Twitter has been getting quite a bit of press lately. It's being heralded as one of the coolest, newest, hippest ways for people to communicate and keep track of their friend's lives and activities. But where did this idea come from? Did the guys who started that "pet project" at ODEO just wake up one day and say "Great Scott! I've got it!" and go to work creating Twitter?

Well yes actually, but I think its important to note that the idea has been around on the 'net for quite some time, and it's first incarnation just might surprise you...

Way back in the early days of social networking, during the Friendster and Orkut's first years, sending messages to people on the internet was widely considered to be frivolous. Email and Instant Messaging (ICQ anyone?) were our primary forms of communication, and most social networking sites simply provided ways to list your email and and IM screen name so members could get in touch with you. It wasn't until about 2001 or 2002 that developers started building full featured private messaging systems into some of the web's most popular sites. Friendster got the treatment as did Ebay. However, something was about to come along and change everything.

When MySpace launched their "Bulletins" feature way back in 2003, the world got their first taste of pointless, one-to-many, broadcast style messages that could be sent out to all of their friends at once. We were familiar with away messages, we'd been using them inside instant messaging clients for years. We were also familiar with the ever-so-annoying "Forward to my entire address book" functionality of email (Which, consequently, allowed lolcats to takeover the internet). But now, we had this amazing fusing of the two ideas. A user could click a button, type in some text or html code into a form and blast that message out to everyone they were "friends" with on MySpace.

The concept took off in a big way, becoming the site's most-used feature. Users were posting bulletins about everything from homework procrastination to concert fliers to haircut previews. MySpace then took bulletins a step further giving them a place on the homepage. Now, every time you logged in you'd see your friends' most recent bulletin posts in a list right there in the sidebar of your MySpace homepage. Any of this starting to sound familiar?

We now have a list of messages, from only the people you're friends with, displayed for you to constantly hit refresh on, right there on your homepage. It would take 3 more years for Twitter to come along. Their innovation on the concept? Limiting the messages to plain-text and 140 characters in length. They also hooked up the concept to an SMS interface, allowing users to "text" in their messages. This allowed for users to be always in touch with their friends, no matter what type of phone they had or where they were in the world.

There's no question that Twitter has changed the face of social media forever. MySpace and Facebook have both made these status-update style messages a core part of their offerings. However, next time you reach for that "Tweet" button, take a second to remember where the idea came from, and whether or not it’s a smart idea twitpic that new haircut you just got.

Over the years, Science fiction, be it on television, in books or films has given us an array of amazing ideas for gadgets, gizmos and technology. Some of these have come to fruition, such as satellites, microwave ovens and whatever Kirstie Alley used to lose all that weight. However there's a number of (sadly still fictional) gadgets that we'd all love to have around the house...

THE STAR WARS X-WING

How convenient would it be to have your trusty X-Wing at hand, R2 unit and all, available at anytime for you to hop in a jet off to Dagobah? Also, it would certainly beat the congestion on the highways to and from work every morning. And as an added bonus, should a Death Star appear in orbit around the planet, at least you'd be able to go and do something about it on your lunch break.

THE MEN IN BLACK "NEURALISER"

Ever had one of those days you'd just love to forget? Yeah, me too. Like the time you accidentally called your boss "Mom" in front of the whole office. Or how about that day in high school when you fell on your ass in front of the entire girls dance team? The Neuraliser would be just the thing you need to get rid of that pesky memory. It would also come in particularly handy when used on others. Ever had a bad date? Go ahead and "flashy-thing" your way to a do-over. Just don't use it too much, you might put someone's mind out.

STAR TREK'S TRANSPORTER

Okay, all jokes aside, the Transporter would revolutionize not only travel, but life as we know it. All we'd need is a tubby Scottish engineer to monitor the controls and in a fizzle of cheap special effects, you and your family are transported to Orlando for your two weeks in the sun, luggage and all. However, if you're going to be traveling to any dangerous destinations, I do advise that you bring a stranger or two along, and make sure they wear a red shirt, just in case anything bad happens.

