A guy in the tech world who turned me on to Four Square told me it was going to be the next HOT social networking deal and I had to get on it.

So I did.

At the time I really didn’t get the concept of Four Square and a year later I still really don’t.

You check in at restaurants, hotels, airline terminals, pretty much everywhere you go in a day and if you check into a place a lot you may get to become Mayor of the place. (assuming no on else is already).

Some places treat their Mayor’s pretty well offering them free drinks to free food to discounts.

I get that I might be cool to be the Mayor of say the Four Seasons Hotel in New York or the city of Miami Beach or the Empire State Building.

However after one year It seems just about every place I check into already has a Mayor and that Mayor isn’t me.

Sure there are some “places” that still come up on Four Square that still have no Mayor, like the “Dumpster behind the 7-11″ which popped up on my screen the other day but somehow that doesn’t have the same wow factor as being Mayor of the Four Seasons.

Maybe its just me.

Users of Four Square also get “Badges” based on their check-in’s so if your a frequent flier you might get the “Jetsetter” badge or if your a boater you might get “I’m on a boat” Badge.

There are a lot of Badges.

Of course the Badges are virtual and there doesn’t appear to be any prize money involved.

Or any other benefit other than i guess telling your friends you basically have no life but a have been awarded a bunch of worthless Badges. (14 as of time of publication)

My tech friend was right about one thing, a year later Four Square is huge.

I got an email from Four Square a couple of days ago and the numbers are pretty amazing:

In 2010:

“We grew from 175,000 to over 6,000,000 users”

“You guys checked in 381,576,305 times in 2010″

6 Million Users and almost a half of billion check-in’s

Wow that was some year.…

Since Facetime uses Wi-Fi rather than 3G quality is likely to be excellent and of course the screen itself it top rate.

As you also may know, Apple has been very anti-adult, not allowing any sort of adult apps in its store.

As soon as FaceTime was announced my first thought was this would make a great platform for adult “chat” and cam sites.

Now an ad has been spotted in the New York Craigs List:

“”Starting an online interactive pornography firm where woman will use the iphone 4 to video chat with potential customers on a pay as you go basis.
Hours are flexible, pay will increase as the business builds.

“”Woman will receive a free iphone 4 to use as personal time when not working. Woman will talk to potential clients and chat with them and perform various acts as desired by clients. All information will be confidential.”"

“”Payment will be based on percentage of sales volume and performance. Potential launch date of the company is 9/1/2010 or based on feedback received.”"

“”Woman will receive, as before mentioned, a free cell phone and a very competitive salary.”"

Please send information and pictures – we would like to launch sooner than 9/1/2010.

* Location: NYC/LI
* Telecommuting is ok.
* This is a part-time job.
* This is a contract job.
* This is at a non-profit organization.
* This is an internship job
* OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
* Phone calls about this job are ok.
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

So here are the questions that I have?

Now what will or can Apple do to stop the use of its product for what maybe the biggest explosion (pun intended) in adult entertainment in years?

Will Facetime, further erode the internet adult entertainment industry or somehow help to revive it?

Will a great domain be of any use in the new age of Facetime or will it be irrelevant?

Have no interest in adult, remember that adult is always the first, not the last to use technology in new ways.…

First the official announcement then my comments and comparison other free whois apps currently available

“”"The app developed by Network Solutions allows iPhone users to use the company’s WHOIS database search tool from anywhere their iPhones receive service. The application will be particularly useful to Web designers, developers, and network engineers on the go.

“”"Available now at the iTunes® store online, the WHOIS allows users to easily look up information on the domain or IP of their choice, finding all relevant information, including the WHOIS business listing.”"”

“”"”Network Solutions has been working with the WHOIS database since its inception,” said Kamalesh Dwivedi, Network Solutions CIO. “The addition of this mobile capability follows the release of the WHOIS lookup mobile application for Google’s Android operating system earlier this year. Extending this capability to the iPhone platform will benefit users in a major way.”"”

Ok so much for the official announcement.

Now for the reality check.

NSI application doesn’t hold a candle to two other free whois apps, already available on the Apple App store.

For one the NSI app doesn’t make available the soft key .com button on the iphone, so for every domain you check on the NSI app you have to type in the domain, change from the letter screen to the symbol screen to get the “.” then switch back to the letter screen to type in the “com”.

Both, The Easydns app available for free from the Apple App store and the “Free Whois” app make use of the .com button.

The NSI App uses black and white fonts, nothing special there.

Finally the NSI APP doesn’t seem to work.

On 5 trys I only got whois results  back 1 of the  5 domains that are clearly registered.

Freewhois App returns results in colors, much easier on the eyes and even better the domain name, and the servers in the whois record are both clickable so if you want to check out what is on the domain you just looked up, you just click on the link and it takes you there.

The only draw back to the FreeWhois App is that the font is pretty small on the imput side.

