Fun with Google Voice transcription part 3

I don’t know anyone named Salazar, Brock, or Ronnie. And I certainly don’t want to know what “soak up together with Brock” means.

Hey Brian, Salazar. You can give me a buzz back. I’m trying to soak up together with Brock at with Brian. So make sure that I think that he straight before we start point able to move in cable sending them on gimme a buzz back or give Ronnie a call back. Thanks Bye, okay but.

What iPad v2 needs to have

I managed to talk myself out of buying an iPad when it first came out. The Responsible Brian narrowly edged out the OMG Gimme Gimme Brian, but it fell just short of what I wanted for that price. If version 2 has the following, then, unless the world implodes, I will happily fork over my cash.

• Front-facing camera. This is a must. Video conferencing is business critical in this household, with me a “remote knowledge worker” and the grandparents all in other states. A rear-facing camera would be really nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
• Retina display. I was suitably happy with the display on my iPhone 3… until the 4 game into my life. Now, looking at non-Retina devices, including the iPad, makes me feel like I’m playing Mask of the Sun in the year 1985. Don’t get me wrong, videos look tremendous on the iPad, but a lot of what I do is text-based blogging and email.
• Multitasking. I know this is coming soon to the iPad, so I’m not worried about it. But if I’m going to use it for light business, I need to be able to have Skype up all the time and still get other work done.
• User profiles. This too isn’t a must, but it would go a long way towards making it a family device. Ideally I would have a profile that has my icons, email accounts, and other preferences configured the way I want them, and my wife would have her own profile with all of her stuff.

That’s it! Not too bad, right? At this point I fully expect iPad v2 to have at least the front-facing camera and FaceTime, given that it’s already available in a much smaller form factor device. There may be formidable technical challenges to scaling up the Retina display in the near future. Multitasking will be available on iPad v1. User profiles don’t have enough of a WOW! factor so I give this a 20% chance. Hmmm, in retrospect, I guess I just need a front-facing camera to justify it.

Hop to it, Apple!

Are you using an ISP email address?

Are you using an @comcast.net email address? What about @(city).rr.com? @verizon.net? @cablevision.net? Or some other email address tied to your ISP?

Have you thought about the long-term considerations of doing so? When you use an ISP email account, you are now bonded to that service provider. Now, if something else comes along that’s newer/cheaper/faster comes along, what do you do? You have to either stay with your old provider in order to keep the email address, or forfeit it and potentially abandon a key way for people to reach you.

By using an ISP email account, you also run the risk the company can either go out of business or suffer a name change that will eventually make your email address seem antiquated. Think @earthlink.net, @mindspring.com, @prodigy.net, @compuserve.com, etc.

What can you do instead? A step up from an ISP email account would be one of the major free email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail. These accounts aren’t tied to a particular provider, so you remove that dependency. But, I’m still a bit leery of doing business with someone that’s conducting all of their affairs through sirdrinksalot42@yahoo.com or brian213@aol.com. These accounts are easy to get… which is both good and bad.

I recommend that people register a domain name and use a service such as Google Apps in order to have a completely portable name. With about 15 minutes of knowledgeable help, you can have your own domain name registered AND a free email account with Google that includes that domain name. I registered bbhart.com years ago for myself for this purpose and haven’t looked back since. Since then I’ve moved three times in two different states without ever losing touch with anyone.

iPhone 4 goes swimming

I placed the magazines on the chair, the phone on the magazines, and then got into the pool. I grabbed the magazines to give them a read and PLOOP goes the month-old iPhone 4 into the pool, making a beeline towards the bottom. I frantically swipe at it to get it out as soon as possible; it’s probably in there for no more than 4 seconds or so.

The phone takes this opportunity to turn itself on (!!!) and start complaining about incompatible accessories. Try to turn it off, it turns itself back on. There’s no yanking out the battery. All one can do is shake the water out of it, use a hair dryer to blow it with cold air, and wait.

It’s been about 20 hours now and the phone seems to be behaving after some TLC. It drained the battery on its own, probably because of the constant rebooting. I gave it a charge this morning and it was able to turn on and pull my mail, but wasn’t running any apps… so when I went into Facebook, for example, the screen would blink and then drop back to the home page. I uninstalled and reinstalled all the apps and now everything appears to be back to normal. I’m leaving it off most of the day for some additional drying time.

