Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant
Supplemental: Thoof shuts down, Dell ad agency hides Apple goods?
Two more items to share with you today, both lobbed our way by Austin blogger Jeff Beckham.
First off, this item is too delicious not to share: according to Mediabistro.com’s AgencySpy blog, employees at the Austin offices of Dell Inc.’s ad agency Enfatico (Gesundheit!) swapped all of their Apple equipment for PCs in anticipation of a visit from Michael Dell.
According to the item, which was said to be confirmed by inside sources, the switcheroo was quite expensive and was just one problem at the fledgling agency. If it’s true, you must admit it’s just a tiny bit hilarious.
It reminds me of when people dress up in ties and dress clothes when the CEO is visiting. Except this was thousands of dollars worth of hardware.
Come on, Michael Dell. Did you really think there’s a high-end ad agency that exclusively uses PCs? Really?
In more somber news, Austin startup Thoof.com, which was trying to combine community content like Digg.com with an artificial intelligence backbone that could be applied to other kinds of sites, has shut its doors. We wrote about them last year and I found their leader, Ian Clarke, to be kind of brilliant. We wish them the best in their new endeavors.
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App store fumbles, ‘Grimm’ is just grim
The things you need to know today:
- When Apple opened up the mighty digital floodgates of the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store, people worried that the sheer number of offerings may signify a lack of quality control. Not to worry! If this approved app is any indication, there is no quality control at all to worry about.
- Our Twitter pal Paul Terry Walhus shot lots of footage at last week’s Social Media Camp/Mashable Austin party. Here is that footage, trimmed down to 46.5 minutes.
- Want to instant message with exciting people in foreign lands but too lazy to learn their language? MeGlobe purports to do instant instant message translating. If anybody gets married as a result of using this technology, I would really like to hear about it.
- I’ll be writing full reviews of some new games, but here are my quick impressions: “Geometry Wars 2” on Xbox Live Arcade is darn near perfect; addictive and as refined a sequel as you will find. “1942: Joint Strike,” also on XBLA, is a surprisingly potent remake of the arcade classic. I love it so far. After playing one episode of “American McGee’s Grimm,” available on Gametap.com, I can only ask, WHY!? It is awful, a horrible little piece of junk. If it were an action, you could convict it as a crime. I hope the next two episodes are better, but I have grim (hee hee? No?) hopes for the series.
- We have several new Statesman newsroom people using Twitter after the Sunday piece. I won’t go into the whole Statesman Twitter strategy here (partly because it is still evolving and I am not in charge of it), but Robert Quigley is a good person to follow if you want to know what’s up with the Statesman and what we’re tweeting.
- Speaking of Twitter, some UT students have created a more visual primer that you may enjoy.
- Comments on the Cuil.com review seem to confirm that it is, in its present form, a craptastic search engine.
- I am on vacation next week, so please excuse me if my brain gradually stops working over the next two days. It is merely preparing.
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Twitter Blood Drive: the video
Last month, I posted about an Austin Twitter blood drive. Now you can see the Docubloggers video version of that day, which explains it much better than I ever could:
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Review: Cuil.com
This article ran in the newspaper on Sunday in Life & Arts. In case you missed it, here’s my review of Cuil.com:
New search engine leaves users looking for the logic
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes a wave of hype in the tech world culminates in a product that lives up to expectations: the iPhone, for instance, or most HDTV sets. What happens when something feels dead on arrival the moment its out of the gate? Meet Cuil.com.
The new Web site, launched last week by ex-Google and IBM engineers, has been hyped as a new way of searching with a much larger index than the king of online search, Google.com. Cuil.com’s home page says it has indexed 121.6 billion Web pages.
But is bigger any better? Given Google’s popularity, you wonder whether Cuil (pronounced “Cool”) is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Are people that unhappy with search engines like Google, Microsoft’s live.com and Yahoo, among others?
Unfortunately, Cuil.com is not cool: It’s a disaster.
