So I moved again. This time it’s Los Angeles. I bought a new car (Mazda3 sedan) and started planning a trip across eight states to setup a new life in L.A. I said my goodbyes, loaded up the new ride with my earthly possessions and started the road trip.
But before I left, I loaded up a few helpful road trip iPhone applications. Travelocity was good for finding hotels near my GPS location. Gasbag was excellent for finding the cheapest gas in the area. Where was also decent for gas stations and Starbucks. I relied on a separate GPS unit for turn-by-turn directions. It was invaluable after stopping over in Memphis.
If you haven’t experienced Middle America before, there’s no better way to envelop yourself in the rural lifestyle than driving across the country. It was a little disconcerting at times where driving across long, empty stretches of Texas and New Mexico, but still worth the experience.
Favorite Exit: Exit 237 in Oklahoma on Interstate 40W. Do yourself a favor and stop at the Hungry Traveler. The place is in a desolate part of Oklahoma, the epitome of the middle of nowhere. I had a delicious mushroom and Swiss burger polished off with the best slice of blueberry pie that I’ve ever eaten in my life.
Favorite State: Arizona. Perhaps it’s just the northern section, but the slow transition from rocky desert landscape to lush, green mountains is really quite breathtaking. I stayed on Route 66 for one night after passing through Flagstaff. It made me think of the Pixar film Cars. (RIP Paul Newman. He was awesome as the voice of the Doc.) The gorgeous farmland of Oklahoma is in a close second.
Least Favorite State: North Texas. The entire area smelled like cow manure from one end to the other. My overnight stay in Amarillo was incredibly boring.
Favorite Overnight Stop: Memphis, TN. I got to see some old friends and eat two delicious plates of sushi.
I made to L.A. after four days. It didn’t rain one time during my trip. I’m staying on Wilshire Blvd. near UCLA. I might have lucked out with finding an excellent roommate and place to live on Craigslist. Only time will tell. It’s going to be interesting to see how well I can acclimate to the city. It’s overwhelming and exhilarating all at the same time.
I sat in a coffee shop today and browsed the music on a friend’s laptop. I browsed by albums for a while but eventually found Ben Folds new album by an artist search. I queued up the music and sat there listening to the tracks while sipping my Splenda-filled jolt of caffeine.
Of course all I had was my iPhone. The laptop in question was about 578 miles away.
I downloaded the Simplify Media iPhone app a couple days ago for free. (It’s free for the first 100K users and $3.99 afterward.) Install the SM app on your PC / Mac and it uses iTunes, Winamp or just directories to share music. Sync it up with your iPhone and you can listen to your entire music collection without having to transfer it to the iPhone. It streams the music through the net and the quality is superb. You can add up to 30 friends and share your entire music collection online.
It works great on the 3G network or Wi-fi. Don’t bother using it on Edge though. It also downloads album art, lyrics and artist info. One downside is that it takes a really long time to archive huge collections on the computer. If you have more than 5000 songs, go watch a movie while it indexes the music. Simplify Media is also having some growing pains due to the massive popularity of the iTunes app as well.
I’m also starting to enjoy Stitcher. It’s a neat app that organizes a ton of podcasts and broadcasts them in a radio format. I don’t like the little ads at the bottom of the screen though. It makes the app seem overly sluggish. I’ll take a few more days with it before sending it to the App graveyard.
I took Chris Brogan’s advice today and beefed up my LinkedIn page a bit. I added a bit of a summary and linked out to the RSS feed on this blog. I also wrote a recommendation for a fellow writer. I’ve really started to notice an increase in networking lately and I’m attributing it to LinkedIn, especially after adding so many contacts.
I’m happy with the blog design for now. I keep tweaking it every day just a little bit, so expect to see small changes. I’m also looking to add something new to the sidebar, but I’m trying to figure out what I should toss in there. I’m really digging the minimalistic look right now, but I’m still missing something.
I also completed a quick video preview of Friend Book for the iPhone this afternoon. It’s not out on the App Store on iTunes yet and it’s certainly worth checking out when it hits the digital streets. Click the picture to the left or the Youtube link at the top of the page to watch the 3 minute preview.
