Useful piece of plastic

In the "gadgets that hold other gadgets" category, I just got a Matias MiniRizer, two interlocking pieces of plastic that form a stand for nearly any portable gadget. They store flat in the included case for easy travel, and slide back together at either a 40 or 50 degree angle to make viewing video a bit easier on iPods and the like.

iPhone 3G Day

So I did the geeky thing to do and got online at the Apple Store in Marlton, NJ this morning around 7AM. I was about the 80th person in line when I arrived. At 8AM, the first group of 20 or so people went in to cheers and applause, and the first person emerged with his new iPhone 18 minutes later. Unlike the launch of the original iPhone, AT&T requires that all iPhones be activated at time of purchase - in the store, not at home. Through the next hour, customers trickled out and the next buyers let in, until about 9:30 or so. AT&T's activation servers were down, and sales stopped for nearly an hour.

I have to give a lot of credit to the Apple store retail staff - they did a great job. Staffers were walking up and down the line, answering questions, chatting with customers, and passing out bottled water. When activations turned south, managers kept everyone informed about what was going on - and made a run to Dunkin Donuts to get a unbelievable huge quantity of munchkins to keep everyone (relatively) happy during the extended wait.

When it was finally my turn, a rep came to the door and walked me back to a workstation setup along the side of the store where the demo iMacs are. Another rep was a runner and got the hardware to us for activation.

After that, everything was done on the handheld devices they normally use for checkout at the Apple store. He checked ID, got my existing iPhone number, scanned the SIM serial number off the box, and I was pretty much done. The second part of activation was getting the iPhone to talk to iTunes, which he walked me to the genius bar to take care of. This part was still down at the time but could be done from home.

It took a few hours before I was able to sync my new phone due to the widely reported problems Apple had today, but by later in the afternoon all was well and it activated just fine.

The 3G is physically similar to original iPhone. The backside is now plastic, the edges are thinner, but overall the device is a bit thicker, though not by much. The differing dimensions prevent it from fitting into the dock supplied with the original iPhone, but it does fit into a universal dock without much of a problem. iPhone 3G should fit into most cases that are made of flexible material for original iPhone. One other nice improvement is the headphone jack is flush with the case, so an adapter is no longer required to connect headphones.

The two big hardware changes are obviously the 3G radio and GPS. GPS worked great with Google maps, and a few of the apps I tried (more on this in a moment) took advantage of the location awareness of the device as well. 3G is nice - where it works. AT&T's website was recently updated with 3G coverage maps, but in just a few hours of use traveling around there seem to be a lot of coverage gaps where the phone falls back to EDGE.

Many of the cool changes are in the new iPhone 2.0 software, and are available to users of both the original and 3G iPhone. iPhone now supports Apple's new MobileMe service, which is a replacement for .Mac, that among other features, allows full wireless real-time sync of mail, calendars, and contacts. It works very well, and Apple has a great AJAX web interface to work with your data as well at Me.com.

The big addition is the new App Store, which adds 3rd party applications to iPhone. At launch, about 500 apps are available, many for free. A few of my favorites thus far are below:

• Remote - Displays a similar interface to the iPod interface on the iPhone, except it connects via WiFi to iTunes or Apple TV, functioning as an interactive remote for whatever you connect it to. It works very well and feels a functional gap that has existed for some time
  
• AIM - AT&T is now charging extra for SMS text messaging, so hopefully I won't have to use it as much any more now that there is an AOL Instant Messenger Client for iPhone
  
• Evernote - see my post on Evernote, this just adds a great iPhone interface to your Evernote database
  
• Jott - no more phone calls to Jott! Just record into the app, Jott transcribes it, and it can then be used as a to-do or reminder
  

Overall I'm pretty happy with the upgrades. The activation delays were annoying, so hopefully Apple and AT&T can agree to go back to self-activation in the future. I happened to be by the Apple store again this evening around 8:30PM and there was still a line of 30 or 40 people queued up to purchase - so a speedier checkout could only help things.

Happy 4th of July

We shall call him "mobile me"

While there was lots of exciting news in today's Stevenote, the upgraded .Mac, now know as Mobile Me was demoed. .Mac has been long in the tooth for a while, and the upgrade addresses a lot of the shortcomings.

Over-the-air sync for email, contacts, and calendaring is now included - similar to Exchange ActiveSync or Blackberry Enterprise Server. If it works as advertised, this will certainly be the easiest way for consumers to keep data in sync across multiple devices. Mobile Me also has a great AJAX web interface - basically, web versions of Mail, iCal, and Address Book. For Windows users, Mobile Me can sync with Outlook. In other words, you don't need to dock your iPhone with iTunes to get updated calendar, contacts, and email.

