The BlueLounge SpaceStation is a desk organizer for laptop users that acts as a USB hub for all peripheral devices.

BlueLounge SpaceStation [ Photo courtesy of the manufacturer. ]

The photo I've chosen shows the bottom of the SpaceStation. The rubber feet set the SpaceStation 5mm above the surface of the desk. This allows the USB cables to pass underneath the organizer where they can be coiled and connected to the USB hub.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• For the Phinney Family, a Dream and a Challenge on NYTimes.com: This story came out last week, right before Taylor Phinney raced in the Individual Pursuits at the Track Cycling World Championships. Taylor finished eighth. His father, Davis, is a legendary U.S. cycling champ who has struggled with Parkinson's Disease in recent years. This article summarizes their recent struggles and successes.
• ScreenFlow: The Killer Screencasting App on MacTips: "ScreenFlow is the application I've been waiting for on the Mac. I've been using it recently for the MacTips Videos and I love it! It's saves me so much time because I'm able to focus on creating valuable content rather than editing videos."
• Dash’s Car Navigator Gives Smart Directions, if Others Participate, Walt Mossberg on AllThingsD: "As smart as in-car navigation devices are, they could be smarter. They could talk to each other via the Internet and share information on how fast traffic is moving on the roads they have just traveled.... Starting this week, just such a smarter navigation box is hitting the market. Called the Dash Express, this $400 product looks a lot like units from better-known firms... But, unlike any other in-car navigation device I’ve seen, each Dash Express... becomes part of a network, connected to the company via the Internet. "
• Windows XP: Going, going ... gone? on Computerworld: "The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000."
• Coming Soon to a Phone Near You on WSJ.com: This article summarizes forthcoming developments in mobile phone voice control, improved web browsers, enhanced storage, and video sharing. [ Subscription may be required to read this article. ]
• How To Use Nokia’s Sports Tracker as a Photo Tracker on The Gadgets Page: "Ms. Jen was part of Nokia’s Urbanista Diaries Relay, which means they sent her to India to promote the Nokia N82 in all its glory. While on the trip, she realized how well the Sports Tracker (a typically exercise related feature) could be used to track the geo-locations of your photos"
• Note to readers: Today would be my grandfather James M. Lynch, Jr.'s 95th birthday. He died in 1982. He is one of the inspirations for this site, since he bought and tried every important electronic gadget that existed in the 1970s. He owned the first digital watch, desktop calculator, and personal computers I ever saw.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Topeak Mini 6 on CoolTools: "This incredibly compact, bike-oriented multi-tool has five different sizes of Allen wrench plus a Phillips screwdriver head, all of which folds up into a little pod about the size of a walnut. Sometimes I'll carry it in my pocket or toss it in shoulder bag; mostly I keep it in the under-seat pouch of my bike. It really comes in handy for quick adjustments...."
• Tapping Your TiVo's Hidden Talents on The Mossberg Solution in the WSJ: "... like any old friend -- or spouse -- who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist."
• 1Password. It’s All I Need…And This Remote. on Apple Phone Show: "If there is anything I love more than software that works, it’s software that helps me save time and having to type on my iPhone’s keyboard. This is especially significant when having to type my uber-strong passwords into a login password field. I’ve been using 1Password since Macworld, and I really find it helpful...."

• iPhone SDK, Apple's Touch Platform, and The Next Two Decades on 37signals Signal versus Noise: "What we saw today {at the iPhone Software Roadmap Event} was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth."

  "What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile...."



• Behind the scenes of the old school HBO intro, a video on YouTube noted on 37signals Signal versus Noise: If you have time to watch any of this 11-minute video produced by HBO about the filming of an introductory film clip that HBO used as a lead in to a feature film presentation, you will be amazed at the amount of time put into building scale models of a city, town, and countryside. Yes this was state-of-the art technology in 1982. But think of how differently it would be done today.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first book I bought to try to get new ideas on how I could better leverage my iPhone as a multimedia Swiss Army Knife was iPhone Fully Loaded by Andy Ihnatko. I have been really impressed by this book because it has some really excellent tips and techniques that go beyond many of the ideas I've seen discussed on iPhone-related blogs and websites.

