Posts tagged iphone

The Puma Phone

Puma, yes, the shoe company, is releasing it’s very own mobile phone. No, it’s not a shoe phone. [Gosh, it would be rather difficult to text of something like that.] Instead, it’s a multi-touch multimedia device. Now, see, I can understand what you may [or may not] be thinking right now; “Kolin, why do you care about this phone? You LOVE the iPhone, and accept no others!” I do, I know, but this may be a phone with more innovation in it than any of the other wannabe iPhone “killers” out there. So let’s look at what’s inside.
The Puma Phone is a GSM phone [for now, at least] so, naturally, it does have access to all 3G [HSDPA/HSUPA] networks. Like most touch screens, it has an accelerometer so you are able to change the orientation to fit your liking. Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, MicroSD slot, 3.5mm audio jack, and syncs over USB, the standard stuff.
The new/different stuff that it’s got drew me in. Other than the front facing camera [as well as a back one, which is 3.2MP with a flash], media player, FM radio, AGPS [or assisted GPS...used for geotagging videos and photos]. It also contains a digi-pet [if you will] to help entertain you while you’re bored. Also, there are two more sides to it, as Puma points out; a sporty side and a playful side.
The sporty side of it all gives you a analog stop watch, GPS run tracker, GPS bike speedometer, a pedometer, and a compass. All of which the iPhone has, but they’re ALL built in, whereas, on the iPhone, you’d need an app for some of them. All of this put together makes it great for those outdoorsy types.
The playful side has the messaging features, probably all phones have. Also, it’s got a punchy calculator which will give you a snarky comeback if you put in something simple, like 2+2. You can be your own DJ Hero with the scratching turntable. Also [drumroll please] VIDEO CALLS which Puma says is “easy peasy” to use. However, I’ve honestly yet to see someone use their cell to make video calls, but it would be nice to see it happen.
Finally, the major feature everyone’s talking about: the solar cell. Yes, yes, set your phone out in the sun, on the dash of your car, near the window in your 30th floor corner office, and it will CHARGE. It’s rather awesome to see something like this. With about 1 hour of solar charging, you’re looking at about 2 hours of music listening, or give it enough of a boost so you can make a decent phone call over 3G. Also, I would imagine, if you’re making a phone call out in the sun, you’d be able to talk for hours upon end before the battery would get close to dying. I’d like to note, though, the solar cell is not a home-charge replacement. It’s meant to give you a little extra boost while you’re out, away from your charger, home, or any major civilization for that matter.
Like I said, the Puma Phone is a GSM phone, so even though it’s only in Europe right now, we’ll see folks in the States using the Puma on AT&T or T-Mobile. Due to this, I’m going to attempt to get my hands on one, very soon.

For more info, check out The Puma Phone site.

Just a Few Words

Hi there, folks. I know, I don’t post as often as I’d like, or as often as you’d like, but I’d just like to say that I’m still alive, and I’m doing much better.

If you’ve been following all my twitter posts, you would notice that lately my tweets have been more upbeat than usual. No, I’m not getting involved with a girl, I’m not on drugs, I don’t absolutely love my job, and I’m probably not completely crazy. However I did have some time to myself, no tweets or any kinds of updates, in which time I was able to confront (partially) this intense guilt complex of mine.

When coming out and apologizing for something that you’ve done, it takes a lot out of you. It’s scary, and can torment you for days afterward. But I felt that it needed to be done, and because I’ve gone ahead and done it, I feel better about it. No, I don’t feel 100% guilt free, but I haven’t been overwhelmed by my guilt since.

Now, I don’t want to make this post about my neuroses or making myself sound good (although, I’m sure it’s not). I just would like to say that I’ve been pretty worked out lately, and my time off hasn’t been spent appropriately, and I’d like to apologize to those I’ve been ignoring… or if it’s seemed like I have been.

Anyhow… in other news, I’m getting my grimey little fingers on an iPhone 3Gs soon (hopefully Friday or Saturday) and I’ve got a new job. I’m more happy than usual, and I’m still in a rather large amount of leg pain.

All in all, I’m going to end the night with the Top Flickr Photo of the day. I hope you all enjoy when I post them. I just like to show off the photos of mine that have gotten the highest number of views for the day.

Goodnight to you all… have a pleasant tomorrow, and, as always, have fun with your bodies.

