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A Mobile Challenge!

Calling all mobile device manufacturer’s, carriers and anyone else who wants to play!

This is your chance to prove just how reliable your high end devices are!  I’m tired of seeing low battery warnings on my mobile devices before the end of a business day and am looking to you to prove me wrong — that there is actually at least one power device that can handle this seemingly simple task.  My normal usage is probably more aggressive than the average consumer and I’m looking to find the most robust smartphone on the market.

Here’s what you can expect your devices to have to survive …

  • I wake each day around 5am using the phone as an alarm.  It is then, that I unplug and really begin my day on battery.  I’ll check email from multiple accounts, take a peak at the weather, twitter and facebook.
  • I typically then work out and use my mobile for music.  I’m open to tracking the workout as well via whatever app you recommend, but typically use my Garmin to capture sports telemetry.  Post workout it’s back to check in with my various feeds as above and then off to the train …
  • On the train is where your device is going to experience some heavy usage and my commute is 90 minutes total in both directions.  The train itself is an hour and during that time, you expect the following type of usage: email (mulitiple accounts), twitter, facebook, extensive web usage (mainly google reader), ebooks and multimedia (music mainly).  I’ll probably check in on foursquare at both ends as well … I’m usually at the office by 9 though sometimes later like today.
  • During  the course of my business day I make a few calls, stay on track of upcoming meetings (exchange sync), and check-in occasionally with Foursquare (lunch), twitter, facebook and google reader.  Much of my information flow switches to the desktop during the day, but as I move between meetings mobile usage does come into play.
  • I’ll probably snap some pictures and upload them to various services as well … just part of a normal day.
  • The return commute is much like the morning.  I tend to take a train anytime between 6 and 8pm so your device needs to be able to last until 9pm.

In my experience the only device that has come close is the Nokia E71.  The iPhone 3GS ranks among the worst performers … requiring multiple top-ups throughout the day.  Other failed devices are the Nokia N80 and T-Mobile G1.

Here are the basic rules:

  • I’m happy to use my SIM card, but only have a personal account on AT&T so if you want to submit a device to this test, I’m requesting that you cover the data and call plan during the trial.
  • All devices must have 3G service in NYC.
  • All devices must fit into the “smartphone” category.
  • I’d like to test all devices submitted over a few days to understand what’s normal and to make sure they all get a fair shake.
  • All devices will be loaner.  I’m not looking to take your phones … just test them.
  • There’s no prize other than bragging rights.  I’m an individual not a company and can’t offer anything other than that.

If you are interested in participating, please leave a comment with an email in the contact field so I can reach out with an address to send things.  If you have any questions, please also leave a comment so others can benefit from the shared knowledge.

I’d like to test a good range of products, but what gets put into the ring will be up to you … I expect this to take a few weeks if all goes as planned and hope it’s fun for everyone.

Let’s get it on!

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best of craigslist: A few things from the bike shop.

This is too hilarious

A few things from the bike shop.

Date: 2009-05-27, 4:05PM PDT

Whoo-hoo Seattle, the sun is out! Let’s discuss a few things before you fumble with swapping the unused ski rack for the unused bike rack on the Subaru.
So yes, you’ve noticed the sun is out, and hey!- maybe it would be cool to to some bike riding. Let’s keep in mind that the sun came out of all 600,000 of us, so for the most part, you’re not the only one who noticed. Please remember that when you walk into my shop on a bright, sunny Saturday morning. It will save you from looking like a complete twat that huffs “Why are there so many people here?”

Are we all on the same page now about it being sunny outside? Have we all figured out that we’re not the only clever people that feel sunny days are good for bike riding? Great. I want to kiss all of you on your forehead for sharing this moment with me. Put your vitamin D starved fingers in mine, and we’ll move on together to some pointers that will make life easier.

SOME POINTERS FOR THE PHONE:

– I don’t know what size of bike you need. The only thing that I can tell over the phone is that you sound fat. I don’t care how tall you are. I don’t care how long your inseam is. Don’t complain to me that you don’t want to come ALL THE WAY down to the bike shop to get fitted for a bike. I have two hundred bikes in my inventory. I will find one that fits you. Whether you come from the north or the south, my shop is downhill. Pretend you’re going to smell a fart, ball up, and roll your fat ass down here.

– Don’t get high and call me. Write it down, call me later. When I have four phone lines ringing, and a herdlet
of people waiting for help, I can’t deal with you sitting there “uuuuhhh”-ing and “uuummm”-ing while your brain tries to put together some cheeto-xbox-fixie conundrum. We didn’t get disconnected, I left you on hold to figure your shit out.

