Technology — No comments
27
Jan 10

The iPad as a digital portfolio

While everyone is busy coming up with reasons why the iPad is destined for failure, I’m proposing a valid use for it that I don’t think anyone at the Stevenote mentioned: a digital portfolio for designers.

My girlfriend is now close to finishing up a degree in interior design. Compounded with the stress of finding a job in this shitty economy, she’s faced with the daunting task of assembling a portfolio. Typically this involves stuffing printed samples of your work (that you spent $40 at Kinko’s printing the night before) into clear plastic cover sheets, which you then place into a small, faux-leather attache case. The iPad may not be very good at anything else but I could see it being an amazing showpiece in an interview. Gracefully moving from page to page with a swipe of your finger as you explain why you’re the best man for the job seems much more like the future than reading ebooks on your couch.

Technology — No comments
31
Dec 09

Contact photos in your phone address book

I used to think that including photos (or, worse yet, silly icons) of people in your contacts was gimmicky and nearly useless. When you go to search for someone, you’re looking for a name, right? And it’s not like you’re going to ever be scrolling through pictures of people whose name you forgot (I mean if you know someone well enough to have a freaking picture of them, you probably know their name).

Well, that was all until I graduated to the world of smart phones. In the fourteen wonderful months since I’ve been using my G1, I’ve sent about five text messages — that I can recall — to the wrong person and have changed my tune. I’ve been used to the dumb phone texting methodology of addressing the message after you compose it. If there was a big picture of my girlfriend at the top of the screen, the likelihood of me telling her about the hot-ass chick in line at ROM would be reduced by an order of magnitude.

Technology — 30 comments
29
Dec 09

Overused tech buzzword: Freedom

Since we’re all in the business of top-ten lists and year-end bests right now, I’d like to nominate the word “freedom” for the most overused technology advertising buzzword. While waiting on a subway platform after work today, I saw an ad that read: “Next stop: Wireless Freedom”.

If this were an ad for a flying car with satellite internet access and an onboard nuclear generator, it might have some validity. Instead, it was promoting Intel’s new Wimax/4G chipset that’s starting to find its way into notebooks.

Can someone explain exactly what we’re being freed from? Would someone be significantly freer than they might have been with a 3G wireless connection? Just curious.

Technology — 2 comments
17
Nov 09

Seniors needed for malware research

I’m beginning to think that malware could be eradicated with the help of our elders. A number of my more senior relatives and family friends have some recurring issues that baffle me. Despite loading their PCs with antivirus, anti-spyware and all manner of protective software, they KEEP FUCKING GETTING infected. They’re not using MySpace, they’re not trying to download Soulseek, and they’re not even using using IE (thanks to my intervention). Something doesn’t add up.

My proposal is that a company like, say, Trend Micro, invests a few million into R&D by donating computers to some retirement homes. In return for the goods, Trend tracks their browsing habits. I’m thinking it’ll take about two hours before they have the whole problem solved. Couple’a engineer dudes’ll be sitting in a lab, lookin’ at some data, and collectively “Oooohhhhh… So that’s what they’re clicking on.”

And malware will be over. Done. Probably.

Technology — 136 comments
06
Nov 09

The debate over multi-touch on Android

There’s an interesting debate going on right now over multi-touch, its merits, its curiously lacking implementation in Android 2.0, and whether or not Apple owns the patents for it.

On one side are iPhone supporters, declaring it a must-have and effectively illegitimizing any smart phone OS that doesn’t have it. You’ve got John Gruber, declaring with even more smugness than usual for him, that he “can’t imagine using a handheld device without it”. On the other side are Android apologists, mostly lurking as commenters, going so far as to say that only lazy people need multi-touch (of course I can’t find it now but I swear to god that a commenter on Engadget or Gizmodo said that multi-touch was for people too lazy to use other zoom controls). And somewhere in the middle are the countless bloggers content to simply note its absence on the Motorola Droid.

Here’s my take: First, unless it truly is a patent issue, there’s no excuse for Google to not include it in every aspect of the Android operating system. For you poor souls who sheepishly accept virtual keyboards as an acceptable alternative to their physical counterparts, you’re pretty much fucked without it. A non-multi-touch virtual keyboard is practically useless. I use Android and its web browser every day. On a much less frequent basis, I sometimes browse through photos on my G1. Again, way less often. Nonetheless, pinch-to-zoom would be nice when I’m trying to see the numbers on the tag of the shoes I snapped a picture of  last time I was shopping in Toronto. But when I’m using the browser, pages load exactly how I would want them to, text is nicely formatted into readable columns, and vertical scrolling is almost all I need to do. Zooming in and out is fun but, at this point, not essential or even terribly useful for my web browsing experience.