I’m so absurdly careful with the phone that it’s almost comical that this happened. It’s as if the amount of care you exercise is directly proportional to the probability of something catastrophic happening, instead of being indirectly proportional.

iPhone 4 first impressions

In the true fashion of under-promise/over-deliver, my iPhone 4 arrived via FedEx a day before the official delivery date. Activation, via the AT&T site, was a snap. I’ve been using the phone now for less than 24 hours but here are my first impressions:

• FAST! I knew my iPhone 3G was slow, but I didn’t realize it was that slow. On the old phone, I’d pull up the iPod application and it could take as long as 20 seconds or so before it painted the first screen. The Flickr app was so slow as to be unusable except for days where I was feeling extra patient. Checking in to Foursquare was a chore. All of those worries are gone. The OS flips between applications without blinking or breaking a sweat. I feel productive again!
• PRETTY! The screen is gorgeous. There’s no other way to put it. You need to see it in person to understand. Text is crystal clear; you have to get really close to it to see any jaggedness. There have been some reports of yellow bands and spots on the new screens, but fortunately none for me.
• I am a little concerned about signal strength, as it seems like I’ve dropped one bar compared to the previous phone. Since I still have that phone I’ll have to do some side-by-side comparisons.
• The shape will take some getting used to. With the old phone, I kept it in my pocket all the time, and got used to determining the orientation of the phone by feeling for the smooth, curved back. With the new phone’s back being rounded off, it constantly feels like the phone is flipped around in my pocket so the screen is facing out. Just something I need to get used to, is all.

Otherwise, there’s not too much else to report that isn’t covered ad nauseum on tech sites and such.

Apple iPhone 4 ordered

I managed to place my order for the new iPhone 4 this morning around 7:30am.

The ordering experience was… mostly what I expected. I tried the AT&T site first, since I felt that would take me along the cleanest path for making sure everything with my accounts was linked up correctly. No problems logging in, no problems selecting the iPhone 4, no problems confirming my upgrade eligibility. Looking good. Until I landed on the check-out page. The Contact Information form had my current address correct, except my zip code was from Pennsylvania… and it wasn’t changeable. Further, even though there was a Ship To form that allowed me to type my current address (including zip), I hesitated, as they went out of their way to state that if your contact information didn’t match exactly the order would probably be delayed. Hmmm. Let’s try the Apple site instead.

The Apple web site was even worse. It would perform really well in fits & spurts, but every attempt ultimately took me to Apple’s version of the Twitter fail whale: a Post-it note saying the online store is closed followed by phone numbers for a bunch of countries. I didn’t take a screen cap… I was tired of looking at it. Hmmm. Ok, let’s try AT&T again… but first, I’ll call to see if they can fix the zip code problem.

So I navigate the phone tree for AT&T, reaching an operator after 10 minutes (which wasn’t so bad, IMO). I explain the situation. Our conversation is roughly like this:

Me: When I’m looking at the upgrade options, it says that I’m in Downingtown, PA. When I go to check out, it still has my old zip code. Can you look at my account?
Rep: I’m looking here and your account looks correct.
Me: Is there any other place on my account it could have the wrong zip code or location?
Rep: <authoritatively> It still has your primary location as Pennsylvania, but the web site doesn’t use that information. At all. It’s internal only.
Me: I see. But can you change it anyway? Because the web site still thinks I’m in Pennsylvania.
Rep: I don’t see how that can be the case, but I’ll change it for you. There. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: Nope, bye.

Not surprisingly, as soon as I get back on the web site, it shows me in Kissimmee, with the correct zip code, and all is good. Not sure why the agent was so adamant that it wouldn’t make a difference (she was quite confident that it wasn’t used by the site), but I’m glad it worked.

I’m also glad I did all of this at 7:30am, before a lot more people woke up.

So now, we wait.

Apple iPhone 4

Enough has been posted out there that I don’t need to post all the facts and figures about the new iPhone 4. I did follow along courtesy of the Apple Blog, who did a terrific job of relaying the action compared to my experiences with other sites for past announcements.

Somewhat unfortunately, the media has decided to focus on a technical glitch Steve Jobs had towards the end of his demo, where he was unable to demonstrate some features because of too many wifi networks in the room. It’s an interesting technical challenge, though one without a great solution. You’d have to figure that if they had a pool camera and audio, however, they wouldn’t have 500 different people all trying to upload the same picture of Steve Jobs in front of a giant screen at the same time using limited spectrum.

Digression: I wonder if any of the people sitting in that room of 500+ wifi networks then go home and complain that so-and-so cell provider is trying to build a tower a mile from their house and “oh, NIMBY! The radiation! Think of the children!!1!!!”.

Anyway, despite everything, I put myself on the list to get one as soon as they come out. Call me names if you want — Apple fanboy, open source traitor, enemy of free (as in speech) software — but I just want something that works. And, for me, the iPhone fits the bill.