I admit it, I am a phone geek. I love my phone and the accessibility a well designed phone gives me and the productivity lifts I enjoy from said phone. I have been using an AT&T Tilt aka: 8925 aka: HTC Kaiser. The stock windows mobile 6.0 ROM is really quite terrible, but with a custom cooked WM 6.1ROM, the phone is quite excellent. It does just about everything I need it to do. With the new Opera Mobile Browser, the browsing functionality is more akin to the Iphone.
6 Weeks ago, my boss decided he needed a new phone. While he was happy with his Samsung Blackjack, he wanted an Iphone. I ordered him one and went ahead and ordered one for myself. My IT guys support everyone else, but my boss views me as his own personal IT person, so I figured I might as well be familiar with the device and I thought it would be nice to eliminate the need to carry my trusty Ipod Nano. Here is what I found:
Pros:
- The web browser is totally AWESOME! Opera is nice, but I never have experienced such seamless web browsing from a mobile device.
- The new Exchange plug-in is pretty, reading email and displaying attachments is pretty darned slick.
- Once you get the hang of the layout, it is fairly easy to navigate the phone.
Cons:
- You MUST have Itunes to activate your Iphone (We have a corporate account, so we did not need to go to an AT&T or Apple store). This is a pain in the butt in a corporate environment. There really are no management tools for Itunes, so I doubt these phone will make it across our corporation.
- No wonder there is a program called “jail break”. I felt like I was in jail using this phone! There are limited applications (most a not free), you can not edit Word documents, Excel files, etc. etc.
- Notes do not sync with Outlook, that totally sucks
- The phone crashes more often than my Windows Based phone (WOW!!)
- The Ipod functionality IMHO sucks, I prefer the interface of the wheel over the touch interface.
- I could find no functional voice dialing option. I love Microsoft Voice Command, it works in conjunction with my Motorola H700 Bluetooth head set seamlessly (until the H700 died last week!)
- You cannot add attendees to a meeting you set up on your Iphone (total suck)
All and all, I liked the Iphone, but not enough to keep it. If you want a read only device that displays thinks beautifully and you do not need a mobile computing platform, the Iphone is the bomb. If you need a mobile computing platform, the Tilt with a custom ROM is AWESOME. I can recommend a ROM if you want!
I admit it, after hearing all of the political rhetoric flying around about Sarah Palin, her apparent lack of qualifications, her 4 month old baby with Downs Syndrome, her inexperience as an executive, all lead me to feel like the GOP missed the mark with their nomination of Sarah Palin.
As with most Americans, I was interested in hearing her speak last night. WOW! Color me impressed! If Sarah Palin can be remotely as eloquent and charming as she was last night in non-prepared speeches, she is going to give the Dems a good run for their money. (Rumor has it she did half the speech from memory due to a screwed up teleprompter)
I believe this election year will bring us the most interesting and exciting campaign season in a very long time. I find the stance the republicans taking on working mothers quite intriguing. The crazy right wing “Mothers should stay at home” crowd is being forced to bite their tongues while the more moderate republicans are defending working mothers! Wow, what a change of pace.
It is also very interesting to me that most of the “women first” organizations have either come out against Sarah Palin, or have remained silent. I thought the National Organization for Women was for Women, not for Women whose politics they agree with! Sarah Palin is the first legitimate female Vice Presidential Candidate in the history of this country, female gender activists should be jumping to her side in droves, but she is conservative and pro-life, so let’s remain silent. I sometimes abhor politics for the two-faced antics that go on (on both sides).
No matter who wins the presidential seat this November, both the campaign season and the next presidency promise to be very interesting. We will either have the first black President of the United States of America, or the first female Vice President of the United States of America. Either way we will be shaking up the establishment!
All in all I am more engaged in this campaign than I have been since 1988!
I received a digg alert this morning, informing me that Vanity Fair has published a list of this years most powerful and influencial people (the story can be found here). On this list Steve Jobs comes in at number 4 and Mick Jagger at number 60. All in all an interesting list as lists go. The list is topped by Vladimir Putin, who given the recent events in Georgia and Russia is probably a good choice. But wait a minute where is George Bush? He is the President of the United States of America, arguably the most power country in the world? “Well”, I think to myself, “maybe it is just the liberal press being liberal again”. But wait, Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton did not make the list? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are number 9 on this list!?!? No American Leader or potential leader is in the top 100? What a bunch of idiots. What warped political agenda would cause Vanity Fair to exclude the President and Vice President of the United States of America AND the two presidential hopefuls from this list? Even given the mainstream presses bias towards the left, certainly Barrack Obama should have made the list? In any event, I think they got it wrong and I truely believe any sitting President of the United States of America should be in any top 10 list of the worlds most powerful and influencial people (regardless of party).
For some inexplicable reason, John McCain added Sarah Palin to his ticket as his Vice President. I have thought a lot about WHY he would do such a thing. Many of my friends seem to think that this is a death blow for the McCain presidency. I am not sure. Since this is front of mind for me today, I thought I would attempt writing an op-ed piece, although I have never formally written ANY “piece” for publication outside of technical journals.
Pros:
- Palin will help with the far right wing conservative vote. Palin is anti-gay marriage and pro-life (two things McCain apparently is not)
- Palin is a young 48 44 (offsetting McCains clearly advanced years)
- Palin is a raising star in Republican Party, clearly charismatic with a varied background which should make her appealing to “Joe and Jane Public” (Just call me Joe)
- In case you missed it, Palin is a woman. Perhaps McCain is thinking this will help him with the female vote? (I for one believe this country is prepared for a female Vice President! Heck if Hilary was not so despised, she would have had a reasonable shot at being president!)
Cons:
- Palin has limited experience in politics: She has served as governor of Alaska for only two years, with little government experience beyond that (Not necessarily a bad thing)
- Palin is governor of ALASKA! I love Alaska, it is beautiful, but certainly our 49th and least populated state is not strong resume material – The democrats will pick this apart in the coming months.
- In case you missed it, Palin is a woman. (”What?!??!” you are thinking, “dummy listed that as a Pro!”). This one is a double edged sword. I believe McCain will draw some support from the female moderate democrates he would not have otherwise had, he also will lose some support from the more sexist moderate male democrates who might otherwise have voted for McCain.
I am not certain how much Sarah Palin will help McCains presidential aspirations, though in aggregate, I think it might have helped him. What would help him more is Gustav not causing too much trouble during the Republican National Convention.
I brought up my new hockey team website today (http://www.tnt-hockey.com) and it is running on wordpress. I decided this would be an ideal time to remove the “Nothing Here Yet” home page from sanft.net/sanft.com/sanft.org.
This is my first official infrequent blog post.
–Ted