What makes the G1 web browsing experience complete though — and some of you are going to laugh at this one — is the trackball. Yes, the trackball that so many people seem to think is useless. It’s the key to obviating the need for multi-touch zoom controls. When you load a page that isn’t optimized for a mobile browser, you’re presented with menus and navigation buttons separated by just a few tiny pixels. For all but the tiniest human digits, pressing accurately in this situation is nearly impossible. If you’re an iPhone user, you solve this problem by zooming in until the buttons are big enough to manage, pressing the one you want, and then zooming back out. On a G1, you simply roll the trackball over the button you want and click. You don’t lose the context of where you were on the page and you don’t have to muck around with multiple fingers. If you’re holding the phone vertically with one hand and clutching the pole in a subway car with your other, it’s a much more efficient process. Have you ever watched somebody try to make multi-touch gestures on an iPhone with one hand? It’s fun to watch.

Even if Google decides to fully implement multi-touch gestures across the board in Android (which they should), I will still argue that the trackball is a fucking god-send for any browser. Maps… well that’s a whole other story.

Technology — 31 comments
05
Nov 09

T-Mobile cell towers in CTA subway tunnels

Every weekday morning, I take the Blue Line through it’s most congested run, the stops just before Clark & Lake on the O’Hare branch. Just after leaving hipster central (Wicker Park), the train goes underground, leaving us GSM folks in radio silence. As if there weren’t enough irony in this neighborhood already, a class divide typically emerges on this train when the Haves and their iPhones and Blackberrys are suddenly silenced by the Havenots and their flimsy, bargain handsets. This is because for years now, customers of US Cellular have enjoyed uninterrupted cell service in Chicago’s subway tunnels, thanks to a wise infrastructure investment. It has become less apparent in the last year or so as other carriers have either made roaming agreements or added towers of their own. Unfortunately, T-Mobile chose to do neither.

…Until now. Something apparently changed though because just in the last week, I’ve started noticing T-Mobile coverage in places where there most definitely was none before. I need to do more testing but I can say for sure that most of the Blue Line’s underground route in the loop is now covered. As you descend stairs or tracks, T-Mobile’s otherwise sturdy 3G signal fades to zero (as it always has) but then suddenly EDGE snaps into action. Unfortunately 2G is all we’re getting at the moment. In my limited trials, data throughput has been in the 15 – 40kbps range, just enough to make Twidroid usable but not quite enough juice to surf the web. Voice and text messaging seem fine so far.

Aside from a few dead zones, signal strength is pretty solid (-101 to about -64 dBm). And again, there was NONE whatsoever before, indicating an obviously dedicated effort to make up for this shortcoming. I’ll post more updates as I have them.

Technology — 32 comments
04
Nov 09

Sprint WiMax in Chicago so far a no-go

Sprint SmartView

Today was supposed to be a big day for me and the five or six other nerds in Chicago who’ve been waiting for WiMax to drop. According to press releases and the internet at large, Sprint was supposed to finally flip the switch on their 4G network.

About six months ago, I bought a Sprint U300 USB modem. I was content with EV-DO but knew that WiMax would come to the Windy City soon. Up until today, every time I plugged it in and launched the connection manager app, it would say cute little things like “Turning on WiMax radio” and “Ready to connect to 4G”. You could even watch the signal strength fluctuate a little if you didn’t try to connect. Once you did actually attempt to connect though, it would fail, presumably locked out by a simple account restriction, and Rev A would kick in. I assumed that things would go a little bit differently today.

Well that didn’t happen. Now I can’t decide which I’m more pissed about, the fact that it doesn’t work or the astoundingly bad customer service I got when I tried call to see what was up. The first rep I talked to had absolutely no idea what WiMax was, let alone that the company he worked for offered it, and the “advanced tech support” rep I was transferred to didn’t either. WiMax, 4G, rollout in Chicago… nothing. I was speaking a language they clearly didn’t understand. At one point, after determining that I was using a laptop running Windows XP, I was asked if I had “3-pack”. Turns out she was talking about XP Service Pack 3. Even after the “Oh, you mean Service Pack 3? Yes, I’m running Windows XP with Service Pack 3″ clarification, she continued to call it 3-pack. So I gave up.