I’ve may have fallen into a Mobius Strip of writing endlessly until it’s time to sleep again. I’m content to repeat that cycle over and over while my bank account gleefully greets the array of dead presidents being added every day. The lucrative lifestyle makes me want to move again, perhaps up north for a few months.
I’ve been receiving an inordinate amount of Facebook friend requests lately; many from complete strangers. No matter how many times I passively hit Ignore, they keep firing pleas at me. Facebook desperately needs to add more options for my possible response. Speaking of Facebook, the new look absolutely stinks. It’s slow to load and I have to browse those stupid tabs to read someone’s page.
I’ve been playing around with the Flip Mino for a week now. The video and sound quality is really excellent for the size of the camera. It’s about the height of my iPhone, but skinnier in width. I wish I had the camera when my sister and I filmed our Rock Band session a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately Mikey and Gerbil broke up after our three day World Tour in Rome, London and Paris.
Here is a quick preview of my most recent Twitter application addiction. It’s a GPS aware app for the iPhone.
I picked up my 3G iPhone last Friday. The consumer madness was in full swing at the AT&T store. They had 40 iPhones in stock and about 60 people in line. I snagged the 8 gig model and spent the rest of the day checking out the applications on iPhone. Here are some of my favorites:
Shazam: This music app is great for people who are clueless to the names of songs and artists. It can listen to any song playing on the radio or over a loudspeaker and identify it through the iPhone’s microphone. You can mark the song for download on iTunes, watch any Youtube related video about it or send a link of the song to your friends.
Box Office: This simple app takes your GPS location and finds all the movies / theaters in the area. It offers the Rotten Tomato rating for every movie and can be organized by rating or title. Most importantly, it offers fast access to the showtimes in all the nearby theaters.
NetNewsWire: This is the fastest way to read RSS feeds on the iPhone. I can rummage through posts on 15 sites when I wake up in about 10 minutes. Just be careful to keep up with the feeds otherwise there will be a huge number posted on the icon all day.
AOL Radio: Turns the iPhone into a radio with 200 stations of music. You can bookmark stations and mark songs for download on iTunes later. The sound quality is extremely good for a web based radio. Pandora is also pretty good for specific artist preferences.
Tap Tap Revenge: It’s Guitar Hero for the iPhone. It’s only 3 buttons and four songs, but there are four levels of difficulty and the possibility of downloadable songs in the future. You can also shake the iPhone to hit the right beats instead of tapping the screen. Lots of fun and it’s free!
Graffitio: This app uses the GPS to figure out where you are and looks for nearby restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, etc. The apps creates persistent online graffiti walls for you to write notes about the business. You can also read notes from people who have been there before.
I was chatting with a friend about the upcoming 3G iPhone and we got stuck on the topic of GPS for a while. Obviously GPS isn’t a new idea. Plenty of people are perfectly happy with their in-car GPS systems or even the current capabilities of their GPS enabled phones. There’s no real added value for current GPS owners to switch over to the iPhone specifically based on the hardware.
Apple’s strategic advantage will be in the applications that are created with live tracking GPS in mind. Apple already demoed Loopt.com; an app that tells you your friend’s exact location, recent pictures, little messages and alerts you when they are nearby.
The possibilities are so ridiculously intriguing. For instance, imagine twittering, blogging, or updating your Facebook / Myspace status with not only a message, but also your current location automatically.
Locating nearby restaurants is nothing new for GPS, but imagine a one click Yelp.com application that automatically recommends the top 3 nearby Italian restaurants based on user reviews and according to your GPS location.
Imagine a music application that offers a list of upcoming, nearby concerts based on the type of music you keep on your iPhone (or your Pandora.com likes / dislikes) and your current GPS location.
Imagine being in an unfamiliar city and desperately needing to find a public restroom. One button click on the iPhone, your GPS location could be sent to Mizpee.com and a list of the closest toilets (along with reviews if you are a clean freak) would pop up along with directions to each.
Imagine not only all of your pictures being geo-tagged with locations due to GPS, but also tossed into a map-like trip diary documenting vacations as you travel or even the mundane details of your life; all via a one click social networking app on the iPhone.