Andy Ihnatko is a freelance journalist who writes a technology column in The Chicago Sun Times and appears regularly on The Early Show on CBS. He hit my radar screen through his regular gigs on The Apple Phone Show and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Some of the concepts he discussed on those programs, such as using Smart Playlists to fill your iPhone with a constant amount of music that you like but haven't listened to recently (mentioned previously on Operation Gadget), and using Handbrake to convert chapters of DVDs that you own to clips that are playable on your iPhone, are prominently featured in this book. However, there are a lot more ideas that go far deeper into Mac and PC technology to pull together content that you have access to, package it in a form that's storable on your iPhone or iPod touch, and get it transferred on to your device.

There are also ideas that didn't appeal to me personally, but were interesting to read about from a general knowledge perspective. Andy is a big fan of comic books, so he includes an entire chapter on finding comics on the Internet and transmogrifying for your iPhone. He also talks about extensively about electronics and software that can be used to record radio programs for later playback on your iPhone. I used to listen to a great deal of radio myself, so this is interesting to me, but podcasts have largely replaced my radio listening habit since I got my iPhone, and I can barely keep up with the podcasts that I'm subscribed to now.

There are a number of other good iPhone-related books, such as The iPhone Pocket Guide by Chris Breen of MacWorld Magazine, but few are as jam-packed with ideas for filling your iPhone with content as iPhone Fully Loaded. This book always seems to be sitting near my MacBook Pro, and I think it will stay there for some time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was introduced to Truphone several months ago as a result of being part of the Nokia Blogger Relations program. Truphone makes it incredibly easy to use the WiFi feature of Nokia N-Series handsets like the Nokia N95 to make VoIP calls.

Today Truphone announced some new calling plans that provide cost certainty when making international calls. The Tru Zone is a group of 40 countries that you can call via Truphone for:

• $0.06 per minute to landlines
• $0.30 per minute to mobiles
• $0.20 per SMS message
• $0.00 for Truphone to Truphone calls

These are huge savings compared to making mobile phone calls to international numbers. I don't really know what the cost of doing this with my iPhone is, but the rates aren't anything close to this. A release from Truphone compared their prices with the Verizon Wireless prices on calls to Germany, and Truphone would save you $1.43 to $1.65 per minute!

I've been experimenting with Truphone over the past few months, calling landlines of friends and relatives in the United States. No one has ever told me that there was any clarity problem or glitch on the calls I've made. The only questions I've gotten are from people who have Caller ID who don't recognize the number I'm calling from.

I'll have to call my friend Ramona in Switzerland to see how good Truphone calls sound internationally. The only issue with that is Switzerland isn't part of the Tru Zone. No worries for me, however. The rate to Switzerland is $0.10 per minute to a landline and $0.50 per minute to a mobile. What a deal.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I used to love Palm Treo personal communicators like the Treo 755p. My wife and I had his and hers Treo 650s until June when I bought my iPhone.

However in 2008, I cannot recommend a Treo in good conscience to anyone who does not work in an industry where Palm or Windows Mobile applications are a work necessity (see Handhelds from Palm Still Make Sense in Medicine as an example).

I want to take a moment to salute Jamie Ledino of PC Magazine for telling readers in no uncertain terms to avoid buying the Treo 755p:

It's been eight months since Palm released the mildly updated Sprint Treo 755p. Now Palm and Verizon are selling the same two-year-old phone and even pricing it like a new handset. The 755p has plenty of virtues, which I'll get to in a moment. But look at all of the contemporary features this allegedly new-for-2008 smartphone is missing: multitasking, GPS, mobile TV, stereo Bluetooth for music, a light-sensing display, voice dialing over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi—and the list goes on....

In the end, Palm and its partners Verizon Wireless and Sprint are pricing this phone similar to state-of-the-art smartphones. You can't just say that the Treo 755p is a stable but feature-poor smartphone. The PalmOS isn't in the same league with any of the current versions of competing smartphone operating systems except in terms of selection of third party applications. Palm should focus on Windows Mobile devices until its next generation PalmOS is ready. (According to what I read, that's first quarter of 2009!)

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I expected to be wowed by Steve Jobs' 2008 MacWorld Expo Keynote a lot more than I actually was. However, I was doing other things while the event was going on (real work), and the products that I was most interested in (mainstream Mac laptops) didn't get addressed in this keynote at all.

