Old Phone Conspires Against Self

To borrow some language from the nuclear power industry, a few "events" occurred this weekend which finally tipped the scales causing this techie to finally stop dragging his feet and get a smartphone, already.

I was running a Sony Ericsson T616 from AT&T (on the Cingular Network) and for what it is, it's been quite useful. I've been using bluetooth to sync my calendar with iSync, it holds some of my contacts, allows me to SMS and take "hilariously bad" photos. All in all it's quite functional and I have few complaints. But there is more and more that I'm needing to do with this phone and it has become dangerous to leave the office for long periods of time.

Here was the weekend list:

• Before I leave my apartment I attempt to load up 2 episodes of This American Life and one DJ set onto my Creative MuVo mp3 player and they don't fit. (of course this phone does not have an mp3 player) The 2nd episode of This American Life (and my subway commute back home) is left behind.
• Our web servers are monitored by software that sends SMS messages to our engineers and myself. I got a few messages and with them, warnings that my internal memory was almost full (despite keeping my inbox clean)
• One of our servers lost http service and while I was able to receive a phone call about it and SMS the unix commands to one of our engineers for implementing, I would have been much better off just opening a shell on a smartphone and logging in myself

With a week vacation coming up it seemed as though the forces were conspiring to unravel my digital lifestyle. Something had to be done.

Monday morning I decided to take a walk past a few train stops on the way to my office. Along the way I happened upon a Radio Shack and talked to a very helpful salesperson. We discovered that I could give my current provider the finger and end up getting the same amount of minutes AND all-you-can-eat internet and data from Sprint for about the same price I was paying with Cingular. Of course I've always liked Sprint but had to drop them when I moved to NYC because they apparently didn't have towers in my neighborhood. That's all cleared up now so we're back, with a brand new Treo 700p.

Apparently these have been pretty popular because this was the last one they had in stock (no demos on the floor and they haven't even been able to keep one for the employees to power up and play with). At first even the "new customer" discount doesn't seem to be enough until you get the phone home and start playing with it. It is a damned nice phone.

It only took an hour to load up:

• iTunes skin for pTunes (sold separately for $5 but a must-have)
• >1GB of music on the 2GB SD card (sold separately, but for a good price)
• All contacts and calendar events via Mark/Space "The Missing Sync for PalmOS 5" ($40, completely worth the price)

A few minutes later I was out the door for a meeting with the actual address of where I was going with map, some music to listen to on the way, and a qwerty keyboard for writing notes and emails.

First impressions are: This phone will survive the attack of the forthcoming iPhone. More details to follow.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Disconnected Heads

So we've already covered that Motorola has abandoned the best-funded business customers of theirs to chase after their average consumer to fool them into paying more for a buggy and incomplete phone.

Of course Motorola has no interest in hearing from you about the issue. Their website, like most corporate monsters, is completely devoid of any kind of "feedback" area. If you want to send feedback to Motorola, especially if it involves product ideas, one must request a form which they will mail to you. In order for Motorola to accept your product idea you must sign away the rights to them, which is fine as I presume that only Motorola would be able to manufacture a Motorola phone.

Bronzefinger's response did not even come from a human being, but rather from

Motorola, Inc.
External Relations
Intellectual Property Section
Law Department

Here is their response:

Re: Palm OS and Touch Screen Features for Cellular Phone

Dear Mr. Detsch (misspelling):

Thank you for forwarding to us information on the above referenced idea along with a signed copy of Motorola's policy and agreement regarding submission of ideas by persons outside the company.

While we thank you for your submission, Motorola is not interested in pursuing this idea with you at this time.

We wish you luck in your endeavors.

Of course this request never made it out of the legal department so who knows what the dev team at Mot is *actually* working on or interested in. There is nothing more frustrating than the black holes created by large, spongy organizations where decision makers can be 100% protected from consumers and experts alike.

I imagine this will be the case when we write to Palm to encourage them to fight the good fight and to watch out because Microsoft is right behind them wearing smile and a ski mask and wielding a bat...

