I've been posting business related iPhone usage reports, so I figured I should post something for those less concered about power points & calendaring.
The 3rd party app store is amazing. What were Palm & Microsoft thinking? It should have always been this way (on-phone purchase/install). Click, Buy, Use!
Check this out (not me). It shows you just how an amazing device/interface it really is and what can be done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51cWRrZdkwk&feature=related
I have Shazam installed. It's crazy that audio recognition has gotten so good.
Unfortunatly I live and work in a dead zone for most of the location services. I live half-way between the SF Bay Area and Sacramento and applications like Urban Spoon and iWant don't appear to have listings where I live or Work. When my travels take me to SF or Sac next i'm ready to give them a whirl.
The only personal user gripe is that there is no MMS or Video support. I love live blogging images & video's to the web in real time. Yes, there are 3rd party apps for a few larger sites, but the small ones I use don't support it (they used validated MMS addresses for image identification and posting).
I look forward to the day SlingBox releases their client (I the client on my Treo)
Whats funny? Its been a week and I have exactly ZERO point ZERO songs loaded. I listen to sattelite radio. I never used the iPod I had, I never kept music on my Laptop or Treo. If I want to listent to something its streamed.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Once the "newness" wears off
Well, I've been using the iPhone as my primary business communications device now for a week. I figure that's enough time for the thrill of a new device to wear off and to have an honest opinion.
The bottom line: The iPhone is far from perfect, but I'm not going back to my Goodlink Enabled Treo 750.
The battery is the big challenge. If you keep your fingers off the screen and don't make any calls, you'll make it thru the day. If you are obsessed with your inbox like me, you've better make sure you'll not be away from a charger for more than 4 hours at a time. With the conscious effort to ensure it's always plugged in at home, in the car, and whenever convenient at work, i've found I am not running below 20% very often.
ActiveSync appears to be able to Sync multiple contact folders. I've created a folder underneath my contacts for CompanyContacts and it appears to be sync'ng them. Unfortunately, It doesn't appear to like the format we use for company contacts (we start the contact name off with the company name) and so it appears to be a little confused. The bottom line is that while not as convenient as accessing the public folder, I should be able to script an update to happen daily.
My biggest disappointment with Apple's mail client is that it goes completely limp when you have no coverage. It appears to download headers only until you attempt to access the message. You can't read unread, move, or delete messages when you have no coverage. This is VERY annoying and I can't see Apple leaving it this way past the next major software update. I haven't used any other ActiveSync device with this limitation. You are able to compose NEW messages which get stored in the outbox and reply to messages that are already downloaded. With airplane mode enabled, you can see which features are disabled. When in an area with spotty coverage, you'll get an error when trying to move/delete/etc.
I'm a pretty demanding user (and so are the rest of the guys at SNI). My expectation is that everyone will want (and get) one of these at SNI in August.
The bottom line: The iPhone is far from perfect, but I'm not going back to my Goodlink Enabled Treo 750.
The battery is the big challenge. If you keep your fingers off the screen and don't make any calls, you'll make it thru the day. If you are obsessed with your inbox like me, you've better make sure you'll not be away from a charger for more than 4 hours at a time. With the conscious effort to ensure it's always plugged in at home, in the car, and whenever convenient at work, i've found I am not running below 20% very often.
ActiveSync appears to be able to Sync multiple contact folders. I've created a folder underneath my contacts for CompanyContacts and it appears to be sync'ng them. Unfortunately, It doesn't appear to like the format we use for company contacts (we start the contact name off with the company name) and so it appears to be a little confused. The bottom line is that while not as convenient as accessing the public folder, I should be able to script an update to happen daily.
My biggest disappointment with Apple's mail client is that it goes completely limp when you have no coverage. It appears to download headers only until you attempt to access the message. You can't read unread, move, or delete messages when you have no coverage. This is VERY annoying and I can't see Apple leaving it this way past the next major software update. I haven't used any other ActiveSync device with this limitation. You are able to compose NEW messages which get stored in the outbox and reply to messages that are already downloaded. With airplane mode enabled, you can see which features are disabled. When in an area with spotty coverage, you'll get an error when trying to move/delete/etc.
I'm a pretty demanding user (and so are the rest of the guys at SNI). My expectation is that everyone will want (and get) one of these at SNI in August.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
iPhone makes a major milestone!
It's been 13.5+ hours and my iPhone is still running on a single charge (Albeit it doesn't look like there is much left)! The following stats are near the end of the 4th full charge/drain cycle.
According to the Usage Stats right now:
Usage: 7 hours, 1 minutes
Standby: 13 Hours, 31 minutes
Current Call Time: 1 Hour, 3 minutes
Sent: 881K
Received: 6.2Mb
What's interesting is that there is no way I used the phone for 7+ hours today, so ActiveSync must trigger the usage timer. The phone spent most of its day today in WiFi range, so the cellular data usage was significantly lower than yesterday.