MMS vs E-Mail

NOTE: I’m going to do my best to not make this strictly about the iPhone…no promises, though.

After Apple released the iPhone, the complaints rolled in about it not having MMS (or Multimedia Messaging Service), as if it were absolutely necessary.  Which is ridiculous considering that most complaints about the iPhone came from the BlackBerry community (whom, up until recently, didn’t have 3G or a good MMS system themselves, so I don’t even know what they were complaining about) who’s phones were supposed to be used strictly for business…right?

Here’s the fun fact: e-mail and MMS do the same thing. There is no REAL difference. The biggest differences are that MMS works like SMS in that you can just input the recipient’s phone number and you’re good to go, and with MMS you’re limited on file sizes or the amount of information you can send.

That’s pretty much where it all ends. However, with e-mail, you’re able to have a hard copy on your computer, or wherever you might go and access your e-mail, thus making it much more portable than MMS itself. Of course, you could save the MMS attachment to your phone, and then send it via bluetooth to your computer, or maybe even forward the MMS to your e-mail. Which would be, in turn, pointless to boot, when it could have just been e-mailed straight to you.

A couple years ago, one could make the argument that not all phones have an e-mail capability. Which was true back then, but now, chances are that the phone that you’ve got in your pocket/hand/desk is ready to send and receive e-mails on the fly.

Now, don’t get me wrong, sending an MMS to a friend is much faster than sending them an e-mail, but it’s a whole different ball park when we’re in that much need for instant gratification than to wait a few minutes for an e-mail to come in.But when you’re limited to .5MB of data, and cameras are getting higher in quality on phones, you can’t really send much of anything good over MMS to youtube/facebook or whatever social media site you might be thinking of.

The Modern Cell Phone

If you’ve read this blog for any sort of time, or listened to my podcasts, you’d know that I’m an absolute iPhone fanatic. Needless to say, ever since I’ve aquired such a godly phone (as you know I would call it) I’ve had, more or less, blinders on toward other phones. I’m actually going to try to change that around, since I now know, more than ever, that it isn’t easy to keep an iPhone.

I began this slight of switchover in January, before I came back from my trip to Ohio and Chicago in buying myself a BlackBerry 8800, supposedly a great example for the brand RIM has made famous. I can say that I’m not exactly happy with it, and I’m making an attempt to reach out towards other phones.

Recently, I’ve become slightly financially unstable, and had to sell my iPhone 3G, smartly, I sold it to a good friend of mine, so I know it’ll be taken care of, the way I want it. So now, on amost a daily basis, I find myself searching around for a fine replacement.

Thanks to the iPhone, I’ve now come to need at lot from a phone:

  • QWERTY Keyboard
  • Internet Access (preferably 3G)
  • a camera
  • e-mail support
  • lots of memory
  • GPS
  • Applications (mainly for twitter, brightkite, loopt, Qik, things like that)
  • and Music playing

Looking at a lot fo the phones, this is too much for just a normal phone, but I can admit, yes, I have been absolutely spoiled with the iPhone. So, instead I’ve now just cut my list of requirements for a phone down to:

  • QWERTY Keyboard (seriously, T9 does NOT cut it)
  • a camera
  • e-mail support
  • and at least WAP support

So far, the BlackBerries are actually looking good in this arena, but unfortunately, and believe it or not, I’d prefer to be using a Windows Mobile device.

The journey marches forward…

(unless you’d like to give me your iPhone ;D)

WWDC 2009 Keynote Wrapup

This morning went over pretty well, in my professional opinion. Here’s what we saw:

  • Phil Schiller did a good job presenting
  • Snow Leopard $129 for new users $29 for Leopard users
  • iPhone 3.0 software to be released on June 19th
  • iPhone Tethering with certain carriers… AT&T not included :(
  • iPhone 3G is now $99
  • iPhone 3GS (for speed) is going to be released on June 19th
  • the 3GS is twice as fast as the 3G also with the HSDPA 7.5Mbps standard
  • 16GB 3GS will be $199, and 32GB for $299 both available in white and black
  • Upgrade fees DO apply for iPhone users.
  • No Steve Jobs :(

The Night Before WWDC 2009

Tomorrow is the grand opening for WWDC 2009. Us Macheads have been waiting for this for a little while. Especially the iPhone fans due to the rumors upon rumors of new iPhones.