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Windows Mobile Threatens to Take Over The World

Though I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, my general feeling from talking to potential smartphone buyers is that Windows Mobile is going to flood this market and drown us. Here are a few brief reasons:

• M$ LOVES to bully, threaten, and undercut to force products into the marketplace through large providers (think the power they weild over Dell; if Dell even thinks about offering a Linux solution on their servers M$ could pull the rug out from under them). It should not be surprising, then, that so many mobile phones are appearing out of nowhere with Windows mobile, and that even the Treo phone is being released with Windows mobile BEFORE the new Palm version.
• Many people coming to smartphones may not already have a Palm and therefore have no opinion about what it can do. When they hear "Windows mobile" their first thought is: "Oh, I can use Outlook and IE", which is true. But more dangerous than that is that they may feel that this is their only choice which is devastating not just to Palm, but the consumer who blindly falls for this

Any good businesspeople out there that can give our friends at Palm a hand?

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on July 14, 2006 | Comments (0)

Windows as Seen in Signage, part two

As seen at Port Authority Bus Station, New York. Wasn't able to capture the exact .exe error on my cell phone but I remember it being something to the effect of a program exception and that the computer needed to be restarted.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on June 13, 2006 | Comments (0)

Triangulating Why the Motorola Q is a Disappointment

After many months of sneak peaks, increasing impatience, and mind-numbing hype, the Motorola Q has finally been released to the public.

Initial reactions have ranged from overly generous (PC Magazine), fanboys of the idea far too early before the release and it is obvious (CNet) to cautiously optimistic (PC World). Those few with their hands on the prize have been overwhelmed with public curiosity and the official marketing campaign for Motorola and Verizon is only now just beginning.

The Motorola/Verizon gang (Verizon has first dibs at selling the phone, we guess it will be 3-6 months before other carriers get it) has created the perfect storm in the perfect order: an early announcement with some teaser photos and promises, a noticeable buzz in the tech community, anticipation and desire, a very competitive price point, a sexy design -- they have created a conveyor belt that implants this thing into your brain as the perfect phone and then practically delivers it directly to your hand.

So how could this phone end up being a disappointment? In a word: reality.

Before I jump into my theory as to why I'd like to preface it by saying that I don't think the phone is going to be a flop. As a matter of fact, I think it could do quite well. If you combine the irrational exuberance over the idea of smartphones like the Treo 650 with the sometimes spectacular industrial design of Motorola phones, and you have an Apple-like reality distortion field that can often last for longer than the life of the product itself.

So here is what I think the problem is: this device looks like a serious productivity machine and another step forward towards the best convergence phone on the market, and we all want very badly for that to be the case, but instead it's a step sideways and backward.

The perfect productivity device would have the speed, efficiency, multi-tasking ability, and interactivity of a Palm phone, the scroll wheel of a blackberry, a thin form factor, and would be chock full of features power users want: unrestricted bluetooth, wifi, and tons of applications. Well, it kinda/sorta is pointing in the right direction.

Where it succeeds:

• form factor
• industrial design
• call quality (it is a phone, after all)
• scroll wheel

Where it fails:

• Windows OS cumbersome, music skips when multitasking
• no touchscreen means less efficient navigation
• no software for editing office documents
• no wifi
• expensive data plans (Verizon's fault for now)

Bottom line:
The bottom line is that there is a chasm between consumer and pro phones that does NOT want to be bridged by a phone that half does what each user group wants. Consumers still don't want to pay the high price and the pros are going to be let down by what is missing. To me, this phone really wants to be more than it currently is - right now it's a large phone with a keyboard, not a small PDA/smartphone with all the fixin's. Here's to hoping for "Rev 2".

Aug 30 update: Gizmodo reports on firmware update for device. They do not attempt to hide their feelings of being underwhelmed.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on May 31, 2006 | Comments (3)

Using Windows, a reminder

I've got Windows XP installed on a Dell inspiron in my office for web testing. The OS is a sqeaky-clean install and contains all the patches. In addition I am running a firewall and antivurus. All that is ever asked of it is to let me KVM over to it every once in a while to load web pages in Internet Explorer. (rough life, right?)

