Category: Technology

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I touched an iPhone

Prior to seeing the Simpsons and after a mind-blowing afternoon on the job (i.e. playing radio at a car dealership in Port Moody), we linked up with John Biehler for some pre-movie, post-BarCampVancouver festivities.

iPhone! John's session is up next
Photo credit: Miss604 on Flickr

John is one of the first folks in Canada to snag an iPhone, even though it is not officially available in this country yet. That’s not to say that you can’t use yours here if you are from the states, but no one is offering service here that allows you to activate it, yet alone use it on their network. The only reason I know that U.S. plans have working functions here is because I happened to be in the same room as the lead singer of the band Yellowcard a number of days ago, and he confirmed this to me when I noticed him fiddling with his own iPhone.

Asking him what he thought of it and using it, his repeated response was, “I just love it. Can’t say more than that.”

So having the chance to sit down with John Biehler the other evening, he put the power of grayskull in my hand. I know that sounds corny, if you get the reference at all, but this was a really unique experience that made you realize that you have a very powerful device in your hand.

John and John and the iPhone
Photo credit: Miss604 on Flickr

John has hacked the iPhone enough to get nearly all the features to work, minus the phone, at least while he is in Canada. Memory can’t recall if he activated the phone in the U.S., where he bought it, but the session that he led at BarCampVancouver earlier in the day was all about hacking into the iPhone for those of us north of the border.

Post BarCamp/Pre-Simpsons Movie beverage
Photo credit: retrocactus on Flickr

After about thirty minutes of seeing what I could do with it, minus the availability of wireless internet at the location we were at (which I can report that said location had a plentiful availability of Hoegaarden in glasses the size of my head), I was uber-impressed. Not only is it cool and/or slick, but it works. All the features make sense, applications work like I expect them to, and you quickly forget that you tapping a flat surface, opposed to the numerous buttons that exist on my Nokia 6682[wiki]. In other words, I adapted to it mind numbingly fast.

Do I have to rush out and get one right this second? No, I think I’ll be alright. I also wouldn’t be opposed to it, more so when it works in all its glory in Canada. John knows of ways to hack you way into doing this for those willing to put the work into it. I’m ok for now, but there was something incredibly cool about checking out pieces of The Matrix[imdb] on his iPhone while sitting in a pub. The resolution was astounding.

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F-117 stealth fighter to be retired

F-117 Stealth Fighter I posted this photo of the F-117 Nighthawk[wiki] that I took a picture of at the Abbotsford Airshow a week or so ago, and it prompted some questions about the description that I made about it. The plane is soon to be retired from service, blowing onto the scene in the first Gulf War. So many people simply refer to it as “the stealth fighter”, but the time has apparently come to replace it with something better.

Now, I’m not the most prolific, all-knowing individual about military aircraft, or much about things that fly in general, but what I do know is that the plane will be replaced by the F-22 Raptor[wiki], another jet fighter with stealth capability. Compared to the Nighthawk, this new aircraft follows the general principle of being bigger, faster, and stronger, among other things.

Even though I’ve been on the job like mad these past few weeks, it’s taken me to some pretty neat locations. Still, it’s tough to really enjoy events like this when you still have a job to do.

You can see more of my photos from the airshow on Flickr.

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Fob and what it stands for

One of those rare occasions where Rebecca and I get to walk into work together, I asked her what “F.O.B.” stands for this morning. This is in reference to those keyless entry things that are becoming the standard for getting into many secured buildings. You wave it in front of the pad, something beeps or the light goes green, and the door unlocks to let you in.

The one for our building is smaller than my thumb. It’s too small to act like a key chain ornament, but the one I had in my old apartment in the states was big enough to hurt small children. Actually, it was more of a credit card in size, but you get the picture.

Turns out, and thanks to Wikipedia, this isn’t an abbreviation. It’s the given name of the device.

A key fob is a decorative item many people often carry with their keys, on a ring or a chain, for ease of tactile identification, to provide a better grip, or to make a personal statement. Key fobs are often mistakenly called “key rings” or “key chains” in colloquial usage.

Fobs vary considerably in size, style and functionality. Most commonly they are simple discs of smooth metal or plastic, typically with a message or symbol such as that of a logo (as with conference tchotchke) or a sign of an important group affiliation. A fob may be symbolic or strictly aesthetic, but it can also be a small tool. Many fobs are small flashlights, compasses, calculators, penknives, store discount cards, bottle openers, or USB flash drives.