Not much else to say, but head over to http://specialkolin.com/live around 1pm EST for my live coverage of the WWDC keynote brought to you by Phil Schiller, and hopefully a cameo by Steve Jobs!

May 25, 2009

Ah, finally. I haven’t been able to access my own server for a couple days now. Kinda kookie how this network works… I can’t access anything locally…so I’m running off a proxy server somewhere in Canada. I feel like I’m back in High School.

There’s some crazy movie on TV… I would really rather not watch it. Amanda is having some hard times dealing with my inability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

I called mom today. I really do miss her. I’ve been feeling horrible most of today.

A little fact about me is that I completely hate myself. I’ve never listened to one of my own podcasts, I never look at pictures of myself. I’m completely and absolutely annoyed with myself. The only reason that I haven’t killed myself yet is because I’m really scared of dying.

I’ve had way too much going through my head lately. I think I need to take a day and just chill out. Which is what I hope is going to be tomorrow/today. Tom and I are going to find our way to Ocala. Hopefully JustHost.com has returned my money by the morning. Which is doubtful.

I’m frankly sick of that company. They have, by far, the worst customer service. The worst service period. If you’re ever considering hosting with them, just forget about it. You really are better off hosting your site yourself on an old laptop behind a router which redirects the local traffic to the router’s config page, so that the only way possible for you to access your own damn site is to use a Canadian proxy which takes forever to load ANYTHINGGGG.

God, someone please, can you help me with my hosting woes?

Oh yeah, and I should be getting my Data plan put back on, but with a different number, which will be awesome… cause then I won’t have to use the proxy, but instead, just tether the phone and do it that way. WOO!

GOODNIGHT!

SpecialKolin Sez Podcast – Episode 7

In this Episode: 

  • iPhone 3.0 Beta! We love it
  • iPhone Apps of the week
  • System Backup solutions
  • Blue Microphone Reviews: Snowball, Snowflake, and Icicle
  • Last week’s video status
  • CONTEST!!

Joining us:

Contest Info:

Links:

Featured Song: Spontaneous Devotion – Random

Listen/Download Here!

iPhone 3.0 Beta – downgrade



The other day, iPhone 3.0 Beta was released. AWESOME improvements on the iPhone software, I can hardly wait.

I’m not a registered developer, nor do I have the money to become one just to get the 3.0 Beta. However, I was able to get my hands on the image for the Beta, and I installed it.

BIG MISTAKE!

For the most part of today (March 18th) I had a dead iPhone 3G and was using a BlackBerry 8800. Oh yeah, I was doing peachy. I tried everything to restore it back to 2.2.1, but it was IMPOSSIBLE. I even called tech support up (since my warranty wasn’t void…yet) and offered up my opening line to Charles: “heh, you’re going to laugh, but I did something really stupid”

I was on the phone with Charles for about an hour… we had NOTHING. He left me with a case number and me downloading iTunes again. The servers were going slow, so it would have been a 2 hour phone call by the time it was done. 

His solution went for nothing…but I managed to find my own method that worked.

  1. Reinstall iTunes (I don’t really know if this helps, but just in case)
  2. Put the iPhone into DFU mode (I ran the pwnagetool through just to make sure I got it all right…your screen should be blank)
  3. Restore to 2.0.1 (you can try any others… 2.2.1 wouldn’t work directly for me… leave comments below)
  4. Then Update back to 2.2.1
  5. if stuck in restore mode at any point, Quickpwn on my windows machine was able to get it out for me

Downsides were that I wasn’t really able to completely restore the backup that I had… and it would appear that my contacts are a bit off. 

I really would like to thank Charles from Apple iPhone tech support. He was really freaking awesome and definitely deserves a raise.

SpecialKolin Sez Podcast – Episode 6

In this episode:

  • Video! (actual video coming soon! check back in a couple days)
  • New iPod Shuffles
  • iPhone 3 hopes
  • iPhone Apps of the week
  • CONTEST!

Joining:

Links:

Contest Rules:

  • You MUST retweet all bit.ly links for this podcast
  • if not on twitter, you must report where you’ve posted the link
  • to enter, however, you must e-mail contest@specialkolin.com with your twitter name
  • 1st prize is a SpecialKolin.com t-shirt and a set of stickers, 2nd and 3rd prize get just stickers.
  • Contest ends on April 4th, 2009
  • ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, TWEET!

Download the Audio Podcast here!