FailMail

Thanks, @andrewhyde for the post title. 

So I knew that gmail is down, but the DUH moment came after a couple of hours of wondering why a certain Twitterati that rhymes with Anger hasn’t pinged me as promised to help me with stuff that rhymes with Roople.  

So anyhoo. Most notable from this whole outage is the Gmail team’s response. 

“We feel your pain and we’re sorry” hit it on the head. The word “sorry” is rarely heard from companies these days, and in the age of social media, I think more organizations should realize that “sorry” isn’t an admission of weakness, it’s a sign of genuine concern for your users. 

Thanks, Gmail team.

Not cool

So I am playing around with the new Facebook redesign and I saw that you can now add tabs for your apps. Cool, I said. Let’s start with “My Music.” So I clicked and saw that Qloud has taken the liberty to pick out my favorite songs for me.  Alright, I thought. Maybe the list came from my iTunes plugin.

But a quick look at the list tells me that it isn’t so. And no, I don’t appreciate Qloud taking the liberty to tell the world for me what kind of music I listen to. Don’t shoot me, but I really have no idea who Rihanna is and I thought Timbaland made shoes. 

Fine, I created an account and didn’t choose “favorite songs.” But please. A “so and so has not chosen any songs for her profile yet” would’ve worked much better. 

Now I’m irritated to the max. Where’s the chocolate? 

My favorite non-i gadget

I am in love with a new gadget and surprisingly enough, it doesn’t have an Apple logo on it. 

Caffeine. On demand. Need I say more?

 

The Son of iPhone, 10 days later

So I’ve been with The Son of iPhone for more than a week now and while I love it, there’s really only a few things to say about it compared to my original iPhone. With iPhone 2.0 loaded on my old iPhone, I can enjoy the same apps on my old iPhone that I do on the newer one. Yes, it is faster on 3G (when it does have 3G coverage, which I find is pretty spotty anyway), and yes, it is thinner and lighter. 

Yes, I do have a few complaints about the Son of iPhone, though I don’t think the Son of iPhone is itself to blame. 

It crashes a lot. Oh goody. Yes, it’s about as touchy and unstable as I am when there’s no chocolate to be found. Open Loopt. White Apple logo appears. Open Whrrl. iPhone says “screw that, I wanna go back to my home screen.” But then again, just as it’s never my 6-year-old’s fault when he is sent to the principal’s office, I don’t think it’s the iPhone’s fault either. It tends to crash when I’m running certain applications while I’m not within 3G coverage, namely Loopt, Whrrl, Where, and Pandora. 

Battery life sucks. I have not done any sophisticated testing to validate my claim, though I think I may be to blame for this one as well. Because of all the new apps on it, I’m constantly using it, and this time, I’m not just checking e-mail or making phone calls. I’m checking for movie times and purchasing tickets for them, I’m twittering, I’m telling people where I’m at on the map, I’m listening to streaming audio, and I’m pretending to be a Jedi. 

Yes, I used to be one of those people who say “I just want a good phone to make phone calls with,” but a year with the iPhone proves that I can do a lot of things with on a phone that’s also really good at being a phone. iPhone took that even further. So, speaking of “other things,” here are a few thoughts on apps that I have played with in the last week. 

Apps I am absolutely in LOVE with: 

Pandora — It’s the same Pandora you know and love on the 

web, except now you can listen to it on your iPhone, and that’s pretty much anywhere. I stream Pandora in my car stereo now for the long commute home along the 101 when there’s really nothing else you could do but sit.  Just like the web version of Pandora, you can give the currently playing song a thumbs up or a thumbs down, as well as bookmark the song or the artist. Yes, you can also skip. I love the interface, and at first glance at the iPhone screen while running Pandora, it looks like it is playing music from your iPod’s library.  My complaint? This complaint isn’t isolated to the Pandora app. Because of the iPhone’s inability to multitask when not connected to wifi, you won’t get incoming calls while running the app. They go straight to voice mail. 

Loopt — Loopt is probably my favorite location-aware application on the iPhone and I’ve got to say that it’s pretty darn useful. It’s actually a social networking application that allows you to connect with people around you and lets them know where you are so that you can actually connect and not just send virtual zombies with each other. It allows you to update your location, your status (you can also link your Twitter account to it), and attach pictures to your update by snapping one on the spot or choosing one from your photo library. I personally DON’T use Loopt as a social networking application but more of a personal utility to update persons who actually need to access that type of info about me, which I deem highly personal. 

I can also see Loopt as being useful for businesses who need to deploy people who must check in with their status. This can be useful for sales people who go out on sales calls. They can simply check in with their Loopt status and this can be tied somehow to a leads generation or a CRM tool. Lets say a sales person checks in with their current location, Loopt can tell them which clients are also nearby. They can update their Loopt journals and use that as documentation on how the sales visit went. 