We'll see if I can do the same tomorrow (I'll be on the road/in the field all day). If I can get similar results tomorrow, I'll say that my #1 concern has been satisfied.
According to the Usage Stats right now:
Usage: 7 hours, 1 minutes
Standby: 13 Hours, 31 minutes
Current Call Time: 1 Hour, 3 minutes
Sent: 881K
Received: 6.2Mb
What's interesting is that there is no way I used the phone for 7+ hours today, so ActiveSync must trigger the usage timer. The phone spent most of its day today in WiFi range, so the cellular data usage was significantly lower than yesterday.
We'll see if I can do the same tomorrow (I'll be on the road/in the field all day). If I can get similar results tomorrow, I'll say that my #1 concern has been satisfied.
iPhone: The Day After....
So Yesterday was my first full day on the iPhone.
Before making you listen to all of my ramblings, I'll give you the bottom line: While I have a few concerns, sofar the it's the most powerful business-enabled remote communications device I've had the pleasure of working with.
Concern #1 - Battery Life
Yesterday I ran the battery to "dead" twice. It shut down once right after lunch and then again (after a full recharge started at 1PM) not too long after getting home. It took somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours to fully recharge (I'll keep a closer eye on this for the next recharge). Solution: I'm going to keep a USB Charge/Sync cable in my laptop bag, I'm going to pick up a few cradles (home , car, office) so that it's charging when it's convenient, and i' going to pick up one of the 3rd party "connector" based add-on batteries for emergency situations. I don't want to deal with enabling/disabling Bluetooth, G3, or WiFI so I'm going to go with "keep a charger around" model and see if this solves my blackouts.
Concern #2 - No Public Folder Contacts
I've decided that I will no longer call anyone and just wait for inbound calls. Well, since that obviously wont work, i'll have to figure this out. This will probably be my weekend project.
Concern #3 - ActiveSync != Goodlink
For the last 3+ years I've been using GoodLink. Before that I was using Blackberry (at first Pager-style then eventually the early phones). GoodLink's sync is so fast & accurate that you really feel like it's a mobile outlook client. The iPhone's ActiveSync implementation feels loosely coupled to my inbox... I'm not yet confident that a urgent email isn't hovering on the exchange server that has not yet made it to my phone. I often have Outlook open on my laptop while i'm holding the phone and the inboxes don't match until I refresh. Dissapointing.
Before making you listen to all of my ramblings, I'll give you the bottom line: While I have a few concerns, sofar the it's the most powerful business-enabled remote communications device I've had the pleasure of working with.
Concern #1 - Battery Life
Yesterday I ran the battery to "dead" twice. It shut down once right after lunch and then again (after a full recharge started at 1PM) not too long after getting home. It took somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours to fully recharge (I'll keep a closer eye on this for the next recharge). Solution: I'm going to keep a USB Charge/Sync cable in my laptop bag, I'm going to pick up a few cradles (home , car, office) so that it's charging when it's convenient, and i' going to pick up one of the 3rd party "connector" based add-on batteries for emergency situations. I don't want to deal with enabling/disabling Bluetooth, G3, or WiFI so I'm going to go with "keep a charger around" model and see if this solves my blackouts.
Concern #2 - No Public Folder Contacts
I've decided that I will no longer call anyone and just wait for inbound calls. Well, since that obviously wont work, i'll have to figure this out. This will probably be my weekend project.
Concern #3 - ActiveSync != Goodlink
For the last 3+ years I've been using GoodLink. Before that I was using Blackberry (at first Pager-style then eventually the early phones). GoodLink's sync is so fast & accurate that you really feel like it's a mobile outlook client. The iPhone's ActiveSync implementation feels loosely coupled to my inbox... I'm not yet confident that a urgent email isn't hovering on the exchange server that has not yet made it to my phone. I often have Outlook open on my laptop while i'm holding the phone and the inboxes don't match until I refresh. Dissapointing.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
24 Hours of iPhone goodness
It's 1:00PM and my iPhone's battery is completely drained. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign.
The bad: I'm now stuck without my device (until it recharges)
The Good: It means I really enjoyed using the device. I only let it sit idle for 1 elapsed hour the entire morning!
I was paying close attention to the runtime today. Counters since last charge: 5.5 hours total (shown as the standby timer) and 4.5 hours (shown as the usage timer). Cellular Airtime was just over an hour of the 4.5. Data Transfered was ~20Mb (i've had a total of 35Mb in the 24 hour window since I activated)
I started off today at 7:30AM by pulling the iPhone off the charger and heading out the door for work. I don't yet have a car charger. Typically my phone sits in the car charger atleast 2 hours a day as I drive 1-hour each way to/from my office. I sat on 2 conference calls on my ride in connected thru the bluetooth interface to my Jeep's MyGIG navigation radio. By the time I got to work it was 30-40% drained.
