hello world

so much stuff has happened since I last blogged, but the usual excuses about work, etc. still apply.

here are my thoughts on some current things going on:

verizon droid

ffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!! don't get me wrong, the pre is still an awesome phone and it has gotten a lot better since my last post about it (Twee fixes twitter issues, linkedin now part of synergy, app store blowing up in quantity of apps), but droid has 5mp camera, layar, virtual keyboard, plus the sexy new maps implementation and more storage. and verizon. 20 months to go....

borderlands

a great game hidden under technical failure and consolitis. the menu system on PC is almost as bad as the inventory system for mass effect on 360... UI was designed by demon terrorists from hell. unskippable cutscenes and gimping all the menu config options (requiring some googling...and even then, console is gimped) is bad enough, but resetting config files after DST (why?) and non-functional private online games is beyond annoying. why hasn't steam gotten this patch yet? when playing a LAN game yesterday, none of us could set up the mics (protip: there is no in-game setting, so just disable it in config and use steam chat) and only the host had a name...so reading the messages in game was useless because two of us had blank names.

Wayne and I played a LAN game w/ our friend Ted from Wisconsin, because the private online servers don't work without forwarding >9000 ports to a host. It was easier/faster/safer to just jack Ted into our OpenVPN solution (and even then, browsing doesn't work consistently and you still need to add an IP as an argument when you launch the game). We probably spent an hour dicking around before settling on this solution. How the hell do regular people do this kind of stuff? I bet they use shit like gameranger... the guy who runs the gameranger twitter account has been relentlessly spamming people talking about borderlands. people like me. he spammed me, then when I fired back, he made up some illogical argument about trust and safety... dude, if I am letting someone sign into my VPN, I think I trust them. definitely more than I trust some guy who charges for a service he spams me about, who allegedly blocks competing software and bans unruly users, and whose source isn't open to review by security experts like steve gibson. i replied a few more times, but at some point you need to stop feeding the trolls.

Back to the game, all that hassle and all those bugs are really sad because buried underneath is a really fun, co-op shooter. the kind of game i love: enough RPGness to make characters unique and worth building up, but not so much that you spend 50% of the game in menus...twitch-based combat...huge world to explore with vehicles and good enemy variety.

it will be interesting to see if Gearbox cleans this up or leaves it broken...so disappointing to see the modern trend of failed online gameplay at launch continuing. Looking forward to a PC-centric, massively single-player game next week.

Palm Pre: Day 3

Keyboard:

• Really, no keyboard in the world can compare with a blackberry
• I've also noticed sometimes it flexes or makes bendy sounds when I'm typing fast (eek!)

Twitter:

• The inability for twitter to pop up like email or IM's is beginning to irk me; as far as I know, neither Tweed nor Spaz use the alerting service the same way IM/SMS/email do
• Lack of integration with TwitPic is another bummer; it's cool you can directly send to Facebook from the photo gallery, but I barely use Facebook
• Speaking of Facebook, why is there no Facebook client ala iPhone/Blackberry? The iPhone Facebook app was lightyears beyond any other means of interacting with that site

Ringtones:

• Haven't found a way to select SMS/IM sounds, or custom ring-tones for contacts (or contact-groups...if that concept even exists)
• The default sounds are OK, but not loud enough to wake me up (which is the vital necessity)

Blackberry Factor:

• All this playing around with another phone has had me re-evaluating why I wanted to switch away from my Blackberry...
• Although the gesture-based UI is insanely slick and intuitive, oftentimes, I am sad that the trackball-looking button is only trackball in appearance; at some times, precise mouse-like control with a trackball would be much simpler (e.g. editing text fields, selecting text) and I start to miss the blackberry
• Typing
• For all that the Blackberry crashes, if it just had a Webkit browser and camera, I could probably survive quite happily with it (losing the capacitive touchscreen is a bummer, but survivable)

Decisions:

• Although I have 30 days to decide, I am already feeling the burn -- it is very much a bummer I would need to purchase an IDENTICAL phone just to switch networks (operating on the 2-phones via Sprint plan)
• I haven't yet rooted the phone, as I don't want to make things weird if I decide to bail -- and other than the cool-factor of being able to SSH into my phone, I don't see a lot of practical value yet, as I haven't encountered any cool-looking, unofficial apps
• When contemplating simply returning to Verizon and upgrading the Blackberry to either a Tour or Curve, I realized that I would still be hosed on the WiFi front -- and a Tour would mean Notifylink at best
• Notifylink would give me email, but I would lose the VPN access of being able to browse the internal network at work (a significant loss) -- so that means maybe just a curve would be the best.
• If I get a Curve, do I just return the Pre and ditch Sprint? Or do I go full-on with the conversion and get my number ported and drop Verizon? How does the functionality/possible-non-crashing of the Curve (or at least a new phone) impact this decision?

At this point, I still have 26ish days to make a final decision...I am leaning toward a Curve + Pre on Sprint (and in my original calculations, I neglected to consider the employee discount of 15% ). This would put me at $110/mo (saving $25/mo off my Verizon plan) with 600 extra minutes.

Palm Pre impressions

This time typed up from a PC...

