K-Squared Ramblings

There’s a Slogan for That

“There’s a ___ for that” is the new “Got ___?” #

iPhoney

Two items from @ThisIsTrue on the iPhone’s app store:

• Apple’s new low: censoring a dictionary #
• Followup on the Apple dictionary story. #

Also, the webcomic Cat and Girl was Sent from my iPhone (via @brionv) #

Ikari Lava & iPhone Anger

• Spam from "Gendo Ikari" selling lava lamps. The mind boggles. #
• Interesting suggestion: T-Mobile should go after angry iPhone Users. #

USB Uncharged, Safari Whizbangless, Android + iPhone

• D’oh! Plugged my phone into a loose USB data cable last night instead of the charger! I’ll just have to use company electrons, I guess. #
• Ah, that’s probably why the new whizbang features in Safari 4 don’t exist on my work PC: video card requirements. #
• Need to read up on this: Appcelerator framework lets you build apps for both iPhone and Android #
• Software updates are traveling in packs. Today I hit Windows, OSX, Office, Safari, Adobe Reader, Chrome & Java. Plus new Fedora & WordPress! #

Reading Comics on the Phone: Hexed on the G1

There’s been a lot of talk about digital distribution of comics lately, what with declining print sales and shrinking distribution channels. In particular, the idea of comics on the iPhone has produced a lot of discussion, with iVerse Media distributing a number of comics from small publishers like IDW and Boom through the iPhone Marketplace. Not having an iPhone, I haven’t been able to check them out, but they’ve just released their first comic for the Android operating system, which runs my current phone, the T-Mobile G1.

I figured, hey, this one’s free, why not check it out?

Finding and Downloading

The first problem I had was finding it. But that’s mostly the fault of the Android Market, which can only be browsed by hierarchy and sorted by date or popularity. Fortunately, there’s a search function, so I just searched for “Hexed” and it turned up immediately.

It took a while to download even over 3G, so I let it sit and came back to it when I had time to take a break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Smoothie in the Rain

• Beginning to think walking to lunch today wasn’t such a hot idea. #
• Dedication: drinking Jamba Juice in the rain. Real dedication: without an umbrella. [Edit: alas, it wasn't me.] #
• Sticker found on a light pole (photo at right) #
• SciFiWire, why build an iPhone app instead of a high-functionality mobile site that would work with iPhone AND Android? #

A Month with the G1

It’s been a little over a month since I upgraded to a T-Mobile G1. Overall I’ve been very happy with it. The Internet-related features are great, I’ve gotten used to how most of the functions work, and I’ve tried it out under various circumstances and played with a bunch of applications. The only problems I have, oddly enough, are with its functionality as a telephone. Read the rest of this entry »

The G1: First Impressions

You may have noticed I’ve been looking for a smartphone for a while, and looking at the T-Mobile G1 more or less since it was announced. Well, I finally went for it. I was going through piles of papers on my desk and realized I had almost enough cashback bonus on one of my credit cards to cover the upgrade cost. And I was already seriously considering adding a data plan in order to put Opera Mini on my RAZR.

So I went down to the nearest T-Mobile store, asked about a couple of issues that hadn’t turned up in my previous research, and got the last one in stock. There was a couple there before me looking at them, but they said they weren’t ready to buy, just researching.

It took me about an hour to activate the phone, mainly because I didn’t have a data plan beforehand and it can take that long for a new plan to take effect. Once I did, I started playing around experimenting with it. (Unfortunately this meant a lot of the things I was going to do this afternoon…didn’t get done. Oh, well.)

Good Stuff:

• I really like the keyboard. Even though I’m using my thumbs, just knowing where the keys are (and not having to do any kind of combos for letters & numbers) means that I can type much faster than I could on the RAZR. I’m already starting to get used to some of the secondary characters, like dashes and such.
• Real web access! The web rendering is very nice. But then it’s WebKit, so it’s basically the same as Chrome or Safari, so that’s not a huge surprise.
• Twitdroid (a Twitter app) and Quickpedia (an optimized front-end for Wikipedia) have impressed me so far.
• There’s a tip calculator app called BistroMath. I had to pick it up or the name alone. (Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work as an FTL drive.)
• I absolutely love being able to look things up online instantly!
• Wi-Fi was easy to set up, including WPA2 security, so I can use our wireless network at home.
• Wallpaper selection is very nice, with a built-in crop & resize function.
• Plain old USB charging, which means I can still use the car charger I got for my last phone.
• The WPhone alternate interface for the WordPress admin area, originally developed for the iPhone, is fantastic on the G1! (Too bad they aren’t developing it much anymore.)
• The built-in calculator app includes limited scientific capabilities (trig, logs, roots, etc.)
• My bank has an app that will look up the nearest ATMs or branches to where I am.
• Scrolling by dragging the actual content instead of the scroll bar is surprisingly easy to get used to. Actually a lot of stuff about the UI is like that: awkward at first, but in just a few hours it becomes second nature.

Minor Issues:

• Our apartment is right on the edge of a cell coverage area, so I haven’t had a chance to try it out on the 3G network yet. But that’s not the phone’s fault.
• It took me a while to figure out how to sync transfer data via the USB cable, since they’ve changed the way it’s handled since the manual was printed. The manual lists it as a system setting, but it’s now an option that pops up in the notification area when you connect it to a computer.

