The Battle in my Pants.

No, Get your mind out of the gutter.  My Black Berry Bold II's optical trackpad had been acting up really bad.  I would scroll all the way to the right and my pointer would jump to the top right? It was ok for a bit, I had been hoping maybe a leaked firmware somewhere along the way would fix it but it got super annoying so I ditched it.

In it's place I picked up an iPhone 3GS.  Now it's not that I'm a big "i" fan or anything but I figured I needed to learn more about the mobile OS X platform at some point so it might as well be now.  With the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad always having such a big customer base, I need to be able to help them with more in depth questions.

So now I am carrying an iPhone in one pocket and a CLIQ in the other pocket.  Honestly the two best Smartphone OS's on the market today. I do wan't to say I give credit to RIM for BES and business solutions that work very seamlessly and have the best e-mail I have ever experienced in a mobile phone, but alas your average user, while able to use the system has wasted features and will garner more use from Android or Mobile OS X.

Anyway's I've been playing around using both phones, and I'm rather impressed with the 3GS experience so far. It's not as bad as when I originally had first played around with the iPhone itself.  I've only had the device for a little over 48hrs but have pretty much mastered it. I have yet to find any great reason to jailbreak it so I may just keep it stock.  The improvements over the years to the virtual keyboard are nice, I can type on it much easier than I have been able to on any of the android devices.  I do still prefer a physical keyboard over any virtual board for writing anything extended, but this has been a pleasant experience.

My true hope at this point is that Apple and Android will be the top two competitors to a point where they push each other to create better features, options and of course apps.  When this occurs we will probably see the best that is available in mobile computing.  It's almost there now, but with the grip iPhone now has on the smartphone market it's not quite a direct competition but Android is stepping up it's game, so only time will tell.

G1 died.

Well, after the network outage a couple days ago from T-Mo when the network popped back up it did something weird and my G1 started rebooting like crazy.  I should have shut it off, but I thought it was just the units way of getting rejected and trying to get back on the network.

Well it fried something and caused it to lose power completely.  I have my electronics guru buddy going to dismantle it and see what fried, he's a genius so hopefully I'll be able to get that back up and running as a development phone / backup in case something happens to my CLIQ.

On the note of the CLIQ, none of the kernel exploits that are known to work are working, fastboot is completely locked up.  This is gonna be a pain to root, but it will be done.

Motorola CLIQ - Straight up and Simple

While waiting to receive my CLIQ I was reading a lot of the initial reviews on the phone.  I was honestly a bit worried.  While it seemed like this would be an amazing phone for me considering the Social Networking aspect, a lot of the reviews put it down.  I’m going to go over the good and bad of the phone which is just a standard production model, the same as anyone would get it from t-mobile, heck I even got it the way everyone gets it.

I’m not going to go through an un-boxing of the product, search youtube for that, needless to say I liked the packaging.  A lot better than the standard t-mo boxes.

So I got my phone, and grabbed my old SIM and SD Card. The first thing I noticed when I opened the battery cover was locking tabs. This has been missed from most phones, they’re just little rubber strips that secure the Micro SD and the SIM card in place, so they can’t be knocked out from moving the phone around.  +1 cool idea there.  Also the battery is secure in place, virtually no wiggle room which was another good thing to see, when I had my original G1 it had the smaller battery and would leave room that I didn’t like.

After popping on the battery cover I flipped the phone over, it is solid, a very nice solid feel.  They physical keyboard after a good bit of use the past 48 hours is nice, I’m not sure where the other reviewers were having issues with the alt and space, I’ve had no such problems what-so-ever.  Nice feel, nice solid key presses.

I got the phone booted up, when through the Motoblur setup, which was easy and quick, started syncing and setting up everything for mobile use.  Motoblur is well documented out there so I’m not going to go over it, if for some reason your reading this and don’t know what it is, it’s an interconnect of all your major social networking needs.  Google It.

