Comments (6)

By Sarah, July 20, 2009 8:53 pm

I have to take this opportunity to whine about something. What else is new, right? But let’s be real – what the heck is up with AT&T? I’m totally butt crazy in love with my iPhone but I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown thanks to the ever-so-flaky service. I’ve recently found myself spending quite a bit of time on the phone, whereas before, I primarily used my phone for texting, the web, and the apps. I’m more convinced than ever that AT&T is trying to ruin my life.

If I were a boxer, this would be my inspiration.

I totally get it, though – I live in a highly urban area, in an old, brick building that doesn’t allow for superb cell reception. But what I don’t understand is how every other call, literally, can fail. Call failed. Call failed. Ooh it’s ringing! Nope, call failed. Even when I can get a call through, the static is unbelievable. Nevermind the mysterious voicemails I get days late from phone calls I never received, that never showed up on my Missed Calls log. It’s endlessly frustrating and I’m finding myself more convicted than ever about the future of my relationship with my iPhone!

It wasn’t until I actually began using my cell as an actual telephone that I noticed just how awful the service is. You really can’t compare anything to the seamlessness of all other aspects – the aesthetics, the syncing, the convenience of having all my calendars, accounts and applications working in perfect harmony. But the cell service is total crap. What do I do?

It’s not like AT&T isn’t aware. The lack of service in Austin this past March for SXSW was the topic of many a conversation. The service just seems to be getting worse, and I’m sure I’m just one of the millions who are taking to their blogs to rant about dropped calls. What is keeping AT&T from getting their act together? I know you’ve got the fundage, the monthly bill for an iPhone is atrocious.

I noticed myself longingly gazing at my good friend Jason’s G1 on Sunday at church (yeah, shame on me for being distracted during church). Surely it wouldn’t be so bad to be the only one of my friends without an iPhone. Dare I risk not being one of the cool kids and allow myself the luxury of having access to a functioning cell phone? Could I possibly turn my back on the iPhone? That Pre is looking really nice about now.

The truth is, if the G1 or the Pre were available with Verizon, the Godfather of wireless providers, I would probably take the plunge. But I’m not totally sold on the reliability of T-Mobile or Sprint at the moment, definitely not enough to break my iron-clad contract with AT&T. The Pre WILL be available through Verizon in ~six months, but by that time, maybe I should just wait to see what Google has happening? Will G1 v2.0 be better? Perhaps by that time my long-distance boyfriend will be in LA and proper cell service won’t matter as much to me? What’s a girl to do?!

I am lost, and frustrated, and based on Twitter’s trending topics and the heated article on TechCrunch, I’m not the only one. One thing is for sure – AT&T is surely working doubletime to extend that contract with Apple, because once they switch providers, their customer base is going to be more sparse than hair on Homer Simpson’s shiny bald head.

FIX IT. Or I’m leaving. I mean it.

Comments (4)

By Sarah, July 15, 2009 1:52 pm

So mean. I’m not even a Palm Pre user and I still think this sucks. Apple released iTunes version 8.2.1 today, and with it comes a nice little blockade preventing Pre users from syncing their music libraries. Now that’s a low blow.

The release notes include a blurb stating, “iTunes 8.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple Devices.”

I suppose fair is fair… but still, this is pure evil. Dieter from precentral.net suggests Pre users check out doubleTwist for music syncing until this gets worked out, if ever.

I’ve only heard good things about the Pre, which we shall call “iPhone #2,” and although I wouldn’t give up my iPhone for anything, there are many times when I want to punch AT&T squarely in between the eyes for its lack of service.

via precentral

Comments (0)

By Sarah, June 25, 2009 6:00 pm

Oh this is just horrible. I’m all about integrating technology into my life wherever possible (as long as it is convenient and helpful) – but this is one of those things I just look at and think, “Why??”

British fashion student Georgie Davies has created a dress that lights up as you receive calls on your cell. Davies, who had some help from Sony Ericsson to merge technology with fashion, had some interesting logic behind her creation:

“When you’re in a pub or a bar, you can never, ever hear your phone,” Davies to Reuters.

What, no one uses vibrate anymore? The dress is knee-length, white, and covered with shoulder-to-hip translucent scales that move and blink. Here is tennis star Maria Sharpova modeling, with a cell phone, because… why not?

