I'm going to the 2008 SXSW Interactive Festival. Really looking forward to it.
As you may know, panels at SXSW are voted on by the community. We are hoping that Bug Labs (a Spark portfolio company) is selected. Naturally I think Peter, Bug Labs CEO/founder would be a great speaker and his topic selected for consideration is called Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets.
Some of you probably know that I've been using the iPhone as my main device instead of my trusty blackberry curve for awhile.
It's been a struggle. That's for sure.
There are days I think about switching back to my Blackberry Curve. That thing just works but the blackberry browser is so lame. And WiFi on a phone is genius. So I think I'm going to hang in there. I want/need 3 things to stay loyal to the iPhone though:
-Wireless ActiveSync. Or some way to wirelessly sync my iPhone calender with my Exchange server. Syncing via USB is so ghetto. I can't believe I'm doing it.
-Search. The lack of address book search is absolutely killing me. There are a bunch of native apps for the iPhone (more on that one in a minute). Someone needs to develop a native address book search app. The current method of last or first name sort is ridiculous.
-Copy & paste. I didn't think I would miss this but I really do. The software should just let me hold down the shift key on the keyboard and click to select text. Then give me some short cut to copy, cut and paste. Please.
If I don't get at least items #1 & #2 soon, I'm gonna use my iPhone as a fancy, schmancy iPod Touch w/a camera and switch back to the Curve. My patience is wearing out. I'll wait until the Leopard release as my cut off date.
In the meantime, I have made improvements to my iPhone's usability. I switched from exchange config to imap config on the iPhone. That was was a big help.
And now thanks to Installer.app, I have a few great native applications on my iPhone (vs web services). Note: Installer.app is a little funky to install. During the install your iPhone will tell you it needs a full restore but just ignore it, be patient and keep iTunes closed. Once Installer.app is installed, it's a breeze to install native apps. All of the apps are installed on the iPhone itself over Edge or WiFi.
My favorite native apps so far are MobileChat which is an AIM client that works great. Summerboard provides home screen customization. And SendPics is a must if you take photos on the iPhone.
I first discovered Wonderbeings one day at Bug Labs. Peter showed them to me several months ago.
The next day I ordered a few for my office. They are so excellent.
These toys are cubes that have digital characters inside of them. The cubes have magnets so you can connect the cubes to one another. And when you connect the cubes the characters interact in many different ways. For example, one character can "walk" and move from one cube into the other. They also have buttons so you can play games or interact with your character.
There are even motion sensors in the cube so if you shake them up they do stuff.
They are great toys for the office. And I like the idea of toys that are connected. Online or offline.
Maybe someone will build a CubeWorld-like module for Bug Labs one day.
My friends at Wallstrip do a much better review of the Garmin Forerunner than my previous review on the product. Howard blogs about Garmin as well and why it's the stock to own. I'm glad I own the product and the stock.
It's another great Wallstrip show. I love Lindsay's "punch in the face" question at the end. So funny.
A bunch of friends have asked me how my experiment is going.
As my friends know, I've been a die hard blackberry user for awhile. We use Microsoft Exchange at the office and blackberry enterprise server. That trio is like gold. It just works.
But I wanted more. Don't we all?
For the past week, I've been using my iPhone exclusively. The Blackberry Curve has been in my desk drawer at the office. And turned off. Cold turkey.
My experience so far:
1. Screen. Unfucking-believable. Gorgeous. I love having (& showing off) photos of my kids. I watch funny N3 and Wallstrip videos when I'm at the airport or when I'm bored. The screen makes all the difference.
2. WiFi. Apple did WiFi right. The range is better than my MacBook Pro. And set up couldn't be easier. WiFi combined with the built in browser is a winner. Love Facebook, nytimes and reading blogs on iphone w/wifi. Browsing on iphone on the ATT Edge network is a loser though. I usually don't do it
3. Keyboard. The keyboard isn't a blackberry. Not even close. And if I'm ever asked to defend my crown, I will absolutely use a blackberry to avoid getting my ass kicked by fred, howard or any other contender. Yet after just one week my iphone typing skills are getting better. Really. Two tips to become an iphone typing jedi
-hit the keys at a 90 degree angle. this is a must.
-don't edit any misspellings until you complete the word. The built in dictionary is quite good and will prompt you in a very intuitive way. Similar experience as Blackberry SureType. Finish the word first. always.
4. Telephone. I like the phone features much better on the iphone than my blackberry. It's easier to hold, dial, mute, redial, hang up, navigate auto-attendent systems, turn ringer on/off etc. Visual voicemail works really well. Pet peeve: phone numbers listed in calendar or email aren't clickable.
