Jeremey's Weblog

iPhone 2.0

So I got in on the "hey the 2.0 bundle is out early!!!" download-yer-own iPhone OS 2.0 upgrade thing on Thursday (which turned out to be a good thing b/c the 2.0 upgrade didn't go smoothly for most of the world yesterday). I love it. The big reason I love it: apps! Surprising, I know. The basic OS has some improvements, but the big deal is third party apps.

Of which I have 10 or so installed already... love Twitterrific and NetNewsWire... I use both on the desktop and the iPhone versions are excellent. Especially love synced RSS feeds. The Facebook app is nice, but missing some things. Exposure is awesome for Flickr users. Pay Fraser money! It's worth it.

But biggest of all: games. The games are fantastic... Super Monkey Ball, Chopper, and Cro-Mag Rally are all very, very fun and perfect for mobile gaming. Of course, we need multi-player Cro-Mag now. It's like a Wii remote... with the Wii and the TV embedded in it.

I was pretty surprised that playing a game as a caveman driving a cavecar was fun, but it was. The ridiculousness of that concept adds something to the fun, I think (suspension upgrades for a car made out of logs and nearly square stone wheels? nice).

The only problem with the games? Battery life. That may make me upgrade to the new hardware sooner than I expected. The new battery has maybe twice (?) the life of the 1st gen hardware... Super Monkey Ball is death to my battery.

Oh I almost forgot... a very close 2nd to games... Remote! Apple built a full-featured iTunes remote app (which is free). It works over Wi-Fi, you can browse your library, playlists, control Airtunes destination, etc. It's exactly what I was looking for a couple days ago on twitter.

I'm super happy with 2.0, and especially given that it's free! Now if only all the games were free... sigh... :)

P.S. screenshots are really cool... hold the home button and press the lock button once, voilá. Email to yourself. Post on blog. Eat, drink, and be merry.

Technorati Tags:
iphone, mobile, iphone 2.0

Symbian Goes Open Source

Symbian is going open source. This is a pretty interesting development, but I think it may be too little, too late, and it doesn't imply any major changes in the Symbian platform.

The real problem with Symbian isn't the fact that it's closed, it's the fact that it's Symbian. It's a difficult platform to develop for, its UI concepts are dated and accelerating towards antiquated, the "access point" scheme for managing IP connectivity is appallingly difficult for users, etc. Perhaps going open source will provide a catalyst for some serious changes and revolutions in the platform, that would be great. We'll see. Increasingly, the features of the Symbian platform that made it compelling are becoming unnecessary... the hardware platforms for mobile phones are no longer the exceedingly resource-constrained, battery-sipping environments they once were, and that will only become more true.

2010 is a long way off... the iPhone 3G ships in 3 weeks, Android phones this year. Developers finally get their hands on Symbian innards one year after that? I can't see that being very interesting to new developers.

It could be a huge boon for existing Symbian developers though, who've wished for access to deeper APIs, or even just to understand what is going on down deeper in the idiosyncratic Symbian brain. But again, in a year or two... it doesn't help now.

Interesting times!

Technorati Tags:
symbian, nokia, mobile

Caroline Collective Grand Opening

Caroline Collective is Houston's first dedicated co-working space, and the grand opening party is tomorrow! Check it out!

I got the tour yesterday, very cool... I'll at least be one of the regular freeloaders. :)

Technorati Tags:
coworking, caroline collective, houston

And There Was Much Rejoicing: Starbucks Axes T-Mobile

Woohoo!

I'll be dropping my T-Mobile subscription... like it's hawt. Thankfully it's month-to-month.

Of course, I've basically written Starbucks off now anyway as they have gotten rid of organic milk and in so doing have become incapable of producing a good latte (the organic milk foamed better and stayed sweeter, and I think the fact that hardly anyone ordered it made the process work better because they were steaming un-steamed, cold milk every time).

It was very nice to have the T-Mobile subscription when traveling, that's the main reason I have kept it... which will now be unnecessary.

