Losing my APPetite? Sorta
November 28, 2009
Turned off, my iPhone epitomizes Zen design: sleek, nearly featureless and aerodynamic.* Turned on, it looks more like grandma’s attic.
After living with Gigi-the-iPhone for about 18 months, my app fervor has diminished. I’ve six pages (100 apps) sitting on Gigi, but mostly, I use the ones that came with the phone. Of the ones I’ve installed, only five see regular use. I’ve taken at least 20 more off just to relieve some of the clutter.
Ticket Talker 3000
October 29, 2009
So, cruising the Web this evening I came across an ad for Ticket Talker, a free iPhone app that helps you talk your way out of a traffic citation. It’s sponsored, the ad says, by ConocoPhilips 76 because “we’re on the driver’s side.”
Uhm….I’m sure the cops will be happy to hear that.
I suspect this is one of those ideas born in the bowels of a late night brainstorm, when the deadline is 9:00 AM, the boss is already on your case for failure to produce, and after no sleep and three too many beers somebody says, “I KNOW! What if we…”
Everyone nods enthusiastically–anything to go home to bed–and another cutting-edge lame “viral” campaign crawls out of the woodwork.
In all fairness, the copywriter did acknowledge that there could be a public image problem with this one, and weasel-worded the copy:
76 gasoline reminds you that the only way to avoid getting a ticket is not to speed. Ever.
But have you wondered if there might be an excuse that could get you out of a ticket? If there is, it could be in here–the Ticket Talker 3000. Download it and you will have a litany of original justifications, rationalizations and outright prevarications at your fingertips. At the very least it will put a smile on the highway patrolman’s face as he hands over your citation.
The Ticket Talker 3000 is another tool from your friends at 76. We’re not just TOP TIER gas, we’re on the driver’s side.
Uh-huh. Go ahead and try it. I’d love to see the smile on the highway patrolman’s face when you do.
Would somebody PLEASE tell all those sophomoric ad execs turned iPhone hipsters and social media bananaramas to go back to the Swedish bikini team?
Next.
Back to the drawing board…
September 11, 2009
OK, so this was a little weird…
NPR recently released a news app for the iPhone. I already use the BBC and New York Times readers, but NPR’s had some interesting features. Among other things the stories include an audio link that lets you read and listen at the same time.
What it lacks, however, is accuracy. The story you click on is not necessarily the story you get.
Clicked on an interesting headline this morning. The story that popped up told of a former US Embassy security specialist in Afghanistan who’s now suing his employer.
Apparently he warned the State Dept. and his bosses that his fellow guards were buying women and starting a brothel, and they fired him. They claim the guard doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Important and interesting story, but the headline I’d clicked on was “Brain Scientists Misled by Squid.”
Uhm….NPR? I think you may want to check your content management system…
Love her. Hate them.
June 8, 2009
So if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I love, er, hate, er, very much like my iPhone, so much that I’ve named her Gigi and she goes everywhere with me. She’s my mobile email, ebook, emovie, emusic, egame, ephoto, eWeb, etext, ewhatever machine, and I have to thank Apple for that.
She’s also a royal pain in the fundament, and I have to thank AT&T for that. And from the sounds of it, the new iPhone 3GS gives me even more to thank them for.
I gotta admit, I like Verizon much better as a mobile phone company; they’re far more willing to help you out with problems, they’re in more locations when you need to stop in for something but most of all, more calls go through.
iPhone as bookphone
May 12, 2009
Morning chores: Shower, dress, feed and jab the cat,* do the litter and breakfast (with a handwash in between), make the bed, get at least a quarter of yesterdays’ email answered and download a book to read on the train.
I am, apparently, drinking the Kindle koolaid, albeit with an iPhone, not a Kindle.** This is probably the dozenth book I’ve downloaded onto Gigi-the-iPhone in the last couple of months. eBooks, which didn’t appear to me to be of much real use, have suddenly become a significant new way to acquire new reading material. There are several reasons for this:
iPhone, bathtubs and blogging
March 24, 2009
However useful Gigi-the-iPhone may be, she has some limitations. For one thing, she’s not really a great companion in the bath (although I’ve been surprised at the quality of pictures she takes, even there–left).
Gigi and water don’t mix. In fact, the first thing that the Apple tech did when I brought Gigi in was to open her case and check to see if water had gotten in.
Apparently every iPhone comes with a wet indicator, some kind of reactive paper that changes color permanently if it gets wet. If it does, the tech said, “it voids your warranty and we can’t fix it.” [Read more]
All sound, no sale: iPod Shuffle
March 17, 2009
Just played around with the new iPod Shuffle, and I gotta say, I don’t get it.
Maybe it’s just my fuddyduddyness talking, but in an age when we can cram more and more information into personal mobile devices, why would I want one that takes me back to the dark ages?
Kindling the iPhone
March 8, 2009
For those of you who think that headline means I finally tossed Gigi-the-iPhone on the fire: Nope.
Actually, Gigi and I have gotten along pretty well in the last six weeks. She’s finally resigned herself to living with a peasant, and I’ve learned that she can be a pretty good phone…as long as I don’t try to use her 3G network. The only time she drops calls now is when I turn the daggone 3G back on. (If there’s a more perfect example than AT&T of why you shouldn’t sell a technology before you get it right, I don’t know what it would be.)
