Android isn't free, unless you are the end user.

Android isn't free.

Apparently Google has found that out that a free OS isn't free.  It's going to cost you legal fees.  Being sued by everyone under the sun, Google has found itself in a sticky predicament, and has to defend itself with patents.  However, Apple still holds the patent on multitouch, so we'll have to see how that all works out.

So they bought Motorola Mobility.  yes. That division of Motorola that almost shut down and is nearly bankrupt -- and they paid 12.5B for it.  Srsly.

Even Balmer says Android isn't free.  Awhile ago.  http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/21/steve-ballmers-claim-android-isnt-really-free/

Unless you are the end user, when you can download and compile Android "for free" for use on your phone.

Should be interesting.

---

Please leave comments below.

iPhone 4 goes to Verizon too.

Finally, after long last, the iPhone is coming to Verizon.

I probably could go on Ad nausem about the new iPhone, but I'll just cover the bullet points

• The antenna is redesigned, and as a result the buttons are moved slightly down on the left, so some cases may not fit.


• CDMA, not LTE.  Which means you can't talk and surf at the same time. (Feature that I use a lot)


• You can use the iPhone as a wifi hotspot (so like a mifi) for up to 5 devices.  Nice.


• Coming February 10th for GA.  Advanced ordering for Verizon Customers on Feb 3.


• Otherwise, it's the iPhone 4.

This will be nice.

Notes syncing between Mail.app and iPhone, finally

I've written several times over the years about the need for Notes to sync automatically between the iPhone and the Mac Mail.app Desktop application.  Well, unbeknownst to me (because I stopped using Notes in Mail.app because of the lack of this feature), in iOS 4.0 Apple has built this in.

I didn't test it right away when the release came out, and just now that I haven't written about it either since they built this in.  But it works.

If you have an IMAP account, you can go into your account settings on your iPhone and turn on "Notes" in that account's preferences.  Mail will create a folder called "Notes" on the IMAP server, and your "Notes" on Mail.app will be sync'ed Over-the-Air with your iPhone.

I have my Mail.app set up like this:



So that all my notes and to-do's stay intact in one account, and not spread apart different accounts.  But there is more than one advantage to MobileMe for this particular feature.  If you set it to MobileMe, Notes are pushed.  (As opposed to pull, as they would be with other IMAP accounts.)

In short, Apple enabled Notes syncing in iOS 4.0.  It works.  Give it a shot.

Facetime

Facetime, Apple’s new iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 video chat application got a bit of an update on Tuesday of this week.

Jobs said it himself, the biggest thing that people wanted when facetime was shown on the iPhone for the first time was the integration of the system into the Mac desktop.  I talked about this back on this original post when the iPhone 4 came out.  Finally, at Tuesday’s speech Jobs and Apple rolled out the Facetime client for the desktop.

It works.

You can call Mac to Mac using Facetime, you can also call Mac to iPhone or iPhone to Mac, likewise with the iPod Touch. The resolution is good (it’s scaled down a bit if you are used to iChat’s resolution), audio is excellent, and it works flawlessly. In fact, when it came out, I was on a hotel network. I tried to initiate an iChat connection to my Dad, and we couldn’t do it for lack of bandwidth, however, Facetime connected right away without a problem.

The only thing that I thought was a bit strange, and I know I'm not the only one, was that Apple released it as a separate application for the Mac.

However, after I thought about it for a bit, I came back to my original conclusion that this is a temporary step. The application is simple and easy to write, so that’s what Apple did. I imagine in order to build the feature into iChat, they'd have to rewrite the whole application, and while they didn’t at all indicate that this was going to happen in 10.7 Lion (which they also started talking about on Tuesday), it makes a lot of sense to have it built into the OS.

One of the other things that i noticed about facetime is that it doesn’t really give you any kind of “presence” notification. For instance, it would make sense that since Apple knows you are connected to the internet via $device, they would be able to provide some type of presence notification along with it, I assume this is going to come with 10.7 too.

Verizon Rumored To Replace Google With Bing On All Android Devices

Yesterday, Spetember 9th, Verizon gave a preview to their newest "Android" phone coming out for their network, Samsung's Galaxy S.

It has a 4-in AMOLED screen, 1GHZ Hummingbird Processor, and it has the ability to become a hotspot.  However, Verizon has ruined the phone, and may ruin every phone on their network from now on.  Why?

The thing that makes Android great is it's integration.  Google built the OS, it's integrated into Google's infrastructure, and that's the way it works best.  Just like the iPhone, which works best with Apple's infrastructure (MobileMe, iTunes, etc).

Verizon has decided to cripple this phone by instead of tying it to Google, they have tied it to Bing.  Bing Search, Bing Maps, and instead of Google's awesome navigation app, they have replaced it with Verizon's own Navigation app, which, btw, they cleverly charge you 10 bucks a month to use.

Bloatware..  Blockbuster apps, Tetris apps that charge you money, etc.

