I may be the first to go on record to say this, but I think there’s a really high possibility that this falls iPod Touch gets a 3G connection option. If so, stand back and watch these iOS devices dominate the way the iPod did.

Update: Looks like Sprint is creating a sleeve for the iPod Touch that empowers it with 3G connectivity, and y’know, Apple has a habit of beating people to the punch just when it’s unexpected, and is there anything more unexpected for this years iPod than 3G?

Apparent iPod Touch 3G Case

I continue to point you to John Gruber and his astute observations on the iPhone and competitors, also Andy Ihnatko for excellent birds eye perspective on the world of technology.

Firstly, Johns made a great point in the last 24 hours, saying that there is no guarantee or neccessity for the Cell phone market to be like the PC market in the 90%Windows Machines/8%Macs/2%Linux Paradigm, John points out that the mobile market could easily become like the game console market with three to four systems each taking 30-40% of the market, that’s a good point, in the face of the “iPhone-killer” and “Android will be the windows of the future” gibberish that is making the rounds with some pundits.

Once it’s agreed that there can be several flourishing systems, it’s much easier to look at the mobile market objectively, and I hope that’s the perspective I give to you.

The Tmobile store at 17th and Valencia is in a neighborhood that leaving working activated phones on those tiny security cables, as such, there’s a huge benefit, they have a completely functioning, untied, not locked down Galaxy S that they’ll hand you so you can feel exactly what it’s like to hold.

Again, I’ll tell you, that it’s very nice feeling. (I can now agree that the plastic back does actually feel a little chintzy in the age of steel backed and now glass backed iPhones (forgive Apple’s temporary plastic phase)). But I’m a productivity guy, I’m about doing things, implementing and recommending the tools that enable businesses and individuals to do more with less work. Whether that tool is plastic coated or diamond coated matters not as highly as whether the plastic tool can slice butter twice as fast.

So what can you do?

Well, the truth is, that the modern computing world is not about Specs anymore, the answer to what can it do really depends on what Apps are available, right?

I took a look at the Android Marketplace, and searching for Speed test got me the same awesome simple Ookla speed test app available for iPhone. Good, then I searched for Skype, I got a list of apps, none of which was Skype.

Then, I redid my test from the other day, made a call and tried to open the camera to take a picture, didn’t work, so i went to the Market and found a camera app, installed it, and guess what, good news, it works, so that solves that, but finding that camera app on the market was not easy.

Then, I tried to find a video camera app so I could test if i can record video, searching and searching found me no good results, but worse than that, I found an App called “Qik Video for EVO”, why am i seeing that? If my mom uses this phone, finds that App, downloads it, runs it, and it says, you’re not on an EVO, goodbye, what kind of experience is that?

Contrast that experience with the App store experience:

Avis are running ads saying “use our iPhone App to reserver your car”
Chase are running TV commercials saying “Use our iPhone app to deposit your checks”
OmniFocus just released OmniFocus for the iPad and it looks like the most marvelous way to organize your to do’s
and today i found out about Moms With Apps, a website devoted to Mom Apps, it’s incredible, they’re highlighting Apps that help moms find parks, find activities, keep track of rewards, goals, and anything that a Mom might care about.

I think all of this shows the power of the Apps, they’re creating their own niches “Mom Apps”, “Guy Apps”, “Travelling Apps”.

Meanwhile Androids Marketplace is a hodgepodge of “pretty cool”, “sorta works”, not “This lets me do more with my day!”

And I think that’s one more key differentiator of the iPhone world.

Also for people who care about continuity, it might be fun to note, that after some bad guys spill beer on the girls MacBook Pro, she brings it to a computer mechanic who says “I can save your hard drive”, but when she asks about the computer, he holds up a broken Mac, not a MacBook Pro, nor even a PowerBook, but a TiBook, that’s the Titanium PowerBook from 2001, obviously the directors weren’t silly or willing enough to dismantle a nice new Mac, and instead broke up a TiBook. That’s still a waste to my mind, hopefully they put it back together afterwards.

Note to future directors: It’s pretty straightforward and almost easier to open the newer MacBook pros for “shock” value in your next scene, the older Macs were harder to open(and put back together again)

Walt Mossberg Reviews New Samsung Galaxy S Android Phones ★
Walt Mossberg:

I’ve been testing the first two Galaxy S phones, the T-Mobile Vibrant and the AT&T Captivate, both of which cost $200 with a two-year contract. Neither has all the features of Apple’s latest model, like a front-facing camera for video calls or an ultra–high resolution screen, but they are worthy competitors. They have some attributes the iPhone lacks, like bigger screens and better integration of social networking.

