Miscelaneous
I heard these guys have great plans on how to secure the universe...
My "baseline" phone is my Nokia N95, so my quality and functionality bar is high. I'll go straight to the point here:
- Bluetooth audio: doesn't support the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) profile, meaning you can't use stereo headsets that support it to listen to music. I've got the BlueAnt X5 which work flawlessly with my Nokia N95 but only work as phone headsets with the iPhone. This also means that it doesn't work either with my very cool Pioneer bluetooth-enabled stereo. This is a bummer as I have a very nice user experience with the N95 and the stereo: I can listen to my music through bluetooth, and as soon as an incoming call arrives, the music fades out and then pauses, and I get to answer the call *from the stereo*. That means I can use the stereo speakers to listen to my caller, and I got the provided microphone installed on the windshield close to the driver steat on the left, so I got a very comfortable hands-free experience. And it sounds much better than the (rather old) Morotola HS820 bluetooth headset I used before, according to friends and family.
- Bluetooth sync: you can pair the iPhone with a laptop, but can't sync over bluetooth. Again, this works great on the N95. I hate wires.
- Keyboard without T9: it's pretty much unusable. Tying to hit the diminute keys is so painful. The fact that the pressed key gets zoomed after you click it is of little help: it just shows me that I pressed the wrong one most of the time. An on-screen keyboard without T9 is a serious no-go for me. I can type MUCH faster on my N95.
I tried the TenGO Thumb for PocketPC a while ago, and THAT's what the iPhone should have provided, nothing less. It's the only thing that can make a querty keyboard bereable:
Imagine if the iPhone keyboard had something like that:
I'd only have to worry about hitting those 6 big keys (I surrounded each with a different color just so that you see what I mean), and the software would take care of disambiguating what I meant while typing. In my experience, this is the only productive way to type with your fingers.
- Text input autocomplete is also very annoying: in order to select the suggested word, you just press Space, whereas if you don't want it, you have to click on the suggested word (?!). This reflects too much confidence on their suggestions. If you happen to write messages in more than one language (I type most of it in spanish), then you're going to have a very annoying typing experience, clicking on the suggested words to get rid of them (I usually forget and as soon as I press Space, I get a completely different word than I typed, and have to go back and delete it all).
- Outlook sync: I hate outlook, granted, but it's a fact of business life (especially if you're so close to Microsoft as we are). The iPhone can't sync with mails in Outlook at all. Contacts is fine, but no emails is a serious issue.
- SIP: I know this is an advanced feature of the N95. I doubt there are many phones that support this feature. On the N95, you enter your SIP credentials, and it will automatically dial through the VoIP server whenever you are connected to Wi-Fi and the server can be reached. Now that I have an Asterisk Appliance at the office (it's been a couple weeks only, so I'll post some other day about the experience), I totally see myself depending on this feature quite a bit, specially when I'm travelling. I will just be able to pick up my cell (even if I'm using a SIM card from another country) and call home at a local argentinean call cost. They will also be able to call me to my office extension, and I can pick up on my cell. Something I was seriously looking forward, which I can't do with the iPhone.
- Dialing: the phone dialing experience is suboptimal. In my case, I'm typically calling the same 2-4 numbers all the time. On the iPhone you have to:
- Press the Home button
- Unlock the phone with the finger sliding at the bottom
- Look at the phone and push the Phone button
- Look at the phone and push the Favorites button (I need to do this because I may have switched the "tab" before)
- Look at the phone and select the contact
On my N95, I go: - Unlock the phone by sliding the screen
- Push the "Call" button
- Look at the phone and select the contact you previously called (you get the list of recent calls, 4 contact names fit on the screen, and you can scroll for more)
- Push the "Call" button again
What's important to notice besides the additional steps on the iPhone, is that I have to be looking at the phone most of the time. With the N95 I only have to glance at it *once*.
One feature that neither provides which I now realize I depended on quite a bit on my previous Windows Mobile phones (O2 Atom Exec and Audiovox SMT5600) was to start typing the phone number and have the contact list automatically filtered until the right contact/phone was displayed, at which point I would simply select it and call. Typically, I'd only dial the first 3 digits before I got a full match (or a narrowed 2-3 contacts list that I could select from)
- UMTS/HSDPA 3G broadband: this one is an unnaceptable oversight by Apple. Either they spent too much time making the iPhone to the point that their "broadband" technology is already obsolete, or they are really convinced (wrongly) that ubiquitous wi-fi (especially outside the US) is a reallity. It is not, unfortunately, and mobile broadband access is pretty much the only ubiquitous choice in many countries. This might sound like a corner feature to you, but according to some users, EDGE (iPhone's supported technology) is as much as 5 times slower than 3G. There are some rumours of a 3G iPhone coming to Europe, though, and I feel like this will happen sooner than later.