Bummer for me. I could have bought my MacBook Pro two weeks ago if I had known that the Penryn upgrade wasn't immediately forthcoming.

Here are my comments on the other aspects of the keynote:

• iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV Take 2: Clearly the announcement with the most business disruption potential. I agree with one of the commentators on MacBreak Weekly who suggested that Apple is making a play to be the digital media hub in the house, usurping services like Netflix, as well as Television services providers such as Comcast and Verizon FiOS.
• MacBook Air: This is a machine aimed at people who travel a lot or who want a portable machine that is a shadow of their desktop Mac. I could see some very well off Mac users owning the big iMac and a MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is incredibly thin. It's hard to believe a machine with a laptop-like display and keyboard could be any thinner than this and still be usable.

• Time Capsule: This is an interesting extension to the AirPort wireless base station line. Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with a 500G or 1T hard disk in it, functioning as Network Attached Storage (NAS).

  My first reaction was, "Bummer. Kathleen just bought me the AirPort Extreme." But then I realized that I would prefer NAS that used RAID 1 or RAID 5 storage anyway. It also costs more than we want to spend on network appliances at this point.



• iPhone 1.1.3 Update: There's some good stuff here. I loaded it on my iPhone already. The cell tower triangulation in the Maps application works pretty well. That feature makes the iPhone version of RinkAtlas viable. Expect an announcement from me on that front soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

• Bills return to Buffalo by bus after loss in Cleveland, The Associated Press on ESPN.com: "Mother Nature sure had it in for the Buffalo Bills this weekend."

  "Bad enough that a blizzard contributed to Buffalo's loss at Cleveland on Sunday, ending the team's playoff chances. Then, following an unscheduled overnight stay because of bad weather, the Bills were forced to bus home Monday after their charter plane got stuck in mud off a runway in Cleveland...." [ Thanks Julie Howson ]



• Who's #1? on ESPN.com: ESPN Classic's "Who's Number One" show will be running down the most important technological advances in sports on ESPN Classic, 10:00pm ET, Dec. 19, 2007. This is definitely something I'll have to TiVo if I can't watch it live.


• Why Wireless Isn't Wide Open on BusinessWeek.com: "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile-phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest U.S. carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own...." [ via Andy Abramson on VoIP Watch ]


• Canadian surprised by $85,000 cell bill on SeattleTimes.NWsource.com: "Piotr Staniaszek normally pays $147 a month for his cell phone. So he was more than a little surprised to learn his November bill had ballooned to $59,000. And then it got worse. When he called to inquire about the high figure, he was told that his bill this month was $83,000." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]



• Verizon FiOS with only a Apple Airport Extreme {sic} on Elecktronkind.org: Excellent article on the things you need to do to replace the ActionTec router that Verizon provides to most FiOS users with an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Something we hope to do in The Home Office in Newtown sometime after Christmas.

  One key fact to note from this article: You do need to keep the ActionTec router on the network if you have Verizon's digital cable service that's delivered over FiOS. Hopefully we can turn off the wireless capability of the ActionTec and put the AirPort Extreme Base Station behind it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nokia Blogger Relations Program sent me a Nokia N81 8GB mobile phone on Thursday. This is a sharp-looking, piano black mobile phone with a screen that's about two-thirds the size of the iPhone. It's got a slide that exposes a standard Nokia 12-button keypad.

I'll try to publish a photo when I can find one or when I have time to take a reasonable photo myself.

The new features that I've found on the N81 8GB so far are the Multimedia Menu which provides a new navigation method to access multimedia content on the device, and support for N-Gage gaming including some special keys that are designed to make the gaming experience better.

The N81 8GB looks like a device centered around music, video playback, and gaming. It's less full featured in terms of still and video capture than the N95 and N93 that I've discussed previously. The camera on the N81 8GB has good dedicated controls, but "only" a 2-megapixel image sensor and no apparent zoom during video capture.

More on the multimedia capabilities of this phone in coming days.

I am so far in front of the U.S. launch of the N81 8GB that the N-Gage gaming site intended to support it hasn't launched yet. The site says it will launch in December, so I hope it will be ready within a couple of weeks.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I solved the syncing problem that had limited Kathleen's ability to use her Treo 650 with her new MacBook. I owe a lot of credit to the book Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition, which explained the details of the interaction between Palm Desktop for the Mac OS and iSync.

