Tag Archives: iphone

Augmented reality with Flow

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So I’m in a store last night and my sweetheart waves a box grater at me, asking “don’t we need a new grater?” We do. But should we buy this one? I don’t know. Suddenly I’m seized with anxiety: how do I know if it’s the best one?

It all stems from buying things off Amazon.com where you can instantly compare it with other items, see how other people liked it and even read their detailed reviews.

When I purchase anything–a box grater, even–I want to know that it is the best box grater money can buy. (Or at least that it’s a terrific value for the price.) Gone are the days when I felt comfortable just hefting something in my hand and glancing at the two competing products on the shelf next to it. Now, thanks to Amazon and the internet in general, I can be a box grater expert before I pull the trigger. It’s a hard thing to live without once you have gotten used to it.

But what do you do when you’re in a brick-and-mortar store and your sweetheart is waving a grater at you?

Easy. You get A9′s “augmented reality” app, Flow.

I pointed my iPhone’s camera at the box grater and voilà: hovering above the live image of the grater are star ratings, user comments, price, media…even a “buy” button if I wanted to order it online right then and there. But that wasn’t necessary in this case.

“Well, it’s highly rated and it’s cheaper than Amazon’s price.” Into the cart it went. And that’s how I got a new box grater.

Siri

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So I’ve had a week with my new iPhone 4S after five-and-a-half months away from my old iPhone 4. How’s it going?

Fantastic. In many ways it feels like the last half a year never happened.

But what about those new features? What about Siri? People have written a lot about it already. The Android community is trying various methods of consoling itself. Someone even sang a duet with Siri. But what’s it really like to use it?

There’s really two things that I find striking about Siri. The first is that it has a decent capacity for understanding context. I can say “where can I get a good steak?” Siri will list for me the local establishments which specialize in steaks. If I then say “what about sushi?” It will give me a list of sushi restaurants in the area. The important bit is that it understood that I was still talking about restaurants. This may seem like small thing–well, it is a small thing–but when it comes to making verbal communication natural and comfortable, small things are where it’s at.

The other striking thing about Siri is that it has good access to some key data sources: my calendar (“What’s my day look like tomorrow?”), my contact list (“Call my dad”), my note pad (“Make a note”), my GPS location (“Remind me to get gas when I leave work”), Yelp (“What’s a good Italian restaurant around here?”), Wolfram Alpha (“How many inches in a mile?”), my music (“Play some electronica”), maps (“Where is Panera Bread?”). It can text whatever I say to whomever I want. Or email them. Or video conference them. In short, Siri can actually do things. Not everything. But many useful things.

Of course what people are really having fun with is chatting up Siri just to see what she’ll say to various questions. I haven’t done too much of that, but everyone around me wants to borrow my phone and try it. Siri often gets the better of these pranksters. (“Will you have sex with me?” once prompted Siri to give a list of nearby escort services.)

And Siri is just in Beta. Can you imagine what this technology will look like in a year? Three years? I can’t wait.

iPhone 4S: Yes please

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As you may recall, I’ve been smartphoneless since my iPhone 4 was stolen back in April. I had a brief dalliance with a Motorola Q, but mainly I’ve just been using a $50 Samsung dumphone for all that time.

At the risk of getting all first-world-problems on you, dear reader, I think I can sum up the experience thusly: SHIT SANDWICH.

Being without Google Maps and GPS was terrible. Having to write a shopping list on a piece of paper–with a pen!–and then having to remember to take it with me to the store was barbaric. Having to open my laptop just to see if there were important emails waiting for me was inconvenient. Texting anything but “yes,” “no” or “OK” on that little plastic number pad was…well, it just wasn’t doable at all.

(For all the ways in which I missed my iPhone, see here.)

But it was more than just these aches and pains. In some ways it was insightful. For example, I became acutely aware of just how much time people around me spend staring at their phones. I’d walk into a restaurant or a store with my girlfriend and suddenly I’d find myself walking alone, wondering where she went. She’d be shuffling along back by the entrance, staring at her phone. I didn’t really have to ask what she was doing. I know a foursquare check-in when I see one.

Other times I’d be standing in line with colleagues to get some lunch at work. Conversation? Not when everyone’s staring at their phone, seeing if the email they sent just before they left their desk has been responded to yet.

