Brian's Blog » 2009

Verizon MiFi

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Category : Phones

I recently got my hands on a Verizon MiFi to test out, and I will be going on a little trip to the middle of nowhere, and according to Verizon’s website, they have coverage there, so I will be giving this a good test.

If you aren’t familiar with what the MiFi device is, in a nutshell, it’s a broadband card that you don’t have to tether to your PC, plus it’s a built in wifi hotspot for up to five devices to connect. I can’t wait to give this the full test, and my review will be coming as soon as I get back.

App Store Approval…Why is it so Inconsistent?

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Category : Work, Life, etc.

Tags: opinion

I have read a lot over the past year about the app store and the unknown approval process, when Steve Jobs first introduced the App Store in June of 2008, he laid out a simple set of rules for the store: no porn or malicious apps that invade your privacy. This sounds pretty straight forward and simple, but the fact of the matter is, it’s far from simple, the fact is, Apple’s approval process is shrouded in secrecy, and little is known how it works, and it’s largely inconsistent.

I love the app store, and have over 1,000 of them in my iTunes library, of course I don’t use all of them, and most of them have never even been transferred onto my iPhone or iPod Touch. I have to give credit to Apple for reviewing all apps and making sure they don’t contain malicious code, but the thing about the whole process is that they need to publish the rules, and make it clear to developers so they can work together to make better apps. I’d like to share a story with you about one app and a developer.

There was an app called Lyrics, which displayed lyrics for the songs in your music library, good app, I don’t have it, but I love having the lyrics for my songs, and use a good couple programs to pull them into the iTunes tags, but back to the story, everyone knows that some music contains bad words, and there is nothing we can do about it, Apple first rejected this app because of the songs that had bad words, so he installed a profanity filter and the Lyrics app got approved. Little to Apple’s chagrin, the developer installed an Easter Egg, and with a few smart swipes on the options screen, the user could turn off the profanity filter, I think that’s a good idea for the developer to do, but this could also introduce a bunch of issues in the app store.

This is just one story, a more prominent story is the NIN app, and the update that was rejected because of the song closer, and if you have been living under a rock for the past decade, you all know that song, Reznor followed up with a passionate response that included the facts that you could by The Downward Spiral on iTunes, with the profanity, he also said that anyone could by the movie Scarface uncensored, and what happens if someone swears in the forums on the app, they don’t have any say on what the users do, he also goes on to say that he just got some spam about f-ing hot Asian teens through the Mail program on his Mac, and he just saw some porn in Safari on his iPhone, and the final words “come on Apple, think your policies through and for f’s sake get your app approval scenario together”.

This is an ongoing issue, as I love the NIN app, but here’s one last example of an app that got approved, but shouldn’t have, and that’s the Baby Shaker app, where you got a crying baby on your screen, and had to shake it until it shut up. What the frack was Apple thinking when they approved that one, they finally pulled it after a bunch of public outcry, but again, if they would publish their approval standards and be consistent, maybe we would have some developers making apps that don’t consist of a fart app.

The last thing I would like to say is why don’t they just add an explicit tag to apps that may contain profanity or they deem explicit, then leave it to the parents to use the parental filters so their kids don’t download those apps, they do that with music and movies, why would it be so hard to do it with the apps. So I say to all the developers, keep making good apps, and I would love to help test and review any app, so please don’t hesitate to contact me. To the readers, please share your app store issues in the comments.

And just remember, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Windows Vista SP2 Available for Download

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Category : Windows

Tags: Microsoft, vista, windows

Service pack 2 is available for download today bringing better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, native Blu-Ray support and faster search, for the full list visit the TechNet article here. You can download the installers below, or wait until June 30th for it to appear in Windows Update.

Download Links:

Vista Service Pack 2 (32-bit)

Vista Service Pack 2 (64-bit)

Nifty Windows 7 Tip

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Category : Windows

Tags: Microsoft, windows 7

I have been running Windows 7 full time since the beta, and found this nifty little tip. If you hover over the taskbar you get a preview of the windows or tabs that are open, however if you middle click on one of the windows, that window will close.

That’s a nice little feature, and Windows 7 is becoming more and more impressive the more I use it. Have you made the jump to Windows 7, if not, let me know what OS you are using in the comments.