- Installing apps: unbelievable that I have to go through a hackerish "jailbreak" process in order to be able to install more apps on the phone.
- RSS reader: there are a lot of options for platforms like Symbian and Windows Mobile. I know it's a matter of time 'till the iPhone gets the same. Right now, the only reader I found sucks badly. This is almost a showstopper for me.
- GPS: ok, another one that most consumer phones don't have, but which the N95 nailed down. It would have been awesome to have this with the gorgeous iPhone screen :(
- Camera: a 2 megapixel "camera" is nothing more than a crappy toy that can never be used seriously as a camera. I can't even understand why a phone maker even bothers putting such a camera in a phone. Seriously, who wants to keep a memorable photo in such a terrible resolution? Add to that that pretty much all of the phones lack flash and autofocus, and it's really a useless feature. Compare that with the very nice 5 megapixel camera on the N95, which also has autofocus and flash. Here's the comparison just in case you're in doubt yet:
[daylight]
[low light]
Guess which photos are from which camera :p
Certainly I don't worry anymore about forgetting my camera when I travel:
[San Diego is gorgeous]
- Video recording: this is related to the previous one. With the N95, I can also shoot pretty good looking videos, although not so much under low-light conditions. But in daylight, it's quite good.
- Storage: fixed storage is another tough one to swallow. Storage capacity doubles about every year, so I know for a fact that one year from now (maybe much less if rumours are true?), a new iPhone will have twice or more as much storage. 8GB already feels tight for an iPod/media player device. With my N95, I can have as many microSDs as I want. It only takes 4 x 2GB nowadays to get comparable storage. And 4GB microSD are already hitting the market. I can easily imagine a not-so-far future where just one microSD with 8GB will give me the equivalent of today's iPhone storage. And I will still be able to have more than one. There's even a new version of the N95 coming out that already has 8GB internal storage. Suck that tangerine, iPhone (ok, that's an argentinean saying :p).
- Fixed battery: batteries aren't forever. With any other phone, I just have to buy a replacement battery pretty much anywhere, swap it and be done without any "phone downtime". With the iPhone, I'll have to bring it to an Apple store, maybe leave it there for a day (if I'm lucky, I guess), and get it back later with a new battery. What am I suppossed to use in the meantime? Are they going to give me a replacement while they fix mine?
"Minor" annoynces:
- TV-Out: I know this may be available soon, but right now, it isn't. I use this feature quite a bit on my N95, where I carry a microSD with TV shows/screencasts/conference videos/interviews and play them wherever I am. I know I could have an AppleTV, a media center extender on XBox, etc., etc., but you can't beat the simplicity of plugging the phone to the TV (and I can do this even when I'm not at home). Showing family videos is also another great use. Photos don't look very good from the N95, though.
And btw, I'm pretty sure to use the feature on the iPhone, I'll have to buy a $19.99 cable :p (I got everything needed for my N95 in the box). I just hate that on Apple.
- Audio out: can't connect a standard headphone or line-in cable to an amplifier?! I had to buy a $10 Belkin adapter to be able to do so, and it just ruins the experience having that long big adapter on my pocket. Taking the already quite tall iPhone plus the long adapter out of your pocket is something you can't just do fast enough.
- iTunes: it's probably no news to anyone, but this software sucks. Being tied to it for everything I want to sync to the iPhone is just too much. I doubt *anyone* would be willing to drop Picassa for iTunes.
So, I join Jeff's "no iPhone v1" crusade:
Finally, it's free and for everyone: http://iphone.unlock.no/
Amazing just how fast this happened. I wonder when companies will realize that trying to fight against motivated hackers is a futile attempt and a complete waste of time (just like DRM, btw).
I can't believe that we still have to "fish" for the few power outlets on airports, and frequently end up sitting on the floor, on a remote corner, below a phone booth, or next to a trash can.
This is especially annoying if you miss your flight, as you can be in an uncomfortable place (or consuming your precious battery life) for hours.
Ok, probably the solution is not to have more power outlets, but batteries that last 16 hours. Granted, but until then, I would be useful to have more of them.
Pretty much every day, I get the following stupid dialog from Vista when I'm trying to connect to a VPN:
Note that even when I've an active wireless connection shown in the dialog, the dialog still doesn't allow me to connect to a VPN supposedly because I don't have such a connection :S.
The workaround is to click on the Open Network and Sharing Center, from there click on the Manage Network Connections link at the left:
And finally from the dialog that comes up, right-click on the VPN connection and select Connect. Weird enough, it looks like this way of connecting is not checking for the "active Internet connection" as the other dialog:
A much faster solution, though, is to select the Create Shortcut option from the same context menu, which will place a shortcut to the connection on the desktop. That shortcut doesn't check for the active connection either.
Networking in Vista is SOOOO broken!!! (right-clicking on the connection to disconnect takes forever to show up the conext menu, connecting to anything always shows the useless "Successfully connected" dialog every damn time, etc.)
