The Lewis Show

I try to avoid posting about football. Mostly because it's a sport and it's kind of trivial to write a serious post about a game. Since my team, however, is now thrust head long into a major controversy, I figured I would post a few thoughts. Short version: I'm not even mad, I'm just done. We've all (we who care) seen the reply from the Monday night game. Seattle throws a hail Mary pass with time expiring on the clock, there is a jump ball, and two officials make contrary calls with one over ruling the other. After the instant reply review in the booth, the touchdown call stood. Many feel that the last play of the game was actually an interception and are shocked that the officials did not see it that way. I wanted to focus on the core of why there so much outrage and what, if anything, is being done to correct it by the league and the referees.  The NFLRA or the National Football League Referee Association is in a collective bargaining dispute with...

At least once every six months, I open my blog and I start writing random things. This time I feel as though I'm letting off some steam to this wonderful world that I live in. Don't take it personal, it's just me being random. And go! Thank you for giving me the time by telling me it's 1700 hours, Sargent! If you paid fifty dollars to join a social network, your smarts are showing. If you are on the interstate and you're not sure if you are "Slower Traffic" and cars are passing you to your right, you are "Slower Traffic". Move right (once all the aggravated people pass you to the right, that is).  If you resort to name calling over anyone's choice in mobile phone, you need a hobby that does not involve a computer, mobile phone, or the internet. If you don't know who's on your local ballot and you are completely uneducated about what's going on in the world, I'm sorry, you should stay home this year on Election Day....

It's not every day I get to poke fun at Cupertino hardware giant Apple, but when the opportunity presents itself, I jump on it. They are typically flawless in their moves. When they tell the buying public they need something, they jump on it. People know that Apple has produced a clean, simple way to be a geek in this modern age. I also mean no disrespect to my friends that favor the iPhone, but I am a constant devil's advocate. As I mentioned in a prior post , a lot is hinging on this iPhone release. Naturally it'll sell a bazillion copies, but will their software improvements and overall attitude eventually sour the sheepish masses? It just takes little nuances or glitches to start turning people off altogether and Apple may have made their first post Jobs major faux pas. With the update to iOS6, Google Maps and YouTube were removed as native apps. This year, deals between Google and Apple to provide Maps natively on the iPhone ended. It is also very well known ...

I posted at the end of 2009 that I was going to start posting about great service and poor service that I received here in Richmond. Janine and I had such a rough year with customer service, that I wrote a series about being a good service representative and even being a good customer. I also posted just this week about ratings systems and encouraged everyone to write good reviews. I wanted to keep that promise and talk about two companies this week that have greatly helped me out and went above and beyond to provide great service. In May I purchased a Logitech webcam on sale. It was high definition and a good price, so I pulled the trigger. Being a writer now at RootzWiki , we sometimes have meetings and it's good to have one of these for those meetings. I also have a tech savvy Mom now who likes it when I Skype in to say hello to her. The cam was having issues almost from the start. It would occasionally work and when it did, it was only for a moment. I tried running it on ...

Retweets are a simple and organic way Twitter users have found to share something said by another person to people who may not be following that person. The process allows people to provide color to their timeline by allowing someone else to provide an agreeable perspective. Many, however, abuse this privilege. It's so abused in fact, that Twitter was aware of this and gives users the opportunity to opt out of seeing retweets for a particular friend. I have unfortunately turned off retweets for a majority of my friends on that network. It does not have to be this way, but here's what gets the privilege for me removed. Political posts: Yes, here we go again. Some people are too passive aggressive to state their own opinions, so they will constantly retweet a political pundit or satirist. I have always, 100% of the time found this to be annoying and thus the privilege is lost. I can understand the passive aggression on Twitter, I often p...

Janine and I had an interesting discussion about internet ratings and their usefulness. I figured the thoughts I had amassed would work out in a nice post along with suggestions that I have for making ratings work for our benefit. Hopefully this will not be a mental dump, but something meaningful. We've all seen several types of ratings. We have the classic 0-5 stars, thumbs up/thumbs down, number ratings from 0-10, number ratings from 0-3, and the list goes on and on. Janine stated that the ratings found on Google Local (0-3) was ineffective in her finding valuable ratings. I completely agree with her assessment, but I don't think the problem lies with the rating system, but with the people who are using the rating system. People typically take to the internet to rate an item or service for two reasons: They either had great service or they had horrible service, and they feel obligated to warn or encourage others to use or not use that service. I've often found the...

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO took to the stage in an airline hanger today in Santa Monica to announce new devices. The company that started as a portal to order a variety of items from the internet has fast become a content giant. With three new devices, they take their place now as a serious hardware contender as well. He announced a new e reader featuring what they are calling a Paperwhite display. Previous versions of the Kindle could never get that crisp white look that we get from reading traditional books. That looks to change now. Before now as well, Kindle users were left in the dark without any kind of back lighting. Now their latest eBook reader features lighting and an incredible battery life. On top of that, he announced two new Kindle Fire devices. One devices is an update to the 7 inch Kindle Fire, the other is an 8.9 inch content behemoth. These tablets are designed to run applications as well as provide a rich portal to Amazon's content. Added to the announceme...

I wanted to take a moment away from my groaning about politics and share my wish for this internet society (for lack of better term). As I've mentioned, I've been writing now for just over a year covering Android news and have written a few opinion pieces on the former Android Activist and now Rootzwiki . The process of writing, even in such a niche field, has helped me to broaden many horizons and have helped me become a better world thinker. Sure I know not everyone has the capacity for a discipline like this, but I see a lot of people that do and are not taking advantage of their abilities. My wish then for this web community, be they found in social media like Twitter, social news like Reddit, or even Facebook or Google Plus is for people to find their inner writer. That is what I want. I want more people to become writers. I want more people to research their opinions, express them, discuss them, then return to research those opinions. Now I know, we can not all b...