As it were...

I've been impressed lately with how long Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne. She's been Queen since her father died on 6 February 1952. That's almost 60 years.

Queen Victoria was on the throne for 63 years and 7 months, making her the longest reigning female ruler in history. Good Queen Bess stands a really good chance of breaking that record.

The world is a dramatically different place now than it was in '52, just as Victoria's world was dramatically different from the beginning to the end of her reign. How strange it must be to see all your "peers" rise to "power" and then move on, or die.

The thing that prompted me to post this was this series of pictures. It features Elizabeth in relatively official photos with our presidents, starting with Obama and going back to Truman. That just amazes me. When we have a president, especially one who is reelected, it seems like they're president for so long. For her it's just another in a long line of short timers.

I've been meaning to blog about this for a couple years, and right now I remembered AND have time. :)

Around The World In 80 Treasures is a mini-series put out by the BBC. Dan Cruickshank is the only regular guy on camera, and he travels around the world visiting 80 treasures of the world.

I won't say too much about it here, since the Wikipedia article for it is amazing. We've watched the series 3 times now, it's wonderfully interesting. I highly recommend it. Netflix has it.

Lately I've been reading books about how to run a freelance business, and one of them is called The 4 Hour Work Week. The author puts forth lots of ideas, but his main point is "stop working so hard, make work work for you, so you can play" where "play" is do what you really want to do with your life.

The book is all about how to streamline your business, to give you more time to do what you really want.

That's when I realized I'm already doing what I really want. If I had all the money in the world, and my responsibilities were all taken care of, this is what I would be doing.

Best job in the world. Do you have the best job in the world?

Recently Ars Technica did an experiment regarding web ads. The results were that ads are what keep web sites alive, and blocking the ads will destroy the sites.

Soon after, several Mozilla developers did posts on why they block ads. The universal reason is that the ads suck. The purpose of an ad is to make you want what they're selling. Most ads on the web fail at that.

Near the front of every National Geographic Magazine is a full page ad for Canon cameras. I look for it every month. Not just look at it, actively hunt it down and READ it. It's called Life As Canon Sees It, and it's a photo of an animal, and it lists nerdy trivia about the animal and where it lives. I also know that Canon is cool, and I'm tell you about it. That ad works.

What if web ads were the same way? What if the ads were really cool? Stuff I wanted to see and read. I'm not sure what that stuff is, but someday someone's going to find it, and become rich.

I was thinking just now about it, and I'd be interested in reading well done infomercials, or paid reviews. For example, if there were a restaurant I didn't know much about, but wanted to, I'd read a full page review about it, even if that review started out with "this is a paid advertisement". If the article doesn't suck, I'm in.

Ars says ads are the only way for the web to survive. I'm saying that ads as they exist today are killing the web. Better ads are the only way for ads to survive.

I was never a Trekkie. I've seen the movies, and I enjoyed them, but I never got sucked in. I've seen about 10 TV episodes ever, across all franchises and times. Recently however, my wife and I got Season 1, Disc 1 from Netflix, and I found some interesting things.

The latest Star Trek movie is a historical re-write. Uhura is in love with Spock, yet in previous movies there'd been some indication she and Scotty were an item. Spock spends some quality time as the captain of the Enterprise, rather than Kirk.

In the very first episode ever broadcast, it starts out with Spock at the helm, captaining the Enterprise. While sitting in that chair, Uhura flirts outrageously with him.

Coincidence? hmmm.....

In my new business venture I need a cell phone. I've had several "smart phones" in the last few years, and not been terribly impressed with any of them. The Windows Mobile (WM) phone I had was ok, but very large. The Blackberry (BB) I have is not very cool for the work I need/want to do.

I should point out that I'm not interested in an iPhone. There's so much wrong with that path that I'm not interested in going down it for the sake of a couple features.

Here are some things I'd want from a Smart Phone:

A real IMAP client

I think the thing that would be most important to me would be email, and I'd want a real IMAP client. I haven't found a good one on any phone yet. The WM phone simply didn't have one at all. It was very sad. The BB's built in email is wretched, but I found a Java based IMAP client. It's ok, but leaves a LOT to be desired. Anyone know of a good one?

SSH client

As long as we're going down the Smart Phone path, let's talk SSH. There's a GREAT ssh client for WM phones. The best one for BB is essentially unusable.

That's it really. Is that so hard? I did a tiny bit of research on the Palm Pre today. I was impressed to see that jpilot is still in active development. I used that with my original Palm Pilot.

I also don't want to break the bank for a toy I won't use much. If I can't get what I want, then I'll get a dumb phone that makes great phone calls and be done with it.

So, what's your advice?