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Yes, it is that time again.

I am once again lusting after a new gadget. This time, it's the Nexus One cell phone, by Google.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. It's the best phone, and the best mp3 player, and the best mobile web browser I've ever had. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Every now and then I think, "I wish it would just do this one little thing in this slightly different way…"

When the Motorola Droid came out, I was tempted to take a close look at it — and in a sense I did — but our contract with AT&T still had around a year remaining, and I didn't see any need to pay early termination fees. The "droid" also has its own problems.

For starters, its bigger and heavier than an iPhone. While I might enjoy a slightly larger screen, the droid was also thicker. One of the things I love about the iPhone is that it doesn't add a lot of bulk to my pocket, or necessitate a belt clip/holster (like my Treo did). Getting a big, heavy phone to replace a small light one would go in the "con's" column, not the "pro's".

While I do sort of miss the hardware keyboard of my previous Treo and Blackberry phones, I get by just fine with the "soft" (touch-screen) keyboard in the iPhone. It's not perfect, and having seen some of the replacement keyboards available on Android OS (the operating system used by the Droid and the Nexus One), it could be better. But that said, I never find myself cursing the iPhone's soft keyboard. Well, I take that back. I curse it when it gets in the way. Especially in landscape view, the keyboard and system bar at the top combined take up somewhere around 75% of the screen, by my estimates. That leaves just enough room for 1-2 lines of text. So while it's nice to be able to use the landscape keyboard when writing text messages, it makes scrolling up to read previous messages a bit painful.

Multi-touch (pinch-to-zoom, for example) was also not available on the Droid until recently. Updates are still being sent out to users, so there are still some Droid phones in the wild without multi-touch. Going forward, I can't imagine a new touch screen smartphone that doesn't use multi-touch being successful.

I also feel like there are some things the iPhone could do better, but don't have much to compare them with on Android (that I know of). For example, Apple added "push" notifications to the iPhone, so that new email, facebook, etc, can all do immediate notification when something happens. That's great, but I don't want to get woken up at 3am because the latest Snow Thrower Enthusiast Newsletter is out. The only time I want the phone to make noise between 10pm and 6am is for phone calls. Is that too much to ask? Apparently.

There are other things that tick me off about the iPhone, too. The lack of Flash Player support is an often cited case of Apple seemingly arbitrarily blocking applications from the phone. The reasoning is not truly known to the public, but there is speculation that it's because Flash support would lead to applications developed in Flash and available on the web, where Apple wouldn't get a cut of any revenue the application developer earns. The why isn't terribly important, but what is important is the fact that nearly every other smartphone platform supports Flash, including the Nexus One.

Another example of functionality blocked from Apple's "Walled Garden" is Google Voice. And yes, it's true that Google has figured out a way to make it work via the web, but it's not the same experience you get from a native application. And in my opinion, what I'm paying for is the experience.

Of course, no list of complaints about the iPhone would be complete without a gripe or two about AT&T's service. Dropped calls are ridiculously frequent, and they'll be charging extra for tethering (connecting my phone to my laptop to get the laptop online when away from WiFi — like on the train), when in reality the only thing that I would get for the extra money is the right to tether. Data won't come any faster or be much different from just using the browser on the phone, it's just got a full size screen and keyboard. Essentially, charging for nothing. I don't know what the tethering situation is for the Nexus One, but it couldn't be worse than the iPhone. The Nexus One will be available on Verizon in "Spring 2010".

Of course, the Nexus One isn't perfect. I don't have the slightest idea why the Blackberry-style track-ball was included. Even Blackberry isn't using it any more — the latest Curve uses a small trackpad, and the Storm only has a touch-screen, like the iPhone. That said, the Nexus One is the most powerful phone on the market today, with the fastest processor you can find in a cell phone. It has an expandable memory slot that supports Micro-SD cards twice the size of my iPhone's hard drive. It has a better camera, an LED flash, and a 2nd microphone used to cancel out ambient noise from phone calls.

So far, when weighing my options, I'm leaning heavily toward switching to the Nexus One and Verizon when our AT&T contract is up in October. Maybe — if I'm lucky — they'll have a new model out by then without the ridiculous track ball.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

We're going on vacation! … and there isn't any internet. We're renting a house in the Poconos for the next week. Maybe I'll take up drinking coffee so I have an excuse to find a Starbucks or Panera Bread that offers free wifi.  But at any rate, there's a very real possibility that you won't hear from me at all, not even email, until the 25th. Just so you know.

I'll have my iPhone and fully intend to hit up BrightKite and/or Twitter occasionally… but that very well may be all of the internetting I do for the next week.

Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it, because I was (kind of) hoping to spend part of the vacation sorting through pictures and catching up on blogging and whatnot.

Anyway, have fun this week. Try not to burn the house down. And no parties. And definitely no girls. Be good. Bye!

I received a forwarded email last week that I've been thinking about ever since, and I figured I could turn it into an entry here and get your take on the situation. For me, email forwards go directly in the circular file, with one chance to get my attention along the way: I open the message to confirm that it really is spammy and not just a poorly written subject line. There, you've got less than a second to get my attention — and animaged graphics and neon blue text on a bright pink background is not the way to get it.

