Mike Flacy

• Despite my constant workouts, push-ups are my Achilles heel.  That’s why I started up the One Hundred Push-Ups challenge this week.  I just hope my forearms don’t snag like twigs somewhere along the way.

• This one is pure, unadulterated vanity. Check out the Kor One water bottle:
  
  Pretty damn sleek and perfect for those skinny treadmill cup holders.  But more importantly, it’s open / close with one hand.  I want one now.

• I discovered Popurls through Stumbleupon this week.  It’s a web 2.0 type site that collects the rss feeds from popular sites (Digg, Fark, Google news, Youtube, Flikr, etc…) and displays them on a aesthetically pleasing page.  You can move around the order of the sites on the main page or even go with a category layout if you prefer.  Anyway,it’s now my home page in the new super-fast version of Firefox.

• 20 Superfoods to lose body fat and gain muscle; I eat about 13 out of 20 of those on a daily basis and can attest to their success.  I’ll have to pick up some Quinoa tomorrow as well as some fish oil.

• Youtube recommendation for this week: Peep Show.  Not a youtube series at all, but rather a popular British comedy.  It’s about 2 guys living in a flat in London and their successes / failures in their careers / relationships.  Extremely funny and very easy to understand (No thick accents like The Office).

I was chatting with a friend about the upcoming 3G iPhone and we got stuck on the topic of GPS for a while. Obviously GPS isn’t a new idea. Plenty of people are perfectly happy with their in-car GPS systems or even the current capabilities of their GPS enabled phones. There’s no real added value for current GPS owners to switch over to the iPhone specifically based on the hardware.

Apple’s strategic advantage will be in the applications that are created with live tracking GPS in mind. Apple already demoed Loopt.com; an app that tells you your friend’s exact location, recent pictures, little messages and alerts you when they are nearby.

The possibilities are so ridiculously intriguing. For instance, imagine twittering, blogging, or updating your Facebook / Myspace status with not only a message, but also your current location automatically.

Locating nearby restaurants is nothing new for GPS, but imagine a one click Yelp.com application that automatically recommends the top 3 nearby Italian restaurants based on user reviews and according to your GPS location.

Imagine a music application that offers a list of upcoming, nearby concerts based on the type of music you keep on your iPhone (or your Pandora.com likes / dislikes) and your current GPS location.

Imagine being in an unfamiliar city and desperately needing to find a public restroom. One button click on the iPhone, your GPS location could be sent to Mizpee.com and a list of the closest toilets (along with reviews if you are a clean freak) would pop up along with directions to each.

Imagine not only all of your pictures being geo-tagged with locations due to GPS, but also tossed into a map-like trip diary documenting vacations as you travel or even the mundane details of your life; all via a one click social networking app on the iPhone.

Imagine sitting at work and hitting a one click Craigslist search that allows you to find nearby apartments (obviously to save on $4 a gallon gas) based on your current GPS location.

The point I’m trying to make is that the iPhone is going to make this type of techy GPS stuff incredibly easy to do. Blackberry already has plenty of GPS apps, but they aren’t for the casual phone user; they are mostly for the tech-heads. Ideally, iPhone users will just load up the App store with one click, download & install a GPS application within a few seconds and away they go. The streamlined process will ultimately increase the number of users and bring these sort of live tracking applications into the mainstream very quickly.

So Steve Jobs and his legion of Apple minions announced the next iPhone for release on July 11th and I’m scratching my head on buying it next month.

The Good:

- The price is reasonable now and within my range; $199 for the 8 gig model. The 2 year contract doesn’t bother me since I’m already with AT&T.
- GPS is cool and actually portable compared to my car GPS.
- Internet browsing is almost 3 times as fast as the older model.
- The App store looks really cool. The games look as good as the stuff on the Nintendo DS and Ebay / social networking stuff looks spot on.
- The new instant messaging system looks great.
- The battery life looks much better than my Razr.
- It’s good to go for international travel.

The Bad:

- The cost would go up another $30 a month for me if I opted for the unlimited internet plan. I hope there are varied tiers of data plans otherwise I’ll have to stick to Wi-fi hotspots.
- The App Store stuff is expensive.
- The picture quality of the camera still sucks and still no front facing camera.
- I’d probably have to install iTunes, something I’ve been glad to be rid of with my Zune.
- I have to wait a bit over a month; I want a new phone now.