During the process of getting the Treo and the MacBook talking, I got another chance to play with ePocrates-- the medical software designed for PalmOS and Windows Mobile PDAs. ePocrates is a great set of vertical market software and services. ePocrates Rx makes my wife's job (as a pediatrician) lot easier. The key feature of it is dosing recommendations and drug interactions on over 3,000 commonly prescribed drugs.

These reference materials really need to be at a physician's fingertips when they move between exam rooms. There is a huge value to having this information physically stored on the PDA in hand. No doctor wants to slow the visit down to look up drug information via the wireless web.

This was the big reason why I said "no" when someone at work asked me, "Is your wife going to get an iPhone like yours?"

Just like I don't need a large quantity of reference information permanently stored on my iPhone, she doesn't need a high fidelity web experience in her pocket in order to do her job. At one time we had "his and hers" Treos, and everyone thought this was cute. However, now our needs are best met by two different devices.

I'm sure that there are other vertical markets where an iPhone SDK and locally-installed software will be needed before there is significant iPhone penetration. However, I think medicine is one of the biggest ones.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm glad to hear that Apple sold its one millionth iPhone today. I think the $200 price cut will put holiday sales on the trajectory where Apple needs them to be in order to achieve the goal of 10 million iPhones in the first year on the market.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back on January 10, I asked Is OS X the Key Component of the Apple iPhone? The first point I made in that article was about multitasking:

Elegantly-implemented multitasking on a handheld device: Windows Mobile handhelds have this capability already, but none devices I've seen have a UI that comes close to what Jobs demonstrated. Treo handhelds from Palm running the PalmOS don't do multitasking at all. It isn't clear to me whether RIM or Nokia have true multitasking OSes on their smartphones, and I've used both quite extensively.

I'm pointing this out for two reasons:

1. I've got an iPhone, and I'm more impressed with the multitasking capabilities of the iPhone after actually using it.
2. Marc Hedlund from O'Reilly Radar brought up multitasking on the iPhone last week as a "new-ish" thought about the iPhone. I'm not sure it qualifies as a newish thought anymore.

I think Hedlund's article is very insightful for some of the other points he makes. He compares the iPhone to several of the Treo's best features, and tells why the iPhone comes out pretty favorably. He's saying a lot of things that I haven't had time to say, probably better than I would have said them.

The only thing he doesn't mention that I think is a significant advantage to using an iPhone instead of a Treo is the $20+ discount you get on "unlimited" wireless data plans that AT&T gave me when I switched from my Treo 650 to the iPhone. I kid you not.

I think AT&T offers less expensive data plans for the iPhone because they realize that the iPhone will be in the hands of more individuals who pay their own mobile phone bills. These people will have a harder time expensing the monthly wireless bill than the average Treo or Blackberry user. That's my theory anyway.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's the summary of my iPhone activation experience:

• 4:00am Saturday (Eastern Time): Finally began activation process using iTunes after a long delay while installing Windows XP Professional on my PC.
• 4:30am Saturday: Received email from Apple, "AT&T is now processing your activation."
• 3:36pm Saturday: Received email from AT&T, "Thank you for your recent purchase."
• 9:36pm Saturday: Received email from Apple, "Activation Complete."

The iPhone was fully operational at that point.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was possible to buy either iPhone model last night in Central New Jersey.

My iPhone moments after I purchased it at the
Freehold, NJ Apple Store on June 29. See more
photos of my iPhone in my Flickr photostream.

I bought mine at the Apple Store at the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, NJ about 7:45pm. The Apple Store appeared to have plenty of stock at that time. That didn't surprise me because I had read that the 140+ Apple Stores around the country would be staying open until midnight. Why would Apple bother doing that if they thought that they would sell out at most of their locations?

First Stop: A Sold Out AT&T Store

Before I went to the Apple in Freehold, I drove to the AT&T Store in West Windsor, NJ. This is a small store that I thought might not attract a huge line. I have no idea how many people were in line before 6:00pm, but when I arrived there at approximately 6:25, the store was already sold out.

What blew my mind was the number of people who stayed in line after the store manager announced that they were sold out. (I had just arrived when he made this announcement.) He told the people in line that they were welcome to stay and his staff would take orders from them. Many of the people were staying in their place in the line when I hit the road for Freehold.

