The Blog of an African NERD

One month with the Palm Pre

Looks

Through out the hype period before it’s actual launch, the images of the Pre concerned me a bit. With all the curves, I thought it would be a bit too femalish for me, but when you actually get to play with the device, it has this cool alienish futuristic look to it. Touchstone also adds to this coolness.

Keyboard

The keyboard is fine if you are coming from older devices like the Treo but am not sure if you are coming from the newer BlackBerrys. That might take more time getting used to. I have been using the iPhone over the past year and since the Pre is also a touch screen, one tends to start out using it like the iPhone. However, with the full qwerty keyboard, you can get around much quicker and get things done faster. 

Set Up

Setting things up is really sweet and fast. Since this is essentially a cloud phone, you just enter you email info, im info etc and you are good to go. I was even pleasantly surprised being able to set up the my Gx5 email without having to sync with my Desktop. I think this may have to do with some of the magic they got from the Chattermail acquisition. 

Multitasking

Palm’s implementation of multitasking is just absolutely wonderful. The card paradigm is the sweetness thing I have ever seen on a Smartphone.

Fatter is better

The Pre feels better in your hand than the iPhone. For once, thin is not better.

Third Party Apps

Even though the App catalog has a limited no. of apps, using these apps validate WebOS as a platform to create powerful and useful apps. Even more exciting is what is going on in the hacking/jailbreak scene, where like the iPhone, you will soon see some mind blowing apps.

Societal Factor

Unlike previous awesome Palm devices that know one in mainstream knew about, the Palm Pre is an attention getter. I have been stopped quite a few times by curious folks wanting to know more about the Pre. Also, Palm's markting has been great. Seeing ads like this makes you feel good owning one.

Gripes

Would prefer they kept the menu/option button next to the sym key like we had on older Treos.

While people will love the interface, I have some issues with the design of some of the U.I. elements.  To a layman they all look good, but to a top notch graphic artist, some of these U.I. elements look cheesy. 

I think the top status bar/bottom alert area concept is great but the implementation is a bit flawed. I don’t see why they can’t be combined into one and placed permanently in the bottom. It saves real estate and makes things easier to touch.

The downside of this captive screen is that you can’t use your nails and that makes it a bit harder to put the cursor between words. That may sound crazy to you, but this is what us Treonauts have been used to.

Palm should stop being iPhonish in certain areas. For example, why go away from the sensible alphabetical listing of apps for the absolutely stupid iPhone way of laying out apps in just random silliness. By week 2, you don’t even know where your apps are any more.

The maps app needs a lot of work!

The slide out keyboard is cool, but it really slows things down. I like to get things done as fast as possible so having to always slide out wastes time. This is not a play phone like the iPhone where I need a wide screen to watch videos. This is a work phone. I need to get stuff done asap.  So I will really be looking forward to the Eos with it’s always available keyboard.

So which one: iPhone or Palm Pre? 

For me, both. Palm Pre is great for working and getting things done. I won’t recommend it as a multimedia device anytime soon. On the other hand, the iPhone is great for multimedia and if you jailbreak it you can do some amazingly cool stuff.

Right now, WebOS will be my work device, while the iPhone will be more of my multimedia device. If you are coming from a Treo, WebOS is absolutely awesome, but I would wait till Eos is released as it will be an easier transition because WebOS would have been more matured and have more apps. If you are using a dumb phone then stop being dumb and go get the Pre now.

Ringtone Expressions is here

We have had pretty good success creating ringtone makers for many popular Smartphones. So the next step logical step was to come up with a cool service that merges all these ringtone makers with awesome features. Ringtone Expressions is the result. It features a super enjoyable user experience, ringtone recommendations and lets you post your coolest ringtones to Facebook and Twitter. More info at http://www.ringtoneexpressions.com 

Steve Ballmer Demos the Zune HD: Looks exhausted and defeated

Remember the once bubbly and super energetic Steve Ballmer. This picture tells a completely different story. Even not knowing the context of this Photo, the man just looks old, tired, exhausted and defeated. Think about it

Microsoft Search - Fail

Windows Mobile - Fail

Internet Explorer - Fail

Vista - Fail

Media Center - Fail

Zune - Double Fail

You get the sense that the failure of pretty much everything coming from Redmond has started to take it's toll. Poor man.

With the Pre syncing with iTunes, the Palm Apple battle is now getting really interesting

The Palm Apple battle just gets better every day. Common belief a few months ago was that Palm was headed for a legal show down with Apple, particularly after Timothy Cook’s statements at Apple’s earnings call. Palm immediately shot back with “We got patents too”. So are these patents saving Palm from being sued by Apple and even giving them the courage to sync with iTunes apparently without Permission? Make no mistake, this is one gutsy move because for one, Palm knows third party developers like us can fill this niche for them and thus they don’t have to deal with the headache of Apple’s anger. Even worse is Apple intentionally breaking the functionality. I personally have been a victim of this. It is very possible Palm holds patents for the ringer switch, threaded sms and many more features you see on the iPhone. Thus any legal attack by Apple can be countered by an even bigger attack by Palm that can put the iPhone in jeopardy and cause Apple more headache. So, right now it seems as though Palm is holding Apple at Patent ransom. 