-I really do need to see your bike to know what is wrong with it. You’ve already figured out that when you car makes a noise, the mechanic needs to see it. When your TV goes blank, a technician needs to see it. I can tell you, if there is one thing I’ve learned from you fucking squirrels, it’s that “doesn’t shift right” means your bike could need a slight cable adjustment, or you might just need to stop backing into it with the Subaru. Bring it in, I’ll let you know for sure.

– No, I don’t know how much a good bike costs. For some, spending $500 dollars is a kingly sum. For others, $500 won’t buy you one good wheel. You really need to have an idea of what you want, because every one of you raccoons “doesn’t want to spend too much”.

FOR YOU INVENTIVE TYPES AND DO-IT-YOURSELFERS:

– Just because you think is should exist, doesn’t mean that it does. I know that to you, a 14 inch quill stem makes perfect sense, but what makes more sense is buying a bike that fits you, not trying to make your mountain bike that was too small for you to begin with into a comfort bike.

– If some twat on some message board somewhere says that you can use the lockring from your bottom bracket as a lockring for a fixie conversion doesn’t mean that A: you can, or B: you should. Please listen to me on this stuff, I really do have your best interests at heart.

– I love that you have the enthusiasm to build yourself a recumbent in the off season. That does not mean however, that I share your enthusiasm; ergo I won’t do the “final tweaks” for you. You figure out why that Sram shifter and that Shimano rear derailleur don’t work together. While we’re at it, you recumbent people scare me a little. Don’t bring that lumbering fucking thing anywhere near me.

A DEDICATION TO ALL THE HIPSTER DUCHEBAGS:

-If you shitheads had any money, you wouldn’t NEED a vintage Poo-zhow to get laid. Go have an ironic mustache growing contest in front of American Apparel, so that I can continue selling $300 bikes to fatties, which is what keeps the lights on.

– Being made in the 80’s may make something cool, but that doesn’t automatically make something good. The reason that no one has ridden that “vintage” Murray is because it’s shit. It was shit in the 80’s, a trend it carried proudly through the 90’s, and rallied with into the ’00’s. What I mean to say is, no, I can’t make it work better. It’s still shit, even with more air in the tires.

SO YOU’RE GONNA BUY A BIKE:

Good for you! Biking is awesome. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s good for you. I want you to bike, I really do. To that end, I am here to help you.

-Your co-worker that’s “really into biking” knows fuck all. Stop asking for his advice. He could care less about you having the right bike. He wants to validate his bike purchase(s) through you. He also wants to sleep with you, and wear matching bike shorts with you.

– You’re not a triathlete. You’re not. If you were, you wouldn’t be here, and we both know it.

– You’re not a racer. If you were, I’d know you already, and you wouldn’t be here, and we both know it.

– So you want a bike that you can ride to work, goes really fast, is good for that triathlon you’re doing this summer (snicker), is good on trails and mud, and costs less than $300. Yeah. Listen, I want a car that can go 200 miles an hour, tow a boat, has room for five adults, is easy to parallel park but can carry plywood, gets 60mpg, and only costs $3,000. I also want a unicorn to blow me. What are we even talking about here? Oh yeah. Listen, bikes can be fast, light, cheap and comfortable. Pick two, and we’re all good.

ABOUT YOUR KIDS:

Your kids are amazing. Sure are. No one else has kids as smart, able, funny or as good looking as you. Nope. Never see THAT around here.

– I have no idea how long you kid will be able to use this bike. As it seems to me, your precious is a little retarded, and can’t even use the damn thing now. More likely, your budding genius is going to leave the bike in the driveway where you will Subaru the bike to death LONG before the nose picker outgrows the bike.

– Stop being so jumpy. I am not a molester. You people REALLY watch too much TV. When I hold the back of the bike while your kid is on it, it’s not because I get a thrill from *almost* having my hand on kid butt, it’s because kids are unpredictable, and generally take off whenever possible, usually not in the direction you think they might go. Listen, if I were going to do anything bad to your kids, I’d feed them to sharks, because sharks are FUCKING AWESOME.

I hope this helps, and have fun this summer riding your kick-ass bike!

  • Location: Seattle
  • it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1192150038

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Nokia closes FriendView

Just got an email from Nokia Beta Labs stating that FriendView is closing. No word on whether we’ll see this continue at some near future point integrated into maps or whether it’s just dead.

Frendview was an interesting service and for a brief time overlapped with my friends from Jaiku. Of course those friends were also Nokia users which was a hinderance towards Friendview’s broad acceptance compared to Google Latitude.

Google’s considerably more open approach integrated Latitude in Google Maps for Mobile and has made it the default mobile social location service. We’ll see if the Nokia perspective evolves though it seems like the house is still getting putting in order.

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A Great Way to Start the Day

Good Morning!

