Why I haven’t bought an IPhone - and still won’t
I’ve been hearing pleanty of hubub about the new iPhone from friends and the media over the past few weeks - in some cases the same people representing both. The new iPhone’s launch was only slightly less eventful as the original. Back then, my dad called early on the Friday to let me know he was waiting in line and to ask if I wanted one. Interestingly, he reported that the line was 3x as long this past Friday, when he returned to the same AT&T store. Back then, I took the bait and bought one….how could I pass up such a gracious offer. I played with it for two weeks (mostly in the first few days) before selling it on eBay to a guy in Switzerland at a 20% premium. I sold it back then because I disliked the form factor, the keyboard, the battery life, the email functionality and most of all, because I had no complaints with my blackberry and my current email/calendar/contacts setup (this hasn’t always been the case). I had high hopes for the second rev, but early reports are unencouraging. Users I spoke to claimed that battery life has, in fact, decreased. It’s true there is a more powerful battery in the phone, but the 3G circuitry and chip drains battery life faster and net-net, the new phone dies sooner. This is a non-starter for me. My blackberry almost always lasts a full day, even when on the road under the most extreme circumstances. Tony’s iPhone frequently requires multiple recharges during a day, a situation that leaves him searching for outlets in restaurants, and one that would frustrate me. The other feature I had hoped for was a rotating keyboard so that typing long emails would be made easier. Everyone was calling for this initially so I’m surprised Apple didn’t follow through. Anyway, I’m even more comforted by my recent purchase of RIMM two weeks back. The blackberry is a solid product and one that I believe has a good life ahead of it.
Cell phones bad for your health?
I’ve been preaching this for a long time. A few years ago, I compiled a folder full of studies on damage inflicted by cell phones. Now, it’s getting mainstream media attention. CNN devoted an entire Larry King to the topic two weeks ago. This article (and forthcoming scientific study) sound ominous. Those 4 years of I-Banking with that old school Nokia glued to my ear may come back to haunt me, in more ways than I realized….
Cancer and Technology: Top 10 Highest-Radiation Cell Phones
Yael Naim….wow!
Saw Yael Naim perform last night at a celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary. She stole the show (which actually wasn’t very hard though did require competing with MC, Natalie Portman). People who don’t recognize the name, surely know her most popular song, New Soul, licensed by Apple for the MacBook Air commercials. Along with all the other accolades afforded to Steve Jobs, people are giving him credit for discovering this talent. I’d be curious to know the real story here. I suspect an ad exec with a finely tuned ear suggested a few songs and while Jobs made the final call, it’s this anonymous (for now) guy or gal who deserves the credit. Either way, I’m in love. Here are videos of her performing the two songs I saw her do last night:
Sometimes, you’re better off on your own….
As the quest to find decent customer service continues - one of my favorite topics - I had two infuriating incidents this week with Asus and HP. Bought a new router from Asus that has a usb port for printer sharing….’pretty cool’ I thought until I called the Asus customer service line for help setting it up. In what was probably the worst customer service experience of all time (yes, I know that’s saying a lot) we spent 20 minutes discussing the issue before the guy told me my printer was not compatible with the router. Infuriated, I hung up, only to figure the whole setup out on my own 15 mins later networking both my mac and pc. Later in the week, I had a scanning issue with the printer (post-networking). Similarly, I engaged HP customer service, which is leagues better than Asus (as it should be), but again was given poor advice. They suggested i uninstall all software and driver and then, reinstall. Unfortunately, this process continued for 3 days because the reinstall wouldn’t take. Eventually, I figured out that scanning wasn’t going to work on the printer networked through usb. In both cases, customer services provided little to negative value. Thanks guys.
Best feature of Google Checkout - don’t share your email with the merchant
I just ordered a Jawbone bluetooth headset from eCost.com (cheapest quality merchant on Pricegrabber). When I went to checkout, they listed Google Checkout as a separate checkout option. I logged in and two clicks later, the transaction was complete. But along the way, there was a checkbox next to the statement "Keep email address anonymous from eCost.com". Why, yes, please, thank you. Google Checkout allowed me to order from a merchant without sharing my email address, preventing the inevitable onslaught of promos and sale notifications I would receive for several months or years thereafter. This is a huge benefit, not to mention the two-click checkout speed. Google Checkout has been fighting an uphill battle against Paypal for a while, and this won’t part the red sea for them, but it’s a nice enough feature, that it made me notice and so will bring me back again soon. Not to mention, I can charge the item to my credit card and get the miles, something that is more difficult to accomplish on Paypal.
AnswerLinks launches on Wordpress.com blogs
Two weeks ago, a project I began exploring in late 2006 launched. A partnership between Answers.com and Wordpress, AnswerLinks is a tool that scans an article’s content prior to publishing and suggests words, terms and people, that may require additional detail, to link back to Answers.com definitions, explanations, bios, etc. It’s the first 3d party tool integrated into the Wordpress publishing interface, which makes it somewhat innovative and exciting. It’s also the first distributed application of Answers.com auto-linking technology, an area that we believed has significant growth potential. From what I hear, response from Wordpress bloggers has been positive so far and the partnership format has been noticed by others. AnswerLinks is also available as a plug-in for Wordpress.org bloggers.
