The iPhone is life changing

It's not often that a piece of technology will change a person's life, but it does happen. Consider the car, the refrigerator, the microwave, and the PC to name a few. However, I believe that the iPhone has changed my life in several ways.

Background:

I was an early user of the blackberry, back when it was just a pager with a few lines of screen real-estate. I moved on to the larger version (PDA size) and was addicted to it at the time. When it broke several years ago, I did a trade-in deal with RIM and had them send me a refurbished one. That broke after about 6 months, and I decided that it wasn't worth keeping it. One reason was that I had to carry around two devices (this was before they integrated phones with blackberry) and the other was that I was getting fed up with it buzzing constantly from all the email. Granted, I could have turned that off, but I wasn't as wise in my younger days. So for quite a while I lived with only a cell phone, telling people that if something was urgent enough they can call me, otherwise it would wait until I was checking mail on my laptop.

I got my iPhone on July 11th, and it has been an unbelievable change. Here are the specifics on what I feel are dramatic enough to list out:

1. Remote email. OK, so I had this before with blackberry, but I was without it for so long that it's new to me again. I learned from past mistakes and have the iPhone set to silently acquire email, allowing me to check it occasionally when I feel the need to. One advantage the iPhone has over blackberry is that it connects to my gmail account as well as my exchange account, putting it in one simple location with the same interface. Where before the blackberry made me feel like I never left work, now I feel more freedom in being able to check email wherever I am and not have to worry about firing up the laptop.

2. Web browsing. My last phone before the iPhone did have a browser on it. It was absolutely pathetic however. Now, if I have something on the tip of my tongue, or want to look something up, it's all there in a real browser just like I would have on my laptop.

3. Google maps. I used to always have to remember to print a map when going to an unfamiliar location before leaving. Now, I can simply enter the address into the google maps application, tell it to give directions from my current location and voila. The fact that it shows real-time my current location on the map is huge, as I then know where I am relative to my next turn. If Apple would allow voice directions, I couldn't ask for more. (bonus feature: click on an address in an email and it goes straight to the map and shows you the location)

4. iPod. On a recent trip with the family, my daughter watched a movie on my laptop on the plane. The movie was a bit too intense for my 4 year old son, so ahead of time I downloaded some cartoons from iTunes to my phone and he watched those. There were times before that we lugged two laptops onto a plane to solve this problem, but now life got much simpler.

There are other things about the iPhone that make it a fun, cool device that I love owning, but I wouldn't call life changing.

If you don't have an iPhone, you're missing out...

Keeping spam off my iPhone

I absolutely hate spam, whether it's email, junk snail mail, text messages, etc. When I got my new iPhone one of the first things I did was connect it to the exchange server at work. It was a beautiful thing, as with a few entries within minutes I was live via activesync just like my Outlook client on my PC. But then the spam started coming in. I was completely baffled when I looked on my iPhone and noticed 3 new messages. Wow, lots of email coming in. But when I looked they were your typical "enhancement" or "get your degree now" emails.

I spent a lot of time tweaking Outlook to be quite good at keeping spam out of my inbox. So I couldn't understand why the spam was zipping through to my iPhone. After doing some googling I learned that there is no spam filtering software on the iPhone. My next step was to go look at my Outlook/exchange settings and figure out what wasn't working. What I learned was that my main spam filtering rule was a client-only rule. So it only runs when the Outlook client is connected to exchange. Eureka! But why was it client only and how do I fix it?

After more googling I found a site that explained the problem. It seems I had a condition in my rule that forced it to be client only. We use Spam Assassin at work to filter messages. When it determines through its magic that a message is spam, it inserts a line into the email header that says "X-Spam-Flag: YES". My rule would look into the message header and if it found that string it would mark it as read, and permanently delete it. I believe the culprit was the mark it as read part. I took that out, and instead of permanently delete it I changed it to move it to the deleted items folder. Voila. When I saved that rule it didn't put the little (client-only) tag next to it.

The good news? I haven't had a spam email on my iPhone since. Rock-on iPhone.

My iPhone 3G Story

I've been waiting for the iPhone 3G for many months now. The anticipation was becoming overwhelming to the point that my wife told me she doesn't want to hear the word iPhone from me again. This morning I awoke at 4:00 a.m. and headed over to my local AT&T store. I had done my research ahead of time. I talked to the employees at that store and they said that the Boulder store would be a madhouse, but with their obscure location, they should be fine. I took no chances anyway and got there at about 4:30.

While driving there I was an obsessive, paranoid freak. Every car I saw in front of me on the road I thought was going to the store and was going to get there in line in front of me. It turns out that none of them were going to the AT&T store, so it's a good thing I didn't speed (I figured that getting pulled over would take longer than just going the speed limit). When I finally arrived there I was thrilled. I was 5th in line. No matter what happened, I figured they had to have at least 5 iPhones, and my odds of getting the one I wanted were very good.

I met some of the other iPhone obsessors and the time actually passed rather quickly. There was a Starbucks next door, but I only got a grande knowing that a venti would likely push my bladder over the edge. At about 7:45, the store manager came out to talk to the line (at least 100 people at this point, likely more) to tell us the basic rules, etc, and also to inform us that they only had 55 phones. Shock and dismay rippled through the crowd, but what do you expect when you arrive 30 minutes before the store opens when trying to get the most widely sought after mobile device ever?