An hour later, I tried again and actually got someone who seemed to be roughly familiar with the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground. Tragically though, I was transferred to a fucking SPRINT SUBSCRIBER instead of the next level of tech support. No joke, I get a guys who’s like “Hello?” and I’m like “Hello? Is this Sprint customer service?” and he’s like “No, I have Sprint… but uh…”

When I was just about ready to really give up, I tried calling two retail stores in the city. I figured they would at least know that this monumental event took place in Chicago and would likely have heard, maybe second hand, from someone who had maybe successfully connected to this mysterious network today. But no, they hadn’t. One employee told me they didn’t sell “those types of products” and the next said they sold out of all their 4G modems today. And apparently no one tried it out! Astounding!

As I write, I’ve tried updating the SmartView application, updating the connection profile (whatever the fuck that is) and have changed every setting at least twice. I’ve attempted connecting from downtown and my apartment in Humboldt Park and, still, nothing.

Has anyone in Chicago had a different experience?

Update: After a software update, patching, cetificate downloads, and two more customer service reps, my U300 still refuses to do business in 4G Land.

Update #2: The consensus from a seemingly knowledgeable rep is that my device was never “properly registered with the network”. It’s a network issue, not a device issue, or so they say. I have a ticket open with an expected resolution time of 36 hours.

Even if this little snafu hadn’t happened, it should be noted that the latest version of SmartView and the Certificate Update Tool both need to be downloaded, available here:

http://www.nextel.com/en/software_downloads/mobile_broadband/sprint_u300.shtml

The SmartView app has “check for updates” option which failed to recognize that it was out of date.

Technology — 2 comments
03
Nov 09

Facebook Peek? I don’t think so

Facebook PeekWhen you’re a technology icon, founder of one of the most popular blogs on all of the internet, and have a Twitter following over the 10K mark, you kinda have to watch what you say. Even when it’s just Twitter.

This morning, Peter Rojas declared that a mobile device capable of nothing but running a Facebook application might do “okay”.

“I could see a dedicated Facebook device doing ok — or at least better than one solely for using Twitter: http://bit.ly/22jzGa”

While I don’t mean to bash a man whose opinions I respect, really Peter? A thing the size of a Blacbkerry/iPhone to carry around, along with your Blackberry/iPhone, just because your Blackberry/iPhone isn’t good enough at Facebooking? Maybe if it came with a coupon for a free pair of specially-designed pants with extra pockets for your Facebook Peek. And your Kindle. And your dedicated GPS.

I get it; he’s not advocating for such a thing, he was just pointing out that a dedicated Twitter device seems pretty silly (So does a dedicated Facebook device if you ask me. But nobody asked me). But as long as the big-name bloggers can make a living tearing apart verbal slipups by major industry executives, I can (attempt to) make a living by returning the favor.

Music — 1 comment
02
Nov 09

Sleigh Bells “Crown On The Ground”

Sleigh BellsAs a DJ, I categorize music very pragmatically. My collection is sorted first by genre: dance, danceable rock, and then everything else. Beyond that, I have lists for very specific uses. This one is going into the “Tracks to hype up a crowd after a lame opening DJ”. This song is just itching to get scratched over and have a big beat dropped on it about 30 seconds in.

Technology — 2 comments
30
Oct 09

No Bloatware in HP business class

A few too many

A few too many

As Adam Frucci points out on Gizmodo, by adding a bunch of shit programs you don’t need, major PC manufacturers intentionally slow down the brand new computer they want to sell you.

Why would they do this? If you’re too lazy to read Adam’s and Rosa’s takes on the subject, the answer is simple: money. Small potatoes software companies pay the big guys (HP, Sony, Dell, et. al.) to pre-infect your computer with demo versions of this bacteria in the hopes that you’ll buy the full version. Unfortunately, just like SPAM, it only takes a few idiots to whip out their credit cards to make this a profitable practice for all involved.

The part that doesn’t make sense, though, is the manufacturer-branded stuff. I get it that there’s money to be made in subscriptions and full versions but what about the apps that manufacturers paid developers to throw in for free? In my personal experience, Sony and Toshiba have historically been the worst by a huge margin. From overbearing WiFi managers to “acoustical drive silencers” (huh?), they have an application for everything you don’t need to do. Right out of the box, there are more system tray icons than you can shake a registry optimizer at.

Luckily, someone at HP got the memo that medium to large businesses are, at the very least, going to uninstall anything that might prompt a user to download additional software if not re-image it altogether. As long ago as 2003, HP began shipping business-class desktops and laptops (DC and NC series) with little more than a base XP build. This was a boon to desktop engineers and IT departments that don’t have the resources to hire a desktop engineer.

I have little experience with Dell hardware but I have to assume they’ve followed suit. Sony doesn’t have the enterprise business that HP and Dell do so they have little incentive to make crap-free computers. Too bad.

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