Pacific Northwest Ballet: All Balanchine

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Last night, I took a date to see PNB’s All Balanchine, which featured music from Vivaldi, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky with choreography by the infamous George Balanchine, one of the founders of Amerian ballet. Before the show, we went out to a new Belltown favorite, Tavolàta.

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We had handmade mozzarella with red peppers in a striking artichoke sauce, and finished with a plate of fettuccine that came with onions and bacon. Both were mindblowing; kudos to my date for forcing me to try the mozzarella, I would’ve never thought of ordering it and it turned out to be remarkable. Overall, our meal at Tavolàta was fantastic. ****.

Live from the Apple Store: Anger Prevails

Today is a bad day for Apple customers, and Apple itself. Many people who own modified iPhones have found that the iPhone 1.1.1 Software Update released today has made bricks out of their expensive phones.

I’m sitting inside of the Seattle Apple Store in University Village, and I’ve personally witnessed an angry customer getting the bad news that his only option to get a working iPhone is to purchase a new phone for $400. The customer simply could not believe it: a $600-list-price-smartphone that won’t allow the end user to change his own software.

Imagine if Windows Vista destroyed your whole computer upon installation of an alternative browser. This is the ridiculous situation that iPhone modders find themselves in.

What may be bad news for iPhone users is even worse news for Apple. A company that has long prided itself on creating products that are easy to use is destroying its public image by strongarming consumers and burdening its own products with inconvenient limitations.

What Apple should do instead, is embrace software development for the iPhone. Doing so would decrease the amount of money Apple would need to spend to develop applications in-house, as well as making the iPhone a more useful device by opening the gates to innovative non-Apple applications.

Apple is burning themselves on this one, and if this kind of strongarming continues, Apple will see the diehard fans who made them an icon running for the exits to other platforms. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Mr. Jobs.

GOOGLE IS DOWN: The Great Google Outage of 2007

To nearly all Comcast cable internet customers, Google.com hasn’t worked all day today (Wednesday, September 26th, 2007).

Google has been confirmed to be not working on Comcast in Seattle, and according to various sources, Google is down across the country: Boston, New York State, and New Hampshire. In addition to google.com, other affected sites include YouTube, Google Reader, AdSense, and Google Calendar. YouTube videos that are found on other sites aren’t working either. Originally, tech support was telling people it was an issue with the Firefox browser and for some, using Internet Explorer temporarily solved the problem. This is a total clusterf***, nobody’s got the real answer, and I’m sure that when Google figures it out, they won’t tell us.

Did I mention that BlackBerries all across the US have also been experiencing outages in the last 24 hours? That makes the 3rd time for BB users in the last 6 months!

The funny thing is, Digg shows a Google outage on this day last year. What gives, Goog?

The Comcast representative I spoke to mentioned that she’d heard all about the problem, and that they’re trying to get Google to “stop blocking [them]“. Is Google really ballsy enough to block all Comcast customers? Is this all part of Google’s evil plan to take over the world?

Earlier today, I was watching Live Free or Die Hard, in which the plot centers on a national computer outage, a sort of perfect storm that makes society collapse. Kind of makes you realize how useful computers are in this age.

Anyways, the solution to the problem (of course) comes from Canada: Go to google.ca! It works like a charm! You’re welcome.

EDIT: I’ve just tried google.ca, and I’m finding it to be down now, too. Try live.com instead.

Cellphones with Projectors Are Now A Reality

In the course of my workday I hear about tons of novel ideas being fostered in the wireless space, but this prototype takes the cake for September. Texas Instruments’ DLP Pico Projector Prototype features a functional projector mounted inside of a cellphone handset. Powered by a laser (the units that will hit store shelves will be LED-powered), the brightness isn’t quite up to snuff, but TI says that will change soon. Check the video, courtesy of Popular Science, which shows a demonstration of the movie Robots projected in low light:

Alan Greenspan: Iraq War Motive Was Oil

This doesn’t exactly come as a shock. Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman under whose tenure saw much economic expansion, said in his new book that he is “saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

I think it’s funny that it’s often the financial types who understand what’s really going on in politics. The reason, you ask? Those who are versed in business and finance assume that people and parties act in their own self-interest, and ask the question ‘qui bono?‘ to determine a list of suspects.

Now, I must say that his admission could be motivated by want of increased sales for his book, but I also believe Mr. Greenspan to be a straight shooter who wouldn’t be bullied by a publicity-hungry publisher.

Check out the book, I’m sure you’ll learn sometime after reading it.

The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan
Via The Times of London

Ralph Waldo Emerson Lives?

Well, his words certainly do:

“What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of our conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of?” -R. W. Emerson, Representative Men.

Do you think Emerson is talking about Shakespeare, or Seinfeld?

Indian Billionaire Mallya buys Formula 1 Team

If you’re not yet familiar with billionaire and all-around playboy Vijay Mallya, here’s a primer:

Mallya is Chairman of United Breweries Group, whose brands include the #1 selling Indian beer brand, Kingfisher, top Indian scotch and gin brands, and Scotch whisky distiller Whyte & Mackay (which he recently purchased for $1.2B). His two-year-old Kingfisher Airlines ingeniously acts as a marketing tool for his beer (alcohol advertising in India is heavily regulated and quasi-illegal). The airline, originally launched to promote his liquor and beer bottling business, is rapidly taking market share from the top private airline in India, Jet Airways, and is poised to overtake them in 2010 when its nonstop routes to North America begin service. He’s got a megayacht, the Indian Empress, which he uses to host lavish parties for high-profile guests. The hard-partying-billionaire reputation that Mallya has cultivated for himself serves to define his brand: he aims to convince ever-more affluent young Indians to move up to his level of luxury-by buying his brands of top-shelf hooch, naturally.

Mallya isn’t stopping at air travel: today he announced that he and a Dutch partner have bought the Spyker-Ferrari Formula 1 team for $110M. The purchase gives Mallya’s beer and spirits juggernaut another avenue in which to advertise its growing spirits business to the increasingly liberal Indian public. The deal cut with F1 boss (and fellow über-affluent) Bernie Ecclestone has deeper meaning, however. The whole world has been trying to secure annual visits from Formula 1 (Bahrain, Malaysia, and Turkey all have Grand Prix events), and so far, India has been left out of the picture. India’s dream of attracting a grand prix may have just been granted by virtue of this deal. Mallya is already planning a New Delhi street course not unlike that of Monaco, with a design budget of $100M largely to be shouldered by the Indian taxpayer. The Indian Grand Prix will surely be a knockout event, considering Mallya’s penchant for celebration and the strong role he’s sure to play in the GP’s planning.

Is it just me, or does this guy belong in Dubai?

City of Angels Photoroll