To make it worse, Verizon has stated that they will be moving all of their "Droid" line to Bing.  It won't be exclusive, (meaning you can switch everything back to Google), but this is basically how to ruin a franchise.  (Verizon having Android on everything.)

This is where Verizon did it wrong with the iPhone as well.  When Apple came to Verizon and said "We are going to make a phone, you can be the carrier, but you can't put any apps or logos or anything on it"  Verizon said No.  So Apple went to Cingular (which later was bought by AT&T).  Cingular agreed, therefore the iPhone is on AT&T right now.

Apple's iPhone doesn't have bloatware (unless you count the apps that Apple puts on there themselves, which, I can understand your argument), it starts off with Google as the search engine by default, but you have the option to change it.

The iPhone doesn't force you to use a service, they force you to use the apps that are built in (unless you download new ones), like the "Maps" application, it's Google Maps and Google Search, but you'd almost never know it.  So far Apple hasn't ruined it, but we'll see.

Verizon may be ruining a good thing here.  Hopefully they don't.

Here's Gizmodo's review as well: here.

Verizon Rumored To Replace Google With Bing On All Android Devices | Markets | Minyanville.com.

Apple Stores are good to me

Yesterday my wife and I took a visit to the local Apple Store, my Time Capsule had died, and since it was one of the original models, it was under a replacement program. I took the Time Capsule back, they traded my broken one for a brand new one, and I was done.

My wife, however, was a different story. You may remember from a previous post of mine that my wife dropped her iPhone4 while getting my daughter out of the car. Whoops.  Cracked the back glass to shreds.

She was fairly upset, since she had it about a week. Anyway, she went in, explained what she did to the Apple Genius dudes, and guess what?

They gave her a brand new phone.

/That's/ why I like Apple Stores.

Thanks to the Christiana Mall Apple Store Geniuses. You rule.

iPhone 4. A review after practical use, part 2

Part 1 Linked here.

Buttons and other Cosmetics

The volume button, the lock button, and the silent/ringer switch all got the same industrial treatment the rest of the phone did. They work much better, have better tactile feedback and are much more defined, making it much easier to find one of these buttons in the depths of your pocket.  (Like to turn the volume down on your ringer or something)

There is the single button on the front of the phone, the Home button, which they made a bit more "clicky" I would say. But the one thing about the design of the phone is, when you reach in your pocket to grab the phone and bring it out of your pocket in one swift motion while mashing the Home button, you can't do it.

Since the 3GS had that rounded back, it was easy to feel where the backside was and hit the button. With the square design, it's hard to tell which side is the front and back when it's your pocket unless you try and find the buttons on the side.

This isn't a big deal at all. It's just a quirk that I found that I had that I've had to get used to.

FaceTime

FaceTime is Apple's new "video chat" feature. You use two iPhone 4s, call each other on the phone, and as long as both of you are on Wifi, you can then mash the FaceTime button.  If everything is okay, (NAT transversal, etc) you'll shortly be talking to each other via video chat. Is it cool? Yes.

Does it work? Yes.
Have I used it? A lot.

Is it revolutionary? No, video chat has been done before. But this time it's implemented correctly and easily. It works. You don't have to go to Fring and sign up with an account, and then use Video (btw, Fring's video quality sucks, and their audio is a close second).  You don't have to do anything extra.  Ensure you are on Wifi, and hit the "Facetime" button. The quality is good, audio quality is good.  It allows me to sit in my hotel and video chat with my wife and daughter while they are at home.  My daughter can show me her picture that she drew that day, she can show me what she's eating for dinner, she can show me her "beautiful dress" that she's wearing.  (All dresses, according to my daughter, are "beautiful dresses".)

Could we have done this before?  Yes, and still do, with iChat.  But there's two things about that.  First, iChat requires more bandwidth, therefore hotel internet most of the time, can't handle it, and secondly, my wife doesn't always have her laptop.  She most always has her phone.  And since my wife is 8 months pregnant, I'm not about to make her get up to get her laptop.   I have better sense than that.

I think this is a great feature, it'll be neat if my parents get an iPhone 4 so they can enjoy it as well.  Especially when it comes to seeing my new baby.

Speed

This thing is quick.  If you bought the 3GS, upgraded from the 3G, or you have the 3G, or if you have the iPhone original.  The new iPhone 4 is dramatically faster than the 3G or the iPhone original, the 3GS, yes, it's faster than that, but you'd have do some some really processor intensive stuff to notice a huge difference (like compressing video).  So, if you have a 3GS and want to upgrade to the iPhone 4, you need to use one of the other of the 100 new features of the iPhone 4 as your excuse to upgrade.  However, if you have a 3G or the original iPhone, you will be blown away by the speed.

Think about this in perspective for a second, the A4's rumored speed is 1 Ghz (after a cursory search of the internet, it's the best metric I could find).  Now the A4 is the same chip that is in the iPad and the iPhone.  The iPhone A4 is rumored to be clocked down, to preserve battery life.