Despite my simple requests it will still randomly tell me things like:

"USB Device Not Recognized
One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem click this message"

...of course if the USB Device in question is a mouse, it makes it kind of tough to follow their cumbersome and useless troubleshooting advice.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Products Publicly Recommended (or Bashed)

I'm purposefully not naming this ongoing entry "Product Reviews" as some may begin to wonder why the growing list of items is so highly ranked. Lest people think I'm a "me too" product hawker allow me to explain the rankings; I try to buy as little stuff as possible. Everything I get is a tool, even if it's a toy, it's also practical. I do a lot of research before buying things therefore trying to avoid bringing products into my home that suck. I also resist writing up scathingly bad reviews unless I have firsthand experience with a) trying to use the product and b) trying to fix the problem or work around the inconvenience.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on May 19, 2006 | Comments (0)

Hacking Hackers on Moveable Type

In all the years I've been blogging I have not seen a single useful "trackback ping". Ever. In beginning to see them being exploited by spammers the feature seems almost to have been invented for that sole purpose.

One of my blogs started with an early version of Moveable Type and was upgraded over time. Somewhere along the line most of the entries were tagged to allow trackback pings. The spam started rolling in, gaining in volume and peaking at almost 100 per day. There was no way to batch change ALL entries to have trackbacks turned off from within the Moveable Type interface -- only batch DELETE the ones you didn't want to keep. (Which are all of them, really)

Was I doomed to have my site slowly crumble under the weight of texas holdem, porn, and weight loss ads? I thought not.

Using phpMyAdmin I:
- navigated to my blog's database
- selected the table "mt_entry"
- typed in: UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_pings=0
...and hit Go

All entries were now marked as DISALLOW pings. Opening individual entries in the MT interface confirmed it -- the "Accept TrackBack Pings" was unchecked.

Later that day, another 100 trackback pings appeared in my inbox.

So something didn't translate -- I logged back in and did a "rebuild site" -- all files, just in case the change needed to be written to all the HTML files (which seems obvious in retrospect).

No dice.

After consulting the SixApart forums and not finding anything useful we just applied a good old fashioned "hack" and renamed the mt-tb.cgi file (Moveable Type TrackBack) so it could not be executed. So far it's been working like a charm.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on May 18, 2006 | Comments (0)

Jet Blue Offering wifi on flights?

This one is a little weird but I thought I'd post it anyway.

My office is located in Brooklyn below approach paths to both JFK and La Guardia airports. There is a constant stream of air traffic overhead day and night.

Last Saturday (the 22nd) I was doing some neighborhood scanning and saw what you see here: a six minute blast of "Jet Blue hot spot" ad-hoc network that lit up the screen, then disappeared.

Six minutes seems a little long for a plane to fly into, and out of wifi range, and I am quite skeptical that this is real but it seemed like a tantilizing prospect. As far as I know there are no "Jet Blue" corporate laptops, and in my 'hood there are *very few* networks to join to ad-hoc from. Also I doubt I am living in the midst of Jet Blue fanboys/girls.

Any general thoughts from the web on the sighting?

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 28, 2006 | Comments (22)

When do I need a new computer?

Sometimes I'll get asked the question: "How do you know when it's time to buy a new computer?". Even though my job is technology and I've been pushing hard towards and am nearing convergence (goal is to have all television, DVD, audio, written work, and more in a single computer with a single large monitor and speakers) I am actually quite pragmatic; my main workstation is currently 4 years old and I have no immediate plans for replacing it.

I use my computer all day every day. As I type this I have 11 programs open: PhotoShop, Mail, iTunes, Safari (11 tabs), Adium, Address Book, Calendar, Clock & Track, BBEdit, Transmit and FireFox -- and it is critical that they all work, quickly, and without crashing. If this machine was hindering my productivity I certainly would replace it, but the fact is, it's fast enough and is stable as hell. It never crashes. It doesn't panic under constant heavy load.

As a matter of fact, that is how I judge if I need a new computer: load factor.

I keep a little application called "Activity Monitor" (found on Macs in /Applications/Utilities/) running in my dock. It tells me how hard my computer is working at any given time. If I go through a day where the CPU is spending most of it's time at 90% usage or more it's time for an upgrade or a new machine. Servers can easily handle this kind of stress all day and night (I work with machines that do this), and a workstation certainly could, too -- but at this point you start to notice tangible slowdowns in your applications which lead to loss in productivity -- and that's what this is about, after all: being as productive as you can for your dollar.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Windows as seen in Signage

Penn Station Subway, New York, NY

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 17, 2006 | Comments (0)

Apple Mail search "entire message" Saga

Recently I, like many others, lost the ability to search in "entire message" in mail.app. We could search From, and Subject just fine, but not IN our messages (which is tragic when you have a lot of mail).