Technorati Tags:
starbucks, wi-fi, t-mobile, at&t

The Big VoIP Post

I've been playing with Asterisk and VoIP and WiFi phones and all kinds of toys recently, and it's time to blab about some of my experiences. First off, Asterisk is unbelievably cool. Some people say it's a big hack, and yes it is in some sense, but it's a big hack that works fabulously and does lots of cool stuff. Compared to the non-big-hack tools out there which suck badly and do nothing. It's a big hack in the same way that Linux or Apache were (are?) big hacks. They work. They give you tools to kick butt and hang yourself at the same time. Anyway...

So here's my current setup... I have an Asterisk box (just vanilla I-installed-it-myself-from-source Asterisk, on FC5), a Linksys/Sipura SPA3102 ATA (analog telephone adapter), a SIP trunk to another Asterisk (test box at work), one analog telephone (nice Sony two-line model from a few years ago), and two Nokia E-series phones. The Sipura provides an FXS port for my Sony analog phone and an FXO to plug the whole rig into our PSTN line. The Sony phone and the two Nokia phones each have extensions, and thus can dial each other.

When a call comes in from outside my Asterisk (either SIP or PSTN, though technically incoming PSTN calls are also SIP because I'm using the Sipura instead of a card in the box), all of my phones (the Sony and the two Nokias) ring at once and I can answer the call anywhere (this is pretty sweet, FYI). Unanswered incoming calls will transfer over to voice mail in the near future... right now they just get answered by an automated message saying that no-one is available. I have my dial plan (think routing, but for phone calls) set up to route work calls (PSTN or SIP) over to the test box in the office, and all other PSTN calls will go out the FXO port on the Sipura.

General thoughts on all of this:

• Asterisk really works and installing it by hand from scratch is very easy. If you're going all-SIP (or SIP and IAX) and you're using an external ATA, it's extremely straightforward to get a working configuration. You do have to edit config files, but they're simple. I'm not sure what Trixbox and AsteriskNOW really buy you if you want to be able to tinker.
• The Linksys/Sipura SPA3102 is the most frustrating device I've ever used, but it is also the most powerful little ATA box you can imagine. There are literally hundreds of knobs on this thing. But, getting it on the network and happy involved pulling hair out. But I could do it again in a snap, it's just that all the quirks and behaviors are totally undocumented (that and the IVR config system doesn't work at all). I'll put up a HOWTO or something. The SPA3000 might be a better bet if you can find one, unless you need the router functions of the 3102. A non-router variety would've saved me hours.
• The Nokia E-series phones (E61 and E70) work great. They make great wireless VoIP phones and using a converged handset (I have a SIM in the E70) is a joy, really. There are some little things that could improve usability, but mostly it's really there.
• Voice quality is very good. Especially on my analog phone, very nice.
• The POWAH! The power Asterisk gives you is amazing. Your phone system is totally yours, you control it, completely. Knock yourself out.

If you've been thinking about installing Asterisk, go for it. It's fun. I got WiFi to cellular call transfer working today (i.e. I get a VoIP call on my cell phone, now I want to leave the house, so I hit ## and it transfers the call to my cellular number by originating a PSTN call). My next project will be a module, I think. I have some ideas.... muahahahaha.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, nokia, voip

E70

An E70 showed up today... it's basically the same software as the E61 but with the flip-out keyboard, and it has a 2MP camera... I'm jazzed to have a decent camera on board. Cool stuff... more to come once I try out VoIP and WiFi and so on.

iPhone... WOW

Well I didn't see this one coming. Some kind of phone, maybe, a widescreen iPod, maybe... but not both, not both in one, not on an OSX mobile, and really those aren't the big story... to me the big story is the UI and the input device: you. If the iPhone is as good as it looks it will change the mobile phone and mobile device industries irrevocably.

Most exciting, long term, is that this isn't just a gadget, this is a direction for Apple. Apple has entered the mobile device market with the best device on the market by far, and that's the beginning.

The mobile phone makers (I work for one) have been developing crap software for years with very little attempt to fix the problems (the list of which is very long indeed). Problems get fixed at a snail's pace and features slowly leak (or get crammed) in, but very little really fundamentally changes. Carriers are slow to innovate, after all, why bother? People buy phones either way. The iPhone is a wakeup call... Apple has produced technology and software so compelling that it makes the current stuff from other vendors look pathetic (mine included).

iPhone is a game-changing device, and it's about time. Thank you, Apple!

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mobility