Apple definitely wants to protect iPhone features like multi touch. Word is that they essentially punked Google to not implement multi touch on the G1. However, Apple’s beef with Palm goes way deeper than intellectual property. If you have no knowledge of Steve Jobs and Jon Rubinstein's relationship, you can sum it up in the following movie theatrical release. 

In Silicon Valley, there was no Lieutenant Steve Jobs trusted more than Jonathan Rubinstein. He personally gave Ruby the green light to build the iPod.  A complex 15 year relationship forged by epic disagreements, shouting matches, risky technical gambles; all in the drive to build the best computers and gadgets in the world. They made history together and in 2006 the trusted lieutenant nobly retired. Or so we thought!

Now branded as a traitor, the iPod legend is helping lead the arch-enemy, using everything he learnt from Apple and in the process getting other key lieutenants to defect. It’s a story of trust, betrayals, backdating stock scandals, jealousy and revenge. This is the mother of all Smartphone wars!  This movies is not yet rated

Any smart book publisher should just go ahead and sign a deal for Jon Rubenstein’s memoir. His tell all book will probably be one for the ages.

This is great stuff

Oh damn, am becoming a Twitter addict!

Twitter is going to be down for an hr. A Whole Freaking HR!!!

It was not supposed to go down like this. I only tried Twitter to make qTweeter. Look what done happened to me!!!

new version of qTweeter with TwitPic support

Learn more at http://www.qtweeter.com

qTweeter is here. iPhone Twittering will never be the same.

I have been involved in a lot of cool apps for Smartphones, particularly in the glorious days of the Treo.  But this one tops it all.  qTweeter is simply the coolest thing I have been a part of to date with regards to Smartphone apps. Big shout out to everyone that contributed to this project and worked extra hard to get it out. Check it out at http://www.qtweeter.com 

Naija Boyz are at it again

How will Panera Bread handle being an office space?

Over the past few months, the surge in laptop users at Panera Bread seems to have increased 10 folds. It was only when I saw someone whoop out one of those cisco land line voip  phones   did I realize that Panera Bread has been transformed to an office space. Combine this with people losing jobs by the boat load, don’t be surprised if you go to Panera next month and every table has someone working on a laptop. This presents a business opportunity for Panera. Since I have been running a virtual company for about 3 years now, I have been a frequent user of Panera’s free wifi. But am not sure how they can sustain this unless the duration people use the wifi is offset by the food they purchase. While most times I don’t buy a lot, there are days when I get their early in the morning and essentially have breakfast and launch there. But even with this, there could be an opportunity for Panera to create a premier membership for people who are working their. Maybe something like for a monthly membership fee, workers get a faster broadband and free complementary drinks and snacks.  Who knows, am interested to see how this plays out.

Ringtone Makers, Ringtone Shufflers and March Madness Ringtones

 

March madness is here and with our RingToneMakers, ToneFXs for iPhone and Ringtone Shufflers, you can enjoy it more and show support for your team on your iPhone, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile Phone. When I lived in Kansas City, I fell in love with the Jayhawks mainly because of their fight song, which I think is the best in the country. Now with iPhoneRingToneMaker and ToneFXs, I can really enjoy these sounds on my iPhone and do some really cool stuff, particularly during this March Madness period.

It starts with getting the fight song of your favorite team. Simply go to Amazon MP3, and search “College Fight Song”. You can do the same search in iTunes.  Another good source is your College’s website. For example http://www.ku.edu/about/traditions/songs.shtml.

Once you download your college fight song, then the fun begins. Simply drag it into iPhoneRingToneMaker and create your college fight song ringtone.

 

It gets better.  For me, I love these two KU songs- Sunflower song and I’m a Jayhawk. Not to even mention the chant “Rock Chalk Jayhawk KUUUUUUUUU”. Of course I have created all these ringtone. However, how do I enjoy them all? Thanks to the Ringtone Shuffling feature in ToneFXs, I can shuffle all these ringtones, so that for every phone call I get, I hear one of these ringtones. Cool stuff indeed!!. Here is a screenshot

There is even more you can do with ToneFXs.  This app lets you customize pretty much all the mains sounds your iPhone makes. You can customize your text message alert sound, calendar alert sound, even the keyboard sound! So when a text message comes in or a calendar alert, rather than hearing Tri-Tone, I can hear the KU’s Fight Song or Rock Chalk.

As you may know, with the iPhone, you can assign a ringtone to a specific contact. I have some close friends who are passionate fans of K State and University of Maryland. So I have created the ringtones of these schools and assigned it to them so I know when these knuckle heads call me.

As you can see, with iPhoneRingToneMaker and ToneFXs, you can further enjoy March Madness in new and exciting ways.