Not So Good

• The touch screen isn’t always responsive, but that may be because I haven’t removed the screen protector that ships with it. I wanted to pick one up that’s actually designed to be used before I pulled this one off.
• The covers on the USB port and memory card feel really flimsy.
• Battery life doesn’t seem to be terribly great. In fact, the clerk at the store suggested I charge it nightly.
• I’ve only played with the camera a little but seems slow and isn’t great with artificial lighting.
• Playing around with WordPress and Wikipedia shows how valuable it is to have a layout optimized for the small screen. The Android browser seems to rely entirely on zoom to handle large-screen layouts, and it would be nice to have something like Opera’s fit-to-width option. Update: It seems to ignore handheld stylesheets, which IIRC is true of the iPhone as well. When website providers try to help you with the small screen, maybe you should let them? *sigh* Need to see if it handles media queries, at least for screen size. Update 2: It does have a fit-to-width option, but I’m not entirely sure what it does, given that I keep running into layouts that end up scrolling horizontally.

Stuff I Have Not Tried But Intend To

• Anything involving GPS. I’m inside right now and it can’t get a signal.
• I don’t know how fast the download speed is over 3G. (Wifi is quite nice!) Update: 3G speed seems pretty decent, actually!
• Map directions. But it’s Google Maps, and those are generally quite good.
• I haven’t hooked up my Bluetooth earpiece yet. Update: Pretty simple. I just needed to remember how to put the headset in pairing mode.
• I haven’t tried connecting to an open WiFi network/hotspot.
• I need to do some more testing with the camera, see how it handles daylight, check out image quality, etc.
• I haven’t really messed with voice dialing.
• Email. It automatically links to your Gmail account, and has the ability to access POP and IMAP accounts, but I haven’t tried out any of the above yet.

More Mobile Internet Thoughts

Mobile goals:

• Real web access.
• Reduce number of gadgets if possible (combine with camera and/or music player)

Limitations:

• Still have a year left with T-Mobile.
• Not thrilled about AT&T, but resistance is softening.
• No phone in existence has the camera capability I want.

Options:

• Back in early summer I was looking at the Shadow or Wing from T-Mobile. Windows Mobile, so I could put Opera Mobile on it. Not 3G, don’t think they have WiFi, so they’d be slow. G1 sort of makes them obsolete (see below).
• iPhone. Safari and 3rd-party apps. High speed: both 3G-capable and WiFi-capable. Requires switching to AT&T. Not quite big enough to replace my iPod yet (I’ll look again when they hit 32 GB). $200 + $130/month for the cheapest 2-phone plan, plus my wife would need a new phone whether she wanted it or not.
• iPod Touch. Basically an iPhone without the phone. Big enough to replace my current iPod, plus give me Safari, but only at WiFi hotspots. (Would be perfect for Comic-Con!) But I’d need the 32 GB model, which is $500.
• G1 from T-Mobile. Comparable to what I’d actually use on the iPhone, won’t require switching providers. Again, 3G and WiFi — and it looks like 3G coverage where we live is better than the standard coverage. AM is expandable via MicroSD card. Music player is MP3 only. $180 + $75/month (assuming I can just add a $25 data plan to our current 2-line plan.

That G1 is looking pretty good. I’m not prepared to be an early adopter, but it might be worth taking a serious look at it in a few months.

iPhone iLine

I went by the Spectrum for lunch, and the line to get into the Apple Store for the new iPhone was still stretched past several storefronts into the nearest courtyard, right up to the fountain by the carousel — even though they’d launched that morning. Actually, I had several co-workers who were late today because they went down at opening for the launch.

From what I hear it was fairly chaotic, at least in the morning. Apple’s new policy of making you activate the phone in the store was causing delays, especially factoring in the fact that iTunes’ servers got swamped. That would explain why the line was still so long several hours after opening.

Usability note: One of said co-workers got tripped up trying to sync music to his new phone, because the default is to not synchronize music, and the “Sync only checked songs” box looked close enough to being the right option that he didn’t dig deeper.

iCampers across the Spectrum

Since I was going to the Irvine Spectrum for lunch anyway, I figured I’d drop by the Apple Store and see how many people were there for the iPhone launch. I walked by around 1:50pm, about 4 hours before the event, and sure enough there were a bunch of people lined up all along the shops.

You can see some lawn chairs and umbrellas. The campers are sort of hidden in the shade, which is why I upped the brightness on the second picture. Of course, I’m sure everyone waiting in line appreciated the shade. Those shadows will only get longer over the course of the afternoon, and while there’s a nice breeze once you get out into more open areas, the corridors of the mall are better at channeling people than wind.

When I walked by the first time, I only noticed the line running to that corner you can see at the end, maybe 3 storefronts down. About 10 minutes later, after stopping at Kelly’s Coffee, I saw that they were wrapped around that corner, almost the entire length of Forever 21, and stopped at the edge of the patio for the restaurant next door.

Not a huge line—I’ve waited in much longer lines for movies—but bigger than I expected for a phone.