The amount of RAM on the iPhone 4 is 512 MB (as evidenced by a particular slide  at  WWDC, Apple doesn't announce the RAM amounts or the clock speed in their mobile devices).  I remember, in 2003, my last computer before I bought an Apple computer, was a 1.7 Ghz chip with 512 bytes of RAM.  Seven years later, I have a phone in my pocket that is almost as fast, has the same amount of RAM, and as 32 Gb of storage on it.  Really puts things in perspective, how things are advancing.  I feel it's impressive.  (Of course, back then, I had a 1.5 Mb/s Cable connection to the Internet and I thought that was fast.  Now I have a 25 Mb/s Fiber connection.)

Camera

On the back is a 5 Megapixel camera, on the front is a significantly lower megapixel camera.  The front camera is primarily for taking pictures of yourself, if you are that vain, and also for Facetime. Which serves it's purpose quite well.  The back camera, with the LED flash, is for taking good pictures.  The iPhone does take good pictures.  Not GREAT pictures, not like Cannon 5D Mark II pictures, but it will easily replace that point and shoot my wife carries in her purse.  Anything where I can carry  less devices is a win for me.

Problems with the camera.  The Flash is okay.  If you try to take a picture, in the dark, and if the subject is close, it'll work great.  As long as the person you are taking a picture of doesn't actually look at the flash.  I don't know why, but every picture I have taken of people with the flash at night has a weird "red-eye" effect, except it's not red.  It's white.  Making my photo subjects a bit creepy.

In low light, and if there is any kind of motion, the iPhone will blur the motion in the picture.  Most cameras do this, so I can't fault the actual iPhone.

However, if you are taking pictures during the day, morning, or evening.  Indoors or outdoors, sunny or overcast, the pictures are great.  It replaces point and shoots.

The other feature of the iPhone is the ability to record 720p HD video.  I've done this several times already, recording video of my daughter jumping off the diving board for the first time and things like that.  The iPhone 4 handles it just fine.  The video looks great on playback on the Retina Display or even after you offload it to your iPhoto and play it on the Desktop.

Overall

I have some opinions, and this is the place to share them I guess, since it's my blog.  Overall, I like the iPhone, but I always have.  The iPhone 4 is much better than it's predecessor.  I'm still not too crazy about the Antenna reception "Don't touch this 2mm of the outside of the phone" thing, but I can overlook it by not touching it there, and getting a case.  Do I think it's a bad design?  No.  I understand why they did it, and it can be overcome easily, but it kinda sucks.

I'm not crazy about the glass on both sides, but according to the things I've read, I understand why it was done.  Apparently, they did away with the plastic back because plastic retains more heat than glass, and the iPhone 4 can heat up when doing really processor intensive things like compressing video.  It's slippery and obviously, as tested by my wife, it breaks.  Apple charges waaay to much to fix this issue, and I think that's BS.

• Do I think it's a good phone?  Yes.


• Do I think it's a good computer? Yes.


• Do I recommend it to friends?  Yes, if you buy a case with it, or at least have the cognitive ability to not touch that portion of the phone.

Overall?  Good.  Buy it.  It rocks.

iPhone 4. A review after actual use.

Physical Design

Okay, much has been said about the physical design of this phone, it's industrial features, it's glass front and back, stainless steel metal band around the side that doubles as an antenna, dual camera, and an led flash. The buttons, the glass, the band, everything. It makes for a great design, feels smaller and better in your hand than the 3GS. In fact, the 3GS feels fat, plastic, and bloated. I only see two problems with the design.

One, front and back are both glass, meaning, if you drop it it might break. Even though Apple claims that the glass is harder than sapphire, if you drop the thing at the right angle, it will break. Ask my wife, who has already shattered the back of her phone after dropping it on the driveway. (Which Apple wants 199 dollars to replace the back, which is the cost of a new phone! Apple, have you lost your mind?).

Problem Two: it's slippery. If you place your phone on something smooth, say, like in my car, I have a center console. If I place the phone on there, it slips right off. Or on the arm rest of an easy chair. This is as a result of it being glass. Neither is that big of a deal, if you just are careful about how you take care of the phone. If you buy a bumper (which Apple is now giving away for free until September 30th) it has a bit of rubber on the back edge, making it non-slip, and a bit more protected.

The Display

Just after the iPad comes out, and those of us who bought one were running around saying "Wow, look at this really big touch screen display", then following that the Evo comes out with that big screen and people say "Wow, look at this really big touch screen display". For instance, I have a friend of mine that went from an iPhone (o.g.) to an Evo, and he was like "This screen is huge, it's so big!", but I digress.

Apple comes out with this display on the iPhone 4, it's has 4x the pixel display density of the iPhone 3GS. This results in much sharper rendering of, well, damn near, anything. Photos look great, video looks great, games look great, apps look great, but what's the one thing you do, or view on an iPhone the most?