EasyDNS App is better than NSI, it uses the “.com” button nicely and results are returned quickly, but once again in black and white and without links.…

After years of waiting for that round wheel on Vista to finish so I could get back to work, my computer freezing – having to pull the plug so I can get it restarted, waiting for Outlook to rebuild after “not closing down properly”, losing work in progress, failed hard drives and all the rest, I finally made the move over to a Mac.

I have always heard that the downside of switching to a Mac is the switch itself and that it takes a few months to get use to.

Well last weekend I made the switch from my Dell XPS which has given me an endless amount of trouble, which I have blogged about (made sure you read the updates in the comments, to the new Apple 17″ MacBook Pro, the one with the non-removal battery.

The move took less than 4 hours and I was up and running with almost no switch over time.

So I thought I’d tell you how I did it, since some of the switch over, I was told by 3 Apple Geniuses in the Boca store could not be done.

Fortunately I had my own Apple Genius, Adam Matuzich in house.

You’re going to need a portable hard drive which supports both Windows and Mac. I used a Maxtor One Touch.

First thing you’re going to want to do is move all of your Outlook Mail, Contacts, and Calendar.

The easiest method I found was a program called Outlook2Mac. ($10)

Download this software to your PC, and run it.

The program exports all of Outlook’s contents. You have the choice to choose all or just certain kinds of files and emails you want saved. Three new files are created – one for mail, one for contacts, and one for calendar.

You then drag the files to your external hard drive, plug it in the Mac, and move them onto your new machine.

Open up Mail (the name of Apple’s standard email client), import all your messages and attachments. Open up your Address Book, import your contacts. Open up iCal (the calender program), import all your past and future appointments.

Mail is done, contacts moved, calendar imported.

Set up your mail accounts in Apple’s Mail and start using it.

Some people complain about the size of the font on MacMail.

Outlook allows you to make all your e-mail fonts larger, but Apple’s Mail does not.…

No Price was announced.…

17″ notebooks are just to heavy and big to carry around, and the 11″-13″ although light and compact, are just to small for these old eyes.

So I’ve been on the look out for a cool 15″ model to replace my Sony 15″

I’ve been hooked on Sony’s for quite abut I hate the look of their “FZ” model which is their 15″ version.

I saw a commercial in late November for the Dell XPS 1530 which had just been released.

I got mine the other day which I believe is one of the first one’s shipped.

I’ve had it for 4 days and I am very impressed.

Loaded with a 2.6 Centrino duo chip and 4 gigs of RAM, and a 200 gig hard drive, the machine is lighting quick

The Dell has a striking design.

You can have your wireless phone card built in from either Verizon or Sprint.

I’ve had a Verizon card for a couple of years, but now instead of making sure I have it with me at all times, i can just click and go.

Also not having the card sticking out of the machine is very nice. Saves power as well.

The Dell also comes with a fingerprint reader (actually works) for extra security and a one year subscription to LoJack.

My six volt battery works for almost 3 hours which is an hour longer than my Sony. Got an extra 6 volt batter so I’m basically good to go for 6 hours.

The computer is pretty light in the 5-6 pound range. Easy to carry.

Keyboard and mouse have a nice feel to them.

The base of the computer around the keyword is actually brushed metal. First time I have ever seen this. Looks very cool. Reminds me of the new Porsche cell phone coming out this year.

All and All a very impressive machine.

…

Check it out.

A vending machine selling ipods, ear phones, headphones and other ipod accessories.

Very cool.

You know I had to try it. So i swiped my credit card and selected, a Christmas gift, a black classic 160G, ipod.

Nice

Ok, I know your all thinking of all those times you put the dollar bill into the soda machine and nothing came out, or the wheel started churning on your Mr. Goodbar only to stop right before the last turn that would release the delicious treat down the chute, leaving you no choice than to bang and tilt the machine until it released the candy bar from it’s clutches or until you exhausted yourself.

So I watched as the arm went up to snag the ipod.

Very good

Then the arm came down with the ipod and placed it in the door

Excellent

I grabbed my ipod and my receipt for $349, plus tax, and thought cool, i just saved myself 15 minutes standing in line at the Apple store.

I looked down at my purchase

Classic ipod, check

Black, check

160G, welllllllll, no

only 80G

Doubled checked my receipt, I didn’t push the wrong button. Right there in my right hand the receipt told me I had purchased the 160G classic black for $349, but in my left hand there was an 80G, $249 machine.

Sucks

Asked the nice woman at Macy’s, who do I talk to? I waited 10 minutes for the manager who told me he didn’t know anything about the machine and I needed to call the 800 number on my receipt.

When I called, they basically asked me for every bit of info on my receipt (another 10 minutes) , told me I would receive an e-mail with return instructions, that I would have to print out the e-mail and send the ipod back to them at MY COST and insure the shipment at MY COST.

Nice, very nice.

As I await a call back from the higher-ups in the vending company, I can’t help but wonder how many people who are buying an ipod for the holiday’s, maybe there first one, may not notice that they received an item worth $100 less than they should have. How many people will not realize it until Christmas day.

Then I remembered I didn’t even get to bang on the machine.

Bummer…