Category Archives: tech

It’s not CalTrain

Posted on July 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

After dropping my kid off at camp for the day, I got on the 22 Fillmore and walked to the back of the bus and sat down.

Back of the 22 Fillmore bus

Back of the 22 Fillmore bus

A few stops later a guy gets on and sits next to me and starts taptapping on an iPhone with a shattered and cracked glass screen. He’s wearing a buttondown shirt and carrying a laptop bag.

Behind me 3 people are talking about where and what Ottawa is. They’re wearing tshirts and baggy shorts. Then they notice the guy next to me taptapping on cracked shattered iPhone screen. They ask him how it happened.

“I put it in my shirt pocket and leaned over. I’ve dropped it a lot before and it’s never cracked. Now I have to call Apple. At least it still works.”

I jump into the conversation with the story about the skydiver who jumped out of a plane with his iPhone in his pocket and it fell out of his pocket (while he was falling from the sky) and landed on the roof of a building and broke, but the GPS still worked and he was able to find his phone.

Now there are a few more people joining in the conversation, contributing stories of cracked iPhone screens and where/how to get them fixed and why not to bother asking Apple to fix it and how the screen gets suction-cupped off and replaced.

“Oh, man, I know where you can get that fixed, don’t call or send it to Apple. Go to Cupertino,” says one of the baggy shorts tshirt guys.

People around me laugh and chuckle. “No, seriously,” says baggy shorts tshirt guy, “Cupertino is a shop downtown on Battery St and they can fix any iPhone fast and cheap. Just Yelp it. They have good reviews on Yelp. Yelp knows everything.”

As people start to get off at various stops, they all wish each other a good day and good luck with the cracked screen, and thanks. Kindness and good wishes are everywhere.

When I got off the bus I wondered why the baggy shorts tshirt guys didn’t just use their smartphones to look up the answer to where/what Ottawa is.

MUNI has the best stories and entertainment along with smells and obscenities.

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Posted in MUNI, storytelling, tech

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Sibling Smartphones

Posted on July 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

I’m about to upgrade my original Motorola Droid to a Droid3 (which will hopefully arrive tomorrow). I use both an iPhone4 and Motorola Droid and recently commented on an email list that that they complement each other.

droid, iphone4

Droid and iPhone4 complement each other

I’ve ended up using two smartphones because of my work. My company does usability testing for iPhone, iPad and Android apps (as well as web sites and web apps).  For my work, when I’m watching people use a mobile app and interviewing them and videorecording what they’re doing on the smartphone or tablet, it’s much easier to videorecord the screen of an Android device compared with the screen of an iDevice (probably because the screen of iDevices are so bright).

If I have to choose just one smartphone to put in my pocket, I usually choose based on where I’m going and what I’m doing:

  • If I’m travelling and need lots of apps for mapping and finding things, as well as airline apps for checking in and finding a gate, I use the iPhone.
  • If it’s my daily life of parenting and working and commuting on MUNI/Caltrain and communicating with people, I use the Droid.
  • If I’m going to take a lot of photos or videos, I use the iPhone.
  • If I’m going to do a lot of writing (even if just a lot of texting), I use the Droid.
  • If I want to play Plants v Zombies, I can only play that on the iPhone (it won’t run on my Droid1 but I’m hoping it will on my new Droid3 tomorrow!)

The original Motorola Droid:

  • It does better multitasking than the iPhone and I can keep more things running at the same time.
  • It works well as a phone since Verizon has more coverage than AT&T in San Francisco (less of an issue now with iPhone and Verizon)
  • The physical keyboard makes it much easier for me to type a lot (I miss the keyboard on the Treo – it was one of the easiest to use keyboards I’ve ever used on a smartphone. I could type on the Treo keyboard without looking at it)
  • The response time seems, to me, much faster for everything compared with iPhone4
  • It’s more transparent and I can always see what an app is accessing and find and kill any running processes
  • One of the biggest learning curves I had, in 2009, when I first got the Droid, was figuring out how to make my battery last all day. The power widget became my best friend.
  • The widgets are awesome. I love the power widget for easily toggling, right on the “desktop,” the settings for wi-fi and bluetooth and GPSand sync and brightness without going all the way into the settings
  • The screen is not as pretty and bright as the iPhone – it’s duller on the Droid, but that means it’s easier to use clandestinely in the dark and easier to video record how someone is using it
  • It’s not as easy to backup as the iPhone, but it’s easier to get data on and off the Droid since you just mount it as an external drive on any computer. That’s more flexible and manageable than the iPhone’s requirement to handshake with iTunes.
  • It’s super difficult to sync contacts/calendar/mail unless you’re syncing with google so I just gave up on some of my distrust of google and sync it all there
  • The animated wallpapers amuse me (and drain the battery)
  • MUNI Alerts is by far my favorite and most used app (I ride public transportation a lot in San Francisco). It loads much more quickly than Routesy on the iPhone and time is of the essence when getting to a bus or streetcar.
  • I love love love the Kindle app because I can read the same book between Droid, iPhone, iPad and keep track of bookmarks in the cloud
  • I also like using the Evernote and Dropbox and WordPress and Google Docs and Netflix apps between Droid, iPhone, iPad
  • It’s much easier to take a photo with the physical button on the side of the Droid (compared with trying to tap something on the screen on the iPhone) — particularly if you’re holding the phone with an outstretched arm
  • The apps are easier to get. Many of the iPhone apps require a wi-fi connection to download and then sometimes want to sync with a computer.
  • When I was waiting at city hall in the summer of 2010, waiting for a prop8 decision to come from fed court, waiting with friends who hoped to get married (then couldn’t), I looked for a piano app for iPhone or Droid so I could play the wedding march for them and other couples.  I couldn’t get an app for iPhone — none of them could be downloaded over a 3g connection, they all wanted wi-fi.  I did find an app for Android and successfully tapped out the wedding march.
  • I can easily tether my Droid and have been able to for quite a while. It wasn’t and still isn’t as easy to tether an iPhone.
  • It used to be that popular/major apps (or maybe just the ones that intrigue me) almost always came out for iPhone before they did for Android. Now, in 2011, some apps come out for Android first.

The iPhone4:

  • I love the screen and the games.  It’s a bright gorgeous screen.
  • I dislike that I can’t dim the screen enough. The lowest brightness setting isn’t low enough at night in the dark.
  • I like the front facing camera and I use it a lot, sometimes just to see if there’s any lunch left between my two front teeth.
  • It’s much easier to sync/backup than Droid since it’s a closed system but I dislike that you have to sync everything in order to backup, particularly for iBooks books.
  • I dislike that iBooks books can only be read on two of my devices.
  • There’s more stuff for my kid to play with on the iPhone than on the Droid. There are probably 70 or 80 games on my iPhone for my kid compared with 7 or 8 on my Droid.
  • I hate the touchscreen for typing but I’ve gotten better at it. Last winter I used Echo Design’s gloves and tested them on iPhone and Droid for typing in cold weather without taking off gloves. It was easier to use the iPhone with gloves than the Droid (can’t type on physical hardware keyboard with gloves)
  • I manage all of my music via iTunes and it’s easier to get music onto the iPhone than onto the Droid
  • I pay a lot to AT&T for service that is rarely available at my home or the other places I work/wander around San Francisco. I usually just keep it in airport mode with wi-fi on. Oddly enough I noticed that the San Francisco Chronicle building has a strong AT&T signal and practically no Verizon signal.
  • I have a general impression that some apps on iPhone are more elegant than any apps on Droid. I find Droid apps tend to be more buggy than iPhone apps, in general.
  • I use an app called Sit or Squat a lot to find a bathroom when I’m out and about.  I don’t know of a similar app for Android.
  • Foursquare, when I use it, seems to find places nearby more quickly on the iPhone than on my Droid. That might just be a problem with the GPS service turning off/on/off/on on my Droid.
  • Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” apps are my new favorites and they don’t exist for Android.

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Posted in prop 8, tech, usability

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Paperless Reading

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 1 Comment

I read on all of my devices (iPhone, iPad, Droid) using iBooks and Kindle apps, but mostly the Kindle app.  I particularly like reading on an iPhone or Droid while standing on MUNI or BART (public transportation in San Francisco) because I can easily hold on to an overhead bar, hold iPhone or Droid, read AND turn pages all with the same hand.  That’s pretty difficult to do with a paper book or newspaper.

The iPad improved my experience of reading in bed.

If I’m on my side, in bed, I can only read the odd (or even-numbered pages) with the book propped on its side:

 

Reading in bed, old school

 

That’s something that always frustrated me as a kid, reading under the covers with a flashlight and having to prop up the book more to read the other side of the page, or holding the book open with one tired hand:

 

Holding book open. Tiring.

I love reading in bed with the iPad because it props up the “whole book” at the same angle.

