August 2007 Archives

I remember years ago saying, "I want my phone to be a phone. Nothing more than a phone. Nothing less." I suppose to a degree that's true, except I am not buying a phone anymore. I am purchasing a Personal Device. A device upon which I will rely for many aspects of my life. I will use this device for my telephone, yes. But I will use it for SMS, MMS, a camera in a pinch. I will use it for a calendar, for a phone book, for a note pad. I will use it to get directions to wherever I'm going, to figure out where I want to be going. I might even use the right one for some music.

In realizing this I have been forced to re-evaluate my choices and opinions regarding my purchases. I have to break out of the paradigm of a phone just being a phone and start to accept how much more than that it can be. Then I have to determine how much of that I want. In doing so, I have begun to understand more of the hype around new phones and features. There are so many and varied different things for these devices. Those that I listed above are the ones that matter to me. And to others? The office suite. The fact that they can do presentations from their phone. The fact that they have a home theater in their pocket. Things like that.

I have to begin to think of my Smart Phone differently. I have to think of what I want it to be. Design my own in my mind, and define why.

I will start by defining my priorities better.

- First and foremost, my phone is a phone. I need it to be good at being a phone - quality in sound is a must. Speaker phone is a must for me because, well, I use it. The ability to use Bluetooth hands-free devices is critical for my success. Battery life is important to me - I need to be able to actually use my phone regularly throughout a day and not run out of battery before it ends.

- My Personal Device is my communications hub when I am not at home or at a computer. Quality SMS, MMS, and Email support is critical.

- My Personal Device will be my organizer. Long gone are the days when a Palm Pilot was a new thing. My personal device has this functionality in it and it works well. It must be able to synchronize with my computer(s) in both directions. This means at a minimum it must have Mac support. It is preferable that this support be built-in with iSync, but I will accept it if there is a high quality third-party application that integrates with iSync. Either way, I will only accept the use of iSync. Linux support would be neat but is not required.

I must be able to sync my calendars and my address book. It would be good to be able to synchronize my to do list, too. I must be able to sync my address book. I must be able to take notes for later review quickly and easily.

- My Personal Device must be customizable; it needs to support a variety of third party applications and, possibly, to allow me to write my own. This includes apps like Google Maps, which I do rely on regularly, or PuTTY.

Knowing that these are my basic requirements, let's talk about interface. Qwerty keyboards are a requirement for me, so that eliminates a few Smart Phones right there. This leaves a two basic interfaces: devices that are driven by the dial pad and devices driven by a touch screen.

For me, devices with a dial pad are fantastic and provide a strong degree of one-handedness (is that a word?). It means that if for some reason I must send an SMS or look up directions while driving, I can. It'll be with some difficulty, and I strongly recommend against such an act as it is unsafe and in some states I'm sure illegal, but it's a whole lot easier than doing it with a two-handed device. Additionally, there are many devices with dial pads that can be manipulated to reveal a qwerty keyboard - the best of both worlds.

A device with a touch screen used to be boring and annoying for me. I hated them. Then came the iPhone. They re-thought the entire interface. Still, though, the lack of a physical keyboard is too much for me. Enter HTC. HTC's Touch interface is beautiful. While it is a tad lacking, I hope that they continue to run with it in the Kaiser and make even more improvements. When they do, I suspect that this would be a very usable interface and comparable to the iPhone. It might not be quite as pretty, but it will be every bit as usable. And, I admit, it's a whole lot prettier than the basic interface.

I think the question in my mind is where the technology is going. It seems like the world wants touch screens, so perhaps my next device should follow that trend. But I just can't quite give up the mechanical keyboard, even if it's just the qwerty one.

For me, if I can program a certain missing feature into my Nokia E70 I'm going to stick with it for a while. Tempting though it may be to switch, none of the upcoming phones I've seen support both frequencies T-Mobile has earmarked for 3G use in the states. That's a downer for me.

Let's see what comes next.

The Great Mobile Phone Debate rages on. I hate Microsoft and Windows and all, but Windows Mobile 6 looks pretty great. So now I have to choose a phone. My new phone will, of course, need to be quad band and have support for at least one of the bands T-Mobile has chosen for 3G. That makes HTC's new line-up pretty safe.

I'm partial to two - the HTC S730 (Wings / Volans) and the HTC Kaiser. I've never had a phone with a touch screen before. Although the Wings would be great for texting while driving (yeah, I know, bad), I don't drive much. So I have to wonder... which one do I want to go with?

Good lord, I really missed this boat didn't I? I'm not going to explain tags too much, but they're basically a Web 2.0 concept that's all over. Take del.icio.us for example, with its ability to use tags to help sort, identify, and search through links. MovableType has it built in now, and there's even a plugin for Mail.app called MailTags that adds it to your email if you're a mac user. I really dig this concept and over the next little while I'm going to be moving in that direction with a lot of my stuff.

I just got home from seeing Muse at The Agganis Arena. It was a fantastic show. this is only the second show I've seen at the Agganis but I've really enjoyed it. It seems like there isn't a bad seat in the house, though this time around I was in the front row of section 104, which means front row, house right, arena seats. When you stand for the whole show there's no uncomfortable neck turning to be had, and this is a Good Thing™.

The show itself was really fun. The band was clearly into it and did an excellent mix of all of their material. I loved the piano and the way it had lights corresponding to keys. The band was right on and everything sounded great. The crowd was really into it, too. The whole thing was just a ton of fun. I'd write more, but I'm beat.

There will be no spoilers in this post.

I've been debating writing about this at all. There are so many strong opinions in all directions about the final installment of the Harry Potter saga. I've heard everything from it being the most original tale in a long time to it being a direct rip-off. Here is what I have taken from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Epic tales are bound to have some repetition and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is no exception. An author must always remind their readers of what's happened in the prior books. For some it's been a long time since they've read the prequels. For others, it's just too much to remember. One big difference in Rowling's writing from, say, Robert Jordan is that she tends to weave these reminders into the plot rather than stepping back and re-explaining. She uses context in such a way that if you've forgotten something you're okay.

The fact is that this and all other Harry Potter installments have been plot-filled. Others might disagree, but I really think that this was something that kept me coming back to read more.

One final note: the climax of the story. I've seen it opined that this scene was too short and abrupt. My opinion is that it was absolutely perfect - it was the culmination of everything that had happened in all of the prior stories. It tied everything together, it filled in minor plot holes, answered questions, and made perfect sense. I do not believe that length of a scene is what defines it, I feel it's about the believability, and this was something that, despite figuring many things out (and some before the book was even released), I did not see coming and was thrilled by.

And that's about all I can say without spoilers.

The Adium blog is reporting on MSN Censorship and their findings are really fascinating to me. Even for Microsoft, it strikes me as kind of a "lazy" approach to solving the world's exploit problems. What's next, declaring an embargo on a country's URL code? This just in, Canada goes with Linux for its national website - .ca URLs no longer work in MSN Messenger.

Okay, maybe I took that a little far. But all of .info? I think they took it a little far, too.

I just got home from the Paradise where I saw Rocco Deluca play. Wow, man. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before. If you have any respect for music for music's sake, you will check it out. Thanks to Ryan for inviting me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some CDs to buy.