Other service-oriented professionals can also use this especially when out on calls. For example, a business that deploys equipment repair types of people such as technicians. With the tap of a finger, the tech can report back his location to base. Location and time are noted. Anyone can boast about quick response times, but the documentation that Loopt can provide - I think - means a lot more. 

Main complaint about Loopt? It crashes quite a bit and it seems to happen mostly on EDGE. 

Shazam — Ever been in a restaurant having lunch and some song you’ve never heard of starts playing over the speakers…and if you’re like me you start writing down phrases so you can Google the song’s title later? Now all you have to do is run Shazam on your iPhone, let it “listen” to a portion of that song, and voila! It gives you the title, artist info of the song. You can then share that information by clicking on “share tag” which opens up the iPhone e-mail client. 

iWant — I am absolutely in love with the interface of iWant. Another location-aware app, it uses your location to find nearby services — restaurants, pharmacies, dry cleaners, gas stations, car rental places, ATMs. By clicking on each category, it will show you nearby businesses plus their distance from your current location. Clicking on the business name will take you to an information page with its address, a clickable map that will take you to the map app on your iPhone (where you can then get directions), a clickable phone number that will then dial the business. It will also show Yelp reviews if they are available.

Bank of America app — I think the folks at B of A did an awesome job on this app. Sure, I can sign in to mobile banking from here, view your accounts, transfer money and access bill pay, but the application is really useful even if you don’t sign into Mobile Banking. Clicking on the “Locations” tab on the home screen gives you the option to use your current location to locate B of A services. You can search for banking centers, banking centers that are open on Saturday, banking centers that have talking ATMs, drive-up ATMs, you name it. Clicking on each location will tell you exactly what’s available there, and gives you the option to get directions to that location. 

Now, I’ve looked for a similar app from Wells Fargo and I haven’t found one yet. I know that Wells Fargo has a mobile site optimized for the iPhone, but other than that, I am now aware of a Wells Fargo app. Another thing that I noticed is that going to http://www.wellsfargo.com on your iPhone does not automatically detect that you are using a mobile browser to visit the site and takes you to the regular Wells Fargo site instead of redirecting to the mobile-browser-optimized site which is at http://www.wf.com. It’s tough not to make comparisons, but B of A’s website automatically redirects to the mobile site when accessed on the iPhone. 

Twinkle — Quite possibly my new favorite Twitter client. While Twitterrific on the iPhone is also location-aware, it doesn’t really do much with the information other than update your profile. Twinkle takes it a bit further by showing you nearby tweets based on your current location. While it’s nice to know what @newmediajim is up to in Washington, DC, it can also be useful to know what people are tweeting about locally. If you remember the Bay Bridge collapse last year, the incident was twitted before news crews even got there.  Twinkle has a home view where you can see tweets from people you are following, and a “nearby” view. This is much better than the web version of Twitter, which only gives you the option to view your own timeline along with the people you are following, and the public timeline which is pretty much the whole world. The only complaint? It doesn’t support d’s, but it seems they are already working on that.  

Under “I expected more:” Facebook: The new Facebook app on the  iPhone looks nice, but falls desperately short of [my] expectations. Not to rag on Facebook or anything, but the original iPhone app, albeit Safari-based, was so awesome that it’s pretty tough to beat. I’m even going to go as far as to say that it is even better than most native iPhone apps out there built on the SDK. You’ve got your News Feed, Events, Photos, your Profile, including your wall, an awesome search function and messaging. The new app does all of that, plus chat and integrates the camera. Ok so it’s cool. Just saying. I expected more from Facebook. Not sure what. But I suppose when you’re used to wowing your users, the expectations are so high that there’s bound to be a point when you will somehow disappoint them. 

So there you have it. My two cents on the iPhone 2.0 apps. They’re awesome, but still buggy and yes, they do test my patience when they crash. But I am aware that these apps on the iPhone have only been around less than two weeks and I have high hopes that these apps will scale.

Yeah. What gives?

I’d have to agree with the people in line on this one. Why do people have to make fun of people who like technology? People who appreciate revolutionary things? Sure, it’s “just a phone.” It doesn’t help you sleep better at night, and it certainly isn’t a “real human being” that you can have a relationship with. 

But it is a really cool gadget and what’s wrong with liking cool gadgets? You can’t have a relationship with it, but it enhances existing relationships. And before you snicker, don’t tell me that a quick phone call or SMS to your SO wouldn’t make a difference. How about status apps like Loopt or Twitter to let them know where you are and what you’re doing with just a couple of taps with your fingers …do they not enhance existing relationships? And no, I’m not referring to stalkerish uses for these apps. Or how about the ability to find movie times and to purchase tickets effortlessly, for the times when you decide to catch a movie out of the blue? Or the ability to find the closest place to eat, complete with ratings, maybe even menu information? 

