The Beulah Land Blog
Today there are people that will not seek help, help they desperately need, for their mental illness due to the stigma that surrounds a mental illness diagnosis. Rick Warren and his wife Kay are all too familiar with this problem. Spurred by the loss of their son to mental illness and the grief associated with that loss they started a petition urging educators, lawmakers, church congregations, and healthcare professionals to change the stigma surrounding mental illness. Will you join me in signing this petition?
From their site.
Kay and I have been overwhelmed by your outpouring of love since Matthew’s tragic death.
Matthew was just one of about 11.4 million American adults that suffered from severe mental illness in the past year. In fact, one in five Americans experiences some sort of mental illness.
Join Kay and I, and the Saddleback Family, in our effort to urge educators, lawmakers, healthcare professionals, and church congregations to raise the awareness and lower the stigma of mental illness… and support the families that deal with mental illness on a daily basis.
Thank you for adding your voice.
Pastor Rick
There isn’t really any major differentiator between the players at this phase,” said Neil Mawston, an analyst at research firm Strategy Analytics. He said to cope, Apple needs to take a page from Samsung and launch more products faster.
I am not sure they need to do that. It just doesn’t make sense to me why this is the approach that Apple needs to take. The WSJ later gives a reason why I don’t think they have to take this approach.
Apple captured nearly two-thirds of the profits in the industry, up from 62% in 2011. Samsung’s share rose to about a third from 19%.
Why would a company that has grown the amount of profits they are taking from the market need to make more products faster? It seems to me that if they can increase their share of the profits year to year, they should just keep doing what they are doing.
I could be wrong. If I am let me know.
I have had T-mobile service for many years now. Before a short stint with Nextel, I carried a Powertel phone. T-mobile has always had great customer service. I have never had any nightmare stories like the ones I hear from AT&T customers. Maybe I am easy customer – I am not sure.
Outside of what T-mobile has ever done, they had a press conference yesterday. Many rumors were floating around about this event and people really didn’t know what to expect. On March 24 they rolled out new rate plans. They are also launching a new ad and service campaign called the un-carrier. I really think they could have done better with the name. Still, the idea is great. No more contracts, you choose when you want a new phone and if you don’t like the service – leave. There are no strings attached to you and the carrier. The services are cheaper than there competitors Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless
There really is no “catch”. If you want to call it one, you can say that you having to buy the phones at retail is the “catch”. However, in reality you can get an iPhone 5 cheaper through T-mobile (with no contract) than you can through Apple themselves. Here is how. They are offering the iPhone 5 for $579. It is accomplished as a $99 down payment and 24 months of $20 added to your monthly bill. So you don’t have to pony up the full price up front, but you could if you would prefer that. Apple is offering the iPhone for $649 on it’ own online store. Yes, I compared it to the unlocked phone. T-mobile will unlock any phone you purchase as soon as it is paid off.
Oh, did I mention that T-Mobile is getting the iPhone?
I have enjoyed the app Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly. I first got the app free on the Amazon App store. They later lost many customers because they only updated the version on the Google Play store and not the one from Amazon. I stayed with them after that and purchased the app. Not sure why I stayed with them but I think it was mostly because it would be pain to move to another app.
They recently went through a new release. It added some great features like the ability to speed up your listening. Before, you had to install another app just to let you listen to podcasts at anything other than normal speed. There are many other nice additions that came with the update including a complete redesign.
I am asking Shifty Jelly to please stop with the update description poems. They are stupid and a waste of everyone’s time. What? You don’t know what I am talking about? Here.
Please stop. I am not laughing.
In case you haven’t logged into your Google Reader account, Google reader is being deleted July 1. Sad? Maybe. To me? Not so much.
Do I use Google Reader? Sure. The only reason I use it, however, is to have an easy way to manage the feeds that I like to read. I have always thought that the interface was terrible.
We could go on and on about why Google is leaving Reader. I really don’t care. However, Ben Brooks has made sure to open his mouth about the subject. This is not unusual. This quote (I originally saw on Shawn Blanc’s site) is from Ben.
I think the why is self-evident. The why is that Google doesn’t want to make anyone spend cash for their services (there are exceptions to this). So if faced with charging for Reader or shutting down Reader, shutting down Reader fits the Google mantra better than the former.
That’s scary to think about.
Seems like when I first ran across that quote it didn’t have the “there are exceptions to this” attached to it. I think he is wrong. This too is not unusual. Google charges for Drive and for Gmail at a certain level. I soon will have to join the ranks of those that need more room on Gmail.
Anyway, I would like to mention what I use that can be used as a replacement to Google Reader.
- Reeder for Mac I love the layout and the way this operates.
- On my Android phone I use Flipboard.I find it very well designed and it works great.
The biggest problem will be hard coding all my feeds into the application as opposed to just signing into Google Reader.
One thing I have my eye on is David Smith’s new project that is not out yet called Feed Wrangler. I hope his plan includes an app for Mac that utilizes the fee based service. (Does this make you happy, Ben?)
Overall I think this will be a great transition and it will be accomplished with minimal tears.
