Category: Personal

My iPhone Experince (Part 2 of 2)

Before I get started I do want to say I am an Apple fan boy. I think Apple makes the best computers on the planet, I think they make the best portable MP3 players on the planet, and now I think they make the best cell phones on the planet. With that said, here are my findings with owning the best cell phone.

The iPhone is easy to use. Which is really a good thing because it doesn’t come with a manual. No RTFM here. I think that says something about a product when you don’t need a manual to operate it. Using this phone and all the software it comes with has been very intuitive. Typing on this thing is very impressive. Mistakes are few and far between and the built in spell checker really dose a great job when I do make a typing mistake.

Battery life is not bad at all. My test for this was this last Labor Day weekend. I charged the iPhone Friday morning before I went to work and I did not charge it again till late Monday Night. So 3 days(ish). Again, I had 3G disabled, and I had WiFi disabled accepted when I actually needed access to the internet.

The phone is slippery. It really is. I don’t mean this so much when it is in your hand. The unit is very smooth. The lady at the AT&T store that I got the iPhone from really stressed to me that I should get a case for the iPhone because of this fact. She explained that I should get one to keep the phone from slipping out of the inside pocket of my jacket. She stressed this to an almost annoying degree and she was very shocked that I left the store with out purchasing any kind of a case at all. My logic at the time was that I have been caring an iPod Touch for almost a year now and I have not broken it yet.

I added some velcro in my inside jacket. Well, actually Hannah did at my request. This was a result of the paranoia that I started feeling after talking with the lady at the AT&T store. But it’s also one of those ideas I wish I had a long time ago. It really is smart and keeps stuff from falling out of my inside jacket pocket now.

Still no pause button. Apple still has not solved the ‘no pause’ button on the iPhone 3g when your listening to music. I honestly don’t know if they think it is a problem, but it is annoying to have to activate the the screen and then press the pause button to stop music.

I don’t use 3g because I live in Juneau. The city of Juneau Alaska as of yet, dose not have 3G cell access. So I have that feature on my iPhone turned off. As I have read that also help a lot of battery life on the phone. It’s easy enough to enable 3G if I was in a location that had it. Same with WiFi access.

GPS is pretty neat. I can open up google maps and in a few seconds it will figure out where I am standing. I can then easily get directions from where I am standing, to where I want to go. I have found that there are places in Juneau I can be that the GPS system can’t triangulate where I am but, I have seen dedicated GPS units struggle with that from time to time.

Setting Up Voice Mail did not go very soothly. As it was explained to me at the AT&T store, click on the voice mail icon and the phone would guide me through setting up my voice mail. Well that did not work. Clicking on the voice mail icon did nothing at all for me. After researching this on the Apple support page Ilearned that when this happens with new phones you have to call your own cell phone number and then you would be instructed on how to setup voice mail over the phone. Which I did do and it has worked just fine ever since. Having visual voice mail is a wonderful thing.

Holding the phone to my face feels weird. At least at first it did. The unit is so thin, but very sturdy. It’s just thinner then any phone I have ever had before that It took a couple of days to get used to it.

Setting up custom ringtones has been fun. Each person in your address book can be setup with their own custom ringtone. I even found a great Life Hacker link that can walk users through creating their own custom ringtones from existing MP3s or any audio for that matter.

Pictures in address book help you quickly identify who is calling better then just a name flashing on the screen. This is really a great feature. It’s a small thing but it’s the detail to the small things that Apple really excels at. A person can recognize who is calling faster from a picture then from having to read a name. When someone calls in it fills up most of the screen.

No stand came with the iPhone. I got one with my iTouch, why not one with the iPhone?

Scratches and scuffs. None. This thing is pretty scratch resistent. I am impressed. Remember, I don’t have a case for my iPhone.

Screen Glare. It’s not been an issue for me. For the iPhone or the iTouch. I use the iTouch at the gym all the time with all their lights.

Things. This is an app I paid for and installed on my iPhone for my GTD needs. It works really well and syncs with my desktop client perfectly. I can’t say enough good things about this program.

Custom Homepages

I was really inspired a while ago from a thread I read on the Local H Message board regarding browser homepages. For the longest time I have had my homepage set to Google. I could never really think of any resin to change it. But that thread made me re-think it.

When I sit down at my computer I don’t do searches all that much. I have a handful of websites that I go to everyday. In the past I would just type in the URL and go. But having a custom page with the links of my commonly visited websites saves a lot of time. Just middle click the links and they open up in a new tab.

This is pretty useful when your not always on your own computer. You can save your custom home page to a thumb drive, CD, or even upload it to your web server if you have one. This allows you to have access to all your favorite websites from any computer.

Below is a screen shot of my custom homepage that i built. Because I am such a Transformers fan I wanted to use an image of Megatron and Optimus Prime battling it out. With a little CSS I am able to make sure that no matter how big or small my browser window is the two will alwasy be fighting on the bottom right of the window.