THE MATRIX'S "HEAD PLUG"

"I'm going to learn Kung Fu today." That's about all it would take to be the next Bruce Lee. We'd have to make sure the system ran off the Mac OS though however, otherwise you'd have to dismiss a million pop up ads about "Hot Babes" and "Penile Enlargement" every time you wanted to learn a new skill. Also, pirating software would be especially dangerous. One clever up-loader could rename a file and your medieval combat your flying lessons could turn into classical ballet pretty quickly.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY'S BABELFISH

Language is often the barrier to so much. Take out that barrier and anyone could experience any part of the world with ease. Slotted into the ear, it instantly translates any language into a language that the host can understand perfectly well. I don't really have a good joke for this one, so just imagine I said something about it translating the world into lies and nonsense for politicians.

BACK TO THE FUTURE'S DELOREAN TIME MACHINE

This one's pretty straight forward. It's a freaking time machine! You could re-live history first hand. You could travel to the future to see what type of wonders humanity has come up with. You could even travel back a few years and be there for the moment when after six years of presidential life, George W. Bush finally learned how to spell his own name! (Oh and as an added bonus, it’s a flying car, that runs on trash, take that Al Gore!)

THE LIGHTSABER

I don't know about you, but personally, any chance I had to use a sword made of a giant laser, I would. From carving up the turkey on Thanksgiving all the way to simply opening your mail, the lightsaber is the perfect way to make sure nobody ever pissed you off again.

THE HOLOGRAM MESSAGING SYSTEM FROM STAR WARS

Forget video chat, I want actual chat. Honestly, you think that by 2009, engineers would have at least started trying some stuff. Plus the business opportunities are incredible (I'm looking at you porn industry).

KITT FROM KNIGHT RIDER

We've got GPS. We've got voice-control. We've got hydraulics. We've got iPods. We've even got iPhones that will do what we say when we tell them. Now where's my autonomous talking car? Even if not for the weapons and gizmos, having a car in which you could take a nap and be politely woken up by Mr. Feeney when you got your destination would be worth any price.

THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK FROM HARRY POTTER

Now I know this one isn't *technically* a gadget, but I think everyone will agree its worth a mention. Invisibility has always been my top-5-desert-island super power, and having it in the form a cloak where I can make other things invisible, is probably the best form I can imagine.

That's just a few of the sci-fi gadgets I'd love to have in my rec-room, how about you? Hit up the comments and let me know what fictional gadget you hope we get in the future!

These wold have been in a particular order, but I'm an indecisive little boy. And to be clear, this is not a list of my favorite bands or a list of people that were influential to me, but rather a list of artists that once popular, inspired other people to become musicians.

Without further ado,

1. The Ramones
2. The Cure
3. NOFX
4. N.W.A.
5. Eminem
6. Bad Religion
7. The Ataris
8. Green Day
9. Blink 182
10. Bon Jovi

I work in an office. I am the "computer guy". I built the system we use to manage our information so I get a lot of "Why doesn't this work?" and "My so-and-so isn't doing so-and-so like it used to!" phone calls. Sometimes I just like to mess with them, so here's some good lines to use if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

Conversation usually goes something like this:

Office-Lame-Guy: Uhmm, dude my computer, like. It won't. Like. See my email used to... Me (Awesome Tech Guy): *Clears Throat*, Ok, What exactly is the problem? Office-Lame-Guy: Basically I think my email has some spyware or virus or something. This thing keeps popping up when I try to upload this animated picture of my friends cat to my myspace as the background of the page. Me (Awesome Tech Guy): INSERT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

• "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
• "Do you have a sledgehammer or a brick handy?"
• "Ok first I want you to go to http://apple.com/store..."
• "Let me put it this way: Have you ever seen McGuyver?"
• "So... what are you wearing?"
• "Duuuuuude! Bummer!"
• "Oh your MySpace must have gotten hacked, just give me your email and password and I'll take care of it."
• "Looks like you’re gonna need some new dilithium crystals there, Cap’n."
• "Sounds like you may need a new flux capacitor."
• "Press 1 for Support. Press 2 if you’re with Fox News. Press 3 if you’re with the FTC."
• "We can fix this, but you’re gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery."
• "In layman’s terms, we call that the YouSuq™ Effect."
• "Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of libro de los muertos."
• "Please hold for Mr. Gates’ attorney."

