The disadvantage with open source platforms is there are so many to choose from you are never sure which one will attract the most developer talent to support it.  Case in point, there are over sixty content management systems listed in this Wikipedia article on the topic.  Clearly, there is a strong development community supporting Wordpress.  Open source can’t solve all the world’s problems, but it certainly created an excellent piece of blogging software.

A search of his UserID shows positive feedback for purchasing a number of 15 cent Star Trek badges. The search also showed that in addition to my cell phone, he won over $30,000 worth of Ebay auctions for other electronics just yesterday. Hmm. When I insisted via email that I wouldn’t send him the phone until the money was in my account, he responded as follows:

“i have made the payment and the money has been deducted from my account.. ok?.. so i will want you to send the item ASAP and send the shipment tracking number to paypal for verification and you can also contact their customers help at paypalcustomershelp@streamingmoney.com for the payment confirmation .. ok.. thanks i wait to hear from you .. “

I responded to him that streamingmoney.com was not a valid Paypal URL and given he had won so many auctions yesterday, he must be a wealthy man so I would patiently await payment.

With such shenanigans plus the other spam I receive posing as questions for products I’ve listed, Ebay is becoming a real bear to use.

As for the iPhone, it is truly remarkable. The user experience is such a step up from my current Windows Mobile handheld that I would liken it to the sheer delight I felt when I replaced my paper calendar with a Palm V.

Google Earth takes on entirely new perspective when you can, as we use to sing as kids, “hold the whole world in [your] hands.”

On Monday I bought put options on Apple’s stock, betting its price would decline after a big run up in the last six months with all the iPhone hype. By Wednesday, the stock had declined enough for me to close out the position and have sufficient earnings to buy the phone. I consider it the ultimate irony to have raised the money for an iPhone by taking advantage of Apple’s falling stock price.

A four hour drive to buy a phone that might be sold out is frivolous indeed. On the other hand, spending the day alone, conversing with my oldest son as we pursue the frivolous is time well spent.

1. Best Buy suggests you spend an additional $129 after you purchase a computer so they can slave away for 3 hours removing all the trial software such as AOL. Apparently the offending programs are now so entrenched in Windows Vista operating system it requires professional assistance to remove them.

2. Even though Best Buy sells $500 to $700 laptops, they highly recommend you don’t buy one because it takes 20 minutes for the thing to boot up with Windows Vista and even after the laptop boots up, it doesn’t work very well.

Is it any wonder why people are switching to Apple in droves. Buying a Windows laptop from a retail store is a worse experience than buying a used car.

Imagini is a UK based website that determines your “visual DNA” by having you select from a series of images. It then uses that visual DNA imprint to help you select gifts or to meet others with similar backgrounds.

Results were mixed. My visual DNA for finding friends seemed spot on. The gift finder was a bit dubious. It suggested I would be ecstatic to receive a new set of cutlery and some tea.

There’s only one problem. I don’t have a social network of people who really care about what I’m doing at any given moment of the day. Okay, well my kids ask me what I’m doing a lot, but it seems rude to tell them to go look it up on Twitter.

Since I’m in Idaho and my coworkers are in Ohio, they often ask me what I’m doing via instant messenger, but it’s easier to just answer on instant messenger than via Twitter.

John Edwards has an account on Twitter. I suppose if you like John Edwards it would be helpful to know what he’s doing. I’m not a big John Edwards fan.

There’s a public timeline so you can see a constant stream of updates from complete strangers about what they are doing. Now that can be entertaining for a few minutes. It at least allows me to practice my Spanish. The same public timeline also provides updates on breaking news, new podcasts, and other miscellanea.

Here’s a few snippets from the public timeline:

Someone named RLTZ says in Spanish she’s doing homework, listening to antidoping and about to cry. Apparently antidoping is a Mexican reggae group.

Somebody named Book2 writes, “Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.” A closer looks shows Book2 has decided to post James Joyce Ulysses line by line via Twitter. That’s ambitious.

Lot of folks are eating, going to bed, going running, and doing things I wasn’t aware existed. Now I suppose that is a benefit of Twitter. Learning new things.

On the other hand, it all seems just a bit narcissistic. Which is why I haven’t updated what I am doing for four days.

For those that want to test their own blogs, go to Greatfirewallofchina.org. (DC, I’ll be interested to see if your blog makes it through.)

Netvibes is my favorite free web service. I’ve been using it for about a year as my web browser start page. It’s brilliant because they keep making it better. Founded in Paris, the company launched its service only 15 months ago. It now has 10 million users in 60 different languages.

Netvibes allows you to pull data from all over the web and organize it on your desktop. You can pull in RSS feeds from newsites and blogs, pictures, email accounts, and other web services, such as Box.net, Flickr, delicio.us. and many others. Information can be organized on separate pages with tabs, using customized column widths and layouts.

I use Netvibes to track close to 100 blogs, newspapers, and other web sources, all of which sit nice and tidy on my desktop. The consolidation of all this data in one place is perfect for me, because deep down I’m a mess when it comes to organization. I despise paperwork, because it just piles and piles up, and then I lose things. So now I do everything I can to digitize and store things in cyberspace. As long as it is out there, then I don’t have to worry about it cluttering up my office.