Email ‘n Walk – A Simple but Useful App

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Category : iPhone, Software

Tags: app, iphone, review

I know a lot of you try to email while you are on the move, and sometimes we run into things because we aren’t paying attention to where we are going. Enter Email ‘n Walk (iTunes Link), a simple yet effective iPhone application. This is a simple one purpose application, it connects to your camera and shows the background while you email, hence the name of the app. It’s simple, and worth the $0.99 price tag.

Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, Webmail? You can now import to Gmail.

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Category : Web/Tech, Work, Life, etc.

Tags: gmail, import

Have you been trying to get rid of your crutch to Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL and start using Gmail. The only thing that was stopping you was the painful process of losing all your old email, well, now you can import your mail from those other services to Gmail.

New accounts will see a feature in their settings that will allow them to import their mail easily, just a few checkboxes and clicks and your contacts, old mail and even new mail for the next 30 days will come into your shiny new Gmail account.

This is a good option for users who have been wanting to make the switch, but still relied on their old accounts, and this will be available for existing users, but according to Gmail’s team, this roll-out will be slower than normal.

For the official word read the article on the Official Gmail Blog.

Blackberry Storm Review

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Category : Phones, Web/Tech

Tags: blackberry, review

The Blackberry Storm has been on the scene for awhile now, and I recently had some hands on time with the device. Most of you also know that I have been an avid iPhone user for 2 years now, and the thought of someone having another device besides the “Jesus Phone” was a shock to me, but I gave the Storm a tough time, and here is my review.

Out of the box, the Storm is a fairly good looking phone, they took a lot of time and effort making this device look good. The majority of the front of the device is a large 3.25 inch touchscreen* display, and below that are the four BlackBerry keys, it’s mostly piano black, and it has a single LED on the top with a lock and mute key on the top of the device.

Touchscreen

The touchscreen is where most of the attention will go, it’s not your usual touchscreen, as you touch the display and then click when you want to actually do something. This is a technology called SurePress which allows you to click the screen like a mouse button. The purpose of this is so you are able to move around without actually moving anything. Does this type of screen work or improve the experience, in my opinion it does not. I can say I am just not comparing it to the iPhone, I have used Windows Mobile devices with full touchscreens and they are better as well, they should have made this an full touch display like the iPhone and the Instinct.

Software

I haven’t ever used a blackberry device before, so this was my first interaction with the BlackBerry software. Navigating through menus was fairly easy, and getting to the built in applications was also easy, but I found the device to be somewhat sluggish at times, and the more apps I used the more sluggish it got. There was no obvious way to check and see if an application was actually closed or if it was running in the background. One very big flaw was that the accelerometer seemed to have a mind of its own at times and would decide to put the phone in landscape mode on it’s own. I am surprised at BlackBerry because they tout their devices as made for email and messaging, yet it took me 3 days with the device to set up my email, and then I couldn’t remove my email account because their was no option to do that. The messaging interface was nice and reading and writing email was very easy with one caveat being the touchscreen was not the best for writing on. I also found that some of the scrolling and other touch actions seemed to be laggy and not made for touch gestures, which I found out that the touch aspect of the Storm was an afterthought, and if they would’ve put more time into it, it has the possibility of being as smooth as the iPhone.

The browser is very good, and I had no troubles going to most websites. Pages seemed to load quickly and were formatted the right way, navigation is good, however scrolling is tolerable, but not as smooth as I would like. One thing I was not very pleased with is that there was a big lack of third party software available for this device. I could do my instant messaging, facebook and pandora, but there wasn’t a very big selection available, even in the BlackBerry App World, the selections weren’t as good as I thought they would be, plus the pricing is very high, it was either free or $6.

The media players/browsers were very good, and watching a movie on the device was a good experience for me, and the larger screen allows for a good view of the album artwork.

Phone/Data

I was impressed with the call quality of this device, and Verizon (love ‘em or hate ‘em) has a good network. The earpiece was plenty lout, and so was the speakerphone. The data downloading in this area wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be, web pages loaded faster on my iPhone, but I don’t know if Verizon has their fast network done here in Omaha, but I was getting faster web times on my iPhone when I did a comparison, however one thing that blew me out of the water was the VZ Navigator, it gave me good directions every time, but just going off the map could cause a little frustration as it would have to load the map every time you went off the screen. One other thing I believe is a set back for this device is the lack of WiFi, if it had WiFi, this phone might have a chance, and I believe RIM needs to rethink the touchscreen, and build a slide out keypad for this device, which would make it better.