Since July, I’ve been waking up at 5am and going for a bike ride. While initially painful to wake up at that time, leaving the house by 5:30 lets me get in a good loop on the road before needing to catch my train to work. Now that it’s turning to fall, the light is taking a bit longer to arrive but when it does, the sunrise is beautiful and makes for a terrific start to the day.

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A note on the Truphone iPhone Bug

If you use TruPhone on the iPhone, you’ll probably be interested in the following PSA from Andy Abramson

This afternoon this afternoon Truphone sent an emailout to its customers explaining that Truphone knows of a bug issue with the Apple iPhone that has existed since the launch of the 3.0 OS in June 2009.

The issue has been widely reported on sites including Mobile Crunch and theiphoneblog. The problem, as was outlined in the email, impacts all applications on a the iPhone, not just the Truphone application. With that said, the bug seems to have affected very few people that Truphone is aware of.

The bug is manifested by applications either disappearing entirely or by attaching themselves to others, so for example you may open a game and a different app opens.

To date there is no official fix for this from Apple, but many people find that a reboot or synch with their PC will often solve the issue.

Unfortunately a publication ran a story today shortly after the email was sent out to customers because the reporter is also a customer who had received the email. The story stated that the Apple iPhone bug had ‘taken Truphone users off air’ – this was not, and is not, true –and the publication has since rephrased the headline to something more appropriate, but not before various websites re-printed the story with the original headline and many people Twittered about it.

We would like to reassure all customers that Truphone is working as usual and is most definitely not ‘off air’.

Anyone wishing to take advantage of the Truphone service on the iPhone can continue to do so. It is still available for download in the App Store and is still offering great cost savings on international calling and Instant Messaging across multiple communities including Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AIM.

via VoIP Watch.

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IO Shortcuts

Cablevision just launched a cool new interactive layer to their digital cable service … It’s not exactly FiOS widgets, but still cool to see some innovation here.

io_shortcuts

I have not had a chance to try this yet, but look forward to seeing how it works.

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It’s all about Performance

I know I have not posted in a while … I’ve been busy, what can I say. I’ve also been somewhat compulsively cycling as of late and found this gem which I thought was worth sharing:

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Google Latitude Goes iPhone via Web App … sigh

So Google Latitude finally arrives on the iPhone and it comes through as a web app?! One one hand you have to admire the skill in which it was programmed by the Google team. Speed is nice and quick, features are rich including pinch zoom and it generally looks like a native app. But it’s not.

Native applications get different access … If this had been part of the actual Maps application – like it is on every Google Maps app that runs on every other platform, you’d have access to your favorites and it might even potentially run in the background – but not.

Instead apparently Apple demanded that it live as a web app over the native app Google had already written.  Apparently the reason is to avoid confusion between Maps and Latitude, yet on every other platform Latitude is a layer that simply loads on top of the map… This decision simply defies all logic for me.  The evolution of the platform goes to native apps from web apps as and back again?  NO!

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Pandora for iPhone streams while offline*

Pandora Streaming Without a Connection

Check out that screenshot … Pandora is actively playing while there is no signal on the iPhone!

I was enjoying some streaming music on my way to work today and though I fully expected the stream to drop as we went underground, it kept on playing!  my iPhone has been jailbroken and I use backgroundr to enable background streaming … I doubt that has anything to do with this, but thought I should mention it.

Presumably Pandora pre-caches the next track as it’s playing which enabled the “local” track to play.  It seems as if the album art downloads as the song is active and since there was no connection that was impossible at the time.  Amazingly my stream kept on playing when the connection kicked back as we pulled into Grand Central.

*You obviously can’t start a stream without a connection.

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gogo internet on american sfo to jfk

gogo internet on american sfo to jfk

That’s a pretty close to live speedtest coming from my flight from SFO to JFK and while the upstream is far from awesome, I don’t even care.  I’m cruising through mail, tweeting and (obviously) blogging with ease.  This is a completely game changing travel experience and something I hope goes to many more flights and airlines soon.

I should note the service costs $15/ flight but I am surfing free thanks to a summer promotion from American Airlines.

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Define Normal

What’s normal usage with a tech product?

My recent return to the iPhone has quickly reminded me that while there is a ton of power available, the more you use the more you pay. With a mobile device that payment comes in the form of battery life and I am not impressed with the iPhone 3GS so far.

My benchmark for smartphones is one day. One day. Getting up at 6 I want to get back home by 8 on a single charge. That has proven impossible on the iPhone.

This am I unplugged the iPhone and checked mail and the weather before showering. Before I left the house, I did a sync with iTunes (podcasts and some new tunes) and then checked the app store for updates. During the course of my commute, I had the iPod playing while running through safari, email and tweetdeck. I used snapped a picture which I uploaded while walking through Grand Central and then checked in on foursquare a few times as well as I passed by a few spots.