Text.

Oh, it rocks. If you have an iPhone (not)4, do this, and you'll understand:

Go to http://nytimes.com. Don't zoom in after it loads. Big newspaper website right? Look at the text, see how it's barely readable and all pixelated? On the iPhone 4, you can read it. READ it. Right from this screen. You can zoom in on the (not)4, and you'll be able to read it just fine, which you'd probably want to do on the iPhone 4 as well, but that's just an illustration of how much better this display is.

After you see and use the "Retina" Display, and go back to another phone (even the iPad, or a regular computer) you'll wonder how you ever complimented that old screen and how bothersome it is to have all that fuzzy text.

There has been some dispute about the fact that Apple calls this the "Retina Display". As to whether or not the pixel density is actually higher than what the Retina can perceive. First off, two things.

1. I am not an optical engineer, and don't play one on TV, so I'm not going to get into the argument by adding my own thoughts here. All I know is that it looks great.


2. It's a marketing term people, there is a line to how pedantic you must be people.

In short, the display is quite awesome.

The Antenna

Now, the antenna has been in constant controversy since the iPhone 4 came out. Let me cover a few parts of it.

1. The Antenna is broken into two parts, if you are looking at the left hand side of the phone, you will see a black band. The piece of metal that is around the outside of the phone on the left hand side is for Wifi, Bluetooth, and GPS. The rest of the metal is for Edge and 3G.


2. It's on the outside of the phone, for better reception.


3. If you touch it, right at that black band on the left hand side, the "bars" or signal on the phone degrade into almost nothing, and if you are in a weak signal area, your call will just drop.

Not really an optimum design for an antenna you might think. One that you can touch in 2mm of the phone and the call drops? Yup. I can replicate it, I can do it, at will. You know what else I can do?

Not put my pinky over that part of the phone.

Or if worst comes to worst, get a case.  I got a bumper for my phone which covers the antenna and the phone works perfectly.

Now, some people have said that Apple should have never released a phone like this. Well that may be a good point, but I don't know if that would have helped. The antenna is on the outside of the phone, okay? Any phone you grip around the antenna is going to attenuate the signal. It's just the way it is. Apple says this, and you can replicate it on any of the prior iPhones as well as a bunch of the iPhone's competitors.

Remember when we were kids and you grabbed the rabbit antennas on your TV? Remember how the signal would get worse when you did that, even some times when you just got close to the TV? Same principle.

The phone is a radio. Sorry. It has to retrieve and transmit, and they have to put the antenna somewhere. Apple put the antenna on the outside of the phone to try and reduce the dropped calls everyone on AT&T was complaining about.

I personally have much less dropped calls than I used to (despite what Apple said about the iPhone 4 dropping more calls), and I'm not complaining about it one bit. Yes, I can hold the phone in a certain way to attenuate the signal and make the bars go down, so I just don't hold it like that.  It de-tunes the antenna, and therefore make signal reception go down.

Since this post is running right around 1000 words right now, I'll cut it into two posts...  stay tuned for part two.

iPhone 4

Yesterday Steve Jobs got up on stage and announced the new iPhone, iPhone 4.  It has a list of slick features, I'll write a couple, then an opinion or two about each.

1. FaceTime

Facetime is a new feature to the iPhone family.  It's basically, Video Calling.  Using the front or the back camera of the iPhone you can make a Video call with one another.  Right now FaceTime is limited to Wifi only, and Apple is going to work with the cell carriers to get their networks up to speed to allow FaceTime on 3G calling.

Opinion:  I think is a really neat innovation.  I can see a lot of use for this, however...  I have a feeling that no one will use it, it will be a pain in the ass for it to work, and it'll get bad press.  I am sure there will be ports to open on the firewall for it to work, and it won't work for $REASON.  I guess we'll find out, but overall I think this is really neat and I'd love to use it with my family, especially after my new baby is born.  It's also going to be an "Open Standard", so hopefully lots of people build this into their phones/apps.  iChat probably won't get it until 1o.7, and the iPad won't get a camera until Round 2.

2. Retina Display

The Retina Display is a higher resolution screen 960x640 at 326 dpi.  It seals the front glass to the LCD by lamination (I believe that's how it works) so it eliminates the "Depth" in between the front glass and the icons.

Opinion:  Cool.  Love me some higher resolution.  Not much bad you can say about that.

3. Multitasking

The iPhone 4 has Multitasking through the use of services (instead of full apps running in the background).

Opinion:  Cool.  About time.  I've been really, really content with using one app at a time, EXCEPT when I am using something like Instant Messenger, or where I need to go back and forth really quickly between apps, and the app I need to switch back and forth to doesn't remember where I was at the last time I used the app.  Really annoying.  So glad this is getting fixed.  I've occasionally wanted multitasking on the iPhone, but I've wanted it more on my iPad.

