iPhone delusions and the reality

Smacked into an intriguing article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10414356-71.html?tag=rtcol;pop on how iPhone users are delusional, referring to the report from Strand Reports available at http://www.strandreports.com/sw3896.asp, which apparently busts some myths about the iPhone.

Since I'm an iPhone user I was intrigued at the thought that I might be delusional and I was tempted to register for the free Strand Report. However, on a little reflection, I haven't requested a copy of the report for the following reasons.

One, it deals with the implications of the iPhone for one's business. Not interested currently.
Two, based purely on the review of the report and my own introspection about my iPhone usage, if I'm delusional, then that's okay by me.

Whatever the shortcomings of the iPhone (and there are plenty - crappy business card exchange, mediocre camera by comparison with other phones, so-so battery life especially when doing non-phone stuff, no copy-and-paste till generation 2 came along), it is still one heck of a device.

In the palm of my hand on a single device, I read books, play games, watch my favorite serials, listen to music, exchange messages with family, do maths, read the news, check my email, log my exercise, manage my appointments, track my music/movie/book collections, check the weather, use maps to find directions, take casual photos... oh, and make and receive phone calls.

In my 49 years on this planet, this is the first device that lets me do all of those things pretty damn well and still fits in my pocket. Could it be better? Sure. And it probably will as time goes by and versions come along. But does it work for me right now? Sure does.

Ok, so I'm delusional. Bite me.

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iPhone apps for the new addict

A dear, dear friend of mine has just got herself an iPhone and I thought of putting together a list of must-have apps for her. I discovered I have 76 applications downloaded, but I end up using only a handful of these. But it's a large handful and the list got so long, I decided to blog it instead. 

In doing so, I reveal my inner soul, I guess. And the sorry depths of my addiction. So be it.

Descriptions are mine, prices are as in the US store as in December 2009

So here goes:

Games - Naturally, that's what you do most on a phone, no?

I prefer the no-pressure, minimum motor skills kind of stuff - logic, word and brain-dead games.

The ones I return to time and agame.

Bookworm - $2.99 - Word game to flex those little grey word cells

Bubblewrap - Free - Mindless workout for the thumbs; deeply satisfying, nonetheless

Drop7 - $2.99 - Tetris-like but surprisingly strategy-oriented, great fun, time flies

Marple - $1.99 (Free Lite version available, if you want to try it out) - logic game, addictive

Sudoku - $1.99 - Need say no more, except that there are lots of versions available. I use the one from Electronic Arts because the interface is sexy and dead simple and the puzzles are coherent and require no guessing

Touch Poet Lite - Free - d-i-y haikus for the rest of us, wonderful

2Across - $5.99 - crosswords on the go. The most expensive of my games but worth every cent, with downloads of crosswords available from 4 or 5 newspapers, so you never run out. I only do cryptics but quick crosswords are even more plentiful. And a great interface.

The others I have and either dabble in occasionally or intend to try out one day are:

PuzzleManiak - $4.99 - collection of logic puzzles, some very satisfying, some very okay. Interface has improved over versions.

Labyrinth Lite - Free - iPhone version of those little puzzles I had as a kid where you guide little steel balls into the centre of a maze. A whole new ball game with the accelerometer!

Paper Toss - Free - Chuck the ball of crumpled paper into the bin. Fabulous graphics.

Pac-Man Lite - Free - An old favourite from the age of monochrome monitors and late nights in office

Myst Free - er, Free - Another old mind-bending classic from my PC days, as far as you can get from Doom and Quake et al.

Books: I now do all my reading on the iPhone and no longer