5. SMS. The SMS app on iphone is very cool. Some may disagree but I like that SMS are separate than email (unlike the blackberry). I really like how it keeps threaded messages together. It's the ultimate Twitter device.
6. Camera. Very easy to use. Photos are a bit nicer than the Curve. Syncs with iPhoto. Easy to upload to flickr via email. Love that. I also like that photos of my contacts appear in full screen with callerID for incoming calls. So far my friend Stan has the best photo ID in my address book. I won't include it here but it's very funny.
7. Contacts. The contacts/address book app is really sweet and really bad at the same time. It's very easy to call, email and sms your contacts. Contact integration with google maps is just magical. But the iPhone doesn't have contact search (yet).
8. Super iPod. Listening to music on iPhone is awesome. Coverflow is dreamy.
Incoming phone calls fade out the music perfectly. iPhone headphones also has a mic so you can talk on them as well. Even though I've been an ipod owner since the beginning of time, I didn't always carry my ipod with me. with iphone, i do. And that's excellent.
9. Form factor/durability/stability. The iPhone is solid. Hasn't crashed on me once. The keyboard does slow down every so often but not bad. Form factor is outrageous. Screen seems very durable. No scratches after a week or normal use. I do tend to baby this thing a bit though. I don't just throw it on my desk like the blackberry.
10. Dealing with Microsoft Exchange. Email is easy for those of you that use gmail, aol, yahoo, pop3 or imap. Exchange is not easy on iPhone.
By enabling IMAP on the Exchange server, the iPhone works with your corporate email. It's not push email like blackberry though. Instead iPhone can at best fetch every 15 minutes. You can also manually fetch your email. I thought this was going to a headache but I can live with this.
There are two huge problems with iPhone for Exchange users though:
-Calendar and contact sync can only happen locally. And requires a cable. No over the air sync and no bluetooth sync. Sad but true.
-Even worse, any Exchange-based meeting invites sent to you are not received on iPhone. I believe it's because IMAP is for email and can't deal with the calendar protocol in exchange. It's not made for that. I cannot accept or reject an incoming meeting invite from the iPhone mail client. (This doesn't effect meetings I schedule myself obviously). My workaround is to check Outlook Web Access periodically where I can accept/reject mtgs.
So after a week, I've decided to continue using the iPhone as my primary phone. It's far from perfect but at this time I like it the best. And it's fun. I've never felt that way about my Blackberry.
When I travel more than a day, I'm going to keep the Blackberry in my bag just in case meetings suddenly change and I need to stay on top of it in real-time.
But for days in/around the office, quick day trips to nyc and weekends, I'm going all iPhone, all the time.
I'm going to try and use my iPhone instead of my Blackberry Curve for one week. Going cold turkey.
Starts now.
My friend Chris from Apple showed me how to sync Microsoft Entourage contacts and calendar with Apple iCal and AddressBook. So those things now easily sync to the iPhone inside of iTunes.
And I can now get my work email via imap onto my iPhone. It's not push email but I've set the iPhone to fetch my email every 15 minutes.
Why am I doing this?
Well the iPhone is simply the coolest consumer product that I've seen in years. As I mentioned on iDay, the screen is stunning, WiFi and the browser are killer and having the best ipod on the planet is fantastic. And it's way more fun than my trusty Blackberry.
It's beautiful. The user interface is gorgeous and the display is truly stunning.
iPhoto & iTunes integration is slick. Safari is so cool. WiFi on a phone is killer. Activation on AT&T is a breeze with iTunes. I'm sure I could gets used to the keyboard.
But it's not going to replace my Blackberry Curve. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Exchange in a seamless way like the Blackberry. I want wireless email, calender, contacts syncing with Exchange. And I want push. The iPhone doesn't do this.
Sigh.
I'm sure Apple will figure this out and offer some killer integration with Exchange soon. Maybe with Goodlink software, Visto or ActiveSync or something. please god something.
"Does the iPhone synchronize with my computer’s calendar and address book? Yes. It can sync with Address Book or MS Entourage on the Macintosh, Outlook, Outlook Express on Windows, or
Yahoo’s address book on the Web. If you add appointments or phone
numbers to the iPhone, they are added to your computer the next time
you sync."
But these two statements make me uneasy about making the big switch
"Can you type with two thumbs? I’ve seen Apple employees flail away with two thumbs as though on a Blackberry, but it takes loads of practice. After two weeks, I’m still tapping with one index finger.
How snappy is the real iPhone, compared with Apple’s ads?
It’s identical, with one exception: Apple never shows the iPhone when
it’s on AT&T’s cellular network. That would just be embarrassing.
