Archive for the 'cell phones' Category
Cidu Bill on Dec 8th 2011
I really don’t know what the big deal is about “butt dialing.” My phone has evolved far beyond that, essentially to Skynet level, making phone calls and opening random apps when it’s sitting on a counter twenty feet away. Last month it sent my friend a text message saying “I can’t speak right now. I’ll call you back later.”
Now granted, that’s a message that came pre-programmed in the phone, but still…
For a while, this self-activation of programs — I called it “air dialing” — seemed completely random; but in the past week or so… I was reaching for my phone intending to listen to some music while I did some chores, and Pandora suddenly opened up. And earlier this week, shortly after thinking that I needed to call my sister-in-law, all of a sudden I heard her voice coming from the phone. I thought she’d called me and my phone had taken it upon itself to accept the call, but in fact “I” had called her.
Last night, at the health club, when I took the phone out of my bag and the Audible app suddenly opened up and the book I’d been listening to the last time I was at health club began to play, my only thought was “Sure, why not?” I’ve learned to just go with it.
So I’m wondering: does this sort of thing happen to anybody else, or did Stephen King somehow get hold of my phone?
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones | 20 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Oct 4th 2011
Filed in Bill Bickel, CJA, Weird World of Crime, cell phones, humor | Comments Off
Cidu Bill on Sep 30th 2011
I don’t know… is this about the technology gap, or the fact that Janis is going insane? And I say this as somebody who recently used his phone’s GPS to track down his mother in downtown Boston
Filed in Arlo and Janis, Bill Bickel, GPS, Jimmy Johnson, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 13 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Sep 1st 2011
Just wondering… why would anybody install Skype on a cell phone? I could understand it a few years back before virtually every cell phone plan included unlimited calling, but why now?
(though I do understand that international calls, not generally included in cell phone plans, are cheaper via Skype)
This being said, by the way, I do have Skype on my cell phone: because I had to install it on my computer for work reasons, and at 2am the only person I could call to test it was myself.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Skype, cell phones | 17 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Aug 14th 2011
Oh, come on… a 16-year-old puts down his cell phone and walks away?? That takes “suspension of disbelief” a bit too far.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Zits, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 12 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jun 30th 2011
Okay, so now I can convert my website’s address into a QR symbol, which people can scan with their smart phones and have the site instantly appear on their phones. But really, after you get past the initial novelty, so what?
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, QR, cell phones, smart phones | 45 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jun 19th 2011
My son’s on an out-of-town trip with friends this weekend. God forbid he should give us any first-hand information about where they are — but he and four of his friends have cell phone cameras and Facebook accounts, so by combining the various photos, I’ve been able to follow their progress online.
I guess this is the “new normal,” like “What time is it?”/”Hold on, I’ll check my phone.”
Filed in Bill Bickel, Facebook, cell phones, parenting | 38 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jun 13th 2011
Arlo has a flip phone, so he can’t butt dial; but not all non-smart phones are flip phones (and therefore some can butt dial), and some smart phones
are flip phones and therefore
can’t butt dial. Trust me on this one, Arlo, I was butt dialing before there was even a word for it.
Filed in Arlo and Janis, Bill Bickel, Jimmy Johnson, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 31 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Apr 24th 2011
I just installed a program that lets me watch tv shows and movies on my cell phone screen. Would I actually ever watch a tv show or movie on my cell phone screen? Get real: I’m 55 years old — I’d be seeing cross-eyed for a week. But how cool is it that I could?
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones | 23 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Apr 13th 2011
If my cell phone is ever lost or stolen, I can text a certain password to my phone number and all information on the phone will be deleted. The only thing geeker than wishing I remembered Captain Kirk’s command code to initiate the Enterprise’s self-destruct sequence, so I could use that as my password, would be remembering Captain Kirk’s command code to initiate the Enterprise’s self-destruct sequence.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Star Trek, cell phones | 43 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Feb 7th 2011
Because cell phone keyboards are supposedly getting smaller??
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Joe Martin, Mister Boffo, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 12 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Oct 30th 2010
Now that I have Pandora installed on my cell phone, I have a device that I can carry in my pocket that delivers random music, transmitted over the airwaves, which I can listen to coming out of tiny speakers. Who’d have guessed, 50 years ago, that technology would have come so far?
Filed in Bill Bickel, Pandora, cell phones, music, technology | 41 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Aug 31st 2010
Today was the first time I read Arlo and Janis on my new touch-screen cell phone
Filed in Arlo and Janis, Bill Bickel, Jimmy Johnson, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor, synchronicity | 32 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Aug 27th 2010
Leaving the cell phone inside a loaf of bread after making a sandwich… is this actually something somebody’s ever done? What’s the joke here?
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Zits, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 52 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jul 7th 2010
Choosing my new phone’s ringtones for family and friends — and admittedly I put a lot more thought into these choices than I probably should — it occurred to me that this can be a remarkably passive-aggressive operation: after all, the person calling you is the one person who will probably never know what ringtone you chose for him.
Not that I would ever assign an insulting ringtone to anybody, but how easy would it be to have your brother-in-law’s phone calls accompanied by Beck’s “Loser”? And come on, who doesn’t know somebody they’d like to associate with Pink’s “Stupid Girls”?
And then there’s Lily Allen’s ever-popular “F*** you, f*** you very, very much.”
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones | 26 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jul 4th 2010
Filed in Bill Bickel, Brad J. Guigar, Dave Coverly, Dave Whamond, Evil Inc, Hark! A Vagrant!, PartiallyClips, Reality Check, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Speed Bump, Zach Weiner, cell phones, comic strips, comics, comics that made us laugh out loud, dinosaurs, humor, lol | 9 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jun 11th 2010
I get it — but wouldn’t this have made infinitely more sense if he’d come out half-man half cell phone?
Filed in Bill Bickel, John Deering, Strange Brew, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 14 responses so far
Cidu Bill on May 25th 2010
This actually
does reflect teenager logic: phone calls take longer to deal with and can easily sit in voice mail for long periods of time. Texts get more immediate attention.
Of course that leaves us with the “then what’s the joke?” problem…
Filed in Bill Bickel, Jerry Scott, Jim Borgman, Zits, cell phones, comic strips, comics, humor | 32 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Apr 19th 2010
Ever notice how just about every comic strip and television show containing teenagers works in at least one storyline about the kid running up a monstrous text messaging bill? Is there a single American family with teenagers and cell phones that doesn’t take the unlimited texting option (which every wireless company offers)?
Are the writers so divorced from reality that they aren’t aware of this? Or is this like the “look at all the snow; so much for global warming, ha ha ha” gag where they just assume their audience is ignorant?
(Just for the record, without unlimited texting, my 16-year-old son’s average monthly bill would be about $350)
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones, comics, comics strips, humor, television, texting | 45 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jan 17th 2010
Wall Street Journal article
On the other hand, this will probably change once it becomes more widely known and customers get pissed off.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Haiti, cell phones | 18 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jan 16th 2010
Along the lines of the classic “outside in your underwear” and “showing up for school and they’re giving a test and you’re not prepared” bad dreams, I wonder whether anybody’s had a nightmare focusing on leaving the house without their cell phone.
Filed in Bill Bickel, cell phones | 22 responses so far
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