I realized perhaps it not fair to insult the Palm Pre for not being able to copy/paste URLs into twitter, because that is not an expection I previously had on my Blackberry...but then again, my blackberry didn't have a modern-era browser and WiFi.

Also, the lack of ability to save files is kind of ridiculous. Plugging into a PC via USB gives you the option to just show up as a mass storage device, which is cool.

The lack of notification about twitter updates is also irking me. Perhaps Spaz is not the right client to use; but I find it odd that it can integrate my Twitter friends in the federated Synergy contact list but it doesn't come with a twitter client built-in.

Many of the bad/ugly bulletpoints were known issues going into the Pre, so it's not fair to act like I was suddenly surprised when they didn't work.

Complaints:

• saving files from browser
• copy/pasting non-email/IM content
• lack of SSH client
  

Praise:

• UI is really slick - I would say it is more consistent and intuitive (to me) than iPhone, and the downloading of attachments/apps is very nice. All the animations and window behavior are stunning -- it almost feels like OS X's expose at times
  
• Federated contacts really are excellent
• Data from Sprint is fast; WiFi is smoking -- compared to WiFi on my iPod Touch 2G the browser is light-years faster
• Browser and Google Maps performance (manipulating already fetched data) smoke iPhone 3G / iPod Touch 2G (not sure about 3GS)

I think i just managed to get it to hard lock messing around with the pdf viewer lol

Pre first impressions

Posted using the pre...

Good:

• Fast data service
• Amazing multitasking
• Accurate GPS
• Great mechanical design
• Slick UI

Bad:

• Can't save images with browser
• Keyboard is sticky mush compared to blackberry
• Not easy to edit text fields like an ipod/iphone
• No street view
• No latitude
• Keypress-and-hold repeats instead of caps

Ugly:

• Notifylink doesn't yet support the Pre
• No official tethering method
• No ssh clients
• No linkedin synergy

(edited on a PC to look less ridiculous)

but who was phone?!

The last few monthes, my 8830 world edition on Verizon has been flipping out and crashing every few days. The two failure modes are a spinning hourglass or simply a frozen display, frequently these happen when i am getting a phone call or sms or email message -- either way the resolution is pulling the battery and waiting 5 minutes for it to reboot. It's dificult to express the frustration of not being able to answer a phone call because of an hourglass or not reading an email whose subject you can see...

When you combine these faults with inability to properly buffer input (e.g. quickly typing "fucking server is angry; logs have nothing useful about error" translating to "fuck you" in gtalk), the phone gets "dropped" a lot. I love "the Network," but not being able to upgrade my phone is killing me.

"But the Tour is coming out!" Yes, and it has a nicer display, better guts, and a fancy camera... but the corporate IT group only supports enterprise activation on the 8830 and 8330; the last guy who went rogue with a Storm got shut down. They are the real barrier, not Verizon. No modern, 3G phone support kills flexibility.

So last night I came up with the following clever plan:

1. reduce verizon bill by $50 by dropping tethering tax and cutting minutes (i only use 3-400 peak mins/mo, but pay for 900) -- now paying $85/mo instead of $135 (but with reimbursements this is effectively $35/mo => $0/mo)
2. pick up a Palm Pre on sprint for $70/mo (450 mins) and see how the sprint network performs at work and home (now this changes from $0/mo to $70/mo)
3. assuming the sprint network performs as well as verizon (brilliance kicks in here...) drop verizon entirely and pick up an 8830 on sprint and move to a family plan for $130/mo (final pricing from $70/mo => $30)

According to this graph, sprint's network is compares favorably to verzion's in baltimore. Plus I would save $5/mo right off the top and nights move from 21:00 to 19:00. This is highly dependent on network performance, however; and I also will have to haul 2 phones around (however, i already usually have a MacBook Pro + iPod anyway, so an extra phone seems minimal)...the upsides to 2 phones would be a clean seperation between business/home use and no more google/groupwise collisions in calendars/address books. I think I would treat the work blackberry purely as an email/conf call device, and leave all other data services to the home Pre.

I struggled very long with G1 versus Pre, and this was what i thought about:

• G1 has the advantage of video, latitude, SD card, and more mature apps
• Pre has LED flash on camera, better multitasking, newer hardware, service-based approach to contact/messaging integration, and true multi-touch

The browsers are all the same (webkit), they both have wifi, and allegedly both will have flash 10 support before the end of the year. The G1 is certainly more developer friendly (compared to "Only a select few partners received the initial release of the Mojo SDK") on the face, but Pre still runs linux and has been rooted.

You might notice I entirely disregarded the populist iPhone. Both the G1 and Pre are a zillion times less draconian than apple, and both actually allow the end-user to multitask. I drive a lot and can't type well with a touchscreen in that scenario. Plus dealing with the hassle/terrible coverage of AT&T out here is not worth the pain. If I need any of the cool apps, I've still got my iPod touch 2G ready to rock. It's sad that I will end up carrying 3 devices around, but for now, convergence is elusive.

BGR has a thoughtful write-up on what's wrong with RIM; further evidence that it's about time to abandon the good ship blackberry.

So... geniuous? Madness? SPARTA?!