Imagine sitting at work and hitting a one click Craigslist search that allows you to find nearby apartments (obviously to save on $4 a gallon gas) based on your current GPS location.
The point I’m trying to make is that the iPhone is going to make this type of techy GPS stuff incredibly easy to do. Blackberry already has plenty of GPS apps, but they aren’t for the casual phone user; they are mostly for the tech-heads. Ideally, iPhone users will just load up the App store with one click, download & install a GPS application within a few seconds and away they go. The streamlined process will ultimately increase the number of users and bring these sort of live tracking applications into the mainstream very quickly.
So Steve Jobs and his legion of Apple minions announced the next iPhone for release on July 11th and I’m scratching my head on buying it next month.
The Good:
- The price is reasonable now and within my range; $199 for the 8 gig model. The 2 year contract doesn’t bother me since I’m already with AT&T.
- GPS is cool and actually portable compared to my car GPS.
- Internet browsing is almost 3 times as fast as the older model.
- The App store looks really cool. The games look as good as the stuff on the Nintendo DS and Ebay / social networking stuff looks spot on.
- The new instant messaging system looks great.
- The battery life looks much better than my Razr.
- It’s good to go for international travel.
The Bad:
- The cost would go up another $30 a month for me if I opted for the unlimited internet plan. I hope there are varied tiers of data plans otherwise I’ll have to stick to Wi-fi hotspots.
- The App Store stuff is expensive.
- The picture quality of the camera still sucks and still no front facing camera.
- I’d probably have to install iTunes, something I’ve been glad to be rid of with my Zune.
- I have to wait a bit over a month; I want a new phone now.
So I’m undecided. I can pay less for a Blackberry right now, but not by much. Decisions, decisions.
In yesterday’s snail mail, I received a friendly reminder from AT&T that I can upgrade my phone since my two year contract is running out. I knew those bastards enjoyed my $50 for letting me talk a few minutes and send a couple texts a month. My trusty, but woefully dusty, Razr was a wonderful upgrade for me a couple years ago. I had been carrying around a gray monstrosity from the late nineties that was as thick as a computer mouse, so the super thin Razr was an obvious choice for me. Unfortunately, the poor battery life and painfully directional earpiece has annoyed me from the start. So I’m in the market for a new phone.
I’ve been browsing the blackberries, but haven’t seen anything I’d like to pull the trigger on. I’d love to have an iPhone, but the cheapest model on sells for an absolutely ridiculous $400; that’s with the two year contract discount. So as much as I salivate over the coolness, the price is an extreme deal breaker. But wait, what’s this I hear about a 3G iPhone?!
I’ve gleefully stumbled into a fantastic time to be in the market for an iPhone. On June 9th, Apple is rumored to announce a 3G version of the iPhone at their developer’s conference. I had no idea what this meant until I started reading about what the 3G iPhone will offer. Here’s what I dug up:
• Cheaper Price: AT&T is rumored to trim the price to $199 with a two year contract. They would have the ability to cut the price due to the nature of 3G. Apple would continue to sell the unlocked version of the iPhone in their stores, but service providers would finally be able to offer discounts. $200 is just about my limit for spending money on a new phone, especially one as cool at the iPhone.
• Better Specs: Namely a higher quality camera and built-in GPS caught my eye. The 3G hardware supports up to a 5 megapixel camera and video chat, so one would assume that Apple would upgrade the pitiful 2 MP camera in the original iPhone. It could be a dual camera system if video is enabled. I’ve also read rumblings about a FM transmitter to send those iTunes songs wirelessly to your car radio, voice dialing, increased storage, flash support, and a slightly thinner build.
• Close Release Date: AT&T employees have been issued a memo that they will be denied any vacation time during the period of June 15th to July 12th. The reason? “An exciting product launch”. The original iPhone launched on June 29th, so a late June / Early July launch is feasible for the 3G iPhone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it out on June 15th or the day of the announcement considering that iPhones have been in development for a year.
So it’s time to wait and see. I’ll live with my Razr for another month and hope ole Steve Jobs gives me enough of a reason to upgrade.