So I've been a T-Mobile customer since 2002. Call me stupid if you want but I've never had a single problem with them. Well, sort of. See about four months ago I started getting really annoyed about my Sidekick 3. Even though I have developer access to the device (after a long and grueling screening process mind you), I still felt like it wasn't an open enough platform. If I wanted custom ringtones or applications on my phone, I had to go through this REALLY clunky command line interface to get them. And if I wanted to give the applications I wrote to my friends or to the public, forget it. There's no way unless you are one of the VERY lucky few to get your application into Danger's "Catalog" which is only viewable on Sidekick devices. So I decided to switch to Windows Mobile.

I know this goes against all that is good and holy, but I couldn't take not being in control of my mobile world. Anyways, it serves me right for trying to actually use a Microsoft product because after four solid months of torture, I'm back to my Sidekick 3. I tried the T-Mobile Dash, and the T-Mobile MDA. Both phones were absolutely great form factors, to the credit of their designers. However, their software was purely ridiculous. I can't even begin to explain how simply idiodic I felt trying to use it for even normal day-to-day operations.

This brings me to the point of this writing. Why can't anyone just get it right?! Even the all powerful iPhone has a laundry list of things consumers and geeks alike agree are missing or done incorrectly. The only real difference here is that I know Apple, Inc. is a good enough company to listen to its masses and fix these problems. But even then, the phone will still be locked to AT&T. Now, I'm a businessman. I understand you need to maximize profits to all those shareholders whose not-so-hard-earned dollars paid for the R & D to make the iPhone as good as it is. But C'mon Apple, at least give me an unlocked super-duper-change-my-life device!

This isn't an iPhone bashing post by any means. To be fair (and honest) its actually an everything bashing post. I'm sick and tired of waiting for somebody in some board room to have the guts to suggest making a product with the consumer's real interests in mind. Now, I say this knowing that Apple has come the absolute closest to getting it right. And an iPhone would make my Christmas list any year. But, I still feel like there's so much missing.

I could go into detail, but this is an insanely long post already, so basically, give me an unlocked phone with enough RAM to do what I want that won't burn a hole in my pocket (literally). Also, Microsoft, please work on making your Mobile OS not freeze when it receives a call. Thanks.

I watch a lot of television. I've seen the trends come and go, but recently it seems that we are building towards something. And its my opinion that that "something" is not good.

It's hard to pinpoint when it began, but to be honest, I think I began noticing it sometime around 9/11/2001. I know that TV isn't exactly what people remember about that day, but think about it. Every news organization in the world had their busiest day of the decade that day. Every single one of them tried their hardest to get people to watch their coverage rather than their competitors, and it showed.

Now I'm not saying that the networks shouldn't have extensively covered the event, I'm actually asking this question: "What the hell happened to us?" What I mean is that ever since that day it seems that news networks and mass media in general have been in the middle of a downward spiral of stupidity. I know that sounds harsh, and I'm trying to be as constructive as possible.

Basically, (and I know I'm rambling here, but bear with me, I swear I have a point), I think that we need to focus more on actual information. It is a sad day when I get more comprehensive political and world news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than I ever do from CNN or MSNBC. You know why? The "normal" news networks are too busy trying to figure out what Paris Hilton ate for lunch yesterday instead of trying to figure out why Paris spent more time in jail for a probation violation than Scooter Libby will for four felony convictions... This country's credibility has been slowly declining over the last 6 years, and mass media has been riding right down there next to it. I'm actually afraid for us. What will become of a nation fixated on false idols? A nation that is apparently too stupid to even ask questions loudly enough to be heard? Why are we still in Iraq? Why do we have such a problem with Iran? Why does our president attach signing statements to half the bills he signs in to law? Why does our vice president feel that he has all the power yet none of the blame? When is mass media going to take its responsibility seriously and ask the REAL questions?

I guess for the foreseeable future we'll never know, but here's hoping something changes soon, otherwise we can all look forward to watching things like MSNBC's prime-time special "Paris Hilton's special wrap-up-of-why-dick-cheney-is-a-sexy-bitch" for the rest of our lives...