The problem began somewhere around OS 10.4.3 and persisted through updates all the way to 10.4.6

Here are a few solutions that were suggested on various bulletin boards:

1. Back up mail, remove and re-import into mail.app. This was reported NOT to work so I didn't try it.
2. One fellow suggested that this worked for him:
   You need to use 'terminal' and 'mdutil' to re-index your hard drive.

   In Terminal, turn off indexing for your drive. example:
   sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

   Then use mdutil again to turn indexing back on for your drive
   sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

   I tried this and it did NOT work.

3. Re-index HD:
   a) open System Preferences
   b) choose "Spotlight"
   c) click "Privacy" button
   d) click the "+" button
   e) choose your hard drive
   f) click the "-" button and close System Preferences
   g) click Spotlight magnifying glass at the top right of your screen and enter any search word -- you will see that your computer is re-indexing your HD for use with spotligh -- but ALSO for mail.app as they use the same underlying technology.

   I tried this and re-indexing of my 400GB HD (with confirmed search within M$ Office documents!) took all night (good thing I did this before bed and never turn off my computer M-F).

   When I awoke the "entire message" search did, indeed work again.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 5, 2006 | Comments (2)

iMic = YES

Now I am no audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. My only claim to aduio expertise is that I've owned a lot of audio equipment, which I have sold and consolidated into a single PowerMac with iTunes and output to a pair of analog harman/kardon soundsticks w/jellyfish subwoofer. (Yes, I actually sold my entire CD collection in 2004 after scanning the cover art and ripping all the music at high quality to liberate my bookshelves and have a larger "randomizeable" playlist)

I listen to music from my collection, streamed from neighbors apartments, and from internet radio. Music is playing from every conceivable genre about 10 hours a day from my home office.

Until recently I thought the setup sounded pretty good to my ears. This is until I talked myself into buying Griffin's iMic. Immediately after plugging it in and resuming the song I was playing I finally understood what people mean when they talk about a "sound stage" as I had just gotten one free with my purchase.

At the same volume settings the playback was louder, and there was much better separation between the highs and the lows. There was more full bass, filling the room instead of feeling like a directional speaker. There were also frequencies I seemed to be hearing that I wasn't before -- kind of like there were gaps in the spectrum that were now filled in. In short, my music came alive.

For some it will seem a little pricey for a device that let's you do the same thing you've already been doing (sound in/out) but it is true that it's a lot cheaper then almost any other audio device that does the same thing and I'm sure you'll notice the difference.

TECHNICAL NOTE: On a generously equipped and recently patched PowerMac G4 QuickSilver there are very real performance issues using the iMic with the internal (USB 1) ports. Music playback is steady for just under a half minute before it "skips". I am not sure if this is a software issue or a bandwidth limitation of USB 1, but there are absolutely no problems using it with a USB2 PCI card.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 24, 2006 | Comments (0)

When Supply & Demand goes wonky

I recently found myself going through a long and tedious comparison of a few cell phones as it's almost time to upgrade to one that is more appropriate for a tech person on the go. This morning I saw this post in the New York craigslist that I had to reprint here because it's true, a few of these smartphones are still miles ahead of anything else on the shelf, and are desireable enough to be messing with how the marketplace works:

Why are so many people trying to sell USED Treo 650 's at RETAIL PRICE
Date: 2006-03-23, 4:04AM EST

a used Treo 650 costs $275-300. if you look around enough you can find one for $225-$250. People are crazy. The value of things goes down after you use them. Its called "depreciation". Treo 650's are not fine wines, rare jewels, or collectors items. As a customer you need to demand a fair price. Don't offer more than $300 for a treo, wait a week and save yourself $100. or buy one new for $400

Another post in the search results for "Treo 650":

Will trade magic beans for your Brand New Treo 650
Date: 2006-03-21, 6:28PM EST

lets get real people

It goes to show irrational exuberence can flare up anywhere in the tech world. This should be a clear message to phone makers: stop with the baby step crap and produce a decent phone that does what people want at a decent price.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 23, 2006 | Comments (0)

Cell Phones: The Long Constant March

March 15, 2006 (You have to date entries like this so you can get the historical context weeks later when they are obsolete): Why do we buy so damned many cell phones?

It used to be that when you needed a phone you saved up for it, went to your local hardware/department store and brought home a 10lb brick of a phone and it lasted forever. Really, we all know someone, either an older relative or a thrift-store surfer who has the old rotary phone, or the first-gen button phone in their home, that still works -- bell ringer and all.

I bought my first cell phone somewhere in the vecinity of 1997. It lasted me two years then there was a fancy new james-bond like flip phone that I just had to have. Did it have any tangible improvements? Well, it was a little smaller, and the screen wouldn't scratch when closed and that was good enough for me. I forget how much I plunked down for it, but the way cell phone companies work, you pretty much double the advertised price of any phone (even if on sale and even with the signed service agreement) -- there are a lot of service and activation charges, taxes, blah blah blah.

This phone lasted three years, which was the longest I've owned any single cell phone to date. It survived through four batteries and two antennas (they used to be extendible and very delicate when unsheathed). The reason for the upgrade? Well, everyone was starting to do this "text messaging" system and it seemed very useful. I also *really* liked the idea of bluetooth syncing of my address book with my computer. So the deal was made and my new phone was plugged into the network.

Though I wasn't shopping for a phone with a camera, mine came with one. The quality is so bad that it is actually hilarious, and the blues are always off. I've affectionately referred to it as my "digital lomo". So the phone is great, I can make calls with it, text, bluetooth sync my calendar and contacts... but of course the internal memory was rather small so not all of my contacts will fit in it. I'd also now like to play music files on it as many phones on the market can today...

You can see where this is going.

The march of the cellphones (and digital convergence) is not a conspiracy, WE are the ones paying for their R&D by continuing to upgrade our phones every year or two -- sometimes at a ridiculous cost.

If you want phone the you've always imagined (and with each new feature you get the next one becomes easier and easier to imagine, doesn't it?) then all you have to do is buy the one that's close to feed the machine and it will spit out your dream in 6-12months, by which time you'll want even more.

At some point there is the potential for phone sales to stall while manufacturers toe the chasm between "convergence phone" on one side (adding all the features that are easy, one at a time to keep sales high) and actual computer phones on the other.

Both sides will represent different kinds of people and likely the "phone" side will stagnate and become the side that gives you "free" phones when you sign up for plans; already there is a group of die-hard cell phone users that only want their phone to be... a phone.

The other group wants to push phones as far as they can go -- but would they stop at live 3D holograms of the people they are talking to? That is yet to be seen, but there's no reason to think that this side of the chasm will want to sit for long when there are so many new and amazing things you'll be able to do with these portable supercomputers.

The long and the short of it is that for the time being cell phone manufacturers and distributors are completely addicted to this extra revenue stream of phone sales and it's not likely that they'll quiet down about the newest phone and flog you with advertisements and promotions to lure you into buying.

Before we get to excited and look at our existing phone as "obsolete" and not worthy of keeping, let's consider what modern cell phones can actually do, and what features they have that people actually use:

Today's cell phone can:

• Place and receive phone calls from almost anywhere
• Send and receive text messages (useful if you need to contact someone while they're in a meeting and can't have their ringer on)
• Use GPS to find you if you call 911
• Let you talk using a wireless headset for freedom of movement
• Browse the web
  

Today's cell phones have replaced these items that would otherwise be on your desk:

• Digital Camera
• Rolodex
• Phone book
• Calculator
• Mp3 player
• Stopwatch
• Timer
• Alarm clock
• Big, clunky desk phone (many cell phones have speaker phone
• Watch (cell phones sync with network time and daylight savings
• Note pad and pen
• Long distance calling cards (long distance is included with calling plans
• Camcorder (for short 30-second recordings)
• Calendar
• Wires and cables (bluetooth to transfer files, though still USB to charge some phones)

Tomorrow's cell phones will replace:

• Computers (you'll be able to "dock" them into KVM)
• DVD players
• Game consoles (you'll emulate or play native when phones run Linux/WinX/MacOSX)
• GPS Devices (get realtime maps)

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 16, 2006 | Comments (0)

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