8:00 comes and they open the doors. A woman says she wants the first 7 people in line to enter the store. I got in and was directed to a sales associate. He asked for my current phone number, brought up my account and asked which phone I wanted. "The 16 gigabyte iPhone white please." Once the box was laid on the counter in front of me I knew I was golden. "Do you want the AppleCare plan?", "Yes, since you can't replace the battery." He asks if I want any accessories and I plunk down a strategically shelved Jawbone 2 bluetooth headset. He activates my phone, gives me a new sim card, and tells me, "you're all set, just take it home and synch it with iTunes and it will finish activation." I leave the store on cloud nine, with my AT&T bag stuffed with goodies even Santa can't get his hands on.

I walked into my house at 8:25. The 15 minute activation process promised by AT&T actually lived up to the billing. I plopped down on the couch and started opening boxes while booting my laptop. All is good, all will soon be great. I get everything out and plug in the USB cable. The 2 seconds it took for iTunes to recognize it and display "iPhone" in the left side navigation area were excrutiating. Then the store area went all white with only the silver words "iPhone". I waited as patiently as possible while the little bar spun and the words "Accessing iTunes Store" were displayed above it. Then I got the popup window you see for this post. Oh, yeah, tons of activiations going on, it's going to take a few tries.

It's now almost 1:00, and after at least 100 tries, I'm still not activated. So I have the most amazing, powerful, revolutionary mobile computing platform in the world in the palm of my hand, and all it can do is call 911. I called the rep from the AT&T store to see if they could do something, but immediately got a voice recording explaining that activations are overwhelming the system, apologies, try later in the day. The wait continues.

UPDATE: OK, I guess if you bitch about Apple the Jobs-God hears and corrects it. At 1:02 p.m. I got in and activated my phone. I am now synching calendars, contacts, email, bookmarks, etc. It's ALIVE!!!!

New Tech Meetup Fun

So I attended my first Boulder New Tech Meetup tonight. It turned out to be a lot of fun. There were several companies presented, but the one that stood out and I keep thinking about is Idyllon. Idyllon is an early stage company creating a full 3D social network. Think world of warcraft without the game part of it. It seems like a really interesting idea, and the demo graphics are amazingly beautiful. It made me think of the old Keanu movie called Johnny Mnemonic. If you've seen it, you may remember the scenes where he "surfs" through a 3D internet. This type of technology could eventually replace the standard browser/desktop interface. Think about it.

Google maps street view

Recently I needed to look up an address for a meeting and noticed a new link on the pop-up on google maps: street view. I clicked this and was amazed with a 360 degree panning view of that location. The great part is that I was able to look "across the street" from where I was going and spotted a landmark I am familiar with. That made it very easy to determine where I needed to go.

However, I then mapped my house and did the street view there. It was a little creepy to have the amount of detail that I did of my house from the street. Luckily my garage door was closed, but when doing the same for my mother's place, her garage door was open and her jeep was visible inside. Zooming in I could almost make out the license plate and with some photoshopping I imagine it wouldn't be hard to get the detail. This raises a very interesting question about privacy. Taking a picture from a public street seems legal enough, but then creating a database that anyone in the world can access takes it to a new level. Let's say that someone wants to look for a neighborhood to burgle. Clicking down the streets might show you an area where lots of people had their garage door open and there are nice cars inside. It's also disturbing to think of people being caught in the images. While I didn't see anyone in the images I looked at, my mother said that while clicking down the main street in her town she saw someone on a bike "in front" of her and then they disappeared in a frame down the way. And as you can see in the image I captured of Pearl and 28th streets in Boulder, there are a lot of cars visible in the image.

There are clearly advantages to having this data available when trying to get to a location you're unfamiliar with, but is this opening the door to potentially massive problems?

Why British Airways sucks

So I'm sitting in the Paris CDG airport right now 3+ hours before my flight to Heathrow. There's a flight in about a little over an hour that would be "lovely" to take. However, when I asked if I can go standby, they tell me that my ticket is a special fare and it's not exchangable. Huh? So I ask, "Don't you have the concept of standby here?" To which the reply was, "Yes, but not with your ticket." I then ask if I can pay a fee to "upgrade" my ticket and allow me to get on the earlier flight. The response was not pleasant, and essentially "no". They weren't nice about it at all, didn't apologize that I have to sit here for 3 hours when there are plenty of empty seats on the earlier flight. Seriously, what the heck kind of policy is this? It doesn't make any sense to me. Screw these guys. This is the last time I fly on BA.

Mass Effect: We don't need no stinkin Star Wars

My two favorite games so far on Xbox 360 by far are Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 without a doubt. I love the mix of first person shooter with role play. Since KOTOR 2 I've been in a Star Wars drought for games. While I am anxiously anticipating the release of the new title, with amazing looking force powers I was introduced to a gem that's been out for a while now. Mass Effect is made by Bioware, the same guys that made the KOTOR games. It's obviously the same engine, and I've heard that they simply lost their license from Lucasarts. The game has biotech abilities which are suspiciously similar to force powers, but it's still tons of fun. They've improved the engine a bit, and if you hadn't played KOTOR before you wouldn't know it was "supposed" to be Star Wars. I'm still early in the game, but I'm having a blast. I highly recommend it if you don't mind becoming quickly addicted.

Take that Lucas!