 

 

iPad improves the experience

 

I also like reading to my 6-year-old kid in the dark, using an iPad, as she goes to sleep. I turn the brightness all the way down, and it’s still too bright in the dark, so I also turn the brightness all the way down in the iBooks or Kindle app.  I sit in a chair by her bed and read a chapter of a book to her (currently I’m reading the Ramona books to her).  It’s so much quieter and easier than a paper book with pages to turn and a booklight to adjust.

 

Reading on iPad vs. reading on paper

A friend recently mentioned how useful the dictionary is in the Kindle and iBooks app.  I’d never used the dictionary until my kid asked what a word meant, I couldn’t think of an immediate easy definition, and I remembered I could highlight a word to get a definition, and it worked!

 

My kid is a good reader, but she doesn’t yet read chapter books on the iPad. She checks out the paper version from the library and she enjoys using and making different bookmarks for the paper books.  I wonder when she’ll start reading more digitally.  Probably just a few years.

I have some books in more than one format (paper and Kindle, or paper and iBooks).   That’s a bit of a racket — paying twice for the same book content just to have it both on paper and digitally.  I hope someday I can pay for the content in one format and choose to have it delivered in multiple formats – particularly if I want to share a book with someone who doesn’t have a device running the proprietary app (iBooks, Kindle).

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Posted in happiness, MUNI, tech

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Gadget Love

Posted on January 10, 2011 | 4 Comments

One of my first electronic loves, sometime in the 1970′s – the Simon game:

Simon Follow Me Handheld Game

I remember trying to fit it in the pocket of my big winter coat, busting seams, to take it with me everywhere.  I turned off the sound and hid it under my coat to play it while sitting in church (and hoping I wouldn’t get caught).  It was a simple game — turn it on, hit start, hit the buttons in the order that the lights lit up.  Each sequence would get longer and faster as the game went on.  I remember playing it ad nauseum.

I can’t remember any handheld gaming devices in the 1980′s — I played games on computers (OSI, Commodore, Apple) in that decade.

When I finished my degrees at University of Washington in 1993, I started working for McCaw Cellular, and I was given a tan Motorola brick.  My first cellphone looked something like this:

Motorola Brick Cellphone

I took it everywhere.  Like the Follow Me game, it didn’t fit well in a pocket.  Then I got an upgrade to a Motorola Flip phone – the MicroTac.  After lugging around the brick, the MicroTac was like a feather, and it was digital!  TDMA, and dual-mode, was all the new rage in 1994.

Motorola MicroTac

from Flickr user floorsixtyfour

In 1994 I got Apple’s Newton Messagepad 110 and, because I worked for a cellular company, I also got a cellular modem for it (14.4k) that fit in the PCMCIA slot and gave me ethernet connectivity (there wasn’t much to connect to on the internet in 1994 – I used to telnet to books.com to buy books online).  I kept my addressbook and calendar on this hunk of gadget love and I absolutely adored it.  I still have it and it still turns on and works.  It’s a time capsule of my life in the mid-1990′s when I look at the calendar and notes still stored in it.

Newton MessagePad 110

My next gadget was a Motorola Pagewriter with two-way Skytel paging, basically wireless instant messaging for the mid-1990′s.  It had a phone number and an email address and I could respond 100 or so characters at a time.  It got news alerts!  It kept an addressbook!  I felt like I had a bit of freedom but I was carrying 3 rather large devices — the Motorola flip phone, the Newton Messagepad, and the Motorola two-way pager.

Motorola Pagewriter

When I met Moya in 1997, when we were first dating, we sent fast and furious short emails back and forth to her one-way pager, my two-way pager, our email addresses.  Accidentally leaving my Newton Messagepad at her apartment was my version of “forgetting” a watch or earring.

In 1999, the Handspring Visor came out and I got one to replace my Newton.  Like the transition from Motorola Brick to Flip, the Visor was wafer compared to the Newton’s heft.  Moving contacts/calendar from Newton to Visor was the first time I felt the frustration of moving data from one gadget’s format to another.

I followed up the Visor with a Treo 180, my first smartphone, which then was upgraded to a Treo 600,  my first smartphone with a color screen and a camera, and then a Treo 700.  The Treo 700 was my absolute favorite and still is.

These days I usually carry around one or more of these but none of them inspire the thumb-numbing obsession of my first electronic Simon game or the thrill of first connecting to the internet wirelessly with my newton messagepad:

  • Motorola Droid (not so old but already a relic compared with newer droids)
  • iPhone 4 with a Simon game on it
  • hackintosh dell mini
  • iPad

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Posted in tech

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