Davies plans for the dress to incorporate Bluetooth technology so that it can wirelessly interact with phones. The only thing that could make this dress worse would be if it lit up in sync with your ringtone. Don’t get any ideas!!

via Geekologie

Comments (3)

By Sarah, June 4, 2009 4:49 am

I may be a half-way decent blogger, but I am a sorry excuse for a plant owner. Anything green that comes into my house has a 95% chance of dying within a month. What? At least I’m honest.

Surely I’m not what the guys at Agrihouse had in mind when they developed the microchip that allows your plant to text you when it needs water.

“It’s akin to a clip on earring, very thin and smaller than a postage stamp, and is affixed to the plant leaf,” said Richard Stoner, President of AgriHouse, a company marketing the technology.

“The farmer would just need their regular cell phone service, and the plant would send a text message when it needed water.”

Though it may be years before such a product is available to individuals like myself, it would extremely useful (and economical) to Western US farmers responsible for thousands of acres of crops that currently use water-conserving underground aquifers for hydration. Or even for NASA scientists attempting to grow plant life on other planets (the original purpose of the plant cell phone).

“You need plants on future space missions,” said Hans-Dieter Seelig, a scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who worked on the original NASA project.

via Discovery

Comments (0)

By Sarah, October 16, 2008 10:40 pm

It’s about freaking time. We have apps for everything from language translators to bubble wrap. Location-based social network BrightKite allows users to broadcast their location to their friends (with photos!), but it has been lagging in the iPhone application department. Thankfully, all that is changing.

Click here to watch the Brightkite iPhone app tutorial.

What advantage does BrightKite have over the many other geo-enabled social network iPhone apps? It is available worldwide, while many of it’s competitors are not.

Great. Yet another reason for me to get sucked back into BrightKite.

via TechCrunch

Comments (0)

By Sarah, September 24, 2008 9:00 am

Now we have the new commercial for the T-Mobile/Google G1-

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZHgZr3SXCA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

My favorite part is probably the use of the word “Funnerer.” Cute. And only a little bit obnoxious.

Comments (0)

By Sarah,

By now we are all well aware of Google and T-Mobile’s answer to the iPhone, the Android G1. If you are a Google lover, or anti-Apple, this is the phone for you.

My opinion? Of course I’m mostly concerned with looks. I like the white-ness of it, but I kind of hate the keypad. It looks like one of those cheap remote controls that comes with your portable DVD player! Or, the crappy remote that is inside the arm rest on the airplane.

So here is the low down on its guts: The G1 has GPS, WiFi, a touchscreen, an accelerometer (how fast does it fall when you throw it up in the air.. dorks), a camera, Gmail, Google Maps, a Webkit-based browser (just like Safari on the iPhone), and an App market, similar to the iPhone App Store. It is $20 cheaper than the iPhone, at $180 for existing customers, and comes with two data plans: $25 a month (with unlimited Web access and limited text messaging) and $35 a month (with unlimited everything).

You’ll have to wait until Oct 22 to actually get the thing, but exisiting T-Mobile customers can pre-order online.

Here is what Google has to say about it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7qbPa1O8Ys&hl=en&fs=1]

TechCrunch leaked a sneak peek at a few of the applications available for the Android… this is the good stuff. Here are a few of my favorites:

BreadCrumbz— Create a route on a map using pictures of landmarks to enhance the directions.

Cocktail—Tell it what ingredients you have at hand, and it gives you a list of the cocktails you can make. Love it!

EcoRio‚Äî Helps you reduce your carbon footprint. I’m curious!

Krystle II— A touchy, feely Tomigochi. This app turns your phone into a pet that you need to take care of and stroke, using the touch screen, of course. Gross. (Agreed, TC.)

Photostream—A Flickr photo browser. Great idea.

Pocket Seismograph— Exactly what it sounds like РREALLY would have come in handy during the recent earthquake/twitterquake!

Quicklist‚Äî A to-do list. I pretty much can’t get anything done without making a list first, so this would be a must for me.

Ringroid—Create a ringtone from any song in your music library. So no more PhoneZoo!

ShopSavvy— Uses the camera as a bar-code scanner to let you compare prices while shopping in a store. HELLO? This is brilliant. (Not that I generally look at the price too much, which might explain the state of my finances.)