I'm 10lbs overweight. Even worse my workout routine is random at best. Some weeks are better than others. But over the past month I've been pretty bad. It started with a torn muscle and then migrated to plain old laziness
With inspiration from my in-shape wife, I'm signed up for a mini-triathlon this August (my partners at Spark are very supportive). More on the August race in another post.
So this weekend I ran both days. Yesterday I ran 2.5miles in the rain. Today I did 2 miles mid day on a hilly run (yeah, excuses are starting already). We now have the Nike+ so I hope keeping track of my data will keep me going on a consistent basis.
Here's my graph from today.
The iPod/Nike+ software and website are fantastic. There are plenty of eye candy charts and you can do tons of stuff like share data, compete, set personal goals, keep track of your playlists for a given run and download new workout playlists of course. I have nike sneakers but you can use the iPod Nano/Nike+ kit with any sneakers and one of these.Update: Lauren has been trying them with non-nike sneakers but they dont' seem to calibrate properly.
They all sucked. Generally they had bad software and were super slooooow. Scanning pages of documents was a non-starter. Scanning old photos was even worse.
As a result, I never used these things.
That all changed this last week. My friends Stu and Jason gave me a demo of the Fujitsu ScanSnap S500M at their office. This scanner is unbelievable. I ordered mine a few days later. Received it yesterday.
This thing is super fast. And when I say fast, I'm talking 2 seconds per page or photo. Honest. You can feed in 20 pages at a time. No problem. It does single or double sided and it's smart enough to deal with a mixed bag. And it doesn't care what size document you are scanning.
And it's a breeze to set up and use. You press one button. The software is a great too.
I never thought I would write such a gushing review on a scanner of all things - but this is so worth it.
I'm scanning everything and shredding docs from now on. This is going to be great for the kids report cards, art projects, bank statements, photos etc etc.
Make magazine is very cool. I first learned about Make from Peter at Bug Labs. More about Peter in a post coming soon but not too soon :) Make is quickly becoming a very popular magazine for DIY electronics.
Etsy is a place to buy & sell handmade items. Great stuff. They both have a very loyal and growing community behind them.
And this week they have another thing in common.
I'm happy to say that both are featured inside the current episode of Threadbanger. Check it out.
(disclosure: we are investors in N3 the folks behind Threadbanger and other great networks)
Sophia got her first Tamagotchi today. For those of you unfamiliar, Tamagotchi (wikepedia link, corporate link) is a digital pet that was originally brought to market in 1996.
It took Sophia about 10 minutes to figure out the basics of her new toy. The device reminds you to take care of it, feed it, play with it and even discipline it or praise it. She named her pet "ben". Already I can see why kids love these things.
It's interesting to see how she plays with the tamagotchi which has little/zero internet experience. On the other hand her physical Webkinz toy has little to do with the rich online experience.
There is a huge opportunity for someone to create an easy to use, fun, interactive physical toy (aimed at kids 8-13) that has a rich connection to the online virtual world.
Their noise cancellation technology is really incredible. They have a demonstration on their website on how well this thing works with crazy noisy conditions like wind, music and even a jackhammer. I didn't believe how good it would be until I tried it.
You may or may not like the looks of this thing (I bought the silver version). But the audio quality is what this baby is all about.
I have this brand new, unopened digital audio optical switch. If you want it just let me know and I'll ship it to you free. First one to comment here or you can email me directly.
It's part of my new years resolution to get rid of stuff I don't need :)
Well the blackberry might be pretty ugly compared to the iPhone but my 8703e (can you believe they come up with such names) dropped twice today. The second time it dropped on a tile floor and didn't even get a scratch.
I'm not sure what would have happened if it was an iPhone with a 3" touchscreen.
One of our founders gave me an early christmas present yesterday. A Nokia E62. Thanks Andrew.
This phone has the Blackberry Connect app so I'm going to give it a run and compare it against my current Blackberry 7130e. I'll let you know how it compares.
I no longer use our dedicated camcorder. Even though it's pretty small it doesn't work for me. It captures content on miniDV-tapes and importing onto the computer is slow and funky. It's also yet another thing that I need to carry and as a result I don't use it.
I started taking video on my point & shoot digital camera a few years ago. It was a Canon S400. It took decent video and it's so easy to get the video into the computer. But the Canon captures video in .avi which takes up a ton of space very quickly. When it died last year I bought a Casio S600. Great little camera and if the lighting is good it rivals my Canon Rebel XT.
The very best part of this little Casio is that it takes 640x480 video in mpeg4. I can capture 60 minutes of video on a 1 gig card. The only drawback is that you cannot zoom in video mode (no autofocus in zoom mode). So you have to settle on the zoom first than start recording.