It is still $99 a year. Since I already pay that for Mac-to-Mac sync with .Mac, it seems reasonable although it would be cool if this was included in the iPhone data plan similar to the way Blackberry service is sold. While iDisk is upgraded to 20GB in the new plan, I hope there is a new mobile way to access my files stored there - it wasn't clear if you could open documents from there on the iPhone. I'm looking forward to giving the new service a try in a few weeks.

The Netflix Player

I haven't really been able to take advantage of Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature since it came out since it requires Windows and anytime I've wanted to try it I've been using a Mac. I was excited by the announcement of the Netflix Player by Roku last week and managed to order one before they went out of stock. The player is a small box, around the size of a stack of 4 or 5 CD jewel cases, that streams movies from Netflix "watch instantly" selection - about 10,000 movies - and displays them on your TV instead of your PC. The box connects via wired or wireless Ethernet, and has a variety of output options - standard composite, component, HDMI, and optical digital audio.

Setup was very easy; after connecting to the TV, the on screen prompts make it easy to connect to the Internet. A short code is displayed on the screen, which is then entered (via computer) onto www.netflix.com/activate, and then the box is associated with your Netflix account.

You cannot browse the entire catalog from your TV screen; movies are selected from the Netflix website and added to your "instant queue", which you can then select from the menu on your TV. (this really does keep things pretty simple - the remote only has a few buttons and the on-screen menus are quick and easy to navigate)

Movies are of reasonable quality; HD is expected in the future. Its not quite DVD quality but good enough. I tried a few movies and they started playing within about 30 seconds; the device only streams video, there is no local storage. Fast forward and rewind worked pretty well, but there is a slight pause while the movie rebuffers after you select your new scene.

One of the best parts is the price. The box is $100, and there are no additional monthly service fees. As long as you had a Netflix plan that is more than $10/month, unlimited movie streaming is included for free. Most of the selection is not brand new, but there is a good mix of movies and even some TV shows available.

Evernote is back

I wrote about Evernote some time ago, and while I haven't used the tool in a while, they are back with a new version (beta 3.0)

Evernote is a note taking and capture application - by "capture", I mean you can pretty much dump any kind of data (handwritten, images, web, email, etc) into it, and it will track it for you like an electronic notebook.

The new beta is very impressive - it now finally runs on a Mac, but even better, can also run over the web - for full sized browsers as well as little ones like on the iPhone. All of your data syncs automatically - make a change on the Evernote client on one PC, and it shows up on the web, and the Evernote client on your Mac. It works great.

The beta is closed right now, but I have a few invites. Please feel free to drop me an email if you'd like one.

Access Everywhere

One of the nice things about EV-DO is that you can get semi-broadband speeds nearly anywhere and not have to shell out $10 a day at a hotel or airport for access to the Internet. It does, however, mean that one more thing has to be plugged into your laptop, and forget about using two devices at this same time.

I was looking for something a bit more flexible and recently got the CradlePoint PHS-300 Personal Hotspot. This is a portable, battery-powered, WiFi router that is slightly larger than a deck of cards. On one side of the device is a USB port to connect an EV-DO or HSDPA USB modem, a DC power port, and an on/off switch. There are also three indicator lights to show power status, Internet connectivity, and WiFi status. The included battery provides several hours of WiFi Internet access - almost anywhere. Download speeds are consistent with using the modem directly - I get about 800kbps on both Sprint and Verizon's EV-DO network through the router.

The router's software is also pretty powerful, supporting all of the common WiFi router functionality, including NAT and DHCP. The WiFi access point can be set to open, or use WEP or WPA encryption. A unique feature that the PHS-300 offers is web-based login: you can setup a network without encryption and the router will redirect anyone who connects to a login page, where they have to enter a password to continue to access the Internet. It will also do custom port mapping, traffic shaping, and Internet filtering if you so desire.

Its small enough to to fit - and stay - inside a PDA pocket in any laptop bag and can easily operate from inside. There is an active support community at EVDOForums for the device. CradlePoint also manufactures a smaller version, called the CTR-350 with many of the same features, but also will connect to the Internet via wired Ethernet, but does not have a battery. There also recently introduced the MBR1000 router, which is designed for home or small office use as a backup router to a main wired connection. The PHS-300, with battery, sells for $179.

My Flux Capacitor is Broken

I am no math expert, but I found this error from Time Machine to be rather interesting:



Thankfully, SuperDuper! is now Leopard compatible...