Continue reading "I Got My iPhone Yesterday, Maybe It Will Work Today" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Let's face a few of facts:

1. A lot of media outlets are going to publish articles designed to provoke FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the hearts of iPhone fans.
2. This is going to continue and grow in intensity up to and beyond June 29.
3. The motives for publishing this type of article are not all evil.

A great example of an article that spreads FUD but isn't entirely evil is the article called Companies Hang Up on Apple's iPhone published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. This article claims that Apple is working to integrate the the iPhone into corporate email systems because IT management says that the iPhone isn't compatible with corporate email systems.

The truth of the matter is a bit different.

The Journal article pretty much says that the corporate email systems they are talking about are based on Microsoft Exchange. Exchange has the ability to support both IMAP and POP3 protocols, but support for these protocols was turned off by default in Windows 2003. Since a lot of people in corporate IT departments know little about non-Microsoft-centric infrastructures, many of them probably concluded that IMAP and POP3 are inherent security risks.

I sincerely doubt that Apple will make any attempt to integrate the iPhone by adding support for Good, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or any other middleware that's been blessed by the CIOs of major companies. This is because the iPhone is aimed at individuals, not corporate users. Making the iPhone acceptable to many corporate IT groups would require too much variation in terms of the hardware configuration and the software feature set.

John Gruber from Daring Fireball wrote a great piece that makes many of these same points. His coverage on that website of the reaction to this Wall Street Journal article is well worth reading.

When you read articles like this one that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, consider the writer's perspective. The writers of this article are general business reporters that sometimes cover the technology industry. This article wasn't written by someone at the WSJ like Walter Mossberg who has a complete picture of technology products and how to use them productively. General business writers don't write about how to solve problems, they point out potential problems.

There are still a lot of questions about the iPhone's real world capabilities. The ability to seemlessly integrate with Microsoft Exchange isn't one of them. If all the other usability and performance issues that may limit the iPhone's usefulness turn out to be non-issues, working around the limitations of Exchange will be well documented because thousands of iPhone owners will develop workarounds for every conceivable Exchange configuration. [ Paid subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm pleased to report that I'm finally putting the Nokia N95 through its paces. The Nokia Blogger Relations program sent me an N95 several weeks ago. I had just started a major new project at work, so I wasn't able to do much with it. Then I found I needed a MicroSD memory card and a firmware upgrade before the phone would do very much, and that delayed things even further.

I love the feel of this phone in my hand. It reminds me of an analog Nokia handset I had years ago that was a predecessor to the Nokia 8801. I loved that old phone for the clean, minimalist look. It was a great little phone with excellent reception in its time. The N95 has a similar look, but the entire front of the handset is taken up by a large color screen and a virtual compass rose of navigation buttons.

The best features I've found so far in the N95 are the 5 Megapixel digital camera that also shoots video at 30 frames per second, and the high quality sound that it produces. Music played over the stereo speakers on the N95 sounds great.

I'm just getting into testing this phone, but I already see some stability issues with Nokia Maps, the application that Nokia includes on the N95 so you can use its built-in GPS features. Even after I did a firmware upgrade on my N95 handset, Maps crashed the phone repeatedly. I'll have to talk to some people at Nokia to find out if I'm doing something wrong that's making this happen.

When Nokia Maps works for me, it works well. I used it to generate driving directions between my home and an office in Jamesburg, NJ. The directions it produced were accurate, but the distances were expressed in meters and kilometers. I was able to use the GPS to display my current location on the phone's gorgeous color screen as I drove through Friday morning traffic for about 45 minutes.

I downloaded Nokia's Podcasting application which actually allows you to listen to podcasts rather than produce them. I think the name of the program is a bit confusing in that respect. The phone has had a few issues when trying to download entire podcasts over the Cingular / AT&T wireless data network called MEdiaNet.