For a while on Monday, the “About Cuil” page on the site couldn’t be found when you clicked on it. When a search engine’s own pages can’t be found, you know there are major problems. The fundamental function of the site, to help you find things online, seems completely broken. A common search that almost everyone has tried at some point, my own name, returned a frustratingly long set of results that didn’t quite get it right. Instead of finding my name among hundreds of American-Statesman bylines, my work blog, my personal blog or any number of other places where my name appears, Cuil.com instead showed an IMDB entry where I have one credit, several audio and video interviews I’ve done for other sites and other “not-quite” pages, sans images.
Contrast that with Google, which pulled up my most relevant sites immediately among 64,700 results. Yahoo, live.com and another visual search site, viewzi.com, which provided not only results from Google and Yahoo, but YouTube videos and photos I’ve posted to Flickr.com. Here was the dealbreaker: a “Texas Longhorns” search returned this: “No results were found for: texas longhorns.” What!? To be fair, several tabs on the Cuil.com screen provided suggestions “Texas Longhorns Football” and a search for basketball. But even that first page of Longhorns results showed the UT Co-op, a scouting site and orangebloods.com, not the official site, texassports.com. Google, on the other hand, returned 3.59 million results. The top result was texassports.com.
An air filter I bought a few months back with a weird product number, “Hw-Fc40r1029,” was not found at all by Cuil. Google, Yahoo and Viewzi all found it. Live.com found it when I changed the search to “Honeywell Fc40r1029.” Cuil.com did not.
Is Cuil a bust? I think so. It simply doesn’t work well. Will it get better? Probably. There’s an option to send a message to the Cuil.com team when your search yields nothing. By then, you’re probably gone.
Cuil, unfortunately, is not nearly cool, or functional, enough to be worth your time in its present form.
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Live chat with Omar about Twitter, 11 a.m. Monday
In case you missed it, here’s Sunday’s Life & Arts story about tips for using Twitter.
You can see the Monday live chat transcript below:
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Friday mind expansion: fill your brain
I have so much to share with you today! A week’s worth of stuff to glide you into your sunny (and, I hope, relaxing) weekend. Ready to get your brain filled up? Here goes the spigot:
- The New York Times Magazine is running a Sunday piece about Internet trolls. I’ve had a few people who have already read the story express shock and amazement, and it will shock and amaze you, most likely. But if you really spend a lot of time online (and especially on video game and tech forums), none of the revelations about bad behavior online will be much of a surprise. Trolls are a fact of Internet life.
- Have you heard of Slydial? It’s a service that allows you to call someone and go straight to their voicemail without having to talk to them. Want to engage in a sneaky breakup? Got some awkward news to share after going to see your doctor? The applications are endless! The phone number is 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425) and the voice prompts will guide you. The press release I got says you can use SLYDIAL to “Create the illusion of communication.” Well, that’s novel. I’m sure you’re not sneaky enough to use it, but it’s nice to have the option to be a reprobate in the future.
- Richard Garriott wants to shoot your DNA into space. Find out how at Operation Immortality
- “Video Games Live,” the orchestral show of video game music I reviewed at The Long Center recently is coming back in March. Yay!
- Dish Network has announced the first 1080p programming over a satellite TV network. The so-called “TurboHD” service launched today, in addition to 17 more national HD channels. The movie “I Am Legend” (which I saw this week and hated) will be offered at 1080p quality over Dish’s video-on-demand service at a discounted price. DirectTV is also planning to offer some 1080p content later this year. 1080p sounds great, but as this blog item points out, it’s not all about resolution: compression is a huge factor, too. For now, don’t expect Blu-ray-level quality.
- I am currently playing “Geometry Wars 2” on Xbox Live and loving it. Definitely worth the $10 price. Also checking out “American McGee’s Grimm,” which I hope to tell you about next week.
- It appears someone has figured out a way to turn an iPhone into a wireless modem to give your laptop a way to get online when out of a Wi-Fi area. It’s a $10 app.