4. HD Video Recording

You can now record HD (720p) video on the iPhone with it's new 5 Megapixel camera, put it into iMovie (a new app for the iPhone) make your own home movies and send them out on the internet.

Opinion:  Good.  I've been very content with the camera that is in my iPhone 3GS, so a better camera is always welcome, however, I know once you record video on the 3GS and try and MMS it to someone, it can be annoying as shit waiting for the upload to take place.  I know uploading a video from the iPhone 4 to Youtube, unless some magic happens, especially on the processor side..  sending a 720p video somewhere is going to be awful and take forever.

5. Mail

Unified inbox, email threading, and multiple Exchange accounts

Opinion:  About time.  I've been just fine the way it has been, however, I'm glad they are making it better.  The unified inbox especially.

6. Folders

The ability to group your apps together in a single button.

Opinion:  Useful.  I'll definitely use it to group things like games and Productivity apps together.  I've tried not to put too many apps on my phone.  But I've met some people that have pages upon pages of apps and this will be good for them.

7. iBooks

The ability to read your iBooks that you've purchased for your iPad up until now, on your iPhone.  Also includes a PDF reader (also coming to the iPad).

Opinion:  Okay.  I think reading a book on that small of a screen will be difficult, but we'll see.  I really like reading on my iPad, but it's big.  I also like the fact that PDFs can now be in a native app.

8. Stainless Steel case design

It doubles as the antenna for the phone and it gives it rigid stability.

Opinion:  Great.  Especially if it reduces the amount of calls I drop.  Looking at you AT&T.

9. Glass front and back

It has black (or white) Glass on the front and back of the phone as faces.

Opinion:  Am I going to scratch the shit out of this thing?  My iPhone glass hasn't scratched yet, so I feel okay I guess.  Whereas the plastic black of my iPhone 3GS is scratch city.

10. Extra Microphone for Noise Cancellation

There is now a Microphone on the top of the phone to listen to ambient noise and cancel it out.

Opinion:  If it's as good as the Jawbone, AWESOME.

Things that are missing still:

• The ability to open a .ics file (Calendar invite) in Mail and add it to your calendar.  I mean, seriously?  It's not clear if iOS 4 will allow this, but we'll see.


• Note syncing OTA.  Really?  I still have to plug in my iPhone to my laptop to sync notes?  No thanks, I'll use Evernote.


• The ability for the "place" in a movie or song to auto-sync back to your actual library, through MobileMe, and down to other devices.  That way when I put down my laptop and pick up my iPad to watch the same movie, it's at the same place.

AT&T has some shady billingness going on.

At my company we use a service named "Webex" to do remote presentations and conferencing.  So here you are, you join a Webex session on your iPhone.   See Cisco (the makers of Webex) made an iPhone app where you can view presentations and participate in an online presentation right on the Phone!  It's great!    You sign into a webex, and the webex app says "Hey, you want me to dial the conf number for you", Why sure!  You can dial the number, and then I can pop back over to the webex app!? Phenomenal.  Great technology, great to see it.

So it kicks you over to the Call screen where it proceeds to dial 8664693239 ,,<confcode>,,<attendee id>#  (commas are pauses in the Phone world)

The way that Cisco sends the number to the call app, inserts that space after the actual phone number, which makes the phone app format the aforementioned number as an international number.
So, the iPhone appears to dial the number as +8664693239.  You know what +86 is as a country code?  China.
So, that's not the problem, not the problem at all.  The iPhone dials the number correctly (even though it shows up incorrectly), you connect to the 866 toll free call and everything!
The problem is on AT&T's billing side, somewhere, where it receives the number under a different format, and the number on your bill shows up as 866-469-3239.

Know what it's billed as?  A call to +86.  Yup. China.

So, my most recent bill from AT&T showed a 200+ dollar call to China.
My question is, how common is this?  Is AT&T charging people like this for calls that aren't processed in the billing system correctly?  AT&T is just expecting people to pay the bill?  My bill was almost 500 dollars this month because of 4 or 5 calls like this.  (I do a lot of presentations.)

AT&T, fix your billing system.  Something is screwed up.

iPhone universal inbox?

Julio Rodriguez, a fellow Apple user wrote Steve Jobs an email thanking Apple for their great customer service, and proclaiming his "life-long" customer status.

However, the interesting part for me came in the second paragraph where Julio ask Mr. Jobs:

I just have one question for you; will iPhone ever have a universal mailbox just like Mail has on my Mac?  It would be so much easier and efficient

Steve Jobs answered back in his typically terse answer form:

Yep.

Sent from my iPad

For a screenshot of the email (including headers), check it out here.

Apple sues HTC for alleged infringement of 20 iPhone patents

AppleInsider | Apple sues HTC for alleged infringement of 20 iPhone patents.

...And so it begins...  I was beginning to wonder when this was going to happen, of course, HTC, the makers of many phones, the most notable being the Google Nexus One, and the G1.