The podcasting application worked infinitely better when it was downloading content over the WiFi network at The Home Office. So, there's my first recommendation-- use WiFi for data intensive tasks on the N95 if data-driven apps are flaky on wireless data networks.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the N95 in the near future. I'm doing my best to use the heck out of it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In yesterday's Loose Wire column in The Wall Street Journal, Jeremy Wagstaff reported some really interesting statistics about mobile phone usage patterns that he got from researchers at Nokia. According to the article, which is unfortunately only available to subscribers:

• 30% of people who carry their mobile phones in a pants pocket fail to answer some or all of their incoming calls
• 61% of women carry their mobile phones in a handbag or some other bag that they carry
• about half of women who carry their phones in a bag "regularly miss incoming calls" because the call isn't noticed or the phone can't be found before the call goes to voicemail
• belt pouches and phone straps are options used by a minority of men and women to avoid missing calls

I don't think I call any women who regularly miss incoming calls because their phone is burined in the main pocket of a handbag. If I had run into that problem in the past, I probably would have stopped calling the people involved. I'd rather send an email or a text message if I know I'm going to have to leave a message anyway.

My wife Kathleen has a good way of handling the phone in the bag issue when she is out with our son Jimmy: she always puts her Treo 650 in the same outside pocket of the baby bag. I've had to grab her phone a few times when she is on-call, and I've been able to answer before the call goes to voicemail.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AkihabaraNews.com reports that several Chinese companies showed iPhone cases and other accessories at the Spring edition of the Hong Kong Electronics and Computer Fair. The show just ended on Tuesday in Hong Kong.

Too bad we couldn't all be there, because Hong Kong is a great city [ via Amazon.com Daily Blog ].

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Taking a look at all of the recent articles on hacking AppleTV that are appearing on technology-related blogs and forums:

• Streaming from URLs on Apple TV
• Apple's not fighting back against Apple TV hacks
• We just got xvid working on the Apple TV

(to name a few)... I'm starting to wonder if there's hope for the same kind of laissez-faire attitude from Apple toward hacking the iPhone.

I've never really believed that the iPhone will be as much of a walled garden as Steve Jobs indicated in his post-keynote comments. I think the process of getting third party apps on to the first generation iPhone will be convoluted, but it will be possible in some form or fashion. Someone will get ssh running on it. Someone will get a third-party Dashboard widget to load on it.

When this happens, the vanguard of the iPhone users will go to the trouble of learning how to do it, and that will be the way that people make their iPhones unique.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen and I are both Treo 650 users, and we often need access to each other's calendars so we can see whether we can plan another event for a day in the near future. As good as the Palm Calendar is, it has never been able to show another person's appointments as well as your own.

I realized a long time ago that the solution to this problem might be something like Google Calendar, but the problem was that I couldn't figure out how to keep a Palm Calendar in sync with a Google Calendar.

This week I solved the problem with GooSync from a British firm called Toffa. Toffa makes a whole line of application synchronization products such as SyncWise Entrerprise for mobile devices that need to sync to a Novell GroupWise environement, so they aren't novices in building synchronization tools.

The key features of GooSync are that it works with so many handheld devices, and it provides over-the-air synchronization. It works natively with many mobile phones from Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, SonyEricsson, and about six other manufacturers. You can use GooSync with Palm OS and Windows Mobile handhelds as well, but they require small SyncML client applications that are downloadable from the GooSync website.

Engadget Mobile first mentioned GooSync back in November and at that time there were several bugs and issues in the synchronization process that were show-stoppers for some people. Many of these issues have been tracked on the GooSync page on Squidoo and they've been addressed by the GooSync folks.

Alternatives to GooSync are CompanionLink for Google Calendar which costs $29.95 and doesn't appear to sync over-the-air, and GcalSync which is Open Source but requires Java on the handheld at the MIDP 2.0 and JSR 75 level. Lots of phones support that, but GcalSync would probably be slow on the Treo 650 if it worked at all.

GooSync is available for free if you are OK with syncing to a single Google Calendar and only syncing the events that are scheduled within a seven-day window in the past and a 30-day window in the future. If you want multiple calendar support and a 365-day sync window, you need to buy an annual subscription at £19.95. Refer to the GooSync Account Options page for more information.

I think the free GooSync service will be fine for me right now. It will also enable me to use some of my Nokia N-Series handsets more easily, since I will be able to bring my calendar with me as long as I connect to GooSync whenever I switch devices.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apple iPhone: Probably the most
controversial integrated communication
device ever announced. [ Photo:
Apple Inc. ]

Operation Gadget is probably the last gadget blog on the planet to report that Apple Inc. announced the iPhone on Tuesday at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. We weren't there, but I did take the time to watch a video stream of Steve Jobs' entire keynote, and I'd like to make a few comments about what I saw.