I also use CSS to control the font and the link colors. Now your custom homepage dose not have to be this involved. It could just be a list of links you like to visit. It could be more involved with widgets, and backgrounds, and animations. Sky is the limit.

If you would like to download my custom homepage, Modifiy it, and use it for yourself you can by downloading it here. You will have to set the links in in the “index.html” file. Once that is done just point your browser to that index.html file.

My iPhone Experince (Part 1 of 2)

Last week my company cell phone died. It was an old BlackBerry 7100g. That BlackBerry and I never got along and I did not keep that fact a secret. So when it finally passed away this last week my boss offered to get me the iPhone 3G as a replacement work cell phone. I thought I might document the process we went through to get the iPhone, as well as my experience with it.

August 21 2008 – After calling our local AT&T dealer we were told we would have to go down to the store and order the iPhone. At the time they did not have any in stock. So we drove down and waited in line for half and hour. In our Juneau store there where only three people helping customers. When we were up to speak with a sales rep, she had us picked out the model we wanted and pay for the iPhone right there. We were told that we had save the receipt to be able to clam the phone when it comes in. (To me that sounds like a bit of BS. I mean, you spend 200 bucks on a cell phone, they can look up that you bought it or not.)  The rep put the iPhone on order. We were told it would take 10 to 21 days to get in and that we would get updates via e-mail.

August 22 2008 – Got an automated e-mail from ATT Order Status.

Your iPhone 3G order has been shipped and is on its way to the AT&T store in which you placed the order… You will be notified via email when it arrives. You will then have seven (7) days to pick up your order or it will be canceled…

August 26 2008 – Got another automated e-mail from the local ATT store

Your iPhone 3G order is ready to be picked up at the AT&T store where you reserved it.  Please bring your reservation receipt and a valid ID when you pick-up your order…

So less then ten days. That makes the whole experience a little more positive.  We went down to the local AT&T dealer and got my iPhone. They took it out of the box to activate it. They moved my old phone number over and that was that. The phone worked from that moment on.

At the end of the day when I got home, I plugged the phone into my computer. iTunes fired up and it started to download and install the new iPhone OS software update. I also downloaded one or two programs to try out. For me the whole process was shockingly easy, fast and painless.

I have been using the iPhone now for less then two day, but so far I am very happy with the experience. The brake out application for me on the iPhone has been “Notes“. Notes lends it’s self very well to anyone who is into the GTD system. In my first two days with the iPhone I have been using this program constantly.

I am a big fan of Things for the Mac. In the next few days I am sure I will pick up the Things program for the iPhone also.

I will do a follow up post in a few days. I would like to talk about things i don’t like about the iPhone (if any come up) as well as how I have been using it.

Juneau Comic Books

There are no comic book shops in Juneau. I came to this depressing realization after living here for a few months. The grocery stores are the only places in the city you can go to and get comic books. The Selections at the grocery stores are minimal and poorly handled by the staff that stocks the magazine racks. You just want to slap some comic book edict into every store employee that walks by.

Last Saturday I forgot about all of that. Last Saturday, everything changed for just one moment. I was at the “Friends of the Library Book Store” by the airport with Hannah. This is a store where people donate old and used book to be resold. Just as we had finished browsing and started to walk out the door I gasped.

“What” said the old lady clerk, startled.

“You have comics?” I said pointing to an old bin with haphazardly placed comics books.

“oh yeah, just that one bin though” she replied.

Transformers Comic Issue 10 - Dawn Of The Devastator
Transformers Comic Issue 10 – Dawn Of The Devastator

I gently dug through the bin while Hannah waited. Inside I found what was to me, a small treasure. Comics like the first issues of “The Crow” and “Marvel Universe” and “He-Man”. I could not believe it. I kept on digging and found the first few issues to the “Marvel Saga” and “Rawhide Kid”. But then I struck pay dirt.

Transformers! In the bin where a couple of issues of the original Marvel Transformers Comic. One of them was one I did not already own! Issue number 10. Dawn of the Devastator! I have not found an original Transformers comic that I did not already own since my trip to Maui several years ago. I have been trying to complete my Transformers collection forever, and now I am one more issue closer to that goal.

Print vs. Cursive

I believe that for day-to-day getting things done, print is a better form of handwriting then cursive. Print is easier to read and I think when you see notes or directions in a format that is easier to read your less intimidated by them. It is so frustrating to be given hand written cursive notes and spending the next half hour trying to interpret them. People write down notes in cursive so fast that the end result is illegible.

If people slow down just a little bit to make sure their writing is legible to anyone who reads it, there is less of a chance of miss understanding notes and directions. The same could be said of cursive hand writing. Slow down and anyone can read it. But my argument is more related to the fact that Print is easier to read then cursive.

This also lead me to think about fonts used on a computer. By default there are very few (if any) cursive style fonts on computers. Can you imagine how strained your eyes would be if the Macintosh Finder or the Windows start menu used cursive fonts instead of print fonts?

Cursive has it’s place in society. I just think it’s home is in typography art.