Mobile Tech

iPhone 3GS Conundrum

by

When the iPhone 3GS was announced I was very interested. It solved many but not all of the issues I have with my 3G. When I found out I could pre-order one and have it delivered to me on the day it comes out I went and ordered one from Apple. I was slightly aggravated after my order went in to read that they estimated my order would ship on the 19th (the day it comes out) and not arrive on that date as the original statement said. This was about an hour after they announced the phone so I wasn’t too worried about it being sold out, but I was a bit miffed by the delay.

About a day or two later I received an email from apple telling me they are sorry for the mix up but I would in fact receive the new phone on the 19th like they originally said. The odd thing is that my order status page still says ships on the 19th. What is also concerning is that on my status page it says “custom configuration”. That makes no sense since it is a phone. It comes in one option. When I click on details it says the custom configuration is “With AT&T Rate Plan-Upgrade”. Not sure what upgrade it means. The plan on the order is the exact plan I currently have. Now I could simply ignore all these facts and wait for the phone Friday since I have a nice reassuring email from Apple, but I wont because I have dealt with enough computer systems like this. When something smells fishy it tends to be fishy. Other anecdotal evidence that I wont be happy on Friday is reading that others who are supposed to receive their order on Friday already have received tracking information.

Now waiting the weekend isn’t the end of the world, and I don’t need the phone first thing Friday. On the other hand I want it Friday and I only ordered it online because I was told that is when I would get it. If I knew I would have to wait I wouldn’t have ordered it online. I would have gone to the 5th Ave Apple Store and wait like I did last year. If they are shipping units to people I assumed the purchase process this year would be allot easier. Unfortunately the conundrum is that I can’t cancel my existing order and goto the store to buy it on Friday. I now have to wait and see what apple system is right? Will the phone arrive on Friday or simply ship out on Friday?

On the plus side it is only a phone and either way life will go on. It would be cool to have a new toy (productivity tool) to play with this weekend. Let the waiting commence.

Trip To NJ Thursday

by

Today is the normal day that I have scheduled myself to goto our NJ office to spend time with the majority of my team. Now that the office they are in has been renovated they are all back in the office instead of working remotely part of the time. It isn’t practicle to have them come to NYC anymore so I goto NJ. The trip is not the most fun I have had getting to work, but it is still better than the trip I had to take to goto Kingston when I was at Partsearch. That was a crazy day.

In order to make it to NJ I do need to get up 2 hours earlier than I normally would. And the commute is long. In the morning it is about an hour and a half depending on traffic. Going home it is over 2 hours door to door. I almost didn’t make it today. The 7 train stopped running due to a mechanical problem with a train, so it stopped at 5th ave station. I had to walk to Port Authority to catch my bus. That typically would be fine, it is only a few avenues but I was on a tight schedule and if I missed the bus I was aiming for it would mess the whole day up. The whole situation aggravated me since I missed catching an earlier 7 train by 2 seconds (literally the doors closed in my face) and that train would have gotten me to Time Square since it was in front of the one that I was on that got stuck at 5th ave. But I digress. I was able to make it to the bus with minutes to spare.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. The day however was full of excitement. We had an issue during the day that kinda messed up my meeting schedule, but issues and emergencies kinda trump typical scheduled stuff. With the excitement out of the way I had a semi normal afternoon before running out to catch the bus going home. The past few return trips from NJ have been bad since I have gotten dropped of on the street far away from Port Authority. It seems if you get a bus stuck on the line into the terminal it can take an hour to go from the 30’s on 10th to the terminal. Thankfully this bus got out of the tunnel via a different exit and it only took like 20 minutes to go 2 blocks (yeah this is why I don’t like bus’s) to the terminal. I was home in around 2 hours 10 minutes door to door. Not great, but not horrible. I stayed in after that because I was just tired. Thankfully tomorrow is a work from home day.

I will say that my issues with the iPhone as a phone aside, I would probably go crazy without it on the bus. I am able to listen to music, watch some podcast’s, read the news on the internet, or just watch my location slowly move on google maps. It helps pass the time!

Bye Grandcentral, Hello Google Voice

by

I have been using Grand Central since December 2006. When it was announced I thought it was the perfect idea that solved most of the issues I had with multiple phone numbers that I have been trying to solve since 1996! Grand Central had great promise but two issues I had with it prevented it from being the solution I wanted it to be. The first issue was simply the quality of the calls recieved via Grand Central. For me at least the performance was hit or miss. I couldn’t rely on it as my main inbound phone number because I got burned so many times by call quality issues. The other issue I had was that Grand Central required you to press 1 once you picked up a call. The options it offered (1 to answer a call, 4 to record, and other options to send to Voice Mail or listen in on the VM) were nice, but 99% of the time I pressed 1 to answer the call. On a smart phone such as my iPhone it was a pain to find the virtual keypad and press one. It was even worse if I was using a headset. They never offered an option to turn off that requirement to press an number when you answered a call, until now.

Google bought Grand Central what seems like ages ago and nothing ever happened with the service. I was happy to keep using my Grand Central number as the default number I gave out when signing up for something or to a doctors office, the pharmacy, etc but I still used my mobile number as the main number I gave out. Recently at work I started using Grand Central as my main contact number and my mobile as my backup since I move around allot but people still get my mobile to reach me on. This week Google announced the release of Google Voice, aka the relaunch and upgrade of Grand Central. I patiently waited until my account told me I can upgrade to the new Google Voice. So far I am very impressed. My major technical issue regarding having to always press the keypad to start a call has been resolved. I now have the option of turning that off, so I did. I also liked the SMS functions, and the ability to leverage my existing GMail contacts. The transcribe feature is nice, but just bells and whistles to me for now.