- Speaking of the iPhone, the game “ReelDeal Texas Hold ‘Em” has dropped in price to 99 cents for the next week.
- And, lastly on the iPhone front, this video was made in Austin. Not sure if that’s a wonderful thing or a matter of grave concern:
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Social Media Camp and the Mashable.com party
World collided.
Yesterday, a Social Media Camp (more on what that means in a bit) was held downtown at the Thistle Cafe. I only began hearing this was happening last week, but I knew one of the organizers was Erica O’ Grady, whom I’d met briefly in Houston at Caroline Collective.
When I started hearing how many people would be there with whom I connect on Twitter (as well as several Statesman folks who were going), I managed to find a way to spend the day there. Usually a mid-week conference that takes place in the middle of the week and lasts all day isn’t something I’m able to attend.
I’m glad I did. Social Media Camp was set up like Bar Camp: attendees show up and decide what the contents of the mini-conference will be. Since everyone involved is probably an expert in some area or other, the topics of discussion are decided early in the day.
What this means is that some people arrive ready to present, with a PowerPoint, even, as the folks who use Twitter at Dell did. Others (like our small Statesman crew) were winging it.
But because the topic of the entire day was social media tools, everyone there was inclined to meet others, participate and connect.
I won’t go into the individual tracks, but I’ll say that the turnout was pretty amazing: more than 200 people showed up at 10 a.m. and braved some major Wi-Fi problems to meet and greet. Other people trickled in throughout the day.
There were plenty of “take-aways,” as they’re called, but what most impressed me was that there is a real movement to change the world for the better among some of the top speakers at the event, not just to use Twitter, Facebook and other social nets as marketing tools.
The second half of Austin’s Massive Day of Social Media was a Buffalo Billiards party sponsored by Mashable.com. More than 400 people were crammed into the upper floor of the pool hall (it was called, appropriately, the SummerMash). it was crowded and hot, but drinks were free and when I left at 9, the crowd had only grown larger.
It began to get a little surreal for me: so many people I’ve written about or communicated with on Twitter or over e-mail were suddenly there in person. World collided, like a dream where all your past friends and family show up in one place. Putting faces to names and online IDs was a bit thrilling, but so was catching up with people I usually only type to.
It took me a half hour to leave, obligated as I felt to say goodnight to everyone I knew who was there. This morning, I’ve been overloaded with new Twitter friend requests and messages.
Maybe it was just me, but it felt like one of those magical, transformative nights that people will still be talking about, at least in this sometimes insular online world, for a while. Many drinks were consumed, many business cards and “@” identities exchanged, and from what I hear, things got a little wild after I left.
I told O’ Grady that we could stand to have more events like this in Austin and I think a lot of people are thinking the same thing.
Here are a few photos I shot last night:
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Away at camp (minus the cabins)
I’m spending a rare day away from the office attending an event called Social Media Camp downtown at the Thistle Cafe.
The event is a take-off of Bar Camp, where techies get together and put on impromptu panels and information sessions as experts in their respective fields.
Rather than give you the blow-by-blow as its happening, I’ll just direct you to a FriendFeed post I’ve made where I’ll be adding comments as the day progresses. I’ll have a lot more to write about it later on, I’m sure.
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Dell Studio Hybrid is for real; Scrabulous no more
The Dell Studio Hybrid computer that I mentioned yesterday is now a three-dimensional reality:
Dell has not always been known for its fashion-forward PCs, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. The diminutive setup includes a wireless keyboard and mouse, a PC base that looks more like an external hard drive and a flat-screen monitor.
It also comes in multiple colors and one possibly ill-advised Bamboo model:
The energy-efficient Hybrid starts at $499 and be equipped with a Blu-ray drive as an optional feature.
Oh, Scrabulous.
The popular Scrabble-like Facebook application is no more. Hasbro has added its own version of Scrabble to the social networking site and has taken legal action against the popular knockoff.
It didn’t take long for a Scrabble protest group to show up on Facebook.
The New York Times Bits blog has more updates — apparently the Scrabulous developers took the game offline themselves in North America, not Facebook.
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Is this Dell’s new Studio Hybrid Mini PC?
Apple isn’t the only company that has to content with rumors and speculation about its product line ruining potentially huge announcements.
Dell Inc. may have had a new product exposed on the Engadget blog. The so-called Dell Studio Hybrid Mini PC has been pictured (at least in drawing form) on the site and supposedly sports a wireless mouse and keyboard, a diminutive, rounded based unit and, of course, an obligatory flat-screen monitor.
It looks very nice — we can’t wait to see actual photos if this is indeed a new Dell product that’ll be rolled out online soon.
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‘Star Trek’ MMO, Social Media Camp, Mobile Me woes and more
Let’s play catch-up with some goodness from around the Web, bulleted for your reading pleasure:
- Trekkies rejoice! You’ve got a J.J. Abrams franchise reboot to look forward to and, now, a massively multiplayer online game, “Star Trek Online.” Here’s the official site. Truly good times for those who covet pointy ears.
- Social networking geeks: a Social Media Camp takes place Wednesday at Thistle Cafe with a happy hour sponsored by Mashable.com to follow in the evening at Buffalo Billiards.
- Some ex-Google types have launched a new search engine, Cuil. It says it can find information from 121,617,892,992 Web pages, yet it can’t find its own About Cuil page. Oops. Check it out — you may like the more-horizontal visual presentation of search results.
- Even after getting slammed by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, Apple still hasn’t quite gotten all the kinks out of the new Mobile Me service. Here’s another Apple apology.
- Speaking of Apple, talk of Steve Jobs’ health woes came to a head in this New York Times story. You must read the last three paragraphs.
- Futurist and sci-fi legend Bruce Sterling will deliver a keynote at the Austin Game Developers’ Conference in September. The topic is “Computer Entertainment 35 Years From Today.”
- I linked to this on Twitter, but it’s worth repeating: an iPhone Web app for tracking Austin Capital Metro bus lines.
- This product, the BrickHouse Child Locator has apparently been selling very well since it was featured in a Duracell ad campaign.
- Don’t forget, Digital Savant has a FriendFeed page where you can chitty-chat and check out links and other info relevant to the blog that I post from time to time.
- And lastly, it’s nice to know that the Muppets have something brief, relevant and witty to say about the YouTube era:
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Time Warner Cable rolls out Start Over, PhotoShowTV in Austin
Time Warner Cable has introduced two new features for its digital cable customers, and both are free to current subscribers.
The first sounds incredibly useful. The second is a bit troubling.
By storing programs on these channels on its servers and shooting them over via Video On Demand technology, you could start a movie or sitcom back from the start if you catch it late or forget to record it with the DVR. (You don’t need a DVR to use the service; it works with the company’s four current digital cable boxes.)
We tried it out at the plush Texas Cable Association offices in downtown Austin and Start Over works as advertised: a helpful prompt shows up automatically when a program is available to begin from the start and doing the time warp is instantaneous, far faster than a typical Video On Demand download.
The catch is that not every program can be started over and that it only works on a few channels: Showtime’s premium channels (730-737), TMC (746-747), USA (66 and 504), TNT (67 and 510), National Geographic and NG HD (232 and 1620), Comedy Central (59 and 530), Cartoon Network (43 and 110) and MTV (72 and 570). Time Warner plans to add a another tier of channels in a few months.
It’s available at no extra cost to digital cable subscribers.
The second service requires both Time Warner digital cable and a Road Runner high-speed Internet account. Subscribers can access a Web site for Roxio PhotoShowTV that allows them to make a photo slideshow within a browser window.
PhotoShow doesn’t require downloading an application and is pretty slick: you can add effects, music and titles to a set of photos. Once your photo slideshow is done, you can e-mail it to someone or upload it to Local On Demand channel 1401.
