Two:Thirty AM

Up until recent years, memory cards for cameras were all about the same. Sure there were different sizes and shapes, but as far as memory went, there was very little difference between them. In 2005, a small startup in Mountain View, CA changed the way we think about memory cards and shooting photos. A new product was released that was like no other: The Eye-Fi Card, created by a company with the same name. These engineering geniuses stuffed a WiFi chipset inside the already seemingly tiny SD card format. Wait, why WiFi? By having WiFi in the card, this enables the card to transfer your photos from your camera to your computer wirelessly without the need for plugging the camera in and then having to import the photos into your computer. The fun doesn’t end there, however. As if wireless photo transfer wasn’t enough, the card also will upload your photos directly to your favorite online photo sharing services effortlessly!

The product has come a very long way in just a few years. The first Eye-Fi card was a 2GB model that supported transfer of JPEG images to your computer and your favorite photo sharing sites. Flash forward to 2010 when the newest card, the Eye-Fi Pro X2, was released. This insanely powerful card boasts 8GB of storage, the ability to transfer the RAW file format, geotagging, 802.11n WiFi, SDHC Class 6 Read&Write speeds, and a brand new feature called “Endless Memory Mode”. With 8GB of memory, you might think it is basically endless already, but what they have done with this new feature is quite brilliant. Endless Memory Mode will begin to free up space on the card by removing images that have already been uploaded safely to their destination. Finally, a card that never runs out! A huge bonus that comes along with this feature is that the card is effectively backing up your photos as well. It is all well and good to have a giant card for your photos, but if that card is the only place they exist, if that card dies on you, you have lost everything.

Of course, the new Pro X2 card is not for everyone, as you may not need all of these very high-end features. Good news is that Eye-Fi offers a range of cards which will fit any style and level of photographer. From Point & Shoot to Digital SLR, these cards are a must have for your camera!

For more Information please visit: http://eye.fi/
Retail Price: $149.99

Electronic Ink? Yes, the future is now! The idea of eReaders is not new, however the idea of eReaders you would actually want to use is. The eReader space is going to be a huge growth area this year. With new devices popping up on the market what seems like every week, the days of just having Amazon’s Kindle as a choice are gone. For the most part, all of the current eReaders on the market have the same seven inch electronic ink display. That being said, it’s the form factor and little extras that really steer popularity.

Barnes & Noble launched their eReader, nook, in November of last year. But due to supply shortage and high demand on pre-orders, it was tough to get one until February of this year. A major plus for the nook from a selling standpoint is physical retail space. Barns & Noble will have nooks in their retail stores right in front of customers who may want an eReader device but are not ready to commit to a somewhat high purchase price online, sight unseen. The ability to have tactile feedback from the device is a selling point that is tough to beat.

In today’s world of multitasking, a device that does one thing can be a tough sell. But when it comes to an area like reading, you want simple and elegant. Just the words wrapping around each other and intertwining to form the intricate design of story telling. Sure, your smartphone, or laptop lets you read books. But they only accomplish the task, they don’t excel. eReaders are meant to do one thing, and do it very well. Electronic ink is meant to mimic the look of ink on paper.

Everyone is busy with their modern lives. Life has a way of making you think there just simply isn’t enough time. Some have even famously said, “no one reads anymore.” Reading a large novel can be intimidating, let alone in order to actually read it when you have a spare moment you must have the book with you. The nook solves these common problems eloquently. Weighing in at just a little over 12 ounces, it can be taken almost anywhere. As for a large novel being intimidating, the nook ensures that every book, no matter the number of pages is a mere half inch thick.

With value added features like expandable memory, replaceable battery, color navigation screen on the bottom, the open Android Operating System, and support for the open ePub book format, the nook truly is leading the pack when it comes to electronic paper media consumption. Will this change? of course, it wouldn’t be technology if it didn’t. That said, the nook stands to stay in the lead for a while given the limitless possibilities with software updates to the versatile device.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/

What sucks about Android.

Well, to be honest, very little! I switched from using an iPhone to using Android in November of 2009. After switching I never looked back. To this day I do not regret it one bit. Sure the platform is a little less polished, but it is so much more forward thinking and open. This makes it number one for me. All that being said, there is one thing that is absolutely driving me up the wall; OS updates. I see a huge problem in the way Android OS updates are rolled out. I am mostly speaking to version 2.0 and later since all the 1.x builds were still, in my opinion, in Android’d infancy stage. When the OS hit 2.0, I felt it was ready for prime time.

Since Android is open source, anyone can grab the OS and modify it how they see fit. A lot of hardware manufacturers are doing just that. It’s great on the one hand because you get a bunch of cool versions of the OS, it sucks on the other though because updates to those handsets are very slow to come and are never up to date with the virgin “Google Experience” phones. If a handset maker wants to make a custom OS version, at this point, they seem to be locked into using older 1.5 and 1.6 versions of the OS code. This sucks for the consumer because even with a brand new phone they are stuck with 3-6 month old technology on day one of using the phone.

