Posts from March 2008

Every time I think there is nothing else that will cut into my iphone 2/android phone account they come up with some other crazy internet enabled, linux powered, ssh-able, super device that I can't live without. e:shawn just IMed me about this.

in comes the chumby



Problem is that it doesn't do much different than my Nokia n810 other than be less portable ;( but it is super cute and would look great on my desk at work.

My brother @mike just brought over this ring I got as a child with my initials on it from some relatives in Italy for my first communion. It now fits perfectly as a pinky ring.

Its fun to have old things back in my life in a new light. Plus it helps me remember my initials. I hope I don't get mugged for my bling. Chances are the white headphones are more of a mugger magnet than the ring.



I am starting a new category for this. The Sicilian in me hope it continues to be popular.

Does anyone want to buy @terry's xbox 360 elite with the following accessories and games before I sell it on ebay. We are looking to sell it for $489.00. It is also a media center and plays DVDs.

Accessories
120GB hard drive
web camera
2 headsets
2 controllers 1 wired, one wireless

Games
Via Pinata
Beautiful Katamari
Enchanted Arms
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
Star Trek Legacy
Ninety Nine Nights
Star Wars KOTR2 (xbox)

There is so much snow. Cars kept gettign stuck last night trying to park or get out of Linwood. WE video taped it because it was so funny but decided not o post it because it was mean. This is what happens when you don't have cable. @terry went out to help some guy.


The iphone's touch screen really required human touch so you can't use it with gloves on which sucks in this weather. I got really good at controlling it with my nose - one new reason why have a big nose is good.





My beard is getting ridiculous. I wonder how much longer I am going to put up with it. It fits this wintry weather well.

The old but sexy nokia 7710 phone can be yours. I am ready to part with it for free. I paid $479 for it back in 2005 when it was cutting edge and I ordered in from Finland. It never came out in the US. The hitch is you cannot sell it. I am could just sell it myself but I would rather have someone use it. When you are done with it someday I could put it in my cell phone museum, even if it is broken and in parts.

Here you can watch demos of all the cool features



It runs series 90 symbian, has java, opera browser, styles, email client, darwing program that is really good for writing handwritten color email letters, 640 x 320px touch screen, media card expansion slot already filled, Office applications, FM radio built in, voice memo mode.

It is edge only. NO 3g in this one as it did not exist yet. Also has bluetooth but no wifi.

YOU COULD USE IT TO POST TO ESTRIP FROM THE MOBILE!

Two hitches
1. As with any mobile phone, you would have to get an mobile internet sim card from tmobile or cingular as it is GSM (no verizon or sprint which is CDMA). If you already have an account with them you could just add mobile internet to your plan. If you don't have one you can pay moth to month because it is an unlocked phone and does not require a contract.

2. The camera takes shitty pictures as it has some error in the CMOS chip @paul #32341



Its a little bigger than the iphone


If no one wants it I am going to just put it in a box in the attic for the rest of its life.

I installed the jailbreak software which allows you to install software other people have developed for the iphone despite apple trying to gimp that.

The first thing I installed was Apollo IM, an instant messenger client

It is really quite decent. It runs in the background like the ones I use on the AT&T tilt and the nokia n810 and accepts multiple accounts and types of accounts including google, yahoo, aim and msn. It is not nearly as full featured as the client on either the tilt or the nokia but it does work and pretty good.

Its missing buddy icons, file transfer, direct connect, etc.

I have to give it props. Not in terms of photo quality - which are pretty good but not as good as other phones. But in terms of ease of use when taking the pic, the iphone has it right with the camera's point and shoot interface. It woudl be nice to have a hardwware camera button. I don't think it would have cluttered it up to have one more hard button on the side.

However, if you are already on the home screen, it is so easy to take pics that snap really fast. The really mastered the interface for taking a pics. Too bad they fucked up all the stuff you would do with the picture after you took it.

In no particular order:

1. No file uploads in the browser.
2. No bluetooth sending pics or surfing for them from other devices.
3. No wireless sync
4. No sending multiple images in an email and not ability to change the name of the image sent.
5. No video capture.
6. No Settings for white balance, etc
7. No led flash which easily doubles as a flash light on other phones. The tilt lacks that too ;(

It does not do a very good job with even slight darkness. This pic was taken at 2PM.

Check out how much snow


Looks a lot nicer after I turned up the exposure in iphoto, why not just allow those settings on the iphone itself.



More snow


@matthew buying some flowers at Wegman's - this one I did not manipulate. We rushed to Wgmans's today because we were out of everything and the news made it seem like the stuff was flying off the shelves and nothing was left. One woman interviewed said that she left tops for Wegman's because tops had nothing left. I think it was a media frenzy just to make people shop. I wonder if Wegman's paid the news to say that.



More snow - this one I did


It is amazing how slow edge is. I had forgotten what dialup was like till I was out of wifi zone with the iphone.

Most importantly, I am a mac user thst loves mac os x but the iphone/ipod touch OS is not to windows mobile what the mac OS is to windows XP unless you mean in terms of eye candy.
Arch, I can't finish editing the bottom of the post because the edit box has no scroll on the iPhone and there are no arrow keys.

I have an ipod touch at work for testing websites and i really hate it - much more than the iphone which at least has its own gsm chip - and it is definitely less sophisticated than the nokia n800/n810.

I would not buy unless all you want is an ipod that can surf the web at home where you already have a computer ;( Or if you have a huge collection of music the ipod touch might be better becaus eit can be 32GB. I do not have that much music.