Oh by the way, for you BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Folks, you can have these same experiences with BlackBerryRingToneMaker and wmRingToneMaker. We also have Ringtone Shuffler for these devices to. You can find them at http://www.ringtoneshuffler.com 

iPhones and iPods Banned at Gates' Home

According to Melinda Gates in a recent Vogue interview

"There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household. But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids."

Oh Please Bill Gates!! if you want your family members not to use the iPhone, build a better one. Windows Mobile 6 and 6.5 are so outdated that it is borderline irresponsible for any father to put his family members through the pain of using them.

Loving the smack talk by Roger McNamee.

This actually is refreshing to see and is nothing new From Roger McNamee. Forget all the politically correct bs statements. If you think your phone kicks butt, say so. Heck, he and his buddies have put about $425 million of their money to get the phone made. Keep it up Roger!!

ToneFXs 1.5 for the iPhone is now available

If you like custom ringtones on your iPhone, you will love ToneFXs. We have updated ToneFXs to version 1.5. It is a free update for currently registered users. Not much has changed on the surface. It is under the hood where a lot of work has been done.  We had to make some major changes behind the scenes to serve as the foundation for version 2.0. These changes we have made give us the power to do some really amazing things with sound customization on the iPhone. That being said, there are a few cool things in this new version.  Thanks to the encouragement of Jay Freeman ( Saurik ), ToneFXs is now WinterBoard compatible. Even cooler is that it lets you use any of the WinterBoard sound themes you have downloaded and apply them to any of the sounds of the major apps. We have also streamlined Ringtone Shuffling, maker it even easier and faster. ToneFXs is available in Cydia. For more info, please visit http://www.tonefxs.com 

Cell Phone Reunion Video

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Now this is how you fly the friendly skies

Palm Nova and 3rd party apps

Based on chatter and a few people I have spoken to, I think the new Palm OS with regards to third party apps will pick up where Apple left off with web apps. While everyone slammed Apple for initially introducing web apps as the primary mode of 3rd party apps on Mobile devices, the idea has a lot of merit, but Apple botched this idea badly. I think Palm will show the full potential and actually do it the right way.

There are 4 reasons why web apps make sense as 3rd party apps for Palm.
1. Web tools are now sophisticated enough to create apps that match and exceed anything you can do on most native apps. You might think that is a bold statement but really it's not. If the new Palm OS supports the flash player then you can do pretty much anything, including 3D.
2. Relying on Web tools, Palm can go from 0 to a bazillion developers immediately without having to have their own platform. There are already well over a million bona fide Flash developers out there, so if the OS supports Flash and all the other web standards, then you automatically have all those developers with no learning curve, no sdk, with apps ready from day 0.
3. They can provide the necessary hooks to make these apps completely robust. I think this is where Palm can shine, by providing all the necessary apis that allow web apps to communicate with the core of the device’s OS. If you noticed in the first ever presentation of Apple’s web apps for the iPhone, they demonstrated how a web app can access the device's local contact database. This held promise that they would give developers more access( gps info, phone apis, etc ), but it seemed Apple just got consumed by the whole native app movement that they stopped working on this. Palm will exploit this too the fullest. They will also do things like caching and offline mode to further make web apps run more efficiently.
4. The Apple app store proves that web apps are very viable. I estimate that  80% of the apps in the app store should not be native apps. They should be web apps if Apple had just provided additional apis for web apps. All those $.99 apps can all be web apps. Another good example of this is how ESPN and Facebook have approached the iPhone. Facebook, which originally was a web app, has jumped on the native app bandwagon. Well, that app is absolutely not necessary as a native app if Facebook had the right apis. On the other hand, ESPN has stuck with the web version for its website/App, they could have easily created a native app, but even with no Flash, they have used other web tools to create a robust site/app.

It's all on the line

For those of us that have stood by Palm with hopes of revival and even held on to our Palm Stocks that are now pretty much worthless, Jan 8, 2009 will seal our fate. How ironic is it that in Vegas, Ed, Ruby and Co. will be putting all the chips on the table. While am no Ed Werder, some unnamed sources tell me Nova won't disappoint, so the question now is: How FANTASTIC is it?

Who do you Believe, Ed Werder or Deion + T.O. + Mooch?

Combine the fact that T.O. is known for telling the truth and Deion won’t risk his reputation lying on behalf of T.O and even Mooch, T.O.’s one time nemesis seems to side with T.O., you gotta wonder what Ed Werder was thinking. Like I said it before, ESPN’s NFL coverage has become total garbage.

Even Evangelists are not safe

When Juggernaut Adobe, which the last time we checked was making healthy profits fires 600 employees, it has you thinking Damn!!!.  And then of all employees to fire, they go and fire one of the most hardworking former Evangelist. If these executives have ever seen Mike Downey put in work at all these conferences year after year, they would not have enough courage to fire him. But instead, they sit sterilized in some board room, look at the numbers and slash slash slash till they are right.