I am hoping that the quality of the calls are consistent with the new Google Voice. If they are, it is an almost perfect solution for me. I look forward to using it more over the next few weeks to put it through its paces. It took google a while to get this update out, but so far it seems worth the wait!

The Laptop Upgrade

by

I got a new laptop at work today. I am switching from a Thinkpad T61 to a Dell Latitude D430. The 430 is not as fast as the Thinkpad, but it is only 3lbs. Since I am never in the same place two days in a row working it is worth the performance loss to get the portability. I am not a huge fan of the fact that the build I get has XP on it but so did the Thinkpad so I am not complaining that much. I had to spend what little free time I had today moving my stuff onto the new computer so I can give back the old one. I guess it is being repurposed right away. The jury is still out on how good the Latitude is. My D420 at Redcats wasn’t horrible, so I am hopeful this guy is pretty good.

iPod Dock’s

by

For a while I have wanted to get a set of speakers I can plug in my iPod or iPhone 3G into. I haven’t gotten one yet for several reasons. The biggest one is that I have been encasing my iPod and iPhone in protective skins. They are great to protect the easily scratched devices (come on apple) but the downside is that with these cases the devices will not fit into any devices made for them. Last week I noticed my brand new (less than a month old) case was flaking its finish off. I read a review that this was possible so I rolled the dice when buying it, but since the case started falling apart I took the phone out of the case for a bit. I noticed that even though these cases don’t add too much bulk, it felt like it did. When I held the “naked” phone in my hands and used it, I was surprised how much sleeker it felt. I the remembered that all of my Treo’s never were in cases when they were in my pocket. I do have concern that the back of the phone will scratch up, but I think I will leave the cases off the phone for a while.

With no case preventing me from buying a dock or a speaker dock for my phone I started looking for a decent speaker set. The timing was perfect because recently I have wanted to listen to music in my bedroom. Now I have to put headphones on and that is a pain. My research has show me that there are tons of options. My research of reviews also showed me that many consumer electronic companies don’t get consumers. People if you make a device specifically for a GSM phone don’t suggest that you put the phone in airplane mode to avoid the feedback sound you get from speakers when the phone is plugged in. That isn’t a viable option, just a cheesy work around.

I found a ton of devices that had an equal amount of options. I find it funny that what I finally set my eyes on is the most basic of systems. I am debating on buying the Bose SoundDock Series II. The only downside I read in reviews is that it lacks features that other cheaper models might offer. Again, consumer electronic companies (in my opinion) don’t get it. Do you need to throw in all these features that many wont use to sell devices? I want to plug in my iPhone 3G and listen to crap on it through good speakers. I want to charge said iPhone in the speaker system, and maybe access the unit via a remote. This isn’t a radio, or an alarm clock, or whatever other features people want to creap in there. I know others might want those features but it is over kill for me. I want good sound. The iPhone 3G will work fine in the Bose system because they said they shielded the unit from the GSM frequencies that cause interference. It might be on the pricey side for what it does but I am tempted to go and get one. Jayson has the older model and loves it. It is a Bose after all. I don’t typically take name brands for granted, but they have lived up to their name for me so far!

So this story ends with me going to the Apple store last night and buying the Bose system. I also bought an iPhone dock for my computer. It drives me crazy that I have cables lying all over the place for my iPhone on my desk. Without the case I can plug the phone into a cradle and one more piece of clutter is off my desk.

No Good Applications For The Blackberry?

by

In some of my free time over the past few weeks I have been looking for some free or cheap applications for my Blackberry I got from work. It has only been six months since I had a Blackberry but I can’t remember many of the applications I used on the BBerry. I think I just didn’t use that many.

For now all I have installed is Gmail, Facbook, and Google Maps. Since I have a personal iPhone I haven’t even used any of those applications since I have them all on my iPhone. The Blackberry is still great for mail, but so far not much else.

A New Blackberry Curve

by

When I got home from the taping of the Daily Show last night I returned to a box containing my new Blackberry Curve 8310. Since I started my new job in September I have been lazy in researching how to order one. Over the holidays I finally broke down and realized I needed one to stay up to date with the contestant barrage of mail I get. So now I once again have to carry two phones, since I won’t give up my personal number. It has been almost 8 months since I had a Blackberry I used every day. I almost didn’t miss it.

I have a slightly newer model Curve from what I used at Redcats. The only major difference I see is that this new one has GPS built in, and is a titanium color. I am still trying to figure out what applications I want for it.

iPod Free, Well Sort of

by

For years I would travel everywhere with my iPod. Recently I had a 60gb and then a 160gb models. They aren’t the smallest but had enough storage for extra stuff so I had them vs a mini or nano. One of the reasons I bought an iPhone 3G was so I didn’t have to carry my iPod everywhere with me and just use my phone. At first I couldn’t stand that the iPhone couldn’t use the wired remote that I had with my iPhone. Because I liked skipping through songs I still used my iPod for music even though I had the iPhone. Back in October that started to change. The other day was the first time I actually took my iPod out of my bag to save weight. The only reason I use it now is as a hard drive or if my iPhone is running out of battery power.

The iPhone 3G isn’t perfect by any means but it does do allot of things right. Music and Video’s is one of them. I am happy for that. Now all I need is to be able to teather it to my laptop as a modem.

by

I just remwmbered that I don’t like above ground subways. People can talk on their mobiles all the time.

iPhone 2.2

by

I upgraded today to the iPhone latest version of the iPhone software, 2.2. On the off chance that the problem I had last week with my iphone not syncing with my computer was related to the phone and not the computer I am updating the software right away. So far I don’t see any major features stand out. I am happier that my Apple TV has a new OS version on it so I can control the volume of the Apple TV using my remote software on the iPhone! Now that is functional!

, , ,