We'll have to wait and see how this one shakes out.

If Email Signatures Were Honest

Murray The Nut » Blog Archive » Signatures.

Very Funny.

Review: Jawbone ICON Bluetooth Headset

I am not trying to jump on you like a bully and pummel you with reviews for a few posts recently, but I feel, as a geek, I have the need to tell my other geeky friends if something sucks, or if something is good. That way, not everyone spends money on things that are complete pieces of crap.

For those of you seeking a Bluetooth headset, you may want to look no further than the Jawbone ICON headset. Little bit of background before I proceed.

I've had all three versions of the Jawbone now. The Jawbone One, was big, bulky, but it did it's job right, however, it did not survive the trip through the washing machine. The second version fixed that, (not the washing machine part, the big and bulky part). Same awesome noise cancellation technology, much much lighter, the only problem was, it wasn't very solid in your ear, and it fell out of my ear a lot, simply because it just felt like it was Stallone in Cliffhanger, hanging on for dear life. The only other thing I didn't like about the second generation jawbone was the buttons. I could never find them. There were two buttons, one on the side and the other on the back, kinda. They were next to impossible to find with your fingers, as they didn't have any raised indication that said "hey, this is a button!"

But let me tell you what, with this new one, they have really outdone themselves. The Jawbone ICON comes in six different designs. "The Hero", "The Bombshell", "The Catch", "The Ace", "The Thinker", and "The Rogue". All are various colors and designs, but they all have the same key features.

The NoiseAssasin® technology is awesome. On by default, it uses a sensor that presses against your cheek to sense when you are talking, it compares that vibration with the mic's input, and thusly uses the difference to cancel out all the remaining background noise. It's awesome for wind, trains, or whatever. You can be in a noisy room and talk to someone on the phone, and the only thing that the people on the phone can hear is you. It's incredible. For a video demonstration of how this works, go to Jawbone's website and click on the lower right area. Check it out.

This version of the jawbone adds a few awesome features:

1) If you are using the jawbone with the iPhone, the battery indication is on the screen of the iPhone up next to the battery indicator for the iPhone itself. If you ever bought the iPhone bluetooth headset (which I didn't), you'll recognize what this indicator looks like.

2) But that doesn't matter cause you can reach on the back of the jawbone, press the button once, and it announces in your ear how many hours of talk time you have remaining.

3) When you receive a call, the ICON will read the caller id into your ear. Just the number. Not any names or anything, which kinda stinks. I wish it would at least try to pronounce some of my coworkers and friends names just so I could get a laugh out of it. But the number is just fine. It's a heck of a lot better than scrambling for your phone when the thing rings just to see who called. I mean isn't that the purpose of a bluetooth headset? So you don't have to fumble for your phone?

4) It doesn't have any blinking lights on the outside. Which is nice, because then you aren't sitting on a train or something and have an annoying blue blinking light on your ear. Or even better, when you are in a hotel room and the blue blinking light is so bright it lights up your whole hotel room every 10 seconds or so.

5) Voice control. The Jawbone has always had voice control, but now, coupled with the iPhone 3GS that I have, I can hold down the button for two seconds and say "Call Wife", which the iPhone then asks "Home, Mobile, or Work?" And I simply say what I want. I like the fact (and this is more on the iPhone than the Jawbone) that I don't have to hit ANOTHER button to say "Work". I just say it after the little 'beep'.

6) It has an on-off switch. I don't have to hold down a button that I can't find to turn this thing on and off. The button is a toggle sliding switch on the inside (faces your face) side of the jawbone. Flick it on or off, and you KNOW which one it's doing.

7) Redial is a double tap of the button on the back. The Jawbone then says "Redialing" in your ear

8) When the battery does get low, it will tell you in your ear. No more guessing.

9) You can connect this thing to multiple phones. YES SERIOUSLY. You can even manage calls from two different phones at the same time. Are you kidding me? This is 2010 right? We aren't in 2020 or anything?

10) They converted from their annoying proprietary charger attachment to a Mini-USB plug. Very standard and easily replaceable if you lose it.

So, overall, I'm very satisfied with this thing, and if you are looking for a new one, or if you are happy with your old one... this one is better, it's smaller Oh and one more thing?

This thing stays in my ear! No loop around the top of my ear, I just put it in my ear and it stays there.

Go, run, don't walk, to the nearest Best Buy/Apple Store/AT&T store. This thing is new, so it may not be in all the stores yet (so it's available online via their website) your milage may very. Check the websites.

I got mine at a Best Buy.

Flash, time for you to die

I've been reading a lot of hubbub about the new Apple iPad not having the capability of displaying Flash.  Of course!  It stands to reason that it can't, it has the same OS as the iPhone, which, also can't display Flash.  Which leads me to think, why do we need flash?

Answer is, we don't.  Not anymore.  90% of Flash usage is for audio or video on the Internet and HTML5 can handle <audio> and <video> tags.  It can do Canvas. (Oh and a TON more, I'm just illustrating a point.)  Some of the major browsers have adapted most of these technologies.  Webkit (Invented by Apple, powers Safari, Webkit, and Google Chrome [amongst others], and Presto (The rendering engine that powers Opera) have supported more than the other two majors (Gecko -- The engine that powers Firefox and all of it's kin), and Trident (The engine that powers Internet Explorer).  The last being the worst adopter.  Surprisingly.

I read somewhere (I can't find it now), about most browser crashes come from plugins.  Flash, Java, etc.  Why can't we eliminate these plugins and go with the native protocols?  That's what HTML5 is attempting to do for the most part, and I, for one, am glad for it.

Apple has always been about killing off technologies and moving onto what is on the horizon (killing off serial, going for USB, killing of Diskettes, going to CD, Killing off CD's (Macbook Air), moving more wireless (Airport), Killing off displayport, hdmi, dvi, vga, going with Mini Displayport).  They have never been afraid to just "move on" to the new thing.

I believe they said to Flash, die, HTML5 is here.  Then they turned to web developers and said "fix your stuff".  How did they do that?  Rolled out the iPhone, which has become the largest mobile browsing platform on the planet now.  Slowly and surely, what's happening?  Websites are changing away from Flash.

Unless, you know, of course, you are a band or a restaurant.  (Seriously?  What is with bands and restaurants and your use of Flash?)

I don't even need to get into the security issues of Adobe's Flash.  Look, there is one small part of Adobe working on Flash.  The entire internet is working on HTML5.

Flash (and Silverlight) is dead.  Get over it.

--

100% of the statistics in this post are made up.  ;)

iPad, why it's interesting

Yesterday, as everyone -- including me -- expected, Apple introduced their first big foray into the tablet computing market (if you don't count the iPhone as a tablet) called the iPad.

Which, even I, as an Apple fan, has to admit-- is a stupid name.  iSlate, or even "Tablet" would have been better, but, whatever.  (Plus, Fujitsu owns the "iPad" trademark, so we'll see what it winds up being -- remember "iTV" changed to "Apple TV" at launch.

Am I interested in one?  Yes.  I am interested because it's just enough for me to NOT have to carry around my laptop bag anymore.  Potentially eliminating the need to carry anything outside of a jacket. (Using a jacket like the Scottevest line: http://www.scottevest.com/ -- which is just handy, all those pockets.)  90% of my work could be done a device like this, and I'm just happy about that.

I don't think people are overwhelmed by it right now in this iteration because people feel it's just a big iPod Touch.  Well, fine.  I have to kind of agree with that idea, but look at how far the iPod Touch has come along since it's release.  It's not about the platform people, it's the APPS.  We'll see what happens in 60 days before it's release.  We'll see what happens in a year.

There is going to be a completely different class of Apps developed for this thing.  I fully expect even people like Microsoft to develop a version of Office (or maybe use the online office) for this thing.

Think of the possibilities for a couple markets:

A) Schools.  Imagine school children, colleges, high schools, etc with this thing as a standard issue device.  Think of what is going to come about as far as accessibilities to text books, not having to carry them around anymore.  Think about taking your quizzes and tests online, doing your homework online.  The elimination of the wasteful use of paper is coming in a big way.

B) Medical application.  Think of a doctor being able to walk around a hospital, every patients records, xrays, results, insurance cards, everything.  Accessible with their fingers.  Think about the Doctors being able to make notes right into the patients online chart.

These are just a couple examples I can think of off the top of my head about the possibilities for a device like this.

Security

Now, how should we treat this device from a security perspective?  It's a mobile device, but it's not a phone, it can't make phone calls.  (Native phone calls, not through Skype.)  It's not a laptop, it's more mobile than that.

I would have to say that'd we'd need to treat this device as a phone.  For the most part, it's a platform that has near ubiquitous access to the internet.  Any Starbucks, Barnes and Nobles, etc.  Then with the cheap 3G access available on it, I think there is going to be a whole class of people (maybe the sub-20 year old demographic) that would use this as a computer.  They don't need anything else for the most part.  My wife doesn't need anything more than this device.  Will you be able to print from it?  Probably not, but that's really the only thing I see that needs to be added from a software point of view for this to replace most computers.  My parents would use this instead of regular computer, most people would, if all they did was process email and read web pages on it.

This is the perfect couch device, this is the perfect "train" or "plane" device. There are a ton of possibilities for this thing, not necessarily at launch, but in a year/two years from now, this may be the computing platform that we are all using.

I'm really only disappointed in one thing.  No face forward video camera for teleconferencing?  Hm.  Well, let's think of this thing sitting on your lap.  Ideally the camera would need to be up higher, level with your face, otherwise people on a video conference with you would be looking up your nose the whole time.  Yes of course you could prop it up, but that's not going to happen all the time.  That's really my only disappointment.

