Tethered
June 25, 2010
When I said I wanted to be tethered, I meant “use my iPhone to connect my laptop to the Internet when I’m out and about.” I did NOT mean tethered as in “chained to AT&T in a weird kind of neverending technological bondage.”
AT&T obviously thought I meant the latter.
iTate
June 1, 2010
The Tates are one of ten museum complexes I’ve vowed to spend at least a week apiece in, before I die. Just in case that falls through* though, the Tate puts its lectures and walking tours on iTunes so I can enjoy it in absentia.
Not quite the same, I know, but the Tate’s foray into virtual education is actually quite nice. Instead of a staid and formal look at whatever strikes the programmer’s fancy (like the Louvre’s iPhone app), the Tate’s iTunes offerings are wildly varied and mostly fascinating. Some are lectures, some amount to a slow scan of a particularly interesting room, with a little commentary.
There are educators’ packs, PDF mini-histories with in-depth instructional details on some of Tate Britain and Tate Modern’s more illustrious artists. There are videos and audios (vcasts and podcasts). Some of them are shot in other places besides one of the Tates (Jim Dine’s very interesting vignette is mostly shot in New York, for example). They range in length from about two minutes to a couple of hours. Some are great quality, a few are awful, and they are absolutely all over the map, which is one of the reasons I favor this collection. [Read more]
My cheatin’ heart
May 27, 2010
I snuck into a Verizon store yesterday and toyed with an HTC Droid Incredible. It was enough fun that I can see myself shoving Gigi-the-iPhone into a drawer somewhere…and for some inexplicable reason guilt’s setting in and I’m starting to feel like an errant spouse.
Gigi’s aptly named; she’s gorgeous, eminently capable, capricious and demanding. And she’s not perfect. Is she due for replacement, though?
Well…I’m not ready to say that, but problems keep cropping up. This week I discovered that I can’t use her to connect my MacBook Pro to the Web, the way I can with just about every other Internet-capable phone. I’d tried this with a beta copy of the OS last year and it worked just fine, then I never did it again. Usually when I’m traveling about town, Gigi *is* my laptop, so I hadn’t needed to try.
This week, though, I’m helping to host a meeting about selling art online, the speakers must demonstrate with live websites, and our venue doesn’t offer wireless access. No problem, I said, I’ll just use Gigi to connect up my laptop, hook the laptop up to the projector, and we’re set. I made sure of the process (known as tethering) with the online iPhone manual on Apple.com, and went over to test it, just to make sure.
It didn’t work. I called Apple and they confirmed that the tethering feature had been removed. “I think you probably used tethering last year during the about 48 hours before AT&T turned it off,” sighed the rep, “They were afraid it would swamp their 3G network and we can’t get them to turn it back on. Believe me, we’ve been asking.”
Drat. I called AT&T, who naturally said it wasn’t their fault and blamed Apple. They might be releasing a tethering solution sometime in the future, “…but don’t hold your breath.”
And then it got weird. “This is what happens when you’ve got management that doesn’t understand technology and won’t pay for enough network capacity,” the AT&T rep whispered, “But tethering IS available on the iPhone…if you know where to look.”
“Uhm…do you mean jailbreak the phone?” (i.e., uncouple the phone from the AT&T network–which voids the warranty, can knock you out of things like iTunes and in the past has sometimes literally killed the phone)
“I can’t advise you to do that, ma’am…but you might visit Google and explore the, uhm, possibilities.”*
Hmmmm. I love the iPhone, it’s an incredible, paradigm-shifting device…but it’s definitely missing some key features: Voice dialing, voice-controlled GPS (unless you pay a fairly hefty fee and then it doesn’t work all that well), easy photo messaging, multitasking (which lets you switch between apps without having to restart every time), Adobe Flash, the ability to change batteries and a memory card slot that would augment storage and allow easy file exchange…
…and no tethering, either.
Verizon offers the best wireless performance in town–and I was a long-time Verizon customer before iPhone–so I headed to my local Verizon store, grabbed a couple of technoweenies there, and we played with a Droid Incredible for a couple of hours.
I gotta say, I’m impressed. The DI offers just about every one of the missing features I mentioned, and quite a bit more. It supports a classic iPhone interface, i.e., pages of apps that you can organize and move through, or you can opt for its standard star-like interface with different “homescreens” for different application groups. It’s faster, the low-light photography is better than on iPhone (and higher resolution, with the ability to adjust exposures), it offers faster websurfing and allows video playback directly in the browser.
Most everything else looks about on par with an Apple 3GS, or slightly better, but with Verizon’s better (and I think faster) network. The iPhone has almost an order of magnitude headstart on apps…but many of the services that require separately purchased apps on iPhone turn out to be native to the DI’s Sense Interface.
I sternly told my gadget jones to settle down but…just to be on the safe side, did a price comparison. Uh-oh. Verizon will sell you a DI for $199 with a two-year contract (there’s a $350 penalty for early cancellation, so beware). Monthly service at my usage level runs about $70 per month.
Right now I’m paying nearly $140 for my iPhone service. 50% less? Ulp. At that rate, the Droid pays for itself in three months.
Of course, Apple’s coming out with the iPhone 4G, which supposedly will blow away even the Droid Incredible, and may indeed include some of those missing features. It’ll still be on AT&T network, though, and I doubt the price will come down…
…so I need to think about this.
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*Instead of exploring THOSE possibilities, I called the venue owner, found out where the nearest Ethernet plug is in the building and will be installing the world’s longest Ethernet connection for tonight’s meeting. Say what you like about landlines, but sometimes they come in awful handy…
iPhone: Where seldom is heard…
May 19, 2010
Round 2 of "Does Dragon Dictation for iPhone make it easier to call Terry Belunes on the mobile? (Answer: No)
…a discouraging word, or any other word, for that matter. Much as I love Gigi-the-iPhone, when it comes to spoken commands she might as well be deaf.
Gigi is a 16G iPhone 3GS, and from the first day she adopted me I’ve been trying to talk her into doing stuff. Literally. For me, speech recognition is one of the more important functions on a mobile phone. Unlike the iPhone, every mobile phone I’ve owned for years had near-perfect speech recognition, something I’ve mentioned to Gigi on several occasions.
She’s having NONE of that, thank you. If I want to access her features, I can jolly well tap the screen like everyone else. Despite having so far downloaded every voice application I can find, Gigi still listens about as well as a rock.
iPhone gets downright neighborly
May 13, 2010
We’ve been so busy using smartphones to weave ourselves into the virtual community, we may not have noticed that the real world has quietly joined the party. Local apps are quickly becoming some of the most realtime, on-the-ground useful of all.
Glassland (AKA Portland) is well-known as a mobile town and has a rich inventory of local apps, but I’d be willing to bet your town (or at least your state) has at least a few of its own. A search on “San Francisco,” for example, shows 335, but even a search for “Cape Girardeau” (Missouri) uncovered two. I thought I’d run down those I’ve found for Portland, just as a sample. If you live in a tech-rich area, chances are you’ll find similar tools.
And I apologize in advance; I’m trying to make this a mostly comprehensive list so it’s loooong.
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: