01.23.08
Posted in Distractions, Reviews, Tech at 6:21 pm by Sulla
I don’t think I’m the cell phone industry’s favorite client. I tend to hold onto my phones for years, until they’re so old the tech guys ask to have them carbon dated.
I’d bought my last new phone a couple years ago, on my first (and only) Black Friday shopping experience. I was long past my two year contract, and my phone – a workhorse Sanyo – was finally too abused to trust as a traveling phone. I gave into the hype, braved the round-the-block crowds, and picked up a Samsung “home entertainment center” phone that did all sorts of things the Sanyo had not, including an accelerometer-enabled “beat box” (shake it and you’d get the wooga-wooga scratch-scratch that is all the rage with the kids these days). First time I broke out the beat box, my brother said, “you remember that time, just before you started doing that? Good times…”
It was my first foray into the concept of phone-as-fun. It had faster Internet, streaming video, better graphics, a camera/camcorder with optical zoom, a downloadable music store and stereo playback, an alarm scheduler that worked better for me than any Franklin Planner…it actually had some coolness to it. And no extensible antenna.
It held up pretty darn well. Not even the iPhone tempted me away. But time passes, and eventually the contract expired and I was free to consider other phones. My wife’s phone, a bottom-feeder LG-225, had been replaced no fewer than four times; my phone had been through the wringer with little more than a slightly cracked screen.
We’ve been discussing our options for months. Smart phone? Media phone? Sprint? Helio? Verizon? iPhone? We trolled the phone stores at every opportunity, giving the phones a test drive. I tried an LG Musiq for a few weeks; well regarded by Consumer Reports, it had some nice features, including real-time traffic and navigation in a package thinner and blacker and cooler than any phone I’d ever tried. When you touched the outside controls, they buzzed. Ooh.
But in the end, I went with a sort of convergence device. I own a Palm T|X PDA, and my best chance to lighten my pockets was to pick something that could run those Palm apps I’d come to rely on.
We ended up going with a pair of the Palm Centro – black for me, pink (champagne blush) for her. It’s a smaller cousin to the Palm Treo 755p, with really tiny keys – but it’s surprisingly easy to type on. Its Internet is fast enough; Google Maps looks terrific on it; I can finally maintain my calendar on my phone through Outlook; it’s got SuDoku; and because my wife and I have matching phones, we can synchronize our calendars with little effort. I can run my favorite apps, including Documents to Go for creating Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
The phone isn’t perfect. The screen, while larger than my other phones, is much smaller than the Palm T|X. The keyboard takes some getting used to. For some reason, incoming calls still read “Unknown caller” even after I’ve added it to my contacts list with a name. I’m not a big fan of the Palm Hotsync method, which takes longer than Windows Mobile’s activesync. I can crash the thing at will, but cannot will it to NOT crash, which happens far too often. And uninstalling apps can be a nightmare.
But all things considered it’s been a good choice, and I think I can live with it for at least two years.
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10.05.07
Posted in Entertainment, Rants, Tech at 4:01 pm by Sulla
As a follow up to my last post, the jury took mere hours to return a verdict of willful copyright violation against the Minnesota mom over a handful of 80s music.
It’s the first suit filed by the RIAA that made it to a jury trial, and the RIAA won it…after a fashion. They had sought up to $150,000 per song, but were awarded a total of $222,000 (about $9000 per song). Still, for the defendant: Ouch. “This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” said Richard Gabriel, an RIAA attorney quoted by Wired magazine in the article link.
Let that sink in. If the RIAA comes after you, they want your money, and they’re willing to squeeze it out of you – hopefully before you start to think about fighting back.
Stomping individuals with both feet over file sharing isn’t going to win this war. The economies of scale just aren’t there. How many individuals HAVE a quarter of a million dollars for the RIAA to go after? How many teenagers – the most prolific file-sharing demographic – have even $1,000? This approach is as likely to stop piracy as the highway patrol is to stop speeding.
The only way to change the culture of file sharing is via a mix of education – the piracy equivalent of marching Junior to the corner store to apologize for stealing the candy bar – and more innovation in content delivery. When you can buy a song for under a buck, that’s essentially a candy bar. LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME. A little humiliation goes a long way. If you throw Junior in county lockup over a packet of ill-gotten M&Ms, that’s a bit over the top. (If he ROBS the corner store, then we can talk about orange jumpsuits.)
Not everyone who has tried to sell music in the age of Bittorrent has succeeded, but some have. Apple has sold over a billion songs in just a few years, by making it ludicrously easy to buy. They continue to innovate, such as by partnering with Starbucks; if you hear a cool song while waiting for your latte, one virtual button on your iPhone buys it for you.
This is the difference between iTunes Music Store and the RIAA; the later cares about how much each song is worth to THEM, and tries to get that cost from individuals. Apple’s model focuses on what a song is worth to YOU. One treats you like a customer; the other, like a defendant. (Apple isn’t a corporate model in all ways, though, as their don’t-mess-with-OUR-iPhone brickapalooza this week shows.)
The RIAA should learn from SCO, which recently declared bankruptcy; you cannot sue your way to solvency. Their victory this week is Pyrrhic at best.
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09.26.07
Posted in Distractions, Reviews, Tech at 7:57 pm by Sulla
My wife recently enrolled in an Italian class, in part to underscore her intent to vacation in Tuscany. (mmmmm, Italian cuisine….) She picks up languages quickly, having dabbled in several (Irish, Russian). She’s not wildly interested in Spanish, partly because of the efforts of so many in our area to force the language upon us.
Me, I don’t mind Spanish, though I’ve only danced around the edges of it. I’ve never taken a class, though I watch a ton of Super Sabado Gigante and El Gordo y la flaca…for the language training, of course. *ahem* I’ve looked at any number of offerings on Audible.com and elsewhere, but the more interesting courses are also the more expensive. I like Rosetta Stone in particular, but its price tag is close to tuition on one (or more) college courses. Some online sites offer some instruction for free, but their quality varies.
Enter LiveMocha, which was unveiled this week. For a detailed introduction to the site and its mission, see its blog, here.
LiveMocha reminds me most of Rosetta Stone, though this is not as immersive as Rosetta’s 3.0 offering (CD and online) that hears and grades your spoken language. Another limitation is that it tends to give you four static images at a time, so the process of elimination during the exercises is easier (Rosetta Stone mixes up the images and their locations for every question).
These two limitations aside, LiveMocha is a breeze to use. It offers the equivalent of 160 hours of instruction (in college terms, 101, 102, 201, and 202 courses) for languages they deem important in the 21st century, including Spanish, English, Hindi, and Mandarin – each of which has at least 1 billion speakers. Those are the four dominant languages in my workplace. French and German are also offered, for those who do a lot of business in the EU. As part of your profile you can specify which languages you (1) speak and are (2) learning, and those lists cover dozens of languages; this lets you search for and connect with people who can or want to converse in more than just the six languages offered. Even so, I hope they eventually increase the offered courses to languages such as Korean and Japanese, Latin and Italian.
The lessons do build on one another, using and extending vocabulary. I take notes in an open Notepad window as I go. I suppose you could cheat, but if the idea is to lear, why would you?
Each course consists of one or more units, which in turn is composed of one or more lessons. Each lesson has four sections: learning, where you’re given 40 words, phrases, and/or sentences.
The Live part of LiveMocha is its social networking, and this is where I see great potential in its “21st century, Web 2.0″ approach. You don’t just enroll in a language; you can’t help but see who ELSE is enrolled. You can see how well they’re doing in your course. If you’re competitive, the Leader Board keeps you motivated not just to finish the lessons, but to do as well as possible. (“What? He’s three points ahead of me? Gaaa! Wait until Unit 8, darn ya!”) When you’re feeling more cooperative, there are options for inviting and accepting Friends who are learning, teaching, or speaking any “common” language, for a natural stable of pen pals. This is particularly useful for languages like Mandarin and Hindi; for Spanish conversation, I can yell at my neighbor’s kids. (¿cómo se dice “hey you kids, get off our lawn”?)
The social networking could be a mixed bag. My first day I was inundated with mail from a “hey, sexy!” spambot, though to the site’s credit, that ended quickly and I haven’t been bugged since. I’ve accepted several friend requests from fellow travelers in Spanish 101, and from an instructor. I’m still at “¿Dondé está casa de Pepe?” stage and haven’t started chatting yet, but the site’s philosophy that language is meant to be USED is common sense, and conversing with folks at varying levels means you can butcher the lingo with fellow n00bs, get schooled by the l33t, and in turn shepherd the young minds filled with mush into the correct path of your native tongue.
The site recommends one lesson per week. Heh; Internet Time mocks such a glacial pace. I signed on 48 hours ago, and I’m 2/3 of the way through the first course. I don’t have all the content memorized, but it’s been sticking as I go along, and I’m feeling accomplished, as this song will attest:
All in all, I give LiveMocha three stars, and say Check it out.
(h/t to Hot Air for the video)
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09.17.07
Posted in Entertainment, Tech at 6:10 pm by Sulla
this will be short, I promise.
Went to Fry’s over the weekend. They didn’t have the iPod Touch, but they did have the new Classic, Nano and Shuffle on display.
We bought nothing, but we were both deeply impressed with the new Nano. Honey liked the green one, which was available to play with on one of the docking speakers.
It’s about 1/3 shorter than the 2nd generation device, 1/4 wider, and close in depth. It’s light as a feather, and the brushed metal looks great. the Lock switch is now – finally! – on the bottom, along with the docking connector and headphone jack. Aside from the front edges being almost sharp enough to draw blood – a little honing work and it could replace a ninja star – I liked the feel of it in my hand.
Software: the split screen looks nice, giving a preview of the song or video you’re scrolling past…but navigating with it is a bit sluggish compared to previous generations. The display unit didn’t have any songs with cover art, so I couldn’t test that, but it didn’t look like something I’d use in any case.
The big enhancement to the new Nano is the enlarged screen and support for video (movies, tv shows, music videos). the display unit had some music videos, so we checked them out.
It quickly drew a crowd of viewers; the video on that little puppy is gorgeous. I almost bought one on the spot, despite my vow not to. It was that good. My PDA has a larger screen, but the Nano display was easier on the eyes.
I must say, the Nano may well continue to be my iPod of choice, whatever the new Touch looks like.
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01.09.07
Posted in Navel Gazing, Tech at 11:29 pm by Sulla
I confess it – the iPhone impressed me, and is probably the first Macintosh I’ve seriously considered buying.
I don’t know if Steve Jobs will call the iPhone a “Mac”, though he did point out that the little wonder is running the actual Mac OS X, which enables many of its “WTF!” capabilities.
It’s an “iPod Nano on Steroids” with a larger screen than the 5G iPod and full video functionality, but it runs on 4Gb or 8Gb of flash memory.
It’s also a phone – available only through Cingular in June 2007 - but more along the lines of the Crackberry/Treo Mobile Communicator stripe, so it’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping, with push-mail (rather than log-in-and-see mail) and Internet functionality. The screen and the input methods are supposed to be “revolutionary” and patented out the wazoo – full, desktop-class web browser that you can actually read, a touch keyboard that you can actually use, a UI that auto-adjusts according to the task, like the LCARS system on Star Trek.
I’ve got decent gadgets now – a Palm T|X, a Samsung MM-A940, an iPod Nano 8Gb, and a drawer full of also-rans that I still use from time to time. Between them, most of my needs get met. I’ve long hoped for a single device that not only does everything, but does it all so well that the other devices I’ve gotten used to go into the drawer. I LOVE my Nano, but the phone and PDA will be replaced or handed down with little remorse when their clear superior comes along. if the iPhone is the Nano of phones/PDAs as well as of media, it could be a winner.
But even if it is, I won’t be an early adopter. Sprint owns my soul for another 18 months or so (curse you, 2 year contracts!) and 18 months is a long, long time in the gadget world. I can only imagine the tech-pr0n goodness with which July 2008 will tempt me.
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