About half a year ago, Scott Hanselman got me into baby signing. He was so enthusiastic about it that he succeeded in infusing the same excitement in me. I have a 15 months-old daughter Aylen (and a 3 year-old one too, Agustina), which was about 11 months back then. Make sure you read his initial post on baby signing as well as his update when his son Zenzo was 14 months old.
Just after a couple weeks signing 3 words to her (duck, drink and milk), she signed the duck! I was blown away by how fast she started with the first one, but it took another month for her to start picking up more and more signs. When she was exactly one year old (about a month after we started), I got a couple of books which tought me more techniques and approaches to signing to make it more effective. Three months later, she's able to sign: duck, drink, milk, cookie/cracker, eat, more, baby, take a bath, need heulp, hot, dog, cat, monkey, flower, shoes, hat, pain, water, sleep, silence (and clip, which Agustina uses at the kindergarten to also mean silence), dance (this one she made it up and we learned what she meant!). That's 22 words for a 15 months-old baby that can barely say Mom and Agus (her sister's nickname and the first thing she learnt to say :)). And there are many more that she understands but she's not signing yet.
Just like Scott felt, it's not just a matter of teaching her something to make her "smarter" early on. There's a new kind of connection that you can make with your baby. Aylen's face shines when she sees that we can listen to her needs and help her. She no longer cries when she's hungry or thirsty, or when she wants to take a bath. That's huge.
It's also a much better way of communicating when you need to explain something to her. For example, a couple nights ago she started to stand in the small wooden chairs we have for them to play. Agustina had tought her how to get on the chair to sit. But now she was standing on it just for fun (the fun of watching both my wife and myself getting angry and saying NO! to her :S). She just kept doing it, over and over, no matter how much we said to her. So I went to the excelent online ASL dictionary (the one for the sign language we're teaching her), found the signs for chair, sit and stand, and grabbed her and the chair for a "talk". I signed chair pointing repeatedly to it. Just after the third sign, she got the idea, and pointed to my bigger chair too, acknowledging that it was also a chair! I said "very good!!!", and started with the signs for sit, helping her to sit, and reinforcing that that was good. Next with stand, reinforcing with signs that that was bad. After three or four repetitions, with her standing and seeing the "bad"/no face and sitting and seeing the "good"/yes face, she got the point, and started trying to stand on the damn chair :). My wife says she got tired of listening to me, rather than learning, haha... (and she added "that's what we all do :p", but I digress)
If you have an older kid, it's even better, because you can engage him/her in teaching the little one too. We bought a couple DVDs from the Baby Signing Time collection (awesome stuff) which both Aylen and Agustina love. It's playing on my TV almost every day for at least a couple hours. It teaches new signs through songs and showing other babies doing them, and it does so while pronouncing the words in english. That may sound obvious to you, but we live in Argentina, so english is not our primary language. However, both girls are now learning the words in both english and spanish at the same time! So my baby signs "baby" when you say the word in english AND spanish too! It's simply amazing.
There were a few skeptics, granted, and there are still. The first concern they have is that teaching her to communicate so well through signs may delay her to speak. I read that this argument is similar to saying "don't let your kid crawl, it will delay him to walk". Talking is a more efficient medium than signing, just as walking is than crawling.
Moreover, I read that babies that signed actually learned to speak sooner and with less frustration because then can accompany the words they are trying to say with the corresponding sign, which greatly helps parents to understand them. This engages them more in trying to speak without feeling that nobody understands their babble. Also, this sign language counts as a second language they learn, activating neuron pathways that will supposedly help her to learn other languages easily in the future.
Only time will tell, but it's absolutely thrilling. So, if you've a 10-12 months baby, you should start signing right-away!!!
I've been thinking lately about the influence we (especially bloggers) have in the world through the internet. I know many guys with much more power (as in google page rank ;)) than myself, but nevertheless, I realize I can also cause quite some damage.
In my last post I wrote about my awful experience with a little hotel called Hotel Kappa. Just a day after I posted, google is showing my post right on the first search result page, right below the entry for the hotel main site. It's a powerful feeling, but do you think we should do this? I surely wanted to warn prospective customers, but would you be comfortable knowing that most probably a large percentage of them will not go there no matter if they fixed the issues I had? Or years from now?
I can almost hear "with great power comes great responsability"... ;). What do you think?
My turn to jump on this blog-game via EdJez, Scott Hanselman and Pablo Galiano :)
So I will also share five things most people don't know about me, and tag five other guys.
- I am probably the only professional developer (as in doing it for a living) in the world that cannot use the IANAL acronym, as I AM a lawyer, and from the most prestigious law school in Argentina, in addition :o). I am probably among the most successfull lawyers of all time, as I never ever lost a case. The only one I had, I won, and it was for my father.
