But!! Good news the once king of the hill beaten by google is back and on the iphone, and it talks to you…

MapQuest has released the “MapQuest 4 Mobile” iPhone app. It sports Voice Guidance and Off-Route Assistance if you stray off course. It finds the closest Hotel, Resturant, Shopping Center, Gas, Coffee Shop, Post Office, Parking Garage, Grocery Store, School, and Traffic (yeah I doubt the last one works very well but nice and ambitious).

Here is the link to the blog over at mapquest and a link to the app

NaBloWriMo is National Blog Writing Month – the annual challenge to post each and every day throughout the 30 days of November to your blog. Register with the site and join our intrepid band of heroes, vagabonds and misfits. You know you want to.

Here’s the link NaBloWriMo Good luck and get writing.

Molly Wood, Veronica Bellmont, some Scott Johnson , and Leo Laporte had a conversation on TWIT recently about companies sponsoring tweets (stupid word).There ia a service, Izea, (there may be more than one) that will pay users to put ads in their Twitter streams. I don’t like it. Its difficult to listen to a show where the hosts talk around your point-of-view but they can’t hear you over the internet. Anyway. Here’s why I don’t like the idea:

When I go to my mailbox I expect, even though it rarely happens, to get a hand written letter or package from someone I know. Needless to say, I come away from the mailbox disappointed with a hand full of junk mail from business trying to “Sell me.” The only time  a commercial enterprise doesn’t disappoint me is when I initiated the correspondence.  If I want the catalog or coupon then the interaction is favorable.  The same is true of my email inbox. Ideally it is the point of contact for my friends and the services I’m interested in.

Again, the same is true of twitter. I follow people based on their profile, if they are micro-blogging about their business or service that I’m interested in then I’m on board when they promote to me. But, when, for a real example, when I follow a guy that writes about alternative energy, I get a little slap in the face when I see, next to his avatar, an ad for a service to get more Twitter followers, or a mass email service. But when he tells me about a new energy service or product then he has much more credibility with me.

So, as @ScottWilliams says, “U do U.” Be who you say you are on Twitter and everywhere else in life.

I was very nervous. I have all but stopped listening to the radio. I roll my own driving entertainment in the form of my sleek (beatup) new (fairly old) 5th generation iPod. I know its old but its the best 30gig jump drive money can buy. I use it in the car, work, Wal-Mart (It is amazing how much more tollerable walmart is when you can’t hear what’s going on around you…) Anyway the battery died last week and – again – I know I’m not the first person to do this but it is nerve racking to open up an electronic device that you’re not sure will ever go back the same way again. We’ll its over now and here are the pics. And it cost less than $10. bucks.

The scary bit.

Its Alive - Closing it back up