Windows 8 First Look…The Mac Killer
For the past few years the mac users and critics have all had the same banter, "Windows is just copying Mac". Well, those days are fading fast. The giant who was said to always be behind the times, is starting to set the pace of computing once again. The Windows Phone is anything but an iPhone copy...its unique, user-friendly, and a lot more privacy-focused than either Apples phone or the Android devices.
And now, Windows 8 is going to blow the world away by bringing the personal computer and the tablet device together. Imagine, loose the $2000 Macbook and the $1000 iPad and the frustration of trying to share information between them, and do it all with one device.
More than that, think about the implications: Windows is business-ready, and fully integrated with the office systems, its the perfect, robust corporate appliance for the new age.
Watch this first official look, and be impressed...
The NEW Windows Phone is coming…yeah!
I love my Windows Phone…it has made life much, much easier than my old iPhone ever did, and now I am excited to see that it is getting even more enhancements. It looks like it took Microsoft a while to catch up to the Android and iPhone devices, and this fall, they will greatly surpass both devices with a much more integrated mobile device. I can’t wait.
Here area few new features I am excited about…
- Organizing people into contact groups
- Integrated messaging that shows me email, txt, Twitter, and Facebook messages on the same screen.
- Built in voice-to-text
- more languages for more countries
and here are a few of the enhancements I look forward to using…
- Faster browsing than any of the other mobile devices via Internet Explorer 9
- multitasking applications, saving my current progress while I switch over to work on another program.
- Better integration with my online storage at Microsoft
- different colors within the conversation window, so my messages are distinct from my friends
- custom ringtones
and here are a few things I hope the new OS gives me…
- improved turn-by-turn voice navigation for free
- visual voicemail
If you have time, watch this video describing some of the new features, or read more online via this post.
Pornography’s Destructive Power…
The Baptist Press posted an article recently about the destructive power that pornography is having upon the generations of people who have had free access to it at an early age via the internet. I believe they are right--porn will be a lot bigger issue in the future as people act out of increased exposure to it and as they try to relate to the opposite sex with a severely skewed paradigm of sexuality.
Their ability to be the husbands and the fathers God intended them to be is being shriveled and shrunk and stifled and twisted and distorted by exposure to ever more hardcore, Internet pornography
I believe that we are looking at in the next 10 years truly an avalanche, a tsunami of sex crimes against women and girls, because we've got a generation of boys that have been exposed at an earlier and earlier age to hardcore pornography," Land said. "And the mathematics are a certain number who view it will become addicted to it, a certain number who become addicted to it will eventually act out what they've seen on screen.
~ Richard Land
Read the article by clicking here...
My New Windows 7 Phone–Yeah Baby!!!
I recently upgraded phones to the LG Quantum Windows 7 Phone, and I want to share my joy and my experience with you, in case your in the place to be in the market anytime soon. Let me pursue this dialog in three ways: (1) Why I have AT&T’s service, (2) Why I chose the Windows Phone I did, and (3) Why I am leaving Apple’s iPhone behind me (good riddance!).
Why I have AT&T:
I was a T-mobile customer until 2009, when their service became so bad in my apartment, that I had to make a switch. When I shifted to AT&T, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my monthly minutes dropped from 1000-1200 a month to less than 500. That’s how many people that Stacy and I call are AT&T customers, and for us, that was awesome.
To further the awesomeness, I knew that staying with GSM technology with cellphones would allow Stacy and I to make calls in countries outside the U.S. – a dire necessity when you plan on doing missions work one day. A switch to Sprint, Verizon, or MetroPCS would mean changing technologies and a dead phone in other parts of the world. Read more about that subject here.
In addition to this, AT&T allowed us to keep using our phones—making the switch cheap, and also keeping us from signing a two year contract…something I have only done once—and never want to do again!
Why I chose Windows 7:
Windows has been advancing by leaps and bounds lately, and all of its Windows 7 software is quite incredible. There has been a lot of talk lately about people using Apple’s OS or Google’s new Chrome OS, and while I agree that the competition is quite good—the truth remains that most of the world is going to stick with Windows. Simply put, its cheaper than Windows (something that matters A LOT overseas), its available in more languages, and people are already very familiar with it.
However, on top of that argument, I have found Microsoft to be MUCH better at protecting my privacy than Google or Apple. A great example of this is Apple’s recent controversy over the iPhone. Apparently Apple thought that it would be harmless to keep a full record of every location that the phone has been over its lifetime without telling us that this data was being recorded. Huh? I guess that’s a feature that Steve Jobs forgot to mention! Oh, and Google is also doing this too! This is one of many headlines over the past year that have included privacy controversies with Google or Apple. I just feel better knowing Microsoft has managed to stay under the radar on these same issues. That matters to me! Read more about Apple’s iPhone controversy here.
“So if a thief got his hands on your iPhone, he can figure out where you live and loot you there, too. Same goes for a hacker who gains remote access to the consolidated.db file…
Imagine if you were suspected of a crime and police wanted to know where you were at 5 p.m. Thursday. They could subpoena your iPhone, dig into this file and, looking at the various data points, get a good idea of where you were at that time.”