When I got to the office (~8:45) I had 47% of my battery left. That means the iPhone would be dead by lunchtime easily at my current rate. WTF? I checked and I have 8 apps ready to use push notices currently so perhaps that’s having an effect but before those apps were even available I saw. Very rapid drain during the course of my morning trip. A quick check now (on the train home) and I can see I have burned about 25% of the battery since leaving the office a bit over an hour ago. Again WTF?

In discussing the battery and laptop performance issues with various people it seems everyone considers my usage more aggressive shall we say than average. No argument here though I don’t see my usage as that unusual anymore actually given the social environment along with the amount of information we are consuming in the more realtime web.

I believe the iPhone only has a 1200Mah battery which is lower than other smartphones in the general competitve set. My Nokia E71 runs with a 1500 battery and has considerably longer life than the E75 which uses a smaller capacity 1350Mah battery. Cleary 1500 shoul be the standard. All of these devices have 3G, wifi, GPS and run lots of applications – concurrently on the Nokia kit.

Is the iPhone actually a mid-tier product operating through the higher end space with a slick UX? Perhaps … The seductive nature of the experience and the flexibility of the applications make it seems like considerably more which has definitley set my expectations.

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When are iTunes and the iPhone going to grow up?

I believe Palm and Windows Mobile devices have had the ability to install applications over bluetooth for at least 10 years, probably longer. My history with S60 is shorter, but there has never been a time when I was unable to install something over basic bluetooth or USB. Apple has severly limited (as in removed) this functionality and as anyone who’s used the iPhone can attest, you can’t use bluetooth access to send and receive files or any data for that matter. Rememeber beaming? Palm invented (in 1992 I believe) that nice feature to make it simple to send your business card to another user … As an interesting footnote in gadget history, the Palm also cost $299 when it was released.

iTunes has a lot going for it. It’s the dominant media management software thanks to the market dominance of the ipod. With the iPhone Apple delivered what is probably the strongest sync solution of any mobile phone. Other’s have similar desktop solutions, but the simplicity with which iTunes is able to handle all your data is stellar.

So what could possibly be changed?

The strength of iTunes desktop sync is actually its biggest weakness. While you can have up to 5 computers authorized to play your media content from the iTunes store, you can only sync your device with a single machine. What’s the point of this silly limit. It’s hardly difficult to move files around via the broader internet if you like and maintaining basic playcounts and similarities within a library are not that hard. Though with iTunes you essentially have to hack the system in order to even manually copy files to a mobile device – forget sync. Media is an easy target as that effects more people and the limit is probably driven out of a paranoid legal department wanting to appease the ignorant MPAA and RIAA.

What I don’t understand though is why other parts of the iTunes sync system are simply blocked because your iPhone is already associated with another computer. I have 5 systems in my iTunes world. There are actually more if you count the additional OS installs I’ve done on the netbook, but regardless I have 5 computers authorized to play content. I’d actually like to sync some data on 3 of the 5 and this is impossible if you play by the rules.

With the current restriction, I am unable to install or backup anything outside of my main desktop, period. In my considerable experience with other mobile platforms (years of Palm and S60 devices) this rule has never applied. Going back to my early palm days I used to use the device as the actual conduit between machines to maintain the same data in multiple (work and personal) systems. With S60 my plan evolved a bit thanks to the evolution of server sync. Today the bulk of my PIM data comes through exchange but with the iPhone I am also syncing personal data through my home config which includes multiple iCal calendars.

You get the point, there’s a mix … There is however no mix of where my device data can reside. Apple has decided that for me based on where I first did my sync. I purchased the iPhone 3G S on my way to work last week and because I wanted to have some media on it for the commute home, I did a sync (and backup) with my work pc. When I later connected the iPhone to my home computer, I received the following warning:

itunes bs

As you can see, you will actually LOSE the data that’s on your device in exchange for the right to sync with another one of YOUR authorized systems. WTF? It’s my data yet I have no control over how I use it? Right … I’m currently beta testing Pocket Universe (as noted in my previous post). The only way to install a beta app is via iTunes … and as you can probably guess at this point ONLY the main iTunes. If you want to install from a different machine, iTunes will actuall ERASE the apps you have on your device in exchange for what’s on the desktop. Um, NO! How about this … since iTunes is the sole conduit for applications do a damn backup and since you know there won’t be any surprises with where things have come from – applications and downloads are even all connected to your apple ID which of course drives the iTunes ecosystem.

I’m used to being in control of my data – how I access it, where I back it up and when and where I want to change it. When is Steve going to allow the iProduct to actually be myProduct?