This one caught my eye though. I did have to reduce my browser's text size to shrink the text into a readable state, but that's a small price to pay. I guess this one got my attention by being about a subject that I find interesting: the economic stimulus plan and the demise of several huge American-owned and -operated companies.

I'll give you the short version, with my paraphrasing:

The government should bail out American car companies (and we should buy domestic cars) because they are more patriotic or more sympathetic to American tragedies than foreign companies.

The email says that Ford, Chrysler, and GM made huge monetary contributions to the Red Cross and various relief efforts after the 9/11 attacks, and claims that BMW, Daewoo, Fiat, Honda, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Suzuki, and Toyota made no contributions or even expressions of condolence, despite posting record sales numbers in some cases.

Now, let's set aside the fact that no source was given for any of these numbers. For the sake of argument, let's assume the numbers are as close to correct and factual as they need to be.

Who cares?

Perhaps the reason has nothing to do with their feelings toward Americans or for any political reason at all. Perhaps they just can't afford it. Perhaps they just prefer to stay neutral. When the Tsunami killed tons of people in 2004, I was working at Perdue and we organized a campaign to collect donations and get corporate matching, and gave that to relief efforts. This leads me to believe that Americans are just more likely to give when others are in need. (I don't know how much relief effort there was for Tsunami victims from other world-regions, this is just given as a small example of typical American behavior.)

The big thing for me, though, is the fact that this email neglects to mention is that American car companies are suffering from their own negligence. Car companies have claimed for years to be working on alternative-energy powered cars, and in some cases even introduced and later destroyed them, no doubt in part due to pressure from oil companies (that opinion is based on what I saw in Who Killed the Electric Car?). As long as Americans are buying petroleum-powered cars, the oil companies are making ridiculous profits, and in turn spending some of that money convincing manufacturers to continue building the cars.

The automotive industry, in some small way, is mirroring what's happening to the journalism industry. Newspapers and the nightly news are falling out of favor with the younger generations, making way for the likes of The Huffington Post, Fark, and so on. I, myself, have said that I consider The Daily Show to be one of my primary sources of news — and it's true. Katie Couric was on The Daily Show the other night and admitted that the average age of her viewers is 62! I would bet that she has one of the younger demographics of the evening news shows, too.

Despite an obvious downturn in their market share, newspapers and TV news networks are clawing the ground, trying everything they can do not to be dragged away and thrown on the trash heap. They are a dying breed, and instead of trying to adapt their industry and their offering to be what the new generations want, they are attempting to convince the new generations that they want the old thing, or that the old thing still has more value. We'll see how that works for them. What they don't realize is that consumers are getting smarter all the time, and are always looking for the next big shiny thing. And when you find the next big shiny thing? You leave the last big thing — now small and tarnished — behind.

In my mind, the parallels between these industries need no explanation; but I'll explain here for your benefit. Think back to last summer. Gas prices were the Swine Flu of '08. If you weren't talking about them, you were yesterday's news. In my area, gas reached the — admittedly humble in comparison to some other places — price of nearly $4 per gallon at their worst. And still, what were the predominant commercials on TV? Think Hard.

I'll tell you: Employee pricing. "That's right, now you can get a Hummer H3 for the same astronomical rate we charge our own employees! What do we care how much it costs to drive the thing? We're selling you the car, not the gas!" This was during the popularization of the Toyota Prius, and now both Mitsubishi and the relatively unknown player BYD are introducing plug-in hybrid cars that will be available in 2010 in Japan (no official word on plans for U.S. sales yet) and 2011 in the U.S. respectively. And that's just from a 60 second google search. I would bet there are more on the way.

What has the biggest domestic automaker resposne to the popularization of hybrid cars been? A hybrid Cadillac Escalade. So that now maybe it will approach 20mpg (from its current paltry 10mpg)… something gas powered Hondas and Toyotas have been crushing for a decade. At this rate, you're pretty much just paying extra for a nice little "Hybrid" emblem… if you really cared about the environment, you wouldn't drive an Escalade at all.

In the interest of full disclosure, I drive a Ford pickup truck and Megan drives a Toyota sedan. There's no arguing the versatility of a pickup truck. Everybody knows someone with a truck — because you have to, if you ever want to move or transport stuff. As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to help someone pick up an apple tree pretty soon. I don't like driving a gas guzzler, but I do need a truck. It's been perfect for camping and carting our canoe around… if only it were a little greener. Just like my iPhone conundrum, when hybrids and pickup trucks are combined and road tested, I'll be first in line to get one. In the meantime, we drive my truck as little as possible — trying to get the most out of it that we can, when we have to — and try to take Megans car instead, whenever possible.

So back to the email. Should domestic automakers get your money because they donated to 9/11 relief funds? Hell no — at least, that's my opinion. I'll buy the best product that suits my needs. As long as they keep pushing gas powered cars down our throats and making empty promises about alternative energy cars, I'll keep thinking they're getting what they deserve. What do you think?