At the office, I proceeded to interact with my phone while in several meetings. Just before I headed out to lunch it warned me I had 20% remaining. I used it to make several calls on my way to and from lunch (which was an excellent bowl of Pho by the way, more on that another time).
It turned off with a little beep sound just after getting back to my desk.....
The bad: I'm now stuck without my device (until it recharges)
The Good: It means I really enjoyed using the device. I only let it sit idle for 1 elapsed hour the entire morning!
I was paying close attention to the runtime today. Counters since last charge: 5.5 hours total (shown as the standby timer) and 4.5 hours (shown as the usage timer). Cellular Airtime was just over an hour of the 4.5. Data Transfered was ~20Mb (i've had a total of 35Mb in the 24 hour window since I activated)
I started off today at 7:30AM by pulling the iPhone off the charger and heading out the door for work. I don't yet have a car charger. Typically my phone sits in the car charger atleast 2 hours a day as I drive 1-hour each way to/from my office. I sat on 2 conference calls on my ride in connected thru the bluetooth interface to my Jeep's MyGIG navigation radio. By the time I got to work it was 30-40% drained.
At the office, I proceeded to interact with my phone while in several meetings. Just before I headed out to lunch it warned me I had 20% remaining. I used it to make several calls on my way to and from lunch (which was an excellent bowl of Pho by the way, more on that another time).
It turned off with a little beep sound just after getting back to my desk.....
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
bye bye Treo! Hello iPhone!
Well Folks, the day you all thougth would never happen has arrived. Joe's personal productivity tool of choice is now an Apple product (long dramatic pause)!!
Today I switched from my trusty GoodLink enabled Palm Treo 750 to a sexy new 16GB iPhone 3G. As most of you know, we are a big Microsoft shop, so switching away from Windows Mobile on the surface seems entirely backwards. Before today, my productivity tool was GoodLink, not the underlying hardware. My productivity tool is now the integrated ActiveSync functionality which is all Microsoft! Atleast that's how I'm justifying it :)
Honestly, I was getting pretty fed up with my Treo. The Treo hardware is decent, I can type 50 words per minute on the mini keyboard using my thumbs, i had installed a 3rd party over sized battery pack so I could make an entire day (and I had a charged spare & travel charger in my bag at all times).. sounds perfect, no? The browser was pretty much useless. The screen resolution sucked (the Treo 650 was better!).. but worst of all? It just plain quit working well as a phone!
Now, I will admit, it was mostly my fault. We have a CRM application that exports all of our contacts into an exchange public folder. That folder now has over 5000 contacts. It was GREAT having 5000 contacts available for a dial at any minute. It was even nicer that *I* didn't have to input them! As anyone in the company adds/updates the contacts they were instantly available on the Treo via Goodlink's public folder contact sync. The problem? With 5000 contacts in the phone it would hang trying to look up the caller-id to display on inbound calls? The result? My phone would continually lock up and people would get voicemail. I was able to answer MAYBE 1 out of 5 calls.
Ironically, ActiveSync doesn't even attempt to sync public folders. This means I'm now on a new device with only about 2 dozen personal contacts. It's not a fair comparison, but boy does it feel good to be able to navigate through my phone and accept phone calls! I'm sure it's not going to be so pleasant when I'm on the road and need to reach someone and do not have access to the CRM database.
It took about 3 minutes to make the iPhone sync my email, personal contacts, and calendar from our exchange server. We have Exchange 2007 deployed with a OWA front-end all prepped for ActiveSync. I had to enter my email address, domain user-ID, and domain password and I was in. It was so easy I'm betting even a sales guy could do it!
First Impressions sofar are really good. Tomorrow will be the real test. If I can make it a day without powering back up, I'll be very pleased..... Stay Tuned!
Today I switched from my trusty GoodLink enabled Palm Treo 750 to a sexy new 16GB iPhone 3G. As most of you know, we are a big Microsoft shop, so switching away from Windows Mobile on the surface seems entirely backwards. Before today, my productivity tool was GoodLink, not the underlying hardware. My productivity tool is now the integrated ActiveSync functionality which is all Microsoft! Atleast that's how I'm justifying it :)
Honestly, I was getting pretty fed up with my Treo. The Treo hardware is decent, I can type 50 words per minute on the mini keyboard using my thumbs, i had installed a 3rd party over sized battery pack so I could make an entire day (and I had a charged spare & travel charger in my bag at all times).. sounds perfect, no? The browser was pretty much useless. The screen resolution sucked (the Treo 650 was better!).. but worst of all? It just plain quit working well as a phone!