While the hardware is almost comparable to the G1, this unit is faster than a stock G1 on 1.5 android.  I’m not sure if this is just because of the newer hardware or what, but I was expecting the sluggishness I experienced running 1.5 on the G1.  While speaking of 1.5 that is the one disadvantage so far, there is no 1.6 update which I would really, really like due to the new market app which is amazing.  I’m hoping for the update, but it does not kill the phone if there is none.

The battery life so far hasn’t been an issue under normal use, I’m going to really try and stress test it next time I have off of work, but under normal usage conditions you should get a day’s worth as I do. Just remember to do full discharge cycle on your first usage.

The biggest problem I’ve noticed is the touchscreen is different than the G1 MT3G and Sprint Hero all together.  It seems to be more accurate to your initial point of impact when your touching.  So it’s not as forgiving as the other models. There is also no calibration for the touchscreen so your stuck with it.  But give it 12 hours as I did and you should be fairly good with it.


Overall - 8/10 

Purpose

Last night was a bad night, a lot of weird issues, things I couldn’t fix on my own and couldn’t get what I needed to fix it.  I asked the question to myself of “Why am I doing this?”

The first thing that lured me to Best Buy when I had lost my job with dell and was looking for work was that I could sell, and I’m a “Gear Head”, or tech junkie, geek.  However you want to say it me and technology click.  It’s something that’s been since I took apart my first VCR back when I was 6, fixed the gears in it with parts from my Erector set and put it back together in working condition. 

So why choose Best Buy to stay with?

I realized that for lack of any better terminology, we’re entering the Star Trek era.  Look at what we have around us.  E-Readers which are going to become a big part of everyday life, a book is now technology, something that was as simple as drawing on a wall.  We have AMOLED displays on devices now. GPS is able to be incorporated into anything.  Look at your cell phones, Look at mine even, it’s a Computer, GPS, MP3 player, Camera, Camcorder and a Phone and all of that fits in my pocket.   Look at GPS technology itself it’s evolved to the point of lane guidance and some units you can pull out and get the best walking directions.  Car audio for that matter as well, we can have an orchestra in our own vehicles, beyond that we can have a whole theater in our vehicles if we so choose.  With car technology we even have sensors in some vehicles that can detect a collision before it happens and engage our brakes.

In Home Theater we have the newest displays, look how thin the LED TV’s are. Look at the resolution now, and the image clarity. Soon we will have 3D TV, 2k x 4k resolution; right now with the proper setup you can control your house through your TV.  That’s the power of Security Systems, Baby Monitoring, The lights in your rooms, the curtains even, and it’ll tell you your shopping list as it talks with your Refrigerator.   Now a system like that is currently crazy expensive, but it’ll be coming to consumers at some point and will one day be common place, much like the Microwave had once been a High Luxury Item.

Speaking of refrigerators look at LG, they market themselves as “The Digital Appliance Company” Go check out the Samsung with the LCD Touch Screen that will give you conversion rates and a library of nutrition facts right there above your water dispenser.  We used to have a set of GE Profile Smart Laundry which would determine the correct amount of detergent and softener and then tell the dryer the amount of moisture being sensed and the clothing type to setup an exact drying cycle.

In computers, check out what they can do now.  You can plot out an entire sky scraper, render it in 3D virtually walk around in it and then run simulations on it to test its structural stability and its fire safety. They can control your digital media from music to movies and pictures and allow it to be accessed by a multitude of devices in your home. You can even take your pictures from it, load them on and SD card and display them on your TV and your Refrigerator.  The computers of now and tomorrow have the power to unlock the secrets of our own DNA.  They will be the brains of our entire homes.  Even in DI some cameras are offering built in GPS and wifi so that images can be Geo Tagged and then when you get near your house they can be offloaded to your PC without you doing a thing.

With built in network access you can also access this content almost anywhere from a simple MP3 player.  They now have features where you can hook into wifi and soon they will include chips in them to access cellular networks at 3G + speeds so that you can always stay connected with your home, family and digital media.

So by now you may be wondering why on earth I’m talking about this entire crazy super high end in some cases bleeding edge and current edge technology.