Text-to-Speech Library— Turns text into speech through the phone’s speaker. I could imagine saying dirty phrases into this frequently with my equally immature co-workers.

Translate— Uses Google Translate to turn foreign words into your own language. Basic function but helpful nonetheless!

I’d really have to play with it to judge, but overall, I like. I am sticking with the iPhone, though. Transitioning from Blackberry to iPhone was hard enough!

Comments (0)

By Sarah, September 23, 2008 1:42 am

Technology trend forecaster Aul Saffo was quoted in a recent New York Times article claiming that text messaging actually makes people dumber. Really?

“The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points. The truth of the matter is there are hobbies that are incompatible. You don’t want to do mushroom-hunting and bird-watching at the same time, and it is the same with texting and other activities. We have all seen people walk into parking meters or walk into traffic and seem startled by oncoming cars.”

I’d be curious to know how exactly Saffo arrived at the number 10, but I’d be lying if I said the statement was entirely false. I can’t count the number of times that I have nearly run straight into someone – or started heading off in the wrong direction – simply because my head was buried in my Blackberry or iPhone (lets just be thankful California now requires hands-free devices while driving!) So if we are so completely absorbed with what is going on in our handheld devices, can we really be aware of what is going on around us? And are we dumber because of it?

Perhaps not, and we are just excellent multi-taskers.

I’m not so sure we are, and the recent train collision in Los Angeles helps prove it. With the overwhelming surge of mediums by which we can connect with our peers on – are we spending just as much time maintaining these networks as we do actually connecting with one another and discussing what we came to talk about in the first place?

I successfully spent two full days in Las Vegas without really seeing much of it at all. You might be wondering how that is even possible, considering the amount of time spent going back and forth from Convention Center, to casinos, to clubs, to the airport with all the BlogWorld Expo attendees. Plenty of time to take in the sights, right? Wrong. Once again – my face was buried in my iPhone, reading tweets, checking e-mail, responding to text messages, finding out where everyone was. And I know I wasn’t the only one. There was so much #bwe08 traffic on Twitter, even those that were unable to make it to conference could still participate in the action.

So yes, it’s blatantly obvious that we have developed an addiction to mobile computing. With the wide variety of choices available to us – from smartphones to PDAs to teeny tiny laptops – in addition to the never ending flood of slick new applications and programs, it’s virtually impossible to avoid giving into the trend. And considering the impact services like Twitter are having on business development, it could be a mistake not to get involved!

So where do we draw the line? How much networking is too much? And is it really making us dumber?

Comments (0)

By Sarah, August 14, 2008 2:51 pm

I’m literally going to the Apple store in about 5 minutes to get the new iPhone 3G. As if the Twitter, AIM, Facebook, and all the other helpful apps weren’t enough, you can manage your Netflix account from the iPhone too, too?!?! This is just too good to be true. You hear that? It’s the sound of me caving.

Dashbuster is a free app that allows you to manage your Netflix or Blockbuster queue from your iPhone. Right now, it doesn’t have the functionality to add new movies, but according to this update, it probably will in the future.

I’m stoked to be able to move my queue around at any given time!!

via geeksugar

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By Sarah, May 27, 2008 3:12 pm

Just reading that title alone made me a bit nauseous. I pictured one of those toy cell phones that your 7 year old niece has – made with cheap plastic and plastered with cartoon characters of a Disney princess, with crappy audio playing “When You Wish Upon a Star” or something equally obnoxious.

Fortunately, that is not the case with this particular mobile, though I wouldn’t go as far to call it demure, either. Flashy phones aren’t my thing, but it’s actually kind of pretty, and much more suitable for say, a 17 year old girly girl.

The DM002SH is the product of a collaboration between Walt Disney and Sharp, and is set for release on June 7. The phone will come with a Cinderella theme and feature Disney Mobility service, available with Softbank in Japan.

Other features include a 2.6″ internal display with a WQVGA resolution (400×240), a 0.5″ external OLED display, 50MB of memory, a 2Mpix camera, Bluetooth, microSD slot, and a 1Seg Tuner. It will be available in three magical colors: Clear Crystal, Brown Topaz, and Pink Diamond.

No word on pricing or availability in North America yet.

via Akihabara News