The Lance J. Technoweb

The other day a friend told me the time based on her cell phone's clock. She said "your clock is two minutes fast." "Bullshit," I exclaimed in a nice way, "my clock is correct because it's synched with the USN clock in Colorado." "But my phone has to be correct," she replied, "as my phone's time is set by my cell phone service." Well, it turns out that she was wrong. We verified the time by calling the USN clock service in Washington D.C., and in fact her clock was about 90 seconds slow. Happily, most providers of time information are getting more accurate. Here's my latest "clock accuracy matrix", using the USN telephone clock (202-762-1401) service as "accuracte": AT&T GSM service (via Nokia 6820) : 5 seconds slow AT&T TDMA service (via Nokia 3360) : 8 seconds slow Verizon Time Telephone Service, Boston (617-637-1234): 20 seconds fast SBC Time Telephone Service, Hartford (860-...

The compact disc era is over. Music CDs have been around for about 20 years, but now that I have an iPod I realize that the CD is dead. I moved my entire CD collection to my iPod and pushed my CDs into storage. There isn't a reason to keep a CD in my living room. Now I can listen to all of my music in the car (thanks to my iTrip). I can listen to my music at home (thanks to the iPod's docking station). And I can listen to my music on the train (thanks to the earbuds). My only wish is for a higher capacity iPod. I bought the 40 GB iPod- but that 40 GB doesn't seem like a lot if you have a large CD collection and you want to play your collection at a high bitrate. But in any case, my several hundred CDs fit on my 40 GB iPod with plenty of room to spare. The cons of the iPod? Even though the iPod is one of the smallest large-capacity players on the market, I wish it was smaller. I would have gone with the iPod Mini, but the 4GB of storage wasn't enough for me. I'm gl...

eBay is nice because it has a huge audience. But eBay costs the seller for the posting, commission, and the credit card ( PayPal ) fees. Craig's List has a much smaller audience, but it is totally free to both the poster and the buyer. I listed my CD Changer (thank's iPod!) and some old cell phones on Craig's this weekend. And then I waited for replies. And do you know what? I got a LOT of replies - about 10 in one day. To further ease the burden and cost, Craig's List is a "local thing" - no shipping required. The only trouble is connecting and exchanging the goods. And in the best case, the transactions are in cash. The CD Player sold (yay!), and my cell phones grab tons of interest. [Note that all of my net reciepts from eBay and Craig's are slated to go to charity.]