In fact, the advantage of the iphone over the nokia wifi devices is that it has its own phone connection. Buffalo is not connected enough to have a wifi only device.

That being said in addition to wifi the nokia n800/n810 can also piggy back off a cell phones connection via bluetooth which is a huge bonus in a city like buffalo that does not wifi everywhere. So it offers more functionality and more connectivity options. In fact San Francisco really doesn't have open wifi very much either in my limited experience. I just wish the n810 has a gsm chip. So sad that it doesn't and I think that is what kills its market share. On the other hand, you have no monthly service fees, same with the ipod touch.

Can the real winner please stand up
But he real winner to me for an all in one, high speed mobile convergence/communication/entertainment device is windows mobile 6 on HTC. All in all, windows mobile on an HTC device like the AT&T Tilt is by far the best hardware, software combo out there. I think the mac stuff only has a large market share because of sexier hardware design and much sexier marketing.

The interface is not as pretty as either of the other two especially by default but once you add the HTC home screen and apps it does everything, play music/video, email, outlook sync, flash, phone, streaming radio, IM, keyboard, cut/copy paste, real gps, and HSPDA super speedy 3G connection. Not to mention there are hundreds if not thousands of free programs that do everything else you need.

Here is a great review of the AT&T tilt vs the iphone that someone else wrote

Here is one about speed comparisons in the browsers

Nokia n810 notphone vs iPhone

Screen
The resolution of the nokia n810 not phone kicks the iphone's ass. The clarity of the colors, the brightness and the 800 x480 pixel screen kicks the iphones 320 x 480 screen.

Keyboard
The keyboard makes the not phone a little bigger but I would say it is definitely a great tradeoff for a couple millimeters on both side and neatly tucks away

The zoom vs the stylus
When you really break it down, the pinch zoom feature of safari is required to overcome the lack of styles. Essentially, the links need to be big enough to click them. This results in lots of zooming in and out. When looks cool as a novelty and then becomes really old. The notphone is so high resolution that pages display much more full size.

File Uploads
Iphone has no fucking file uploads form the browser. That is ridiculous in today's world of web sites that you contribute images too. Why limit this? Even my series 40 phone running opera mini can do this. Not phone has fully featured file uploads.

Email
Again, no cut copy paste. Only one image in the email.

SMS
No cut, copy, paste - no picture mail

Load time
site take longer to load on the iphone and then require all kind of zoomin g in and out to make it readible. The higher resolution, larger screen and stylus of the notphone make it way easier.

Sound
The headset free sound on the iphone is worse than any of the phones in our including @matthew and @terry's free phones. Maybe there is something wrong with the speakers. the notphone is loud and clear enough to be used as an audio entertainment device for the whole room.

Radio
The iphone is limited to my mp3s, the notphone has streaming radio of multiple variaties out of the box.

It also has an FM radio built in for those times when there is no internet.

Cut Copy paste
Again, the lack of it sucks

GPS
The not phone has it, the iphone has it only simulated. On its defense, google maps is way better on the iphone minus lack of cut, copy paste. The zoom interface works really well. Compared to the tilt, they both suck, The tilt running yahoo maps with GPS over HSPDA is the best combo in my opinion.

Summary
I was doubtful before I really had it to play with, but while I think that the iphone is a great consumer, idiot proof device - the nokia n810 is definitely the cooler device for a true technophile.

Some of it is hardware, like the screen and keyboard and gps but the main thing is that the iphone is gimped by the lack of software (bluetooth, email, picture sms, cut/copy/paste, browser upload, streaming radio, flash)

Now if only the nokia n810 has its own GSM chip I would never ven be having this discussion.

Sorry about the quality of the pics. It is dark in the room I am in.

The best part is that the not phone lets you run instant messenger with a keyboard, and you can leave it open while other programs are running. It also bluetooth transfers files to all my other devices and also acts as a UPnP for my playstation.

I can't wait to get the iphone so that I can officially hate it and not have everyone thinking I hate it because I haven't experienced it.

Nice things coming:
activesync so I can use my outlook stuff on the phone

Things that I just can't be happy with:
Still no freakin cut copy paste.
no 3G
no real keyboard
no styles
no video camera
emails still only send one image called photo.jpg
the ability to mass move and delete emails
no flash
no streaming radio

And then, this I totally cannot believe but just read on CNET

The SDK item drawing the most attention Friday, however, is that third-party applications will not be allowed to run in the background. TechCrunch's Mike Arrington wrote, "Instant-messaging applications (we saw a demo of an AIM version at the event today), can't run in the background and collect messages while you are doing something else. Leave the application to take a phone call, and it shows you offline."

That is insane. Every phone in the world besides series 40s nokia and a few starter phones that are free from the telcos have the ability to run things as background tasks. It is a major step backwards to not have that ability.

This is what the apple docs have to say:


Writing Code for iPhone OS

The iPhone SDK supports the creation of graphically-oriented applications that run natively in iPhone OS. The applications you create reside on the user's Home screen, along with the other system applications, such as Photos, Weather, and Clock. After it is launched, aside from the kernel and a few low-level daemons, your application is the only application running on the system. While running, your application occupies the entire screen and is the focus of the user's attention. And when the user presses the Home button, your application quits and the system displays the Home screen again. Having the system to yourself is advantageous because it gives you full access to the underlying system resources. You can take advantage of built-in hardware such as the accelerometers, camera, and graphics hardware to run just your code.

So wow, it really can't run multiple apps. that seems so silly like that old palm OS that didn't let you run programs in the background. Somes the notphone or tilt have 10 programs or more running at once.