They sound like good — maybe the best? — Android phones. What I find interesting is that “Galaxy S” is Samsung’s branding, but the phones aren’t called that. Each carrier gives them their own names. How many real people will know that the T-Mobile Vibrant and AT&T Captivate are pretty much the same phone from different carriers? And “Android” doesn’t get mentioned at all. The word “Android” doesn’t get much play from the carriers, either. There’s just one mention of “Android” on AT&T’s web page for the Captivate, and it’s near the bottom in the small print section

John Gruber, author of the most excellent daring fireball, comments above on Walt Mossbergs review of the new Samsung Galaxy phones.

I had some time Sunday to go peruse phones at Verizon, Tmobile and Sprint, and because I did, I am able to make some comments on the above.

The Samsung Galaxy S on Sprint, is far and way the best android handset I’ve used so far, it is truly excellent.

How so? Well the interface is the smoothest I’ve seen on android, possibly equal to the nexus one, but I think smoother. The screen is beautiful, the thinness is lovely, and best of all, probably to convince iPhone people to switch, they’ve made the applications appear in a horizontal page by page grid a la iPhone instead of up and down endless like all other androids I’ve seen. I’m not sure if that only makes me happy, or if it will work for all iPhone people, but I can tell you scrolling up and down the general android apple list feels Frey alien, whereas the samsungs feels nice.

Not only that, but in my surveys of android phones over the last few months, they all stutter when swiping or moving ui elements around in comparison to even my original iPhone. But the Galaxy S? It’s smoother and faster than my iPhone.

Pretty sweet, huh? More responsive than my iPhone(not than an iPhone 4 of course), beautiful screen, open android and so on, lovely.

So let’s get one right? Wait, it costs the SAME as an iPhone. Like exactly the same, monthly, plus up front, it’s all the same.

Well, I guess it better do all the same stuff then, let’s see.

No video camera for face time.

That’s a deal breaker for most anybody.

But let’s say I’m a geek who wants google voice, or more openness. How would I choose?

Well I’m a geek with a l ot of international friends so I’ll go to the android store and get Skype. Oh no Skype on the store? Okay

Well, android has built in tethering, that makes up for no video camera or Skype right? Oh tethering comes with froyo 2.2, which could take a month or six months to arrive, who knows, and will Tmobile charge an extra $30 per month for it? Who knows? And Tmobile aren’t saying.

So nothing killer selling me on this phone, but it is slick. So you could call it a tie.

But then, take in the factors that nobody counts. Take in iTunes U and it’s awesome amount of university education that is built into every iPhone for free, and doesn’t technically even require ATT, you could just sit in starbucks all day learning and learning on your iPhone.

Then take Siri, the absolutely mind blowingly artificial intelligence app for iPhone, that will never be available for android because apple just bought it.

And toss up the above and decide which phone is worth your $200, and $70 monthly.

One more thing.

I had a nice Sony Ericsson phone before the iPhone came out, I was happy with it, it was a Walkman, made great calls, and took good pictures, I wasn’t dead certain I needed the iPhone over this Sony. Then I was walking down the street one day and listening to some songs, I saw a beautiful view and took out the phone to take a picture, opened the camera app and took a picture, know what happened? The song paused(not gracefully) while the camera presumably buffered and saved the image, then the song resumed a millisecond before where it had stopped(horrible).

I went to the apple store, started playing a song on the iPhone, opened camera, took a picture, the iPhone didn’t miss a beat. Why pay $70 a month for a phone that’s going to bug me every time I’m listening to a song and want to take a picture? And I got the iPhone and loved it.

Nobody notices this, nobody.

People buy stuff all the time, and it doesn’t do perfect everything, normal people don’t rant and rave like i do about this, normal people just continue their lives, buy a canon to take pictures along their Sony and continue.

But iPhone buyers, normal people, are listening to music, taking pictures, chatting on the phone simultaneously in the playgrounds with their kids, while Sony Ericsson, motorola and nokia owners aren’t. Can their phones not do all these things at once or do these people not wanna do it? I put it to you that it’s that their phones can’t do it and they just don’t think a second thought about it. Well listen to this, that galaxy s that we began this discussion about, go try it out, go marvel at its beauty at how slick it is, comparable it is, awesome it is, then make a call on it and open the camera app.

