iPhone 3Gs

Finally decided to take the plunge over the weekend and upgrade my iPhone 3G to the 3Gs!!!

I had become so frustrated with the speed of the 3G. Hopefully, the 3Gs will be significantly faster. So thats my new toy to play with. I’m looking forward to a better camera. Ideally, it may be able to replace a point and shoot.

Photo library management: iPhoto and Aperture?

I am looking for input here. Presently I organize my photo libraries (yes two) using Aperture and iPhoto.

I use iPhoto primarily for what  I consider personal shots (shots w/ friends, family, camera phone etc) mostly because I had the library organized the way I wanted using folders and, when I first moved to a Mac, iPhoto understood this organization. I use Aperture for more what I consider my photo projects which has become the lion share of current photos taken.

Microsoft Licensing of Exchange Active Sync to Apple

Brad Feld had an interesting post this afternoon about Microsoft’s intentions in licensing of Exchange Active Sync to Apple for their new Snow Leopard OS. I commented over on the post, basically in agreement with Brad (at least its how I interpret Brad’s post) that a potential motivating factor is to entrench Microsoft’s back-end enterprise system understanding that the end-user interface will face additional competition and its in their best interest to hold onto the back-end infrastructure.

Brad’s post raised a tangential question I had, which is the purpose of this post, how does Apple’s licensing of Active Sync affect Google’s attempt at interfacing with Snow Leopard’s native applications? A while back Google licensed Active Sync from Microsoft for use in their Google Sync product which helps connect Outlook and other handheld devices to Google apps. So now that Apple’s native apps can sync with Exchange and Google Apps have Active Sync capabilities when will Google Apps  sync with Snow Leopards native apps? Brad ponders that the Apple license may in an attempt to keep Google Apps out of the enterprise, but if Google is able to utilize their licensed Active Sync protocol do eventually Google and Apple do and end run around Microsoft and control the enterprise back-end and front-end? This of course assumes that enterprises would be willing to switch to Google Apps, which is still unproven. But as a user of Google Apps, I’m left wondering will I shortly have built in sync for all services between Google and OS X’s apps?

Apple’s 9/9/09 event

There has been a lot of speculation the last few days over what Apple will release or talk about at tomorrows event. In general, I’ve taken much of the talk leading up to previous events with a large grain of salt, just as I am tomorrows. I don’t think we’ll see an apple tablet, although I can’t wait for one to come out (or the CruchPad if its out first). But stepping back from tomorrows event and thinking about the next 12 months for iTunes/iPods/iPhones I personally feel moving to the cloud would be the biggest “revolutionary” step for Apple to make right now. MG had a good post on this topic today, and it rang true for me. I run iTunes on my iMac, which in turn is the central place for all my music, iPod/ iPhone syncing, and as a result photo storage. Its the only computer with enough storage to handle it. But I would love to be able to sync my iPhone with my MacBook Air while traveling, or play music from my Library through iTunes on the Air, or at my work computer. Such functionaly is going to come, its already coming, the quesion is will Apple lead or will another player steal their thunder.

Besides an iTunes in the cloud, i think updated iPod touch’s that include GPS and a camera would be nice. Not necessary but nice. I would actually like a large capacity Touch to put all my media on that would have GPS (camera don’t care so much about) to travel with. As a result of the limited iPhone battery and my constant usage of the device I’m basically unable to play music on the iPhone and would shell out for a second device to travel with. Even more impressive would be functionality to keep two device “in sync” so that application data would be shared between two device. The goal being a seemless user experience transition between devices (including data stored in applications) *even more important for an Apple Tablet, assuming it runs an iPhone like OS*.

On a related topic, come on Apple why can I not sync my iPhone/iPod Touch with my Mac via Wi-Fi if I’m on the same network? That would simplify things greatly.

Google Calendar Quick add via email?

For a wile I have been looking for an easy way to add entries to my google calendar. I’m a pretty heavy user of google calendar and love the existing quick add option from the web site or via SMS. but sadly, SMS is just too slow and buggy on my iPhone these days to make it useful for me to quickly add items to my calendar. What I really want is the ability to add items via an email address.Frankly, I can’t believe Google hasn’t already added this feature. I can add doc’s via email why can’t I create an appointment via email?  Come on google calender.

Until google creates an official option, does anyone know of a work around?

iPhone rant #1

While I love the iPhone there are a few elements of the functionality that I really don’t like.

Bugging me the most lately is the fact that you can not end a call (unless you are using a headset) without first clearing through (selecting close or view) EVERY text message received while on the call.

This may not seem that annoying, but with how often I get SMS messages from twitter and other people cobmined with confrence calls it becomes really annoying. Even for the short calls.  I REALLY JUST WANT TO END MY CALL, I’LL DEAL WITH THE TEXT MESSAGES LATER.  What I don’t want to happen is for me to forget about the text messages just so I can end a call.

Please Apple fix this.

What little quarks about the iPhone aggravate you?

Google Reader Organization

I love Google Reader, its my primary source of news these day, in fact I’ve all but given up on reading blogs or sites that don’t provide RSS feeds. Anyway, i digress. Over time my reader has grown to over 270 feeds and haphazardly organized into 75 folders. Well as you might expect that many folders became quite unmanageable.

Anyone know of a firefox text box character count tool?

I am in need of a firefox add-in, some type of script, or something that will let me count the number of characters in a text field or in the body of a gmail message.  Please let me know if you have any thoughts on how i can accomplish this.

My paperless vacation

Today I am heading across the continent for a getaway,
Nothin new about that (except for actually taking a vacation) but this is the first vacation, or long distance travel, that I’ve taken nearly entirly paperless.

Usually I’ve got books, tablets of paper, files, and other junk. But as I sit here on a flight writting this on my iPhone (wordpress app) looking at what I’m carrying I have virtually no paper except for a few business cards, boarding pass, and a passport.

This time in place of the bulky paper I’ve got my macbook air, iPhone, blackberry, and kindle. The best part, it all fits nicely in a very slim bag giving my shoulder a break for my camera bag with my cannon 50D, lenses, and a flip video.

I’m carrying less than I normally would and hopefully am able to be more productive. Only thing I’m going to miss… Always on 3G data. No way am I using iPhone data out of the country.

Fios install (opposed to Comcast)

This is a follow up on my prior post about switching to Verizon Fios from Comcast.  Yesterday, Monday, Verizon installed my new Fios service (TV and Internet). All I have to say is wow what a difference from Comcast! First of all the installer came during the installation window (as opposed to Comacst who never came on time), granted the window was 8am to 5pm. The service is absolutely incredible! Kicks my former Comcast service out of the water, i should have made this switch a long time ago.