I think the most under-reported aspect of the announcement is Jobs' revelation that the iPhone will run Mac OS X natively. This is a huge development because it will clear the way for:

• Elegantly-implemented multitasking on a handheld device: Windows Mobile handhelds have this capability already, but none devices I've seen have a UI that comes close to what Jobs demonstrated. Treo handhelds from Palm running the PalmOS don't do multitasking at all. It isn't clear to me whether RIM or Nokia have true multitasking OSes on their smartphones, and I've used both quite extensively.

• Widespread deployment of OS X Dashboard Widgets: By making Dashboard Widgets an integral part of the iPhone UI, Apple may have changed the balance of power in this rapidly expanding area of software development.

  A lot of developers have been creating HTML-based widgets for deployment to weblogs and similar types of sites on the Internet. For my RinkAtlas website, I've built rink information and search widgets that are syndicated through Widgetbox.com. Now I'm seriously investigating what it would take to implement similar widgets for the Mac OS X Dashboard. I think other developers will do the same.



• "High fidelity" handheld access to virtually all Internet sites: The inclusion of Safari on the iPhone is probably the single biggest boost to mobile use of the Internet since the development of the GPRS wireless data standard. Shipment of Safari on the iPhone device will coincide with a negative inflection point for more limited browsers in the marketplace. Yes, there will continue to be a need for browsers like Opera Mobile and The Blazer Web Browser such as the version that appears on my Treo 650, but these browsers will probably no longer be sufficient for high end handheld devices.

Continue reading "Is OS X the Key Component of the Apple iPhone?" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Beginning with Thanksgiving, Kathleen and I have been using a Nokia N93 mobile phone to shoot DVD-quality video at family get togethers. People are shocked when they see the quality of the movies we can make with this phone.

Conversations with some of our more gadget-savvy friends sometimes continue with the question, "But what else can that phone do?" After I say, "You mean you want more than a great phone that doubles as an incredibly compact digital video camera?", I tell them about how the N93 is the ultimate entertainment device for my son Jimmy.

Jimmy is our seven month old son. He likes to listen to songs from the CD Walt Disney Records : Children's Favorite Songs, Volume 1. These are songs like "I've Been Working On The Railroad" and "Old MacDonald".

The Nokia N93 and most of the other Nokia N-Series multimedia phones I've tested have extremely high-quality speakers built into them. The Nokia Music Player application and the speaker on the N93 allow me to play Jimmy's tunes, wherever we are, at a moments notice. I play his songs for him on the N93 when we are taking walks with his stroller or with him in the BabyBjorn baby carrier. I turn on his music when we're in the car and he doesn't like any of the songs currently playing on the radio. I play the music for him sometimes when we are shopping in home improvement stores like Lowe's or BJ's Wholesale Club.

Like every other gadget freak in the universe, I have an iPod and I have the right accessories for it. The problems with using the iPod in this case are:

• I need accessories to play music that someone else can hear, and I often need different accessories depending on the situation.
• I can't imagine using earphones with a child under age five or six.
• I don't want to have to put an iPod and several accessories into the baby bag that I carry when I'm out with Jimmy by myself or with Kathleen.

This makes the Nokia N93 or any of the N-Series phones the best music player I've found for use with babies and other young children. It's significantly more practical for me than an iPod in this case, or even a portable CD player with built-in speakers. I never would have imagined that I would be recommending a solution like this until I got a Nokia N-Series phone and tried it.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, MP3, multimedia handsets, mobile phones

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Kathleen and I continue to be wowed by the digital video capabilities of the Nokia N93. We used it on Thanksgiving to shoot a couple of short videos of our family around the dinner table. The problem we ran into was limited memory. The N93 comes with a 128-Megabyte MiniSD Card. Since the N93 captures 640x480 video at 30 frames per second, we could only fit about 6 minutes of video on our original memory card.

I just got a 2-Gigabyte MiniSD Card from Amazon.com, and the result was a huge improvement. Now I can shoot over 100 minutes of video at the highest available resolution. This will be ideal for the holidays, when we will want to get a lot of video of our son Jimmy who is six months old and our niece Emma, who is about 18 months old.