Yknow what you’ll see? “camera can’t be used while on a call”

These are the things that matter, people don’t notice them, but when everything is perfect and aligned, they don’t have to, they just get used to cup holders, and niceties, and while samsung catch up to make their camera app work while a call is happening, apple are steaming ahead with iOS 5, which will have built in Siri, who can book you on a flight, reserve you dinner, your hotel, and, take a photo while doing all that.

Now Cupertino, please make it so I can shoot video while on a call, iPhone 4 doesn’t do that, and why not?
.

I hear it often, as of July 17th 2010, my answer remains:

iMac or mac mini, any specifications. Best home computer, no question. My parents love theirs, I got them for them four years ago. Windows PC’s(hp/Dell/Sony) all more or less the same, software (windows) the biggest factor, virus, problem vulnerable, (without tech support) try em out at best buy. They carry both. But apple store transfers your files for free from your old pc.

That video was by a guy who signed off the video using his real name, his Twitter nameHandle, and I believe that’s all.

While Twitter, YouTube, and perhaps facebook are without question the places to be discovered, easily shared and publish yourself. Don’t forget to begin with your own space.

That is to say, get yourself a piece of the web, the new frontier, (yes it’s still new), being able to still buy billsawesomesite.com, is like coming to California in 1850 and being able to grab an acre of land for a house(in my humble opinion). And once you get that land(webspace), build your content on it, put your pictures, video, text and art on it, and redistribute from their, ensure that the highest quality native original format of your creation exists solely in a secure location(like a local backed up hard drive), put your web quality version of your art on YOUR own webspace, be that a rented shared server space like DreamHost, yahoo, your own server sonnected to the web, or big stuff like dedicated server or collocated servers.

And from that location, spread your content in other formats, YouTube720P, vimeoHD, twittervid, facebook etc, and on and on, always preserving the link back to yourdomain.com, or your personal webspace whatever it may be. Because Twitter and YouTube are hot today, but they’re not forever, just like country borders change, web properties change ownership, priorites and more. So put your content somewhere your grandkids can look back and say, “wow check out these emails from grandma to grandpa back in 2011″ as opposed to Twitter who only keep your last 12000 tweets or some such arbitrary number.

Contact me to learn more, but at the moment I heartily still endorse DreamHost. Click the link to the right “green hosting” to learn more about them.

P.s. Gmail only gives you access to your email for about six months if you stop logging in. Personally in like the idea of my email inbox being there for my grandkids to look at. You?

Create a new “MailBox”

Give it a name:

Go into Mail Preferences

Click Rules

Click Add Rule

Fill in the criteria you wish to filter (e.g. addressed to info@yourdomain.org), Select the folder you want the message placed in

Click Ok

And Then Click Apply

Bingo, you’re all set.

But one thing that is hard, is figuring out how to use your numeric keypad, the answer to that question is posted below, courtesy Brent V.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Numeric Keypad does work in Parallels

Well, to be fair the numeric keypad does work in Parallels, but it takes a little knowledge. What I found out is that when I run Windows XP in Parallels it looks to see if the num-lock is turned on or off. Just like a regular PC running Windows, the numeric keypad moves the cursor instead of typing numbers if the num-lock is off.

I guess the Mac OSX doesn’t really have a concept of num-locks (at least when using the Apple keyboard). So, Parallels changed the clear key (near top left of numeric keypad) to be the num-lock toggle key. All you have to do is hit the clear key while in Windows XP (under Parallels) and you can toggle your num-lock.

Not very intuitive, but hey, what do you expect when you mix Mac and Windows together.

Posted by Brent V at 8:52 PM

No Space needs to be taken on your MacBook Hard Drive

Downsides:

Lock outs if you send over 500 emails in a day.

Incorrect sender tag resulting in your mail being flagged as spam or the dreaded “sent on behalf of” message.

8GB Limit for your Mailboxes
Dreamhost is Unlimited

25MB File size limit for sending or receiving
Dreamhost is 40MB

MobileMe

iLife

iWork

Transmit

Teamviewer

Transmission

Acorn

Hazel

Automatic

XCode

Billable

Sprint Overdrive on Amazon for $49