I’ve gone and left DC. On my way to Austin, TX. No time to write much, but I offer a warning:
STAY AWAY FROM WHITE CASTLE
I stopped at the White Castle above, just outside of Nashville, for a bite. I have never eaten a more disgusting burger in my life. These things looked like they were boiled. Whoever made the Harold and Kumar movie must have been smoking something pretty strong to have portrayed such a foul place as a mecca for the hungry.
Both applications require you to install software on your home computer (which must be connected to the Internet). Running these proxies will open up a port on your home computer (which must be exempted from any firewall you might have) so that you might hit http://yourIPaddress:port/whatever from your iPhone.
Besides the security implications of opening up these ports and running this code, is this really even necessary? I’ve long wondered why some enterprising company didn’t offer free web-enabled SSH (hosted on their servers and on port 80). As a consultant working at a client’s site behind firewalls, I would have given my pinky toe for something like this on numerous occasions. So, time for someone to step up? Can it be that hard?
I used to have a blogroll located on the right side of this blog. The roll was powered by Bloglines, my old on-line RSS reader. I have since switched to Google Reader and haven’t looked back. I love using it on my laptop and I especially love using it on the iPhone. So, as I’ve added and pruned blogs from Reader, the old blogroll on Bloglines had grown out of date. So, poof, it’s gone.
In its place is Google’s concept of shared posts. The idea is simple: as I am reading posts in Google’s Reader I can flag posts of interest to share. These shared posts show up automatically in the “Shared Posts” section to the right. Instead of having a static list of sites that I read, I now have a more dynamic (and relevant) list of post that I found to be interesting.
I won’t pretend to be an unbiased critic of Apple products. I own a Mac Mini, a MacBook Pro, an iPod and now an iPhone. I also own Apple stock (now trading at $130, woo hoo!). However, as much as I love the iPhone, there are some bizarre shortcomings that I’ve come to notice.
RSS Reader
For the life of me, I don’t see why Apple didn’t bundle an RSS reader for the iPhone. RSS, as a format, is perfect for mobile devices. The information is organized well (chronologically) and stripped down to just the headlines and posts you want to read. The amount of data is compact enough that you can usually download all of your favorite feeds and read them off-line (should you be away from a connection). This is one area where Safari and the .Mac Reader come up short: off-line reading. Here’s hoping for a software update sooner rather than later.
Mass Text Messaging
It’s embarrassing when my iPhone can’t do something that my Razr can do easily. In this case, sending the same text message (SMS) to multiple people. The UI on the iPhone allows for multiple recipients in their Mail program, but not so in the SMS program. It occurs to me that Apple’s iChat-like interface for SMS might not be amenable to “mass chatting”. Any other ideas?
Today is the third day of using the iPhone, so I thought I’d share some reflections on the device that may (or may not) be changing people’s lives. I should state for the record that I have never owned a “smart phone”, and my last phone was a Razr. So, if I seem too giddy, maybe it’s because I’m only just now getting caught up with everyone else.
Calls
I made several calls, some using the wired headphones/mic and others simply using the phone itself. From all accounts, the sound quality was great. I wanted to test the fade in/out of going from music playback to making a call, so I called my girlfriend Carrie. It worked just as advertised, and she had no idea I was talking on a headset, the sound quality was that good. We played around with the visual voicemail, too. Once you have this, you will truly wonder how you survived navigating those menu tress. Press 1 to save, Press 2 to delete, Press 3 to slit your wrists…
Wi-Fi vs. Edge
The auto-switching to Wi-Fi is crucial, because Edge sucks. I remember when GPRS technology came out, and that was 3 jobs and 5 or 6 years ago. To be fair, sometimes it zips, but other times I just give up and put the phone away. So, hopping on to hot spots is a life saver.
Battery Life
Great. Really, really great. I put this things through the wringer (calls, web, email) for a couple of days and still only got down to 50% of my battery. One thing that’s odd, it didn’t seem to charge very fast when plugged into my computer. I wasn’t even sure it was charging, because after 30 minutes the meter hadn’t seemed to move. However, the next morning I had a fully charged phone, so I guess it worked after all.