Final Thoughts

Would I purchase this device? No, it’s not customizable enough for me, if I didn’t have the choice of the iPhone, my device of choice would be a device with Windows Mobile on it. This is a great device for first time BlackBerry users, but if you have used a BlackBerry in the past you will get easily frustrated. I believe that the company tried to push this phone to market too early, and with a little more time they could’ve had a great device. I’ll be interested to see what the Storm 2 will bring when it comes out.

My final rating for this device is 6/10, because despite all the good things, the device could still be better.

Is RSS Dead? Really?

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Category : Work, Life, etc.

Tags: RSS

I have been a fan of RSS feeds for quite awhile now, and this past week I was listening to the Gillmor Gang podcast and they were talking about RSS being dead. I don’t really agree with that statement, but I can see their point. My personal RSS readers of choice are FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, both by Newsgator. I like them because they stay in sync wherever I get my feeds, on the iPhone, the desktop or the web.

RSS has changed the way we process information by brining a lot of sites to us in an efficient and easy way, before RSS I would have to go to all the sites and browse and read them, thus taking up all my time and missing articles because I didn’t go to that site one day, with RSS that made my work day more efficient, I open my reader and browse the headlines or read the article in the reader and everything is in one place.

Now enters the time of the real-time web with Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and people often get breaking news stories ahead of the broadcast networks and websites because people will tweet about them. Could I stop using my reader for good and just get all my news from Twitter or Friendfeed, I suppose I could, but I really don’t want to, and I will still push RSS to my friends who are always too busy to read an article link I send to them or don’t have enough time to catch up. That’s the one thing I really like about RSS, if I am on vacation and don’t want to be wired, when I come back I can browse the events of the time I was gone with my reader.

So is RSS really dead? In a way it is with more people getting their updates from Twitter and Friendfeed, but will it stop being useful, I don’t think so. So, in the words of Dennis Miller “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

A couple of questions to the readers:

1. Do you use a RSS reader? If yes, what’s your reader of choice?

2. Do you think RSS is Dead?

Answer in the comments.

7 Various Twitter Apps for All Types of Users

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Category : Twitter, Web/Tech

Tags: apps, Social Networks, Twitter

I have been using Twitter for quite awhile and after many failed attempts to make my friends understand and start using it, I will tell you about 7 twitter apps that you may or may not know about, but I have used most of them and like them all in different ways.

1. Seesmic Desktop – This is my number one app right now, it has gotten better over time, and ever since they added Facebook integration, and they promise more, it seems to be the best choice for power users. They allow for filtering and setting up groups, search and more.

2. TweetDeck – This was number one for a long time, and I still recommend it for power users, they also have some type of Facebook integration, but not as well as Seesmic Desktop. The setting up of groups is much easier in this app, as you can choose the users from a checklist. If you are a power twitter user, then this is another one to check out.

3. Tweetie – This is the most popular iPhone app for twitter, and no matter how many others I try and use, I always come back to this one, it’s hands down the easiest to use, but it’s not free. They also have a Mac desktop application as well.

4. PowerTwitter – A Firefox extension that lets you do a lot more than post tweets, you can do broad and user-based searches, post inline links to YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic and more, it’s a powerful tool to check out.

5. Twitterberry – This is a Blackberry app, but it’s slow to update, and doesn’t grab tweets as much as it should, but if you are a Blackberry user and don’t want to waste SMS messages, then give this a try.

6. Ping.fm – While not really a dedicated Twitter app, it allows you to post your updates across multiple sites at one time, so if you belong to a lot of social networks and dislike going to each individual site to update your status than check this out, you can also update from your IM service of choice.

7. Twitter.com – This is just a given, but you can tweet from the Twitter website, and now that they have added search and trends to the homepage, it is a lot more user friendly.

I know I may have missed some or excluded your favorite twitter tool, if I have please feel free to share your favorites in the comments or follow me on twitter @btiede.

Hands on with Blackberry Storm

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Category : Phones

Tags: blackberry, review

I recently had some hands on time with a Blackberry Storm, and will be publishing a full review on the product in the coming days. My first impressions of the device were good, and I will be sharing with you my thoughts and ideas on how I used the device and what I wish it would do better.

-Brian