- Similar to Peter, I never saw myself as a professional software developer, even though I started programming around 12, first with Basic and next year with Pascal, and then Visual Basic. I always saw it as a hobby, something fun I could do instead of playing football with the crowd ;). Obviously, one job after the other took me in the right direction in the end, and I'm glad I will (hopefully) never have to work as a lawyer.
- I studied music at a conservatory, about 8 years IIRC. Violin was my main instrument. I played in a number of orchestras and the "official" tango orchestra until I moved to Buenos Aires (see 4.). At around 15, I figured out playing tango wasn't going to get me too many chics, so I started with electric gitar, after a brief time with the drums (while still playing tango with my violin!). I happened to like metal too much, so I ended up playing in a number of metal bands, which also turned out not to get me too many chics either... I was the lead guitar, but it's been so long since then, that I can barely play a decent riff nowadays.
- Unlike many believe, I played each and every sport available in my native town: football, basketball, voleiball, baseball, swimming, tennis, paddle, etc. etc. I was never too good at any, and never got hooked to sports. I'm not a big fan of watching sports either, quite unlike most argentinean men. (Spending weekends at home watching football games seems to be the #1 complain from most women around here).
- I'm from a small town about 300 km (~186 miles) from Buenos Aires. I moved to Buenos Aires (where I currently live and where my company is based) at the age of 20, 12 years ago. It's a lovely city (now that I spent 45 days travelling Europe with my wife, 2 daughters, my mother and my mother in law, I can really appreciate it), and it changed my life forever. First, it gave me internet (wait, keep reading!), back in '97. That was unthinkable in my native town. Thanks to that and mIRC, I met my wife on a chat room where I also made some friends. It was the glory days when chatting was about making friends, going out as a group, and not about getting a chic. Although that was sometimes a nice bonus, of course ;). And I also met my partner Victor "vga" Garcia Aprea also on the internet, competing on MS newsgroups to answer as many advanced questions on ASP.NET 1.0 custom control building as we could. He won, and he earned his ASP.NET MVP award much earlier than me. I got him into writing for Wrox Press after that, and eventually we founded Clarius Consulting, which is the dream company to work on in Argentina ;). (ok, this item is a tad more than just one thing about me, hehe)
My turn to tag five guys now:
Ok, so people is surprised by the
announcement of Dell shipping Google stuff in new machines. Guess what, I got my brand new
IBM T60p dual core centrino preloaded with
Google pack!
I was trying to determine the best setup for a secondary disk to use to work with a virtual machine (VM), which is a must in order to have the development experience inside the VM be almost on a pair with developing on the host machine (without the risks of screwing your machine with betas, etc.).
I have the usual Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 (7200rpm, 60gb), pretty much the only 7200rpm option about a year ago. And lately I bought a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (5400rpm, 120gb) with the idea that even if it’s slower, I may use it to keep backups of VMs, music, etc.
I had some doubts regarding my Thinkpad T43p UltraBay performance for the disk. At some point, I felt putting the disk in the UltraBay was slower than using it with the external USB enclosure. So I run some tests with the two disks in USB and UltraBay configuration, using the PerformanceTest 6.0 software from PassMark, which is supposedly pretty good at testing various performance indicators.
Results were surprising:
In a nutshell
- A secondary disk in the UltraBay outperforms USB2 consistently.
- Hitachi Travestar 7k60 is showing its age, and even the “slower” Seagate Momentus 5400rpm outperforms it consistently by a substantial margin.
So disks switched roles now: 5400rpm for VMs, older 7200rpm for music/backups :o)
I want DivX playback. I want a decent screen size. I want easy photo slideshows. I want a single device.
Turns out there's no easy answer for that combination. PSP entered the scene thanks to Scott, and now the choice is even harder.
On the one hand, traditonal portable DVD players, there’s the excelent Phillips PET1000, which is DivX certified and has a very cool design and “huge” 10’’ screen. It’s pretty much the only one with DivX playback. But photo slideshow requires you to burn a CD :(. No way to just take the 2GB ultra-fast CompactFlash out of my Canon Rebel and show the family.
Then comes PSP, which is also impressive, is even cooler and also has the games bonus, but it has only a 4.3’’ widescreen display. I could put movies and music in a couple 1GB memorysticks, but I have to do a conversion from my CF :(.
Finally, there’s a digital frame which is basically an LCD with a multi-format card reader that can also display video. Sounds like what I need, but its screen resolution is far from optimal and it’s only 8’’ (although bigger than the PSP for sure).
And it all started with the idea of having a big picture (i.e. the size of the really cool 24’’ wide Dell monitor) hanging on a wall on our living room, doing a slideshow of pictures coming from a CF or SD or Wi-Fi. Then, not finding a big enough “picture frame” I started dreaming of the single device.
In the end, I think I’d need to get