View the video on Viddler from Engadget on the new iPhone 4 changes when it comes to Verizon. There are not many changes — but the phone is running iOS 4.25, over the AT&T’s 4.1. Also, a nice little upgrade is the ability to have the phone be a mobile hotspot as well to over mobile devices or computers near you. That will make connecting to the internet on the laptop while driving down the road on those long car trips nice.

For some text from Engadget on comparing the phone differences across the different networks:
In light of both Verizon’s and AT&T’s harping on “4G” data in the past week at CES, do either of these phones support it? Let’s have a quick look!

AT&T

Verizon

¹Verizon hasn’t announced iPhone plan pricing yet, so current smartphone pricing is used here for comparison.

… I also got this email this morning from Verizon enticing me to switch my phone over to the new iPhone 4. Will I do it? I don’t think so just yet — but it’s nice to think and dream a little about if I would not… If anyone wants to pay for a phone and a data plan for me, I will gladly take the new toy under my wing.

Anyway, Steve has an organization called i-Tec that teaches indigenous people technology… and these people in turn can use the technology to reach others for the gospel. One item that they have developed is a car that flies… yes, a car that flies! See the great video below that shows a bit more about that.

See another related post from this past September, “A flying car? — yep! It’s real! And no chitty-chitty-bang-bang either!“

The song in the commercial, while catchy-cute, is a little creepy.

thanks to @powerfm for posting the tweet/facebook status for the idea for the post. 89.7 PowerFM in Dallas is a great Christian Rock Station!

The show Community has started again. I know that the show has gotten mixed reviews over the years, and like The Office or Parks and Recreation (which is coming back in the Spring of 2011) — I think each of these take a special group and type of humor to enjoy them.

For me, I enjoy Community. The closing sequences of the show with characters is some of the funniest random parts of the show. This last week, Troy and Abed did a closing rap with Betty White. While not their funniest closing sequence, it was still pretty good. The funniest ones still are their bit with Bert and Ernie and the “Troy and Abed in the Moooorning” bit — they did have those clips on Hulu, but they have expired, otherwise I would post or link to them.

But enjoy the above clip with Betty White.

For those of you who look at leadership articles periodically like I tend to do, like from some of the greats in good leadership (Tony Morgan, Michael Hyatt, Sam Rainer, & Brandon A. Cox), you may have come across this video.

This video is from Derek Sivers and a speech he gave at the TED Conference earlier this year.

The video contains an important leadership lesson:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

– the above text was brought to my attention by Sam Rainer. Thanks for the link!

See this video and other interesting mods for the iPad on iPadcasereview.org.

I found this great short clip above of Guy Kawasaki speaking about “the meaning of meaning” and making a difference in the world. He says ion the clip above that it doesn’t matter whether you are a business or a non-profit, small or large business, first focus on making a difference — not on ‘making money’ — and you will be a successful company.

I agree! I have worked before at a company where we began our day with a company meeting and then someone in charge finished the day, each day, with “Alright. Let’s go make some money.”… something about that just rubbed me the wrong way. while I agree that you should be focused on your company, making it successful — because that is what you are there for — let your focus be on doing good and then be successful out of that and not the other way around.

Much like Google, the billionaires they are, I feel do a lot of good and provide many useful services, many of them for free (email, online documents, phone/voice services, blogs, online calendars, photo programs, open source phone platforms, and of course online video sharing through YouTube) to name a few, and they are always developing new items and free updates all the time! — not that they aren’t making money on ads, but the service they provide makes us go to them again and again.

I hope this blog post make you think and helps you re-think why you do, what you do. If all you do is focus on the “Benjamin’s” then you might need to re-direct your thinking to a more positive direction on doing good for others above yourself.

Okay, so while I truly believe this to be a fake movie, this is pretty funny that people went to such great lengths to make a

movie trailer about the 80s video game that people played on floppy disk on pre-windows 95 computers. I remember those days!

The blog says you’ll learn nothing from the video game, and they are close to right… Okay, okay… maybe yo could learn something. I remember learning that when a  person get hypothermia that you don’t rub them to make them warm, you just strip them naked and get close for body heat.

Did you learn something from the Oregon Trial?

By the way, here is a 4th edition of the game Oregon Trail, for Windows or Mac, that you can get for $6.20 from Amazon.com.

Thanks Joshua Rogers for posting the link. Check out Joshua’s Spiritual Klutz Blog.

Steve Jobs may need to brush up on his lightsaber skills and enlist the help of a Wookie because Darth Vader doesn’t seem too pleased about the iPhone 4’s slew of reception problems.

Posted via AllTop’s Holy Kaw!

But I do say that I enjoy the geeky side in me that enjoy the classic Back to the Future movies. I don’t know, but watching this video just made me happy. Enjoy!