Here’s where things get a little weird: the slideshow takes about 24 hours to appear on the channel as it’s reviewed by humans to make sure you didn’t try to sneak in some shots from your trip to Hippie Hollow.
If you’re bashful about strangers looking at your family snapshots, you really won’t like the next part: anyone in Central Texas to channel 1401 can view your slideshow once it appears. There are no privacy filters, no passwords, no way to make sure that only friends and family members can view your slideshow.
Also, relatives in other Time Warner Cable cities can’t currently view your slideshow unless you e-mail it to them directly.
To prove the point that this could lead to some embarrassment we pulled up a few slideshows and promptly began making fun of dogs dressed up for the 4th of July (oh, the patriotic hats we saw!) and formal photos featuring someone showing off way too much cleavage.
I’m not a big privacy freak, but PhotoShowTV sounds like an accident waiting to happen, and I’m not convinced that people know what they’re getting into when they post photos online for all the world to see: especially when those photos are going to be blown up to giant proportions on cable viewers’ giant-screen TVs.
It’ll be a promising, useful application (and free to boot), but it’s desperately in need of better privacy controls.
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Bealls skips the clipping with cell phone coupons
I recently organized all my coupons into an accordion-like clip filer (you can stop pointing and laughing, please) and everything is neat and labeled.
But I don’t think I can compete with eliminating the paper part altogether: retailer Bealls is working with mobile coupon service Cellfire to offer some back-to-school deals over mobile phones.
By sending the text “BEL” to 22888, customers will receive deals every two weeks until Sept. 1. Alternately, you could go to the Cellfire Web site and sign up there.
To use them, you show your cell phone to the cashier, which doesn’t sound like the most natural way of redeeming an offer, but hey, baby steps.
Will cell-phone-based coupons be the future for discount hunters? No idea, but this sounds like something that could really take off, especially if somebody writes a great iPhone couponing application.
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Obama Girl responds to Statesman video
I meant to post this over the weekend, but we’re all back at our desks now and able to fully appreciate it. Late Saturday night (about 1:33 a.m.), Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, posted a response to the Statesman video we posted on Thursday. I’m trying to reach her associate Melissa to make sure it was really her, but this is what was posted under Amber Ettinger’s name:
Omar, wow how uncool and ridiculous you are. I did walk in there 2 minutes before you put your camera in my face and attempted to ask me questions just to make me look stupid. I am not a political expert and I have said that time and time again. I can answer my own questions and I chose not to answer yours because I wasn’t there to talk about Howard Dean and YES I was bored. Sorry everyone. And to the comment below, I graduated from College, get your facts straight.
As I noted in a Twitter message over the weekend, her assertions of my being uncool, ridiculous and boring are at least accurate. As to the putting the camera in her face, I didn’t know that was out of bounds when she was specifically brought to the Media Room to talk to press. I asked, “Can I shoot a video with you?” and she said yes. I can see how that could be taken as a complete intrusion.
I do not, however, have a sufficient defense for the commenter from France who reposted Obama Girl’s response several times, adding only, “IN YOUR FACE Omar,” It kind of is in my face, so I believe that’s on point.
I like to think I’m one of the nicer journalists in the business, and I honestly meant no harm. As to suggestions in some of the Postcards from the Lege blog comments that I set out to embarrass Ms. Ettinger or make her look dumb, I can assure you that I don’t possess the foresight or the mad scientist skills necessary to pull off such a crackerjack caper. I was rattling off questions off the top of my head based on my limited time at the conference as a non-political reporter.
The whole affair could have been headed off at the pass if Obama Girl had simply told our viewers why she was at Netroots Nation and what she planned to do while she was here. Surely she and Melissa must have discussed this on the plane ride over.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Obama Girl knew, and that’s where the problems started.