Communication and Email woes answered - Microsoft, RIM, Mail2Web and Apple save the day!!
I posted a few weeks ago about my frustration that so few email solutions provide the functionality and convenience I’ve come to expect. My problem was the following: (1) multiple computers and access points, all of which I expect to remain sync’d at all times (2) a blackberry device that also needs to remain sync’d (3) a calendar system that needs to communicate with my blackberry and interact seamlessly with other communication platforms. While gmail was exciting to me initially, it proved inefficient, as deletions required more than one click, my inbox soon reached 1,700 messages, and messages often slipped through the cracks, sometimes falling off my first page, sometimes lost forever. GCal was extremely disappointing. It couldn’t sync with the blackberry, only sending SMS messages before appointments, making scheduling a challenge and checking my calendar a nuisance. I looked into Yahoo Mail, but wasn’t impressed with its blackberry compatibility either. Well, after a bunch of research, my problems have all been solved. I researched virtual exchange servers and decided to purchase a plan from Mail2Web for $20 per month. Their virtual exchange sever allows me to use Outlook or Entourage to manage my mail, and keeps my email, calendar and contacts wirelessly sync’d between computers and devices at all times. This is the way the blackberry device was designed to be used and boy, does it make a huge difference. Never again will I miss a conference call because I forgot to manually sync my blackberry. Mail2Web offered the best package of the Microsoft certified partners and as a Canadian company based in Toronto, I found their 24-hr customer service department to be unusually skilled and helpful….note: no outsourcing to India here, every representative I spoke to was a true Canadian, eh? Finally, to throw another wrench in the mix, I recently switched to a MacBookPro for my work laptop, a move that I’m thrilled about…this is the most fun I’ve had on a computer in a long time. I played with Entourage for a week or so, but found it extremely inferior to Outlook 2007, which incidentally, I found to be a huge improvement over 2003. Running XP over Parallels on the mac, and adjusting the settings to optimize for performance, I’m able to run Outlook with good speed, not sacrificing email and calendar functionality. So there you have it. If you want more info, I’m considering doing some IT consulting on the side….
Google Calendar (GCal) is pathetic, but are there better solutions?
In an effort to migrate my life to hosted organizational tools, I switched to Google Calendar a few weeks ago, hoping that managing my email and calendar in the same place would prove effective. After a few weeks of using it and several hours trying to export my data and stop using it, it would be difficult to accurately convey my disappointment with the application. GCal sucks. Not only does it not work elegantly with GMail, but it doesn’t sync with PDAs. The sharing functionality - the reason hosted apps are helpful in the first place - is only so-so, and after several frustrating hours trying to figure out how to export my data to a better solution, I’m giving up because Google’s instructions and forums on the topic are pitiful. I’m hoping to give 30boxes a try, but my expectations are tempered, and I suspect I may have to return to Outlook. Despite all the attention paid to hosted apps over the past 10 years, from my perspective, it seems they’ve progressed only minimally. Is it so difficult to design a solution to manage email, calendar and contacts seemlessly in a hosted environment? If anyone has suggestions on apps I should try, please leave a comment.
My turn to weigh in on the iPhone
Since just about every blogger with a pulse has voiced their opinion of the iPhone within the week, I feel like I’m in a blogosphere all my own to not have voiced mine, especially considering I’m on my way to the Cingular store to return it today. A week ago Friday, I received a frantic call from my dad who was camped out at the Cingular store in Easton, MD. He had just relieved a guy who he paid to wait in line since the store opened that morning. The line grew from 2 to 20 people before it opened and the store never sold out, though you can’t fault him since this seemed to be the prevailing pattern all around the country. Later that weekend, I unpacked and registered the sucker, not experiencing any of the problems that plagued many other purchasers. The device is very cool. The user interface is revolutionary. The keystrokes and multimedia functions are creative, original and unseen yet on a mobile device. So why am I returning it? I find the form factor and the typing process/keyboard problematic. Problem #1 - It’s taller than my blackberry so doesn’t fit in my pocket as well. Yes, it’s also thinner, but height seems to make a bigger difference when it’s in my back pocket. Problem #2 - I found it difficult to type and certainly far more time-consuming than the blackberry. Sending a quick sms message takes roughly twice as long. No good. It’s possible that my stubby fingers have something to do with it, but when I conducted an unscientific test made up of a random sample of friends, more than half also had trouble typing accurately. There’s been chatter on the wire about the next gen version having a feature that rotates the keyboard to landscape mode when the phone is held horizontally, similar to the photo functionality. This would be a huge improvement, but still not make is as easy as typing on a blackberry. Ultimately, the keyboard plays a prominent role in every function that requires typing - email, sms, calendar, web and notepad - so a sub-par keyboard is a big deal. I’ll wait and see what Apple has in store for the future, but for now, I’m content sticking with my old trusty RIM device.
One of the best YouTube videos….ever