“Ke$ha’s annoyingly catchy ‘Tik Tok’ won’t die, thanks in part to clever mash-ups like the Star Trek one and this “Tik Tok to the Future.” Set to scenes from 80s flick fave Back to the Future, the pop ditty gives a fresh perspective on the residents of fictional Hill Valley.”

Full story at Mashable.

But here are some interesting fact, taken from statistics of the YouTube press center.

1. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo,” on 23rd April 2005.
2. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day
3. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
4. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
5. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
6. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
7. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
8. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
9. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.

And I thought this one very interesting:

10. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.

Get additional fast facts about youtube.com here, or even some cool store items from the YouTube Store…. or if someone wants to get me this cool google maps shirt, I will thank you for 1,000 years.

“It’s time to hang up the nightly suspenders,” the famous host announced.

If I should say anything, they were more than just nightly suspenders, but very, very mighty suspenders indeed. Larry King Live holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running show with the same host in the same time slot; in fact, it’s been a regular feature on the air for 25 years. It was also the first-ever worldwide phone-in TV talk show. King himself has been in professional broadcasting for 53 years, during which time he has conducted more than 40,000 interviews with celebrities, politicians, topical experts and others.

Understandably, news about King’s pulling the plug on his show created a significant hiccup in the social web. Let’s take a look at the topic as it trended on Twitter, Google and elsewhere.

First, here is a YouTube video showing King’s announcement:

Larry is a great interviewer and in his announcement, he said “I’ll still be a part of the CNN family, hosting several Larry King specials on major national and international subjects… With this chapter closing I’m looking forward to the future and what my next chapter will bring, but for now it’s time to hang up my nightly suspenders.”

A kitten born in West Virginia shocked local veterinarians when it entered the world with two faces—like two distinct faces, not like the Batman villain. Vets haven’t pinpointed an exact diagnosis, but say the adorable kitty is either a conjoined twin or suffering from a protein synthesis that caused the mutation.

See the short AP News video below on the story:

Twenty weeks into their pregnancy, T. K. and Deidrea Laux found out that their son had Trisomy 13—a rare DNA abnormality. After being counseled that “terminating the pregnancy” would be an option, they chose life. In Deidrea’s own words:

“We didn’t not terminate because we were hanging on to some sort of hope that there was a medical mistake or there was gonna be some sort of medical miracle. We didn’t terminate because he’s our son.”

The Dallas Morning News has produced this video chronicling the birth and home-going of Thomas after just 5 short days — even longer than most baby’s with his condition live. This is an amazing story of love and life, and you need to watch it.

The good news is that about one year after Thomas’ life ended, earlier this January, the Laux family were blessed with the birth of a healthy baby daughter. To the family who thought that they would never be parents, God’s grace is sufficient.

(Portions of text for this post were taken from fellow Seinfield fan, Denny’s Burk, on his blog about Choosing Thomas). Thanks Denny.

(Our group, by the way, made up of Wilson Wise, David Townsend, and Amanda Gibbs (maybe?) put together a rube goldberg where the final result was to open a PEZ dispenser). It was fun, I think.)

When put to music, and done all in one take — wow! –  you can get a great result! See this video from the band Ok Go. (This video, at the time of the posting, out after only 2 months has received about 13 million views on youtube. That is pretty outstanding!)

To learn more about the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg and how these fun projects have come to be known as “Rube Goldberg Experiments,” see the Rube Goldberg Wikipedia page.

Zac died yesterday.

This video is story of Zac Smith‘s battle with cancer, the love of his wife and children, and how he, despite his fervor for life and desire for living for God and his family, he knows that whether he lived or died that God would still be God, and God would still be good.

Zac’s message is an inspiration to everyone to live life, love each moment we have, and make each second count.

Overall, The Office is sumber one in my book. I have seen every single episode and am bummed when it’s not in my queue on Hulu.com.

But a great up and coming show that I have enjoyed seeing blossom and develop is Community. (I was telling my wife about this show, which she has not watched since she watches another show at the same time on CBS — CSI, I think? — so, she hasn’t watched it and gotten into like I have.)

While the plot line of Community works adn has been developing overtime, what really works is the ever developing cast of characters, both growing in numbers, but also in likability and humor. There are some great, and well known actors in this show, like Chevy Chase and lead character Joel McHale, known best as host of E!’s The Soup.  Two of the ones that I’ve grown to like are Abed and Troy; their male bonding through “end of the show” quirks just adds so much more to the enjoyment of their relationship as characters on the show. — Abed, played by Danny Pudi, is probably one of the funniest characters on the show and extremely talented in timing and versatility. Would love to meet this guy one day!

To give an example, see the clip below — which overall had very little ties to the rest of the plot of the show, but it still was very very funny! (At least to this comedy critic).

And just one more clip for kicks is this one where, again it had nothing to really do with the plot of the show, but the humor, especially with the eating of the cookies and pretending to be Sesame Street Puppets Bert and Ernie, was great!

This video is titled “God of Impossible.” Enjoy!