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Live blog with Andrew Butler of Hill Country Rambling
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iPhone 3G: the review
It’s been a week and people are still standing in lines, trying to get their hands on the iPhone 3G, the second coming of the so-called Jesus Phone. A year after the first iPhone came out, it seems the pretty slab of plastic, metal and glass hasn’t lost its luster.
Is it the new iPhone App Store paired with the new iPhone 2.0 software that’s got people buzzing. Is it the misleading “Half the price” ad campaign, touting a $199 iPhone as a bargain? (It’s not; as I’ve pointed out before, you will pay more in wireless fees during your two-year contract than you would have with the first iPhone.)
I think it’s a combination of these things, but also a mass exhalation from all the people who swore they wouldn’t buy a first-generation Apple phone, especially at its initial price of $600. It was a big sigh of relief from all the people who’d maintained their self-control for a year and swore they wouldn’t lose their resolve until the iPhone surfed AT&T’s 3G network and had built-in GPS.
That’s why the lines are swelling. Some people had been waiting a whole year for Apple’s version of Christmas morning.
But how’s the phone itself?
For the last week, I’ve been test driving a black 8-GB iPhone 3G on loan from AT&T. I’m keeping my “old” iPhone (purchased earlier this year) for the time being, so I was able to compare the two phones side-by-side, using the same iTunes account to sync music and applications.
I’ll go point-by-point with the caveat that all iPhone users will have varying experiences with the new phone. A lot depends on where you live as far as the 3G coverage goes and how you’ll use your phone: we’re not on a corporate e-mail system, so I wasn’t able to test out the new business-center Exchange features.
Your mileage will vary depending on how you use it, but I’ll try to cover the basics.
Looks: The 3G has a plastic, rounded back now, with curvier edges. On the black phone I tried out, the reflective Apple logo on the back stands out nicely, but the metal circle around the camera hole looks cheap and blingy. The design is a bit of an optical illusion, though — setting it next to the earlier iPhone, they’re not significantly different in size or thickness. Some people I’ve talked to hate the plastic rear and liked the brushed metal better. Others love the option of a black or white plastic phone. Since I slapped a Gelaskins sticker on my phone long ago, I don’t really have a preference either way.
I do like the new metal buttons along the edges, which feel sturdier than the plastic black ones on the earlier phone. And the recessed speaker holes on the bottom and the flush headphone jack (which no longer requires an annoying adapter or super-skinny headphone jack to use) are both welcome additions.
Sound: This is a big win for the 3G: when Steve Jobs announced the new phone would sound better, nobody was sure exactly what he meant. It turns out the speakers put out much louder, clearer sound than the first edition (as long as you’re not covering the speakers with your hand). Phone calls sound sharper, with less of a tendency to break up. If you have a tendency to listen to voice mails or podcasts via the speakers, the 3G is a noticeable improvement.
Visuals: I’ve heard a few reports that video on the iPhone has a warmer, richer look. Though the screen itself hasn’t been upgraded on the 3G, the color temperature has been adjusted. Most people, I think, wouldn’t notice, but if you watch a lot of video on the iPhone, you might see the difference.
Battery life: All right, here’s where we hit a major snag. 3G on the iPhone sucks up a lot of battery life. In my usage, using iPhone apps or doing any heavy Web browsing caused a fast battery drain unlike anything I’d experienced on my older iPhone before. Once I turned off the “Push” option to pull down online information, things got a little better, but the battery life is still the biggest disappointment on the 3G. Before announcing the phone, Apple had acknowledged that battery life on the 3G phone was a big challenge, and apparently they weren’t able to surmount it. One shock I got was when I tried to use the iPhone 3G while it was plugged in to a power source: the battery kept draining as I used the Safari browser. The charger couldn’t keep up with the amount of juice being sucked out of the battery at the same time. WOW. If you buy an iPhone 3G, expect to invest in extra chargers to keep around (make sure they’re compatible; not all iPhone accessories work with iPhone 3G) and maybe even an external battery for emergencies. This is a major issue and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple addressed it somehow if they’re faced with a barrage of complaints. My advice for conserving battery life: turn off “Push” if you don’t need it, disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when you’re not using them and keep your screen turned off when you’re just listening to music. You don’t have to like it, but it’ll help you eke out another hour or two of battery if you’re lucky.