Electronic key fobs are used for remote keyless entry systems on motor vehicles. Early electric key fobs operated using infrared and required a clear line of sight to function. These could be copied using a programmable remote control. More recent models use challenge-response authentication over radio frequency, so these are harder to copy and do not need line of sight to operate. Programming these remotes sometimes require the automotive dealership to connect a diagnostic tool but many of them can be self-programmed by following a sequence of steps in the vehicle and usually requires at least 1 working key. [wiki]

So now I know, and in case you didn’t, you do now. For the longest time, I thought it stood for something but never took the effort to find out until now. Sadly, it’s not “frequency operated bobber” like Rebecca thought, but I think it should be from now on.

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But yes I love technology

As a complete experiment, I am typing this on a Nokia N800. The interface takes a little bit to get used to, but the screen quality is fascinating to look at. So far, I have been very impressed. This is really something that would take getting used to.

Using the handwriting option is very interesting. It takes a little to get used to. Not being a cursive writer since elementary makes it tough. I’m much more of a sMall uppercase writer. I will alSo stop cor.recting rrors to See now much Faster I Can Set t .his Finished.

The cool thing about the N800 is the auto complete of the text, no matter if you uSe the Keyboard or handwriting. CoMbining the two can be very effective. You just have to learn how.

Still, it took me way too long to post this.

Hey Nokia, send Me one oF these to Play with some more!

(Post edited to add links)

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Apple WWDC keynote was kind of… meh

I’m often a fan of the keynotes that Steve Jobs gives at either MacWorld Expo or the WWDC, and the one today has left me with a lot of mixed feelings. Either way, no matter what happens at these events, you expect something to wow you. Big or little, I usually feel like something cool just happened.

Today, I just didn’t get that feeling.

Ok, I am not forgetting that this is the “World Wide Developers Conference”, so these guys are concerned about hardware as much as they are the lines of code that they can manipulate and build cool software with, so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of product updates and launches.

Jobs, instead, gives us a demo of the really cool features that Apple is excited about and think will be uber sweet for us, the consumers, to get our hands on… again. I mean, there were a few, new neat things announced, but we saw this same keynote in January. Left me feeling a little let down, but there were some interesting things announced today that made me chime into the “cool” vibe that Steve was touting.

The next version of Mac OS X is $129 across the board, for all flavors. Boot Camp will be built-in, so you’ll be able to run XP and Vista out of the box. A new Finder, but that gives me reason to pause in that I’ll have to relearn a few things, no biggie. Anything that helps file management and work flow is a great concept to me.

They also announced a Windows version of Safari, and I am debating with myself as to how I feel about it. As cool as Safari looks, there are elements about it that I can’t handle when it comes to making it my default browser. Maybe version 3 will change my mind, but I’m still resisting the urge to download the beta for now. Bottom line, Safari beach-balls on me too often for me to go back to it, but my mind remains constantly open.

On top of that, Apple launched a redesign to their website. It has a heavy Web 2.0 look and feel to it now, complete with fun AJAX things here and there. Looks nice.

Other than that, not too much else sticks out to me. iPhone still sounds cool, I hope it works well when it’s released, and making software for it sounds pretty easy if you are skilled at making web applications in general. I think I’d be more excited about the outcome if this new OS was coming out next month and not October, but the waiting is half the fun. Kinda.

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Two screens are better than one

My dad had an epiphany while he was visiting us in Vancouver back in April. Instead of one really huge monitor, you can get a lot more out of having two. When I told him about having three, I think that kinda blew his mind.

Chris Pirillo, who apparently I am a lookalike of, posted about this today, so I sent it on to Dad. He replies, “I already have one.”

Dad’s Duel Monitor Setup

“There is no way I’ll go back to the single monitor on my work setup. It is too nice; too productive; too fun; and a new world all together.”

Designing electronics like he does, it makes a whole lot of sense, eh?

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Find the best FM freq for your iPod transmitter

MyBestFM Courtesy of PC World, I thought this was pretty cool. My Best FM is a website from Belkin that allows you to plug a location in and get the best, dead spot on your radio to tune your FM transmitter to. Handy if you have one of these things for your iPod or various portable MP3 players.

If you’re like me, then you own a FM transmitter that connects to your computer via USB and broadcasts nicely to a two hundred foot radius. Sadly, their database doesn’t cover Canada, and I’ve just been guessing that the freqs that my transmitter sits on is fairly empty. If not, oh well. I hope those poor suckers like what we crank out from here.

