U.S. Senators’ “Trust Busting”–Why?

I recently posted to Twitter an article from PCWorld.com reporting that a group of Senators have sent a letter to the FCC urging it to consider regulating device/carrier exclusivity deals in the mobile device industry. The most obvious one that comes to mind is the iPhone deal between Apple Inc. and AT&T. If you want an iPhone you need AT&T. However Apple and AT&T are not, by any means, the only companies with such a deal.

There is a term in the business world that explains what agreements like these create: a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is any inherent or created edge that a company possesses that sets it apart from its competitors. A competitive advantage may be created by partnering with another company.

First of all, the only Constitutional power given Congress that is even remotely related to business is the regulation of interstate commerce (Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 3). This enumerated power applies to commerce between states or with foreign powers. Phone/carrier exclusivity deals do not fall into either category.

On the night of Obama’s election to the presidency I wrote an article borrowing heavily from “Nineteen Eighty-Four” imagery. At the time I considered that perhaps I was too hasty had not given the new president enough time to prove himself. Well within the first six months of what is sure to be a long and grueling term, he has proven me right. And now it seems that liberals (and big government folks in general) are emboldened by the leftist presence in the Oval Office.

Gazelle Buys Your Stuff

This is my 300th post, by the way.

I am cursed with two expensive hobbies.

First of all I am a musician. As with most things I have expensive taste when it comes to my instruments. I am not into knock-offs or second-rate brands of instruments. My favorite guitar company is Gibson. My favorite guitar and the one I currently own is one of the most sought-after guitars in the world: the Gibson Les Paul Standard. Growing up it was my dream guitar. My dream amp has always been a Marshall JCM series half-stack. It took me until my late twenties to acquire both of these items and together they are valued upwards of $2,000. My other dream guitar is a Gibson Firebird. I pretty much need a very lucky lotto ticket to pick one of those up. Just Google it.

My second hobby is computers/tech gadgets. Again, I have expensive taste. Paint it any way you like, Apple products are the best and the most expensive. Sure, I could have gotten a Dell laptop for $800 or less. But no, I sprung for a $1,300 Macbook. Now I am already looking forward to getting a second Macbook so Lyndsay and I can each have one (though that will not happen for some time, I am afraid). Also when it comes to enjoying content on the go I must have the best: the iPod. Definitely not the cheapest mp3 player out there, but it is the best (in my opinion).

Now if you also enjoy tech gadgets, be it video game consoles, mp3 players, or computers then there is a chance that you have accumulated gadgets that you no longer use. Perhaps they are stuffed away in a closet or the attic. Well I learned of a way that you could sell those gadgets, get them out of your way, and makes some moolah.

The company is called Gazelle. I have not use them because I do not have anything to sell right now but it looks interesting. Basically you look up the item you want to sell and they will give you a quote on what they would pay you for that item. The quote is based on your evaluation of it’s condition as well as market demand for the item. If you agree to the quote then they send you a box, you send the item off, they inspect it for themselves, then they send you payment. Gazelle’s site states that it refurbishes these items and resells them through various wholesellers and vendors. But the important thing is Gazelle takes these unwanted gadgets off your hands and replaces them with cash money.

If anyone has used them or if you use them in the future, let me know what your experience is like with them. I would be curious to know what sort of payment folks get for their items.

Josh H.

Computer TV

As Lyndsay mentioned in a recent post of hers, we have successfully connected our Macbook laptop to our high-definition LCD television. It all started when we found out that our Skyangel satellite service was changing dramatically. So we had to figure out something different.

ScribeFire for Blogging

The strange title of this post no doubt got your interest up. If you are wondering “what gives?”, please read on. You are about to be a part of an experiment.

A coworker of mine sent me a great article listing the author’s favorite Firefox extensions. I was familiar with several of them (Adblock, FlashGet, FoxyTunes), but there was one that really caught my attention: ScribeFire. ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that operates right inside your browser. After you install ScribeFire and restart Firefox a notepad icon will appear in the lower right of your browser’s status bar. Click this icon and your browser window will be split into two panes. The upper pane will display your usual browser whereby you can continue to visit websites. The lower pane is the ScribeFire editor. I was interested in this particular extension because I am the kind of person that takes a really long time to complete blog posts. This is because I spend the majority of my time preparing for my writings by locating links that I want to include and pictures that I may need in order to add some pizazz to my posts. ScribeFire allows me to write while still able to view websites in the top pane thus cutting down on tab switching and increases my efficiency by giving me a clean, single-window view.

Setting up ScribeFire is easy. Simply select the “Blogs” tab in the right-hand toolbar and the software will launch simple wizard to set up ScribeFire for your blog. It is also capable of handling multiple blogs (for all of you “Uber-bloggers” out there!); however I have read that this feature isn’t perfect. And since I only have one blog, I can neither confirm nor deny that fact.

Inserting links into your post is simple. Simply highlight the text that you want to act as a hyperlink and then select the Link button in the ScribeFire toolbar. You will instantly see the text change to indicate that it is now a clickable link. Inserting photos are equally as easy. Select the image button in the toolbar and you will be presented with a box that will allow you to enter a URL (for linking to pictures that reside online) or upload your own images from your computer.

ScribeFire also features an amazing toolbar on the right-hand side of the pane. Not only does it have a tab for displaying all of your blogs, but it also has a tab that displays categories, a history of past blogs, and your blog’s pages. The left-hand menu features even more options, including the ability to pull links from your del.icio.us account and the option to incorporate different Themes for the ScribeFire interface. Of course spelling correction functionality is included. Suspect words are underlined red and the user may right click to see suggested spellings.

All of this I learned while writing this post. So as you can see ScribeFire is quite intuitive. But there is still one more thing: I haven’t actually posted yet. I guess the time has come to see what ScribeFire is really made of. Well, here goes nothing!

Josh H.