Now, I will admit, it was mostly my fault. We have a CRM application that exports all of our contacts into an exchange public folder. That folder now has over 5000 contacts. It was GREAT having 5000 contacts available for a dial at any minute. It was even nicer that *I* didn't have to input them! As anyone in the company adds/updates the contacts they were instantly available on the Treo via Goodlink's public folder contact sync. The problem? With 5000 contacts in the phone it would hang trying to look up the caller-id to display on inbound calls? The result? My phone would continually lock up and people would get voicemail. I was able to answer MAYBE 1 out of 5 calls.
Ironically, ActiveSync doesn't even attempt to sync public folders. This means I'm now on a new device with only about 2 dozen personal contacts. It's not a fair comparison, but boy does it feel good to be able to navigate through my phone and accept phone calls! I'm sure it's not going to be so pleasant when I'm on the road and need to reach someone and do not have access to the CRM database.
It took about 3 minutes to make the iPhone sync my email, personal contacts, and calendar from our exchange server. We have Exchange 2007 deployed with a OWA front-end all prepped for ActiveSync. I had to enter my email address, domain user-ID, and domain password and I was in. It was so easy I'm betting even a sales guy could do it!
First Impressions sofar are really good. Tomorrow will be the real test. If I can make it a day without powering back up, I'll be very pleased..... Stay Tuned!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Grohe Thermostatic Valves
Well,
The previous owner of my house had some pretty expensive taste. He equipped all of the showers with Grohe Thermostatic valves. For those of you who've never seen them, basically they are temperature calibrated valves where you just spin a single knob to the temp you want anywhere from like 70 to 110 degrees and it automagically handles adjusting the hot&cold no matter what the pressure to get your temp (some sort of thermostatic spring).
Anyhow, My brother moved out of my house about 2 years ago. Since then, nobody has been using the spare shower. The spare shower is a nice double-headed shower that is completely tiled in from ceiling to floor in natural stone. I had a friend over recently and he said one side wouldn't turn on at all and the other side was cold only!
Since my parents are going to be spending a few days here next week, I decided I had to look at the shower today. After spending an hour figuring out how to disassemble them, I was able to get the hot water working! The hot side of the valve was completely full of some sort of sludge. With the valve dissembled, I turned the water on (a little bit messy) and all sorts of carbon-like crap shot out into the shower. I cleaned the valve cartridge up in the sink, re-assembled, and Voila, working shower!
Unfortunately, when I tried to do the same to the other side, I ended up breaking the thermostatic valve controls plastic housing. Turns out this side was properly assembled with set screws that were left out of the side I fixed. Unfortunately the set screws are in a spot where they are going to be a nightmare to get to, so I decided I had enough for one day. Atleast it's a nice regular shower again. Once I find a replacement part (so I know I don't have to fix the one I have), I'll just cut the plastic off the brass housing. While I might need to change the other side's cartridge, I'm betting I can fix it just by flushing it out too.
The best news is that I didn't have to jack-hammer out any of the stone!
The previous owner of my house had some pretty expensive taste. He equipped all of the showers with Grohe Thermostatic valves. For those of you who've never seen them, basically they are temperature calibrated valves where you just spin a single knob to the temp you want anywhere from like 70 to 110 degrees and it automagically handles adjusting the hot&cold no matter what the pressure to get your temp (some sort of thermostatic spring).
Anyhow, My brother moved out of my house about 2 years ago. Since then, nobody has been using the spare shower. The spare shower is a nice double-headed shower that is completely tiled in from ceiling to floor in natural stone. I had a friend over recently and he said one side wouldn't turn on at all and the other side was cold only!
Since my parents are going to be spending a few days here next week, I decided I had to look at the shower today. After spending an hour figuring out how to disassemble them, I was able to get the hot water working! The hot side of the valve was completely full of some sort of sludge. With the valve dissembled, I turned the water on (a little bit messy) and all sorts of carbon-like crap shot out into the shower. I cleaned the valve cartridge up in the sink, re-assembled, and Voila, working shower!
Unfortunately, when I tried to do the same to the other side, I ended up breaking the thermostatic valve controls plastic housing. Turns out this side was properly assembled with set screws that were left out of the side I fixed. Unfortunately the set screws are in a spot where they are going to be a nightmare to get to, so I decided I had enough for one day. Atleast it's a nice regular shower again. Once I find a replacement part (so I know I don't have to fix the one I have), I'll just cut the plastic off the brass housing. While I might need to change the other side's cartridge, I'm betting I can fix it just by flushing it out too.
The best news is that I didn't have to jack-hammer out any of the stone!
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