In fact, Gigi and I have been visiting that irresistible money magnet, the iPhone apps store, and trying things out. And I’ve discovered a natural rating system of sorts for the apps I try: Gigi presents apps in groups of 16 per page, and you can move app icons to any page you like. I’ve got five pages of the little buggers, pretty much arranged from most-used to least. Anything that makes Gigi’s first page is pretty darn indispensible. Anything on page five is about to be blitzed off the phone.
Amazon’s Kindle app (Amazon.com, free) has made it to page two.
Now, I’ve just not seen the sense in buying a Kindle. I mean, even a first-class gadget freak has to draw the line SOMEwhere. In Gigi, I’ve consolidated phone, pager, email, browser and all kinds of other gadgets I used to carry and my purse is about four pounds lighter. Why the heck would I want to add stuff back?
Besides, Gigi offers apps like Stanza, which lets you read just about any book or magazine in the public domain. It’s not great–no real illustrations, the interface is a tad clumsy–but it works.
But when Kindle came out for iPhone this week, I just had to try it. And I gotta admit, I kinda like it. It’s not–repeat NOT–the same as reading a book,. But if the book’s good enough, I could be reading it on a roll of toilet paper and I’d still love it.
You download the app, register with your Amazon.com username and password, and you’re automatically connected to your Amazon.com account. Buy a Kindle book, and it automagically shows up as an available download on your iPhone the next time you open the app.
(And, btw, here’s a fairly significant difference between the app and the Kindle: I’m told you can acquire books directly on the Kindle. The iPhone app only supports reading them; you still must buy them using a regular computer.)
I downloaded Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book ($9.99–the paper version is a couple bucks more) and gave it a shot. Text was easy to read, the illustrations were there, and the interface was very iPhone: A fingerswish moves you from page to page, you can easily select different text sizes and the “book” always opens to your last-read page. If you move about, you can resynch to the furthest page read. (BTW, TGB just won a Newberry Award, well-deserved. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.)
So…tell me again why I should buy a Kindle?
Loopt (free). Loopt has barely made it to page five and I probably won’t keep it. The Loopt app uses GPS and text messaging to do a geosynched kind of Twitter. Anyone connected with you can see where you are and, to some extent, what you’re doing. They can share geotagged photos, give you directions to places they’d like you to try, etc.
I’m all for presence detection, i.e., using applications such as instant messaging to learn when a person is (or isn’t) available to take a phone call, email, etc. But Loopt is kinda scary. The default privacy level on this app is essentially zero, and figuring out how to restrict others’ access can be challenging.
To use Loopt you must enter a bit more personal information into the app than I’m comfortable with. Besides, it works from your address book to match up with other potential Loopt members (and also to invite them to join–gee, isn’t that what malware does?).
Anybody with a significant online life (say, someone who, er, blogs a lot and has accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and heaven knows where else) knows that privacy is an illusion and has made some measure of peace with that. That doesn’t mean, though, that I want folk checking to see if I’m out of the bathroom yet.
I suppose that kicks me up a notch on the fuddy-duddy scale, but too bad.
Facebook (free). I’ve also installed the iPhone version of Facebook which has, to my surprise, made it to page one. It’s a useful little precis of what’s going on with your Facebook friends and, aside from the iPhone’s lousy keyboard, is pretty easy to use.
(BTW, if you’re on Facebook, come find me; I’m gathering a nice network of glassists and techists and they’re fun)
BBC World News (free) kicked the New York Times newsreader out of its page one spot last week, mostly due to its broader news focus and slightly faster performance. It’s a quick, fast update that also gives you access to “World, Have Your Say,” which has to be one of the most fascinating radio programs on air.
MagicPad ($3.99), one of the the first rich text editors for the iPhone, also moved to page one. It lets you cut and paste text from one application to another, something that’s been sadly lacking in the iPhone, and also allows you some rudimentary formatting such as changing fonts and text color. Using it can be an exercise in frustration until you understand how the gestures work with the editor, but once you get the hang of it, it’s quite useful.
Been playing around with more apps, including FacePhone ($2.99), which matches up your address book and your FaceBook friends, iStethoscope (free), a heart monitor and sound amplifier for iPhone that so far hasn’t so much as found my pulse, and Pinger, which lets you send text messages for free and integrates your social and instant messaging accounts into a single place.
So far, only Pinger looks like it’ll make it off page five, but I’ll keep you posted…
Making the iPhone phone
January 18, 2009
After my rant about iPhone woes the other day, my buddy Ed sent me a note: “…after you get rid of the I-phone. I love my Macs but would never put up with the mess you keep telling us about. Buying a back up phone, phooey!”
Hmmm. Right after that, when I’d reconnected to her for the third time, a friend said, “You know what? Don’t call me on that thing anymore. Just wait till you get to a landline.”
OK. Something had to be done. AT&T insisted that it wasn’t THEIR fault, it was Apple’s, so I called Apple.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Repeat.
January 14, 2009
Computer users are a remarkably forgiving lot. Mobile phone users are not, so why is the iPhone 3G, with its lousy phone service, such a success?
Because we’re treating it like a computer, not a phone.