3G: Depending on how you look at it, 3G is either a big boon to the phone or a big bummer. The 3G network is indeed much faster than the pokey, but consistent, EDGE network. Unfortunately, 3G is not perfect or ubiquitous. Sometimes, the iPhone 3G takes a full 15-30 seconds to start downloading a page speedily on 3G, even when you’ve got full bars and the 3G logo at the top of the screen. I’m not sure if the phone is attempting to connect or what, but sitting there watching the phone try to take a running start at downloading data is one of the most frustrating experiences anyone who’s waited for 3G will experience. Once it gets going, 3G is great. Using Google Reader, I zipped through my RSS feeds, pulling down lots of images and text. It was close to being in a Wi-Fi area. But, again, more problems: even in parts of Austin, the phone would drop the 3G network and switch to EDGE for no apparent reason. I was able to pick up 3G in New Braunfels, but on I-35, 3G went off and on the whole way. (Please don’t iPhone and drive.) AT&T has apparently made big upgrades to its 3G network and expanded it at a huge expense, but it’s just not enough. The network has to be more consistent and have a wider coverage area to justify the $10 more a month iPhone users are paying for the privilege of using it.
Text messages: Text messaging works exactly the same on the iPhone 3G as it did on the earlier iPhone, which is why it’s mystifying that AT&T is now charging $5-$20 a month more for texts. Color me completely annoyed by this. If you want to avoid text messaging altogether, just to mess with The Man, there are work-arounds.
GPS: A pleasant surprise. An early review by David Pogue of The New York Times made it sounds like the GPS on the iPhone 3G was total weak sauce, but maybe he was trying to use it among giant skyscrapers in Manhattan. I’ve been surprised with how well the GPS works in Google Maps: watching a red dot of yourself going down the highway is a very cool experience, and it seems very accurate. The sooner the right applications come along to take advantage of the GPS feature, the sooner iPhone users will be able to ditch their other redundant, clunky GPS devices.
iTunes: Aside from the complete fiasco that activation and upgrading was on launch day, the new iPhone 2.0 software has introduced a few annoyances to the iTunes experience. For one thing, the iPhone now tries to back up its entire memory every time you sync. You can stop it in mid-backup by clicking the tiny x in the dialogue box at the top of iTunes, but it still takes much, much longer to do a sync than it did before. New iPhone 3G users may not notice anything’s amiss, but older iPhone users will definitely be annoyed. Another weird feature is having your applications backed up when you sync. This is nice in theory, but one I download an app, I don’t want to have to worry about it every time I sync.
iPhone 2.0: This is a bit of a moot point because except for certain GPS or 3G-specific items, the software runs the same on the iPhone 3G and on the older iPhone (and, even, on the iPod Touch). The new software creates a new “Contacts” icon (previously only accessible via the Phone icon), adds the App Store (more on that in a bit) and a few improvements like a scientific calculator that appears when you run Calculator and turn the iPhone on its side. You can now search contacts (finally!), mass-delete e-mails and open certain e-mail attachments like PowerPoint documents. Unfortunately, the new features come at a price: overall, 2.0 is less stable than the previous iPhone software. It’s more prone to crash, lag when you’re tying, or simply stop responding. Expect a patch soon to address performance issues that the new operating system version seems to have introduced.
