Jammin with my Jambox

Today I picked up a new toy for myself called the Jawbone Jambox.  What is this little device you say?  It’s a portable speaker that connects to any Bluetooth device to play music or, if you have it paired with your cell phone, to be used as a speakerphone.  The picture is about as big as it is in real life which is to say its pretty tiny.  The sound out of this device is pretty bad ass so far.  It’s definitely better than trying to use the built in speaker on my iPhone or my iPad.  I decided to give it a test today after charging it by sitting outside for about 2 hours with my work laptop to update a project file.  I used my iPhone for the music and it sounded pretty good in the courtyard at my townhouse.  Now I have something to use in my garage while I clean my car and stuff and it won’t be nearly that boring since I’ll have music now.  The unit is pretty pricey, but I think it was well worth the money.  I can take it to the beach, the pool, pretty much wherever I want since it runs off a rechargeable battery.  There are supposed to be configuration apps that I can download for it but I haven’t tried that out yet.  I’m still pondering if I should take this on the road with me.  It might be useful to have to pair with my iPad when I watch Netflix movies while at hotels.  I know the sound will at least be better or I can pair it with my work cell phone and use it as a speakerphone for my conference calls.

I don’t know what other tech gadgets I’ll be acquiring in the future, well besides the iPhone 5 for me and the Mrs., but this was definitely a good purchase and its coming with us during our next vacation for sure 🙂

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Android Week 2

This marks the second week that I have been using a myTouch 4G for work sling with my iPhone 3GS. There are a lot of things to like about the Android OS but there are still some things I still prefer about my iPhone. I’ll continue to use both for the foreseeable future since one is for business and one is for personal stuff.

I guess I should start with what I like about Android.

1) Widgets: These are pretty cool, I can put widgets on the panels in the OS and all the apps are kept in a list elsewhere in the OS. I’ve added a few widgets to my home pages and it seems to be working out well, I just need more screen real estate for more widgets.

2) Live Backgrounds: This feature is just awesome. There are a ton of wallpapers that have animations so the background is never boring.

3) Notifications: I think everyone in technology has beaten Apple to death about their poor notification system so I won’t do the same. I will say that notifications on my iPhone, which is jailbroken, are pretty awesome but as a native function Android has done a great job.

4) No desktop software required: Not having to sync with a desktop is huge for me. I can pull out the SD card and transfer files without using a piece of software and I can set up the phone without having to validate the OS. The thing just works! The new Android web store will put more pressure on Apple to change iOS to be untethered from the desktop hopefully

There are more things that I like but I still find myself going back to my iPhone for surfing the Internet or reading the news. Actually it is still my “go to” phone but that might be because I’m just more familiar with it compared to the Android. I think from a consumer standpoint, most people will still be attracted to Apple devices due to the simplicity and seamlessness of the device. Android is still a little geeky and hard to use, I think it’s like comparing Windows to Linux. Linux was getting there but the people want simple and familiar and iOS just happened to capture the heart of the masses first. Sure there were other devices in the market before iPhone but they didn’t capture the attention of the every day consumer.

I’ll continue to experiment with my Android work phone but I still plan on getting the iPhone 5 this July and then I’ll jailbreak the hell out of it once it’s released 😉

myTouch 4G Ordered

As part of my new job comes a new phone.  Well I didn’t HAVE to get a new phone, I chose to get a new phone.  Even though I’m still in consulting, I’m trying more and more to separate my work and my life.  Doing so comes with some sacrifices and one of them is carrying a separate phone for work.  My company is very security conscious so I had the choice of either un–jailbreaking my phone or getting one just for work.  I chose the latter since I like jailbreaking my iPhone.  Doing this also gave me 2 rare opportunities that a lot of people don’t get with their jobs

1) I get to buy a new phone that is running Android which I have wanted to try out (using the SDK on my computer just isn’t the same)

2) I get to see how tMobile’s service is in my area and when traveling since AT&T stinks!

I went to a tMobile store a while ago just to give a test drive and I was impressed with how the phone worked compared to my iPhone.  I know that the new Honeycomb OS is going to be released soon and I’m hoping that HTC is good enough to provide an update to the phone firmware.  Since this is a work only phone, I won’t be going crazy with the app downloads if any at all.  I won’t be burning minutes like I used to when I was with my old company because I couldn’t expense a company phone easily, and I won’t have big brother having the ability to see the data on my phone.  The downside is that I have to use groupware to view my calendar and email so the native functions on the phone won’t be of much use.  I’ll still do some personal stuff on the phone just as a test and to see if I want one in the future but I wouldn’t count on me switching from AT&T or getting the iPhone 5.  I just submitted the order yesterday so I’m eagerly awaiting the phone, I’m hoping that they do free overnight shipping or something so I can have it by Friday before I have to head out to a client for work.

I guess I need to read up on how Android is different from my iPhone and learn to manage/carry both devices.  Woohoo new tech gadget for me!

The Daily is here!

After much fan fare, the new app called The Daily has arrived.  I just downloaded this app for my iPad to see what all the hub bub is about.  This is a new offering from News Corp (the ones that run 20th Century Fox and Fox TV) to bring new content to all of us that were fortunate to be able to buy an iPad.  I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the app yet since I just downloaded it but the concept is pretty awesome, however this has already been done before just not to this level.  I have other apps like the NY Times and NPR that also publish news that I consume but I think the selling point they are trying to do with The Daily is that it is all original content.  Hmm… I don’t know if that really is a selling point for most people.   The iPad is a consumer machine that pulls down all types of data from the web.  The best part about the iPad is that I can view the web using Safari and it shows me what I want minus all the Flash content.

I’ve been reading some of the articles here and they are no better or worse than what I read on the web.  What gets me is that they want people pay for the content like a regular magazine subscription.  This is interesting considering you can do the exact same thing using the Kindle App and you have a great many more sources of content using Kindle than just using The Daily.  I do give kudos to Fox and Apple for execution.  The app is fully interactive complete with video content and its all seemless.  It definitely has the “COOL” factor down pat.  It also has interactivity with Sudoku puzzles and ads.  The best part that a lot of other magazines have failed at during their implementation of subscription based apps is that you can view the content while it loads.  I  tried out two digital magazines, one of them I can’t remember and the other was Travel and Leisure.  Both magazines had to load the whole magazine before I was able to view the content.  I only have a Wifi iPad but I typically use it at home and my connection is pretty fast so it should have taken no time at all to load the content.  That would be a big negative on that one, it took almost 30 minutes to load the content, by that time I was already interested in doing something else entirely instead of reading the magazine.

I’m not sure I would ever pay for this but I can see some people going for this kind of app.  What is nice is that Verizon gives a two week subscription away for you to try before you buy.  That would be awesome if more apps were like this.  I’ve been able to do the same thing using apps from Cydia (yeah I’m a jailbreaker :P).  I’ll give this more of a test drive later this week and see how often the content updates.  In the mean time, I have all my news sites bookmarked and there is always my Flipboard app that has all my RSS, Twitter, and Facebook feeds which by itself keeps me pretty busy.