With each new release of the OS like 2.0 and 2.1, the new OS seems to launch with a single phone. With 2.0 it was the Motorola Droid. With 2.1 it was Google’s very own Nexus One. Meanwhile everyone else is stuck with whatever version their phone came with. This almost makes it seem like if you want the latest OS you have to buy whatever phone is launched with it. This of course will not work.

I am not sure what, if any, are the technical reasons for this. Perhaps drivers for specific hardware are the culprit. What I would like to see is a more uniform release schedule of OS updates. If drivers are the problem, there should be a more common specification for how hardware is to talk to the OS and every handset maker should follow that spec. If you want to have a hardware keyboard, here is how it talks to the OS, same with touchscreens, trackballs, cameras, speakers, and so forth. Something similar to how USB peripherals work on a computer. If i get a new USB keyboard, no matter what it looks like, it still types normally. There should not be a difference in how an HTC keyboard talks to the OS vs. how a Motorola keyboard does.

I use a Motorola Droid so I have a “Google Experience” Phone. In this case I would like to see updates hosted by google. When google put out the Nexus One with 2.1, I would have liked to see a ROM download for “Google Experience 2.1 Update” and one for each of the carriers if necessary. This would ensure the platform keeps moving forward, and applications are more likely to work across the board

Currently in the Android market you are seeing over and over applications that say “does not work with droid” or “must have 1.5″. If the latest version of the OS were more readily available, I think more developers would be developing for the newest version and taking advantage of all the newest updates have to offer

So, to say that Android sucks, would be a gross mistake. Android is absolutely fantastic! Any of the problems I have seen up to this point are all nothing to worry about. I had an iPhone from the very first day it was launched, and to be honest it sucked until half way through version 2.0 also. Although I love Android and recommend it to a lot of my friends, I would still not recommend my mom use it, but very soon in the near future I think I probably will be able to.

Well the HTC Hero has finally made it stateside..kinda. Instead of the
next gen looking Hero, we got the crappy knockoff version at Sprint
that looks like every other phone. It came out today, so we stopped by
the local sprint store to check it out. I didn’t really care too much
about the handset, nothing too special there. More important is the
Android Sense UI. The UI is beautiful, however feels very clunky sadly
:( I think it is a problem of a phone UI finally outpacing the hardware
it was designed for. Is this phone a winner? Probably, if you are with
Sprint. Am I switching from my iPhone? No. I am thrilled however that
this type of innovation will fuel competition in the mobile sector.

I have been using Google Voice for a couple days, and I think it is time to step it up! I have been looking into ways to more tightly integrate my new Google Voice service in with my phone. There are a couple of key areas to focus on when trying to seamlessly integrate Google Voice with your cell phone. Phone calls, Voicemails, and Text messages. As you of course know, I use an iPhone; more specifically an iPhone 3G (at time of writing), so I will be working to integrate with that. In time I suspect an Android phone will integrate with Google Voice seamlessly. Hell, they might even just give you a Google Voice phone number when you buy a Google Android Phone.

Stage I – Voicemail
I really like the voicemail in Google Voice, with its ease of use, ability to listen anywhere, and the transcribing features. Before today, if someone were to call my iPhone and I didn’t answer, they would get my AT&T Voicemail. Now don’t get me wrong, Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is great, but nowhere near as powerful as Google Voicemail. Now you may ask why not just give everyone my Google Voice number and problem solved right? Well, yes and no. It is going to take a while to get my new number circulated to everyone, and in the meantime it would be nice if I could start receiving all my voicemail in one place. There is also the problem of relaying text messages between my cell phone and Google Voice, but there will be more on that in blog posts to come. Anyway, back to the matter at hand: voicemail. I needed my iPhone number to go to my Google Voicemail when I don’t answer, and that is precisely what I have done. Here is how I did it.

Some of you iPhone users may know about things like Field Mode Testing which is a diagnostic tool that you can get to by typing *3001#12345#* on the dial pad in the phone app followed by pressing the call button. Nothing too special there, but a similar method to this is used to change where callers are sent when you do not answer your iPhone. Now, if you type *#61# followed by the call button, you will see a screen like the screenshot below, which shows you where your phone is currently forwarded to for voicemail. This is an AT&T central receiving center for AT&T voicemail from what I can tell. In case the regular number isn’t the same for everyone it would probably be a good idea to write this number down, just in case you need to revert back for some reason. The next step is for making the switch. Go ahead and fireup your dial pad again and enter the following:

*61*1<your google voice number>*11*<voicemail delay in seconds>#

If your Google Voice number was 555-555-1212 and you wanted your phone to ring for 20 seconds before going to voicemail it would look like the following:

*61*15555551212*11*20#

That’s it! Your iPhone will now fwd to your Google Voice number and subsequently your Google Voicemail when you don’t answer your iPhone.