So, yeah, I get it. I get how smartphones are the downfall of civilization, how they’re rewiring our brains, sapping our attention spans and polluting our precious bodily fluids.

And I simply cannot wait to get my hands on that new iPhone 4S.

My plan right now is to order on Apple’s web site at midnight on Thursday. It won’t ship until a week later, but I’m hoping to be basking in the sweet, sweet glow of that 3.5 inch, 326ppi LCD well before Halloween.

Q

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I’m sorry for being such a whiny bitch about life without a smartphone. Those who have proper smartphones probably understand, though.

But there’s good news! The kind folks at work took pity on me and tossed me a Motorola Q9C Windows Mobile 6! It’s not an iPhone, you’re right. But I can check my email and my calendar on it at least.

I’m going to make it. I’m going to survive until July.

Day 1 with interim phone

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Do I miss my iPhone? Let me count the ways.

It was my alarm clock. It was my grocery shopping list. It was my to-do list. It was my quick note taker. It was my GPS navigation system. It was my bar bet settler; my gateway to Google, IMDB and Wikipedia. It was my pocket camera. It was my Foursquare check-in device. It was my mobile Twitter machine. It was pictures of my kids. It was my pocket photography portfolio. It was my mobile email receiver. It was my weather forecast checker. It was my ever-present calendar, reminding me of where I needed to be. In a pinch, it was my TV remote. It was the repository of all my music and the brains of my home stereo. It was my distraction while waiting, with Netflix and all my RSS feeds. It was my mobile game station. It was my high def video camera.

It also made phone calls. Hell, it made video calls, if I wanted them. Plus text messaging.

My interim phone makes calls pretty adequately. But the text messaging is absolutely barbaric. There is no other way to describe it.

Fifty seven days to go.

Please kill me.

Phone Tragedy

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So I lost my iPhone the other day. And it was picked up by someone, who then took off with it. So I guess it was stolen as well as lost.

Yeah, I had Find My Phone installed and set up and I was indeed able to see the phone’s approximiate location on a map for a few hours. But in the end I could not pinpoint the culprit, nor did they respond to my offers of reward or to my threats. Ultimately, I locked and wiped the phone. Done. It’s gone.

It’s been really odd without it. I went to bed that night and realized I didn’t own an alarm clock. Today I found myself walking to a meeting and realizing I didn’t have a watch on to see if I was late. But I think I’ll survive it.

Which is a good thing, in the light of the Faustian bargain I reached with AT&T for a replacement.

It seems my iPhone is eligible for a subsidized replacement on June 25 for the low, low price of $199. I called them up to see if they would help a brother out and give me that price today. Nope. Today it would cost me $550, sixty days from now it would cost $199. And they wouldn’t budge, not even when I threatened to get a $199 iPhone from Verizon.

Ultimately we reached an agreement that was at least tolerable. They’d sell me a $40 cheap-o phone to use for the next sixty days, and I’d get my $199 iPhone in June. I wouldn’t lose continuity in my data plan, either, which is nice because I’m grandfathered in to the old unlimited plan.

So. I’m going from the pinacle of iPhone 4 smartphone nirvana to slumming it in a Samsung A197. For the next. Sixty days.

I keep waiting for Morgan Spurlock to walk in and start narating my experience.

More on Apple TV

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I’ve written about Apple TV before, but I think it’s a subject that bears revisiting. There’s a lot of people who could get a huge bang for their buck with this unit, just like I’m doing.

Do you have an HD television?

Do you have a home WiFi network?

Do you have a Netflix subscription?

Do you have one or more iOS devices such as an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad?

Do you have a computer with iTunes on it?

If you’re answering yes to these questions, go immediately to your local Apple retail store and get Apple TV. Here’s a few scenarios describing how I use mine.

Netflix Instant Watch. If you’re still fishing red DVD envelopes out of your mailbox every few days, wake up! With your DVD-in-the-mail subscription you also get unlimited streaming. There’s thousands of movies and television shows for you to choose from. And while the selection isn’t everything you could possibly want, it’s plenty large enough to be worthwhile. In fact, I find it so worthwhile that I opted for a streaming-only subscription to Netflix. No more DVDs for me. What do I do when I want a just-released blockbuster that isn’t available to stream on Netflix? Read on.