I'd love to hear if you have any recommendations for a small digital camera that captures video in mpeg4 (or DivX) and fully supports zoom in video mode.
(I know many of you are going to tell me about all of the new HD
camcorders. The video is stunning but it's just too big for me. I won't
carry it around. Honest)
Friends periodically ask me which remote control they should buy.
Since this blog is also my journal of sorts I thought I'd jot down my history in my search for the Holy Grail of remote controls.
About 10 years ago our home entertainment system started to become rather complex.
Like most people we had too many boxes and way too many remote controls.
When our first daughter was born I remember the first time we got a babysitter one evening. Trying to show the babysitter how to operate the TV was a joke. Just watching television you needed three remote controls - all had different layouts and look & feels. I ended up creating a "how to" instruction sheet and I had a laminated for safe keeping.
Well since those days my AV system has become a more sophisticated and unfortunately much more complicated. I've gone through my share of remote controls. I don't remember all of the remotes over the years but a few stand out.
The very first programable remote control I purchased was the Microsoft TakeControl remote.
It was enormous. This photo doesn't do it justice -- it was huge and heavy. It had great promise - but it sucked.
A short time thereafter the Philips Pronto was all the rage in home theater magazines. Home installers were configuring this remote and websites like RemoteCentral were attracting a cult following where consumers were exchanging their customized screens.
It was so hard to set up that CEDIA installers were actually providing a backup service with your Pronto's settings. And like the Microsoft remote I found the lack of real buttons (vs soft buttons) a problem. It was also enormous and it sucked as well.
After that I ended up returning to a basket of remote controls but that was really lame and I was now back to square one.
Then in 2001 I discovered the Home Theater MX500. I'm pretty sure that Santo and I bought these at the same time after we downloaded and studied the manuals and poured over various websites like AVS Forums.
The Home Theater MX is extremely powerful, capable of sophisticated macros, could program a zillion devices. Also you could buy IR to RF repeaters and even had dedicated buttons for DVR trick modes. But it too took me forever to set up. When I upgraded various components in my av system I had to re-configure the macros. It is also a very large and heavy remote. It was also expensive. When my kids later destroyed this remote I decided not replace it. The idea of reprogramming the thing wasn't worth it for me.
At last, Nirvana: Harmony Remote Controls
A few years ago I discovered Harmony Remote Controls (now owned by Logitech). They have several models and they are truly amazing. These remote controls are radically different.
1. Easy to set up. When you get a Harmony Remote you create a profile on their website. You simply input all of your av components and their web service will automatically create the correct codes and scripts called "Activities". You plug in your remote with the included USB cable and click "Update" and you are done. If you ever get a new piece of equipment, you make the change on the website and click Update again. Done. If your kid or yellow lab named Jackson physically destroys your remote, you goto Amazon, Prime it, connect to your PC or Mac, log into the website and click Update. Done.
2. Customer Service. I have never experienced a consumer electronics company support their products better than Harmony (pre and post acquisition). They have expanded tech support hours, their staff is super knowledgeable about CE and they are extremely patient and thorough. They actually care.
3. User experience. Babysitters love our AV system and so do we :-) If you want to watch tv you just click the physical activity button on the remote that says "Watch TV". All of the correct devices turn on, switch to the correct input" and just work. Same thing for DVD, game console, MacMini, music, etc.
I went on this journey with a few good friends. I'm sure we aren't the only ones. Love to hear your experiences.
update: Santo just gave me this gyro rf mouse & keyboard. it looks like it could be a lot of fun to connect to my macmini on the big screen. i'll let you know how it goes. thanks Santo.
After this post I got a few comments on my blog from Fred and Nabeel about Sonos. I also received a few emails from a few shy friends. Everyone I know that has Sonos loves it. It has the same consumer loyalty as Tivo users.
I decided to go for it. FrontRow is a good start but still needs a lot of work. I'm keeping the macmini hooked up to my hdtv for web browsing, photo slide shows and home videos. but for music it's not pain free.
I received my Sonos earlier this week and decided to set it up tonight after the kids went to bed. My home av system and networking is a little complex but that isn't Sonos fault. After getting my NAS on the same subnet as Sonos it was a snap. And Rhapsody on Sonos is as good as everyone says.
I still believe that Rhapsody TV needs to happen. Sonos is expensive and not for everyone.
But if you love music and want it everywhere than Sonos is really the best available solution.
My friend Tim Bucher has a new company. They designed and built this product for Sirius. They did an amazing job in a very short period of time. Congrats guys.
I've been evaluating bluetooth headsets for awhile now and finally found one that works great. It's the Plantronics 510. Excellent audio quality and appears to have the best noise cancellation technology.
kit with any sneakers and 
