all walks of life.  The diversity of posts is refreshing.  Reason being, all (or at least most) of the posts are written by readers.

Yesterday’s was a little extra enjoyable, this guy apparently received this Halligan Bar as a gift but luckily hasn’t had to use it so far…

I keep mine leaning against the wall in the corner, where it waits for the day when I need to smash into or out of something… or I hear screams of “He’s trapped inside!” or “The Zombies are here!”

If you’re wondering what heck a halligan bar, just imagine the tool you wish you would of had in the first level of Half Life.  If that description doesn’t do it for you…it’s a crow bar with an attitude.