So I’m undecided. I can pay less for a Blackberry right now, but not by much. Decisions, decisions.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I ramble on about Lost or consistently tune into The Office each week.  I really don’t spent lots of time on TV besides a few choice series, but there are two shows that snatched my attention in their freshman season this year before the strike.

-    Pushing Daisies:  My absolute favorite new show of the season.  It’s about a pie-maker that has an odd ability to bring the dead back to life with a single touch, but only for 60 seconds and only once.  He teams up with a private investigator to solve cases, but the true narrative involves the pie-maker’s love for his childhood sweetheart that he revives & refuses to touch again to return her to death.  They both love each other, but can never touch again due to his ability.  The acting is fantastic, the writing is witty, the characters are quirky and the artistic design of the show is very Tim Burton-esqe.

-    Reaper: Ridiculous premise, but the supporting characters sell the show.  Basically, a 21 year old guy finds out his parents sold his soul to the Devil when he was a baby.  The devil forces him into a life of bounty hunting souls that escaped from Hell.  It’s very much like Smallville’s format, but with believable acting, competent writers and an evolving storyline.  It’s a light comedy that takes itself just seriously enough to be extremely entertaining.

There were a few highly touted freshman shows I tried to watch, but failed miserably.  Mad Men comes to mind, the show about the sexual exploits and social mores of a 1960’s advertising agency.  Despite recommendations from friends, I found the lack of plot to be incredibly boring most of the time.  Another AMC show, Breaking Bad, killed my interest in a couple episodes.  It was a novel idea, but the B-List actors got on my nerves.  I tried NBC’s Chuck as well, but found it to be a poor man’s Jake 2.0.  Eli Stone had my interest peaked, but the story moved along far too slowly and it got bogged down in political messages.

I’m looking forward to a couple new pilots in the fall, My Own Worst Enemy with Christian Slater sounding the most interesting.  It’s about a guy with a split personality, one half being a mild-mannered, middle-class family man and the other being a Jason Bourne type character that works for the military.  The premise sounds promising and I’d like to see poor Christian Slater finally get a hit.  I’m also looking forward to The Cleveland Show, the spin-off from the Family Guy character.

As I was sitting in the San Diego airport this week, I was anxiously downloading the finale of Thursday’s Lost to my laptop before the battery died. Fortunately, my battery lasted the length of the flight and I found that my previous predictions held up. I do believe that Lost may have lost (no pun intended) some viewers with their foray into the possibility of time travel. But they probably gained as many sci-fi nerds.

The Desmond / Penny reunion felt a bit flat compared to their hopeful phone call in The Constant (which was one of the best scenes in Lost history). But the important part was Desmond lived. Jin is a question mark right now, but I can’t imagine the show going without him next year. It also fits in well with Sun’s motivation to work with Widmore.

Michael’s death was justified and felt like a bit of redemption for him killing Ana Lucia and Hurley’s girl. He did his best to save Jin and pass the torch of fatherhood to him. It’s strange that Walt didn’t get to say goodbye to dear ole dad, but I’d imagine Walt will be chatting with the ghost of Michael eventually.

Keamy’s death was satisfying to say the least. And let me just say Sayid gave us a friendly reminder why he’s an official badass. The fight scene versus Keamy was ridiculously visceral. The whole radio transmitter ploy was fairly stupid, but it worked well for the majority of the audience that doesn’t give a flip about the science. Ben got his revenge and gave Keamy a painful death.

As for the reveal on the coffin, I had a feeling it was Locke as soon as Ben popped up in the room. I also think that Locke’s death means one of two things: Locke is officially dead, but returning him to the island will bring him back to life or that wasn’t Locke at all. Does anyone remember the video with the two rabbits? What if moving the island caused a doppelganger of Locke to be created a.k.a. Jeremy Bentham? It’s not probable, but it is possible.

Other random tidbits:

- Looks like Saywer and Juliet are going to hook up after polishing off that rum.

- Miles snarky outlook is growing on me. Charlotte got a whole lot more interesting.

- If Jin is alive and got moved with the island, it’s safe to assume that Daniel as moved as well.

- I think Sawyer told Kate something about his daughter.

- I love that Hurley was played chess with Mr. Eko’s ghost.

- Finally, I believe Ben is heading back to the island by hitching a ride with the Oceanic 6.