The Nokia N93 is clearly the best digital video cameraphone on the market in 2006. If you decide to buy one of these, make sure you include a 1 or 2-Gigabyte MiniSD Card in your budget. It really improves the video capture experience.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, multimedia handsets, mobile phones, MiniSD memory

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nokia N93 produces DVD-quality video, has a
terrific MP3 player, and includes wireless
broadband and WiFi capability. It's great for people
who want a phone that can be used in relatively
serious video production. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]
[ Check out my Nokia N93 photo set on Flickr. ]

A friend who works with Nokia chose me to be in the Nokia N-Series blogger program and has been sending me high end phones of all shapes and sizes for several months. The latest phone I've received is the Nokia N93, which I like to think of as the Swiss Army Knife of GSM / UMTS Multimedia Phones.

The N93 folds and unfolds in many different ways. Depending on which way you choose to hold it, it can be a video camera, a still image digital camera, an MP3 player, a wireless Internet access device, and a video phone. And I forgot to mention-- it can also be a plain old voice-oriented mobile phone.

The N93 has every feature I can think of for a state-of-the-art multimedia device:

• DVD-quality video with a 30 frame per second recording rate.
• 3.2-Megapixel primary camera with a 3x optical zoom and a Carl Zeiss glass lens. (0.3-Megapixel secondary camera for video calls.)
• 2.4-inch high definition color display.
• Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

On top of all of that it's a mobile phone with Bluetooth and WiFi. About all its missing is a full alphanumeric keyboard.

There are way too many features and dimensions to the Nokia N93 to cover in one article. I'm planning to do a small series of articles that will appear here on Operation Gadget, including as many samples of photos and videos as I think are necessary to demonstrate the features of this incredible device.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, Adobe Premier Elements, UMTS, Bluetooth, WiFi, multimedia handsets, mobile phones

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thursday ESPN announced that it would shutdown its Mobile Virtual Network Operators called Mobile ESPN at the end of the year. I was surprised to learn that ESPN is planning to buy back the handsets of customers who pay their balances in full. In addition they are allowing customers to "suspend" their service without an early termination penalty. Subscribers presumably could suspend their Mobile ESPN accounts and sign up for service on a major wireless carrier immediately.

This shows how desperately ESPN wants the early adopters of their mobile phone service to subscribe to its data services on other wireless providers' networks. Who can blame them? The subscribers to Mobile ESPN already identified themselves as willing to pay for wireless data services. Very few individual customers have been willing to do this.

Is anyone else wondering how Mobile ESPN will succeed as a value-added wireless data service resold by other carriers? I just don't see many mobile phone customers being willing to pay extra for sports-related services, except perhaps game highlights delivered to their handsets. The problem is that most people don't have phones or data plans that are robust enough to easily use such a service, if it existed today.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My friends at Nokia sent me a Nokia N91 Multimedia Phone several weeks ago. I'm a late in putting it through its paces because I've been spending so much time taking care of my son, Jimmy. If you're a regular reader of Operation Gadget, you probably already realize this.

I took my Cingular SIM card out of my Treo 650 and fired up a phone that promises a completely different experience.

Here are some of the highlights of the Nokia N91:

• 4-Gigabytes of built-in hard disk storage (up to 3000 songs)
• Surprisingly good speaker for listening to music with others
• Built-in FM radio
• Seemless switching between music and smartphone functions
• 2-Megapixel camera with excellent movie capture capabilities

Although the N91 has all of the video and camera functions of the other Nokia N-Series phones that have been tested here, the N91 is intended to be a music-centric phone. That's why it has a 4-Gigabyte hard disk, and music player controls on its face. I installed the Nokia PC Suite on my laptop, ripped a couple of CDs in my collection to MP3s, and downloaded the tracks to the N91. This was an easy process, and I'll have more to say about this in another article.

I'm sure that I'll love the N91. I've already used it to record a couple of movies of Jimmy, and I really appreciate the N91's built in hard disk for movie storage.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past couple of months I've noticed that my Treo 650 has more and more trouble opening the IMAP Inbox for my main email account. The reason for this is obvious: I'm an email pack rat.

At the height of my madness, I had over 25,000 messages in my main email account's Inbox. I was about as anti-Inbox Zero as you could get.

For the last year, I've read article after article touting the benefits of managing your Inbox and not letting it become