We'll see..

iPhone compatability

When I moved to the current theme, I received a couple emails telling me that the theme is hard to read on an iPhone.  So I fixed that.  If you browse to the blog on an iPhone you will now receive a completely different screen and interface, one that is very iPhone compatible, user-friendly, and still allows you to use all the features of the site (commenting, emailing, etc) as you normally would.

So here's what it will look like now when you navigate to the site on an iPhone:

You notice the drop down at the top right of the screen?  This allows you to view the site via RSS, sort by category, even Email me directly from the blog.

If you don't like how the page looks on the iPhone, you can turn this feature off by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and flicking the switch, as seen below:

This is all made possible by the WPtouch theme.  Thanks Wordpress.

Review: Vtech DS6322 w/ Bluetooth

My wife bought me this for Xmas, and it's probably one of the best ideas ever.  The Vtech DS6322 w/ Bluetooth, is a 3 or 4 phone kit with bases (with an answering machine) that has Bluetooth capability.  Buy.com has it here.  So, after I paired my wife and I's cell phones to the base, now, when we come home our cell phones connect to the base, and then calls that come in our cell phones can be answered via the regular phone.

The regular phone has all the regular cordless phone buttons that you'd expect to see, plus one additional, a "Cell" button.  Whenever a phone call comes in on the cell phone, we just tap this button and we can answer it, all without having to run all over the house to try and find our cell phones.  It's convenient, as we have the base station (w/ Answering Machine) and our cell phones plugged into this piece of handiness from Pottery Barn (ours is black). The cell phones stay put in that area, along with the base station, and now we don't have to sprint all over the house looking for phones when one rings.

You can even import the phone books of the phones into the base station.  (Nice!)  You can set a static ringer, per phone line, so you know exactly which line someone is calling in on.

I recommend it.

Instapaper is so great

I am not sure if Instapaper has apps for anything other than the iPhone, and I kind of doubt, if that exclusivity exists, that it will last any amount of time.

Instapaper is one of those new 2.0 companies that is web/app based. They provide you a free log in to their website, which by the way, by default, had no password. Past this login you get a bookmarklet, similar to the "readbility" bookmarklet I talked about earlier, which, upon use, allows you to turn any article you are reading into a saved article of sorts.

For example, earlier today I was reading an entry on a blog, it was rather long, and I wasn't going to have time to finish reading it as I was about to head out to go to the dentist.

So, with this combination of app/website, I tapped my instapaper bookmarklet, which takes whatever you are reading, and puts it up in the "cloud". Which, provided you then have the Instapaper app on your iPhone, can sync this content down to your mobile device.

Now, whatever article I was reading, just by tapping one button, is now formatted in nice big text on my iPhone, and I can take with me.

I don't know the size limitation of the file you can put on instapaper, I don't know, for instance if you can put a whole book up there or something, but for now, while I am in the dentists waiting room, I have articles to read instead of the weeks old copies of  "Newsweek".

Why don't I use something like Google reader? Well I can, except for those websites that shorten their rss feeds to force clickthroughs. It's another couple steps, who knows how it is going to be formatted, and who knows what kind of connectivity you are going to have.

Which, also by the way, is why I removed the "shortened rss" clickthrough thing for my blog. It annoyed me, so I figured it was probably annoying you.

Some New Apple stuff

Like every other retailer getting ready for the Holiday season this year, Apple, on the back of the biggest Quarter in Apple history, which saw their stock jump almost 10 dollars in one day, announced a few new products into the pipeline yesterday.  Let me just share a couple thoughts on these and then we'll move on to more interesting things.

1.  New iMac's with 21.5" and 27" displays.  While I don't have an iMac, my parents do, and I think it's a great platform.  All that in a 27" form factor is nice.
2.  Magic Mouse, the "world's first multitouch mouse".  Apple did away with the trackball, made the mouse a bit more rectangular (rather than the oval shape of the mighty mouse), got rid of the side buttons, and put multitouch gestures on the mouse.  Two finger swipe, scrolling in 360 degrees with just a finger.  Similar to the trackpad on the laptops.  Pretty cool I guess.
3.  Updated White Macbook.  Made it LED display, locked the battery in, made it "rounder".  (Even though that's not a word).  Now it looks like a true UFO.
4.  Updated Mac Mini, even a version with two 500GB Harddrives and Snow Leopard Server. (This is interesting here!)

Overall, underwhelming, I mean, from the 10,000 foot view, a couple of updates and a new mouse.  Of course I don't know what we expect Apple to come out with now-a-days.  Maybe we expect more from a company that invented the iPod and the iPhone.  I think the Mouse is cool, but the big one for me was the Mac Mini update.

Putting Snow Leopard server on it, as kind of a "home" server type of appliance, that's an interesting play, and I'd like to see what they are going to do with that technology being in the home.  


Please leave comments below.