In addition to this, I have to admit, I like the Windows OS. It is very effective, and very fast. It has a lot of applications, just like Android and iPhones, and it integrates REALLY well with Microsoft Office and Mail services. For the first time, I am able to read my email or update my calendar or add a contact on the phone, on the web, or on the computer and have it automatically update on the others! How nice!!!
Lastly, and VERY important to me, the LG quantum has a physical keyboard. I have been typing on the iPhone for a year now, and I can’t spell on the dang touch keyboard at all. Somehow touching the right keys evade me every time on the stupid iPhone—I would have gone insane without spellcheck help on that device. But now, thanks to Windows Phone, I have found I can type on the phone’s screen or on the physical keypad pretty easily. It’s a nice upgrade that saves me frustration.
Why I am Leaving the iPhone behind:
Well, if my earlier comments on the keypad and the privacy issues weren’t enough, then here’s the big reason—COST. The iPhone 3G was getting ridiculously slow—after only having the phone new from AT&T after 1 year. That’s just sad that a device can be so poor in performance when it can be bought brand new. The truth is, an upgrade without a 2 year contract would have cost me a minimum of $300—probably more like $500. I can buy a laptop for that, so I’m not interested in having a phone that costs so much. Instead, I am selling my iPhone for $100 and getting the LG Quantum for $140. A $40 upgrade price is pretty good to me!
Want to read more about my phone choice, see a great review here.
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A Mormon President? (Thoughts on Mitt Romney)
The current presidential campaign seems to favor two popular candidates: Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. While there is still a high probability that some prolific figures will rise from national obscurity to seize the attention of the American people, I find myself worried that the affections of the American people will favor a clearly non-Christian candidate. While I have my concerns about our current president’s faith, I am somewhat comforted by the fact that he has decided to represent himself as a Christian. Mitt Romney would have no such constraints…and that bothers me greatly. I hope that by reading this article, I can persuade you to consider my reservations and make them your own, and here’s why:
Presidency is more than character, morals, or even political leadership. It’s about influence and representation of our beliefs before our nation, before other nations, and before God. Putting a Mormon on center stage means that Mormonism will be on center stage. Mormons will represent our country to our citizens, to other nations, and to God. People will question their own religious beliefs on the basis of what they see in the President…do we really want them considering Mormonism more than they do now?
God will also judge us through our actions and the actions of our leader. God has always dealt with people on a national, as well as on an individual basis. The books of Kings and Chronicles as well as the prophecies of the Old Testament make it clear that God judges the nations and their leaders based on their religious influence. We should be concerned for how our election of a non-Christian leader will affect our standing before God.
The reality of Spiritual Warfare necessitates the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m crying “Antichrist” here. That’s not my point. But every day we encounter demonic activity in subtle ways, and every day across the world, our Christian brothers and sisters encounter cases of demon possession. Judas, who was with the Lord, was controlled by a demon. The truth is, I don’t want a president who doesn’t have the protection of the Holy Spirit in his life. If there’s one leader that I want to be immune from this type of influence, it’s our president.
Mormonism is NOT a branch of the Christian religion, it is a cult. Mormons have their own separate religious books (The Book of Mormon, The Book of the Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price) and their own prophet (Joseph Smith) and their own distinctive beliefs (polygamy as a way of gaining heavenly status, eternal marriage, eternal progression toward god-hood, etc.). Their movement was so clearly heretical that they were driven out of most of the communities they tried to settle in when they first began. Joseph Smith believed that God intended him to establish the only true church in the world, and was later killed for his movement.
Let’s never fall into the mindset that “Christianity” is defined by the fact that it creates moral people…that confuses the results of a relationship with Christ with their main focus: salvation from our sins and the punishment they demand. If we define Christianity by its effects, it is no different than any other religion—Mormonism, Islam, or Buddhist. But Christianity is not about creating moral people. Christianity is about the history of the world—mankind’s separation from God and God’s awesome work through Christ to restore them. Christianity is about a historical event, where a man named Jesus proved through miraculous events that He was God and that He had come to save the world through His death and resurrection. Christianity is about people who experience the power of rebirth when they come to know Christ and live lives with the power of God’s Spirit dwelling inside of them. Christianity is defined by ONE holy book: The Bible, which we trust and follow so passionately that we are translating it into every language imaginable. And Christianity is a religion that continues to grow because God is miraculously at work in the world—sending visions, healing diseases, casting out demons, and revealing Himself through the extreme love of those who know Him.
[UPDATE 4/5/11]
For those who want to read more, please do visit Tom's blog (http://redemptivetheology.blogspot.com/) and also note his references to the Mormon (LDS) church's own writings and records. I particularly appreciate his citation of the LDS's own admission that "In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints "do not believe in the traditional Christ. No, I don't. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak." from LDS Church News.
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