RIP Steve Jobs

The world lost one of its few visionaries a few hours ago.

Today, we bid farewell to Steve Jobs, the man who single handedly moved the technological world into the future with his inventions: iPhone, iPod, iPad, Macbook…

Steven Spielberg has called Steve Jobs the “Thomas Edison of our times” and deservedly so. It’s very easy to imagine a world that didn’t have Steve Jobs – one where we’d all still be using phones with keypads that only serve their basic function, where our notebooks constantly crashed, where we didn’t feel inspired by a company  to advance in our lives and where we were content with what we had.

It’s very easy to criticize Apple. But it’s also very easy to look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple and the world and be amazed by how talented this man was and how great his achievements are.

Today we bid farewell to Steve Jobs. But the chapter in our history and present that Steve Jobs has opened will not close anytime soon. It will live on – just like the legacy of this man. It will never die.

Steve Jobs has been through the hardships of life. He was born for an out of wedlock couple, in a time where such a thing was frowned upon. He was put up for adoption. He dropped out of college. And yet, for someone who has been through so much, he sure left his mark in the world.

RIP Steve Jobs. The world will miss you. Thank you for being the great man that you are. Thank you for changing the world.

Eighteen Inches (Lyrics) – Lauren Alaina [Written by Carrie Underwood]

These are the lyrics for the song Eigtheen Inches, written by Carrie Underwood, and featuring on Lauren Alaina’s upcoming debut album: Wildflower. For the album’s review, click here.

It’s about fifteen hundred miles to California,
they’ll get there Friday if they leave tonight,
she sneaks out at three thirty in the morning,
leaves a note so she won’t see her daddy cry.

He cuts the engine when he coasts in the driveway,
she slides in and gives him one kiss for the road,
no friends and no family, no job out there waiting,
the whole town will call them crazy but they gotta go.

‘Cause when you’re young and in love, yeah,
you might do some things that don’t seem all that smart,
’cause there ain’t no greater distance than the eighteen inches from your head to your heart, yeah.

They can barely make rent on a rundown apartment,
she’s waiting tables and he’s a valet,
they’re behind on the bills and the car’s barely running,
but he buys a ring with the tips that he’s saved.

When you’re young and in love, yeah,
you might do some things that don’t seem all that smart,
’cause there ain’t no greater distance than the eighteen inches from your head to your heart.

Last thing they need is another mouth to feed, but they want one,
just kids themselves but that’s all to change in nine more months,

she wakes him up at three thirty in the morning,
ready or not their new life’s going to start,
seven pounds and eighteen inches,
the doctor lays that new baby’s head right on her heart.

When you’re young and in love, yeah,
you might do some things that don’t seem all that smart,
but thank God for those eighteen inches,
the distance it is from your head to your heart, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have to say I’m very impressed. Carrie is telling a story here without taking sides: she doesn’t showcase the pregnancy in a positive light, which would have turned this song into a saccharine love song and she doesn’t condemn it, making it preachy. On the contrary, she’s simply narrating a segment of someone’s life and uses beautiful imagery to do so, mostly revolving around the double meaning of eigtheen inches.

Favorite line?

“Cause there ain’t no greater distance than the eighteen inches from your head to your heart” – Lyric GOLD!

The song is not out yet but listen to a live version:

3G in Lebanon To Be Delayed and Not Launch in October?

4000 lucky people are already using the service – of which I am one – but for the rest of Lebanon, the tantalizing dream of faster internet will possibly just stay a dream.

Personally, I found the area of coverage in the test pilot to be sort of absurd. Why is it that only Mount Lebanon and Beirut are the covered areas? Shouldn’t at least Lebanon’s major cities (Batroun, Amioun, Tripoli, Saida, etc…) be covered as well to get a broader picture of how the service acts in those locations?

However, while using it in Beirut, I’ve found the service to be seamless. I burned through 30 MB of data within minutes and without knowing. And no, I wasn’t streaming on YouTube. The only drawback was something I had also experienced while backpacking across Spain and France: battery life is murdered.

I was getting speeds of about 2 Mbps, which is very comparable – and even better – to the speeds I was using on Spain’s Orange and France’s SFR. Coverage, however, even in Beirut, was still quite spotty and I found my iPhone switching back and forth between edge and 3G frequently.

But basically everyone was waiting for October to roll around so we can put the smart in our smartphones and actually have data plans that would hopefully bring the country and us forward. But it looks like it won’t happen.

Just today, Lebanon’s Shawra council, responsible to uphold whatever little law is applied in this country, has ordered the rolling of 3G services to stop. The degree itself says the delay should happen for a month. But we all know how things in happen tend to be delayed. Why? They cited “illegal” actions taken place by the Ministry of Telecommunication at the hand of both former minister Charbel Nahhas and current one Nicolas Sahnaoui.”

Change and reform, indeed.

Apple Sets New iPhone Event Date – October 4th

Following leaks, reports, guesses, approximations and the like, Apple has finally set the date for its unveiling of the new iPhone, call it iPhone 4S or iPhone 5.

Mark the calendar to October 4th, which happens to be next Tuesday, at 10:00 am Pacific, which converts to about 8 pm in Beirut.

Invitations to the event were sent under the title “Let’s Talk iPhone” and had the following format:

Who’s excited?

We Found Love (Single Review) – Rihanna

Rihanna keeps churning these singles and albums, faster than any market can contain them. Wasn’t it less than a year ago that she released her most recent album, Loud!, and aren’t we being bombarded with her most recent single Cheers (Drink To That) on radio as I’m writing and you’re reading this?

Well, no matter… she’s ready to release yet another album, set for a November 21st release date and she has teamed up with Calvin Harris to deliver the lead single off the album, a club-banger titled: We Found Love.

“Yellow diamonds in the light And we’re standing side by side,” she sings to an electropop beat behind her. “As your shadow crosses mine, what it takes to come alive. It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny… But I’ve gotta let it go.” And then she breaks into the chorus.

What’s the chorus, you might ask? It’s just one sentence. But unlike Lady Antebellum’s We Owned The Night, she doesn’t say it only once. She repeats the sentence four times. The sentence in question: “we found love in a hopeless place.”

The song’s second verse goes as follows: “Shine a light through an open door, love and life I will divide. Turn away cause I need you more. Feel the heartbeat in my mind. It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny… But I’ve gotta let it go”

Insert repeat chorus.

So it’s needless to say that there’s not really much lyrical backbone for We Found Love to go on. What the song relies on is, however, some very tight production that gives you a result that is nothing short of incredibly catchy, with a great beat to go with it.And that’s pretty much it with We Found Love. It’s a dance song that is sure to become a radio hit. After all, almost anything radio friendly that Rihanna releases finds itself in the highest possible rotation on radio – no matter how frequent her releases come to be.

Will you be blasting this in your car on repeat? I don’t think so – well, unless this is your kind of music. Will it be blasted in night clubs across the world on repeat? Yes, it will. And at the end of the day, it’s not really a bad song. There’s just not much substance going for it. And in a time where pop radio is slowly changing, one wonders why Rihanna did not wait longer and release something with more power. After all, the fact that Adele’s Someone Like You is exploding on radio and Lady Gaga’s You and I is also doing well, as well as Lady Antebellum’s newly released (to pop radio that is) Just a Kiss, should be indicative enough that change is on the horizon – and it’s not just because of the names associated with those songs.

Maybe Rihanna’s label should stop making her their only viable source of income and give her some room to breathe. God knows it’d be good for her and us.

But I need to repeat this… We Found Love is not a bad song. It’s just same old, same old.

Listen to We Found Love here