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It’s a Matt Mullenweg world

I caught this video interview that Matt Mullenweg[wiki], Mr. WordPress founder himself, did with CNet yesterday. It’s really worth watching because you get his insights as to this whole Web 2.0 revolution, of which some say is dead, and other interesting things that he’s been more or less involved with.

I especially like the part about how he developed spam filtering for WordPress because he didn’t want his mom, who suddenly decided that she wanted to start blogging one day, to get bombarded by spam. More so to the fact, Mullenweg didn’t want her getting blasted by the naughty and not so friendly stuff. Akisment was basically born out of that.

One thing that he mentioned was a tool that I was instantly interested in. Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that you can install to have your browser data mirrored between every computer that you need to have synced together. Being that an iMac has been a new addition to our home collection, I have to say that I see why he endorses it. I love being able to switch from my laptop without the headache of not having all the same bookmarks on both machines, and this is far less complicated than importing them between the two. It also works for cookies and all the rest of the data you need and want.

To round out the day, WordPress 2.2 was released last night, up from the most recent version of 2.1.3. There are some decent additions to this edition that makes me pretty interested to really try it out.

  • Atom feeds updated to Atom 1.0
  • Preliminary support for Atom Publishing Protocol
  • Widgets are now supported in core
  • Protection against activating broken plugins
  • “Deactivate All Plugins” button. Sadly, my “Reactivate All Plugins” patch didn’t make it into this release. Hopefully you’ll see it in WP 2.3.
  • Improvements to comment management
  • Code optimizations and speedups
  • Future WYSIWYG support for the Safari browser
  • Post Preview moved into a popup window, rather than an iframe on the Write page
  • WordPress-specific XML-RPC API
  • JQuery support

[gunters]

Dang that Mullenweg. The guy has been busy.

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Joost

Joost When I first heard about Joost, I thought not a lot of it. On demand video over IP. I love my TV in doses that I can control, but there really wasn’t much more that made me want to check it out. That changed this afternoon when I got myself an invite to try out the beta, so here’s my initial thoughts on it.

Addictive. Turning it off was, I admit, difficult to do. Anytime you can give me access to watch content from around the world, I’m curious. I don’t care what language it might be in, but that won’t stop me from checking it out. Even this beta version has a lot of content that I can see myself getting into, I’m more curious about other things that are slated to come on board, namely The Soccer Network. On top of that, get me on demand Cubs games and I’ll be uber hooked.

I only spent about twenty minutes watching the content that is currently available on Joost, and the quality wasn’t that bad at all. In fact, I found myself watching Fifth Gear[wiki] for a few of their clips. I’m not a car guy, but now I get why people are so hooked on this show. They do cool things about cars that I’ll never own or care about. Still, that shows the effectiveness of technology like this. I might actually stop and watch this on the “normal TV” if I stumble onto it.

I think it’s pretty cool. I’ve heard other people complain about it, but the guys behind Joost are working on making it better. At least I hope that’s the case.

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The costs of cellphones in Canada

This is a topic of conversations a lot, and just last night I was saying how I missed being on Verizon back in the states. Sure, it’s a CDMA[wiki] network, but living in Iowa, GSM[wiki] isn’t your best option unless you never travel outside of major population centers or venture away from the interstate highways that crisscross the state.

For me, it was that last point that made Verizon a good deal. The coverage reached where I needed it to, the cost of the package deals were friendly to my income, and the data plans of their “In” network were pretty sweet. There was never hesitation to chat for a long time with friends who were also on Verizon, plus I could send photos to the same people at no charge. They also had a super nice online presence that I could track my account on, all the way down to the last call I received being updated on their website within minutes.

Plans like that simply do not exist here, at least where all of this is included for just $60 a month. In fact, it still boggles my mind that you have to play extra for caller I.D. or voice mail. In fact, I think it’s rare to find the two packaged together. And data plans? It gets worse. Text messaging is just the start.

Below is a chart that Boris made regarding the cost of moving 1 GB of data through the various competitors in the country. This includes things like sending pictures, videos, emails, files, and and anything else you can zip through your wireless phone. Granted that all the data is valid, and I have a lot of faith in Boris that it is, the results are eye opening.

Canadian Mobile Data Rate Costs (1GB)
Photo credit: Boris on Flickr

I hate playing the grumpy American role, but the costs for using a cellphone in Canada should hardly be this expensive. I’ve heard someone tell me before that some of the highest costs in the world of owning and operating a cellphone exists in this country, and this certainly rings true now. I thought I was just being picky.