http://seanzone.com Blogs & Podcasts by Sean Aldrich Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:05:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Copyright © 2010 The Sean Zone sean@seanzone.com sean@seanzone.com posts 1440 http://seanzone.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg http://seanzone.com 144 144 Blogs & Podcasts by Sean Aldrich sean@seanzone.com no no http://seanzone.com/2007/09/anhosting-midphase-bad/ http://seanzone.com/2007/09/anhosting-midphase-bad/#comments Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:26:28 +0000 Sean http://seanzone.com/2007/09/anhosting-midphase-bad/ http://seanzone.com/2007/09/anhosting-midphase-bad/feed/ 0 http://seanzone.com/2007/07/apple-iphone-review/ http://seanzone.com/2007/07/apple-iphone-review/#comments Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:44:38 +0000 http://seanzone.com/?p=7 http://seanzone.com/2007/07/apple-iphone-review/feed/ 2 11:02 This blog entry is presented in both text and audio format, setup as a podcast. Please feel free to comment on the audio quality ... This blog entry is presented in both text and audio format, setup as a podcast. Please feel free to comment on the audio quality and content, as this is my first try at podcasting. (Intro...) Our contract with AT&T was eligible for an equipment upgrade at the cheaper rate, so we had been testing out different phones for the past month. Since she also wanted an iPod and I was somewhat seduced by it's wow factor, I decided on the iPhone. On July 7th, we got up at 6 AM, left for King of Prussia a little after 7 and were second in line in front of the Apple store at around 8:30. We probably would have been first if I hadn't missed the exit off of the PA Turnpike. We picked this particular Apple store because the web site told us there would be iPhones available when the store opened at 9 AM. (Apparently, most of the AT&T stores have been sold out since the release date.) At about 8:50, an employee came out and handed out little cards to the first 4 people in line. They had only 4 of the 8 GB model available, so there were a few disappointed people at the end of the line. Soon after, I had spent about $650 on the phone and the car charger, including tax. (I think my debit card went a little limp after that one.) I didn't buy one for myself because I already knew of some of it's shortcomings, which I'll get into later. We'll see if it was worth the big bucks... Being a Pocket PC user (Windows Mobile 5) myself, I am familiar with touch screens and the damage they can suffer, so the first thing we did was to buy a screen protector for it. Since nobody in the mall had one I could buy without also purchasing an overpriced rubber skin for it, I decided to buy a Sony PSP protector from EB Games and cut it down to the correct size when I got home. (This was suggested by a guy at the AT&T store, and it worked out just fine.) The Interface: The initial reaction to it's design and interface is "Wow, that's cool!" I was quite amazed at the accuracy of the touch recognition. Part of this, however, is the fact that the whole interface is designed to be used this way. There is no stylus, so you won't be drawing anything useful on the screen or taking notes using your own handwriting. The biggest thing that impressed me was it's sheer speed. It reacts instantly to your touch and has no delays when changing applications or loading artwork. In this way, it kills my Pocket PC. My 200MHz Cingular 8125 can't do hardly anything without the spinning wheel showing up for a few seconds. Email: The email application is easy enough for my wife to use, and does a great job displaying HTML emails. Some emails that are formatted in MIME come through as an empty message with an unreadable attachment. In fact, it appears you can't do anything meaningful with attachments. It will only display pictures inline or launch the ones it likes. There isn't even an option to save the file to the filesystem. For that matter, there is no access to the filesystem within any of the applications. I tried to play a simple .WAV file sent from my Vonage voicemail, but it won't even attempt to open the file. Calendar: The calendar seems pretty simple and straight forward. It doesn't have the ability to sync over-the-air, so you're limited to using Outlook or the equivalent software on the Mac. Contacts: Elegantly displayed, with photos if you add them. The simulated Rolodex motion that it uses when you "flip" your fingers is very handy for this. If you want to skip to somewhere in the alphabet, you can use the teeny tiny letters on the right edge to move around. I found this to be awkward. They should make it so the letters magnify when you're using that feature so you have better control. This also has no OTA sync. Web: The Safari web browser seems to be faster than any mobile device I've seen so far. Opera might be able to give it a run for it's money if I had a faster processor in my Pocket PC. Scroll Podcasts, Reviews sean@seanzone.com no no