Simple, we’re the forefront of it all, and unless you’re like me and spend almost every waking hour immersing yourself in it then you won’t know it. Neither do our customers. We have all the tools in the toolbox that if we can use them effectively we can help people transition into this new “Star Trek Era”.

Seriously, look around at whatever department you may frequent. If you’re in PCHO how many people do you still get that don’t understand the wifi technology that’s been out for how long now?  If you’re in Home Theater how many people do you see that still think they can just hook up a new LCD to a coax RG6 line and get a good picture?  CarFi how many people do you get that still don’t understand why they need a separate box just to keep their door chime?  Appliances how many people still don’t quite know what Energy Star is and how front loaders work?  Gaming how many people still don’t understand how to connect their wii to a wifi or set parental controls on an Xbox 360? MP3 how many people do you still get per week that get screwed over by DRM controls on their iPods or lose all their data completely.  DI how many people have you heard that don’t know how to get their pictures on/off their computers, or talk about wanting to take pictures faster but don’t know about the different memory card speeds.

With all of Best Buy’s resources:

Best Buy (US, Canada, China, Europe, Mexico)

Future Shop

Magnolia A/V

Geek Squad (US, Europe)

Five Star Appliances

Napster

And our other brands that I just can’t think of right now.

We are in the best position possible; we have every tool we need to help People, not just Customers but People to stay better connected with each other, to learn more, to save their time so that they can spend it how they want. Whether it is our Geek Squad to hook things up, Me and You in store to help unravel what they want to do and get them what they need to do it, or even to help them imagine what they can do.

This might sound extreme here but if you know me I’m not one to take the easy road; We can help people reshape the world and their lives.

Consolidation

Wow, so I realized it's a pain to try and do everything.  Different e-mails and logins and blah blah blah.  So today I'm taking this morning to try and consolidated.  Set my Android phone up for a different e-mail which should help in some aspects.  I was using one of my google apps accounts, this prevented me from a few things.  To make life easier I've consolidated all of my social networking under one e-mail with different passwords for each account. Total time 1.5 hours

Now I'm trying to organize my photos and get them setup with picasa... between duplicates and tagging, this is going to take awhile.

So a summary of what I have and hope to use more frequently on the web.

Blogger
Twitter
Facebook
Myspace
Picasa
LinkdIn
G-Talk
AIM
Yahoo
Live Messenger
Xbox Live
Last.FM
Giftag
YouTube

Cease and Desist Open Source.

Ok, first off this is not as easy as it sounds, and both sides do have an issue.  I do not know all of the background of the issue but being around Open Source projects for a long time and seeing things like this come up I have a very good clue and I'm going to go by what I know, but I can be completely wrong without all the info.

It appears that the problem isn't the Open Source operating system which is just a flavor of linux developed by google, the problem is going to be in the closed source applications that come with the operating system.

From the chat log this appears to be the issue, the GMail, YouTube, Google Maps etc.  All seem to be under non-gpl and non open source licenses.

Google, can put a stop to them and in some instances may be forced to put a stop to them in order to protect their copyright, because in the world of law if you do not protect your copyright you basically are giving it up.

Now, there are reasons to make a program closed source, I'm not a fan of this, but there are times it's better.  Mainly when it protects security.  Sometimes, when a program is very simple, but very useful, and a developer can not always rely on donations to make money for their time and energy spent in making a product that makes our lives easier.

So what I would like to see happen here is one of two things. That would show Google having merit and us being able to keep faith in them.

1. Tell Cyanogen just not to include the closed source apps.
2. More preferable give Cyanogen a distribution license, now, once again in the business world, this may not be able to be done for free, but make it cheap, at least cheap enough that we can donate so it can be done.
3. Ok, I said two but really I'd like to see all the google apps become open source :)

Now there can be one more problem that is being run into, and without really digging into all of the code I honestly do not know, but maybe someone out there does.  Does android run with any closed source modules or required dependencies of android itself?  Because that can also be a big snag.