Hope this helps you. Check back for additions to integrate the rest of the services more tightly.

As always leave comments, questions, and feedback in the comments below or send me an email twothirtyam@me.com

Much like when you get burned by your friend with the Moto Razr when they send you an MMS and then laugh at you because your “state of the art smart phone” can’t get a simple MMS which is a technology from the early 2000 era, the browser can burn you just the same. “Oh hey, go check out that webpage on your phone man.” Sure thing, after all, I do have the internet in my pocket, right? Well, you do, if the internet you want doesn’t have and kind of Flash. As you see in this screenshot, I am not looking at this page on the go or any other with any kind of Flash content.

So who do you blame? The website developer for not having an HTML version? Apple for not having Flash on the iPhone? Jesus for not making everything work? (I guess that is a bit redundant since Jesus is the CEO of Apple) (hopefully that got you riled up, feel free to flame me with “fanboy” messages now) :)

What’s the point here? None, really. Just stating the obvious, yet again. How many years before we actually get the /ENTIRE/ internet in our pockets? It did take 2 full years to get MMS on the iPhone…(at least that is what we have been told, I’ll believe it when I have it)

It has often been said that Apple hardware is a thing of beauty, and I have to agree. Just look at this Apple Xserve RAID array, stunning!

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 35
Camera Body: Nikon D40
Camera Lens: Nikon 18-55

Time to get all conspiracy theory on you! This may be way out in left field, but I am just shooting from the hip here and telling you what it looks like to me on the surface.

It seemed to take forever but a couple weeks ago we finally got Skype for the iPhone! Sure it took longer than it should have but what on the iPhone doesn’t? Well, after the first install, we came up against the app crashing upon starting, consistently. Well long story short, it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with Jailbroken iPhones and MobileSubstrate. So we were back up and running just fine after a MobileSubstrate update. So it was MobileSubstrate? Well no, take a look at the lengthly article by Saurik on the matter.

So fast forward to today, a new Skype app update, cool, so I install it. Upon launching the app, I get the following message “This version of Skype is only supported on unmodified iPhone OS 2.2″ which you can see in the screen shot.

Bottom line, what is this app doing that no other app is?
Why is this particular app so different in the way it works?
Do they not work with the same SDK that everyone else does?

I really hope this turns out to be no big deal and I have blown it way out of proportion to be honest.

With all the talk of actions being taken to make Jailbreaking “illegal” and so forth, I don’t want this app to turn into a fact finding mission for Apple/AT&T to begin shutting off service for iPhone users that are “breaking the rules”.

Comment below, tell me I am over reacting…please :)

(the app seems to work ok, but is this the beginning? Because obviously if you have Jailbroken your phone, you know that you are not going to get technical support on anything)

With the recent launch of the Amazon Kindle 2, the eBook reader market is a hot topic once again. I have been interested in the technology behind eBook readers and e-ink for a while. The offers have been pretty slim in years past, however. I was at Fry’s Electronics the other day and happened to pass by what was now an “eBook reader section”, so I stopped and looked. Now, they of course did not have a Kindle to play with since you can only get it through Amazon, but they did have several others. They had three that utilized e-ink technology; 2 Sony, and an Astak EZ Reader. For the most part they were the same, and unfortunately that means they all have the same screen flicker that comes with the territory when you are using current e-ink technology. The fourth unit they had was a Jetbook from ECTACO. This unit was different in that it didn’t use e-ink, but rather a VGA monochrome reflective-type TFT LCD. This screen is very easy on the eyes and does not suffer from the same screen flicker “problem”.

Overall I really enjoyed the unit, it was very portable and easy to carry. Had a quick power on time and was comfortable to hold. For page turning, you can use the 2 page turn buttons on the bottom face of the unit, or a thumb slider on the left hand side of the unit. Both worked quite well. After the first few days I was sold on the unit, until, yes unfortunately there is an until, I looked at a PDF book. Up until that time I was reading a .txt text eBook. With text files, the page flips were instant, very clear and fit the screen perfectly. Now, when you move to PDF books, it’s a whole different game. PDFs don’t fit the screen very well, and unfortunately the page flips take considerably longer, making it just about as uncomfortable as the e-ink flicker.

Finally, price. With the Kindle coming in at a hefty $359, the Jetbook is cheap at only $199. However, with the limited number of book formats it works with, and the inability to display PDF eBooks as well as .txt files, it makes it still too pricey for what you get. If this unit was $99, it would probably be worth keeping for text files.

For now it looks like I am back to Stanza and my iPhone for eBook reading, at least until the Kindle (or other models) fix the e-ink flicker and page change delay. It’s coming soon though, I can feel it!