Technophiles may be easy to make fun of because we wake up early, stand in line for hours under the hot sun just to get our eager hands on the latest iGadget. I say, however, that there must be something terribly wrong with people who make fun of “geeks” whose only fault in this case is that they recognize and appreciate how technology can enhance our daily lives. 

iPhone post

Someone made a comment that apparently I should be institutionalized for referring to my iPhone as “godphone.” Why, thank you!

July 11 — after visiting two stores and ending up in a 2-hour line at the Apple Store at Stanford (all while suffering from a this-is-the-first-time-I’m-taking-Ambien hangover…note to self: do not take after 2am), I finally had the Son of iPhone by 5pm.

Once in the store, it took less than 10 minutes to get my iPhone going. So I have no idea what y’all are talking about when you say iPocalypse. I did notice that other customers in the same store were not enjoying the same seamless experience that I had, and it seemed to me that the issues were mostly on AT&T’s side, such as accounts not being properly configured.

I love my new iPhone overall, my only complaint is that its battery life most definitely sucks worse than my original phone and I am finding that I need to keep it plugged in as much as I can. Other than that? I love it. Next post should be a review of my current apps.

Favorite one so far without going into too much detail? Loopt and Pandora. More to follow.

T minus

Ok, fine. Have at it. I’m so gullible right now certain people are having a field day. Best yet was when I actually believed some mean colleagues (you know who you are) that AT&T would be setting up special booths in a certain Silicon Valley company’s campus and perhaps I should go there instead. Sadly, I not only believed them, I even went as far as having an internal debate…”to Twitter or not to Twitter?” 

So. Anyhoo. I’m seriously considering waiting until mid-day tomorrow to get the iPhone, just to give AT&T a chance to get their act together. I might check out the Apple Store early in the morning just to see, though…and in the event that hell freezes over and AT&T handles this smoothly I might just stay and get it before work.  

If it’s bad as I am imagining it to be, my new iPhone will probably have to wait until Monday. 

But iTunes 7.7 is now out and I already have a few apps downloaded. I am itching to try them out, except I still haven’t successfully upgraded to iPhone 2.0. If I am able to upgrade successfully before tomorrow, this might hold me over until Monday. We shall see. 

And so it goes

…that this blog continues to be the poster child of AT&T hell. Apparently I also come up #1 for the phrase “AT&T is so stupid.”

I have a feeling that as the Son of iPhone comes out on Friday, my blog will be getting hits from frustrated customers. There will be those finding out that they are not eligible to buy the Son of iPhone at the $199 price, that they will have to shell out $299 instead for the 8GB model. There will be those who think it’s unfair that AT&T will charge existing iPhone customers $18 to upgrade to the new 3G model, or those angry that we have to pay an extra $10 for unlimited data. Of course those of us who don’t want to risk a bricked iPhone later will probably just suck it up with AT&T even though it just plain smarts. 

Read the release here. 

And this from the AT&T Wireless site. 

Oh. And guess what. The current agreements include at least 200 text messages a month (with Twitter DMs and updates and whatever other notifications I get in addition to IM’s and regular SMS, I burn 200 text messages in two days). The new ones won’t have any text messages included. If you want to do any text messaging, unlimited text messaging plans start at $20/month unless, of course, you want to pay per message. Not like you can take the Just Say No approach to text messaging. You’re getting charged for incoming messages as well and in the age of mobile spam, it’s a bit of a risk to not have a text messaging plan at all. 

Oh. And in-store activations only. Given how well AT&T handled last year’s activations, I could only imagine how they will handle it this time. You don’t get to yell at iTunes or the poor customer service rep on the other line. Nope. This time, you get to yell at a real live customer service rep! I have a feeling I’m gonna be staying in next weekend watching Scoble videos about ongoing geek riots, twittering on my current godphone: “staring at yet-to-be-activated iPhone.”

WallE

No secret that the only reason I ever get to go to the movies is to see kid films, but I think this is the first time I’m actually blogging about one. Went to see WallE this weekend and I’ve got to say that it’s one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

It’s futuristic yet nostalgic. There’s very little dialogue in the movie, yet it still manages to take you through a variety of emotions. Never thought a movie about robots could do that. But then again, I didn’t think a movie about talking clown fish would do that to me either.

Estrogen definitely kicked in for me whenever Barbara Streisand was in the background singing It Only Takes a Moment: “And we’ll recall when time runs out, that it only took a moment, to be loved a whole life long.”

But I have to admit that as emotional as those lines may be, it still doesn’t compare to how my heart jumped when I heard WallE’s “fully-charged” sound.

Shoulda known

It’s not like I would actually get excited about a browser from AT&T but when I read reviews that it actually doesn’t suck, I actually grabbed an invitation code and in the spirit of early adopterhood and despite my sentiments for AT&T, I actually made it to the download page.

Ah. Silly Lisa. What did you expect?