App Store: Hands-down the best new feature on the iPhone 3G or the older iPhone. With the iPhone, you now have access to literally hundreds of new programs, many of them free. It would take a whole other review just to talk about some of the great applications available, but taken as a whole, the App Store is simply an overwhelming ocean of goodness. Sure, there are some clunkers in the store, but there are more than enough enjoyable, free Apps that they make up for the weak ones. It’s simply long overdue and totally welcome. My favorites so far are Remote, a simple and beautiful way to control iTunes or an Apple TV with the iPhone, Pandora’s music service which streams songs directly to the phone based on your musical preferences, the useless but entertaining PhoneSaber (like having a light saber in your pocket with accompanying sounds), the Facebook and AOL Instant Messenger apps and Yellow Pages’ YPMobile, which shows you restaurants and other businesses in your area, including reviews and phone numbers. It’s worth wading in the deep waters of the App Store and finding the programs that suit your interests and needs. The best part is it’s not exclusive to iPhone 3G users. Check out Webmonkey’s poll of the top Apps.
Conclusions: Is the new iPhone 3G great? Yes. Yes, it is. Is it much greater than the original iPhone? If both phones have the new iPhone 2.0 software installed, not so much. 3G service is inconsistent, and while GPS is very nice, there isn’t enough software yet to really make it a killer feature. The phone sounds better, has a more refined design and a cheaper price at the register (but watch out for that phone bill later). The verdict is that those who don’t already have an iPhone will certainly fall in love with the 3G if they’re already used to paying Blackberry-like data fees. For those who got the original iPhone, there’s no shame in hanging on to the original phone and seeing if the price or service fees drop in the next few months. (Or at the very least, whether AT&T gets rid of the ridiculous text messaging fee increases.) As for me, having a 3G for a week hasn’t convinced me to go out and buy one for myself. But, I have a feeling it’ll be my next phone at some point in the future, perhaps after the 3G network has matured enough to provide a better experience.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Gadgets, Internet, Phones, Videogames
I got crushed by Obama Girl
I spent the day covering the Netroots Nation convention for the Postcards from the Lege blog (my entries are the ones that totally sound like they don’t belong there).
Unexpectedly, I got to meet Obama Girl. You can read the story of how this video was almost thwarted over there, or just watch the video itself here:
See how she starts looking away for someone else to talk to? I just don’t think she was that into me.
Guess which one’s the print journalist and which one’s the lusted-after Internet sensation.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet
And on drums… Governor Rick Perry! (Corrected)
This is too good not to share.
I thought I’d have my iPhone 3G review all ready for you, but I got swamped and won’t have it ready, unfortunately. In the meantime, I’ve got something even better (besides, aren’t you tired of hearing about iPhone stuff yet?).
Texas Governor Rick Perry spoke at the E3 convention in L.A., and the Joystiq.com blog has a photo (and a write-up about his remarks) so awesome, I can only point you to it and guarantee you will love it.
Oh, Governor. At this moment at least, you do rock.
Edited to add: Let me explain — yesterday when I posted this entry, maybe I had “Rock Band” on the brain, but I swear it looked like Perry was sitting behind a set of virtual drums. I don’t know why that got into my head, but it did. Little did I know it was just a podium with an unusually round logo. My bad, folks. How cool would that have been, though?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Videogames
iPhone 3G: Charger snob?
I’m still playing with the iPhone 3G, putting it through its paces and trying out different downloads from the App Store. I’ll have a post of my impressions up tomorrow, but here’s something a little troubling in the meantime.
On the way to work this morning, I noticed the 3G was low on battery, so I plugged it into my handy car charger, which I’ve been using for my 1st-generation iPhone and iPod for ages.
It didn’t work. Here’s what the iPhone 3G told me:
I think anyone who’s upgraded an iPod has felt the sting of defeat when your old accessories don’t work on your new device (usually because of the regularity with which Apple redesigns the hardware), but this is just silly. Why would a charger that works fine with an original iPhone not work with the 3G?
Is anyone else out there finding accessory incompatibilities withe the new phone? Post them in the comments here or on the Digital Savant FriendFeed page.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: Gadgets, Phones
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Thanks for the shout-out, Omar! Enjoy your well-deserved vacation next week.
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