Have you seen the latest viral Youtube video? Of course you have. But wouldn’t it be nice to watch it on TV so you could enjoy it with your friends and family? Definitely. Apple TV does Youtube. (Incidentally, the Honey Badger is my animal spirit guide.)

Supposing I’m going to hang in the kitchen, cooking or doing dishes, and I want some music? I can reach into my pocket, pull out my iPhone, fire up my favorite music and AirPlay it right to my TV and out it comes through my surround sound speakers. If a clunker comes up on random? I can use the phone to skip it. Or pause it or whatever. And if my phone rings? The music fades out for me to hear it, then comes back up once I’m done talking. Remote music through the entertainment center speakers is a thing that also works with my iPad and with my computer. I think the phone is just handier.

Netflix streaming and YouTube are fine and dandy, but what do you do on a Friday night when you really want to see that hot movie just released for home video? In a bygone era, you’d have to drive to Blockbuster (hope you get there early and remember to return it on time). More recently, you could (if you had the foresight to do so) put it on your Netflix DVD queue and hope it arrives on time. I suppose some people just go to a Redbox machine or something. Me, I rent from iTunes. Yeah, it’s like $3-$4. But it works beautifully, I don’t have to leave my couch, there’s nothing to return and no late fees.

Remember when home WiFi was a new thing? And laptops didn’t all come with WiFi radios inside them? I remember having to convince people that the addition of WiFi into their homes would make their laptop so much more useful. I feel the same way now about Apple TV. It makes things like your Netflix subscription and your iOS devices much cooler than before. And for only a Benjamin!

Some will want to point out that Apple’s not the only game in town. Roku and Google TV and others are in this market as well. I don’t think any of them have gotten it just right, though. Apple’s is the solution I recommend.

iPad, teaching and video mirroring

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One of the reasons I elected to upgrade my original iPad to the iPad 2 is because of video mirroring. A lot of teachers feel the same way. For us, a basic requirement for any mobile computing platform is that we be able to carry it into a classroom and display it to our students. The original iPad was able to project certain kinds of content to an external display, but it wouldn’t do full-time mirroring, showing everything the teacher sees to the rest of the class.

iPad 2 seems to resolve this problem. All you need, according to Apple, is the optional HDMI adapter and you could plug your iPad 2 into a widescreen television. It even supports rotation.

Problem. While televisions might be standard equipment in primary and secondary education classrooms, they aren’t in higher ed. Instead we have podiums with computers hooked up to a data projector. These rigs don’t typically have HDMI plugs available to the instructor. They have VGA ones.

But does the new mirroring capability in iPad 2 extend to the VGA adapter and not just the HDMI one? It took a little digging to find out, but it does. So I ordered the VGA adapter with my new iPad 2.

I stil have one question, though. What about iPhone? I have an iPhone 4. I could plug it into the VGA adapter, as the iPad and the iPhone use the same 30-pin connector, but would it also mirror to my class? I don’t know. But I’ll find out next week when it arrives.

Selective outrage over Flash in mobile computing

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When the iPhone appeared, the online nerditocracy wrung its hands over the lack of Flash support. When the iPad also debuted without Flash, they went in search of their fainting couches, such was their shock and disbelief. How could Apple do this? It must be some kind of evil, political war against Adobe!

Apple pointed out that Flash is inefficient, drains too much power, runs too slowly, crashes too much and that much of the Flash content on the web isn’t amenable to a touch interface. But their explanation fell on deaf ears.

Since that time, the rest of the technology world has tried–and in some cases succeeded–in catching up to Apple’s lead in mobile touch devices. But you know what? Their devices don’t support Flash either.

Consider the latest iPad killer, the Motorola Xoom. According to Motorola, it’s “fully Flash-enabled”! And by that they apparently mean it doesn’t support Flash at all. They “expect” Flash support in Spring.

Why would they ship their product without Flash support? It’s probably because they don’t want reviewers knocking it for the performance, stability and battery-draining issues that Flash is sure to bring. After the positive reviews are in, then maybe they’ll issue a software update. Maybe.

Did your non-Apple smartphone or tablet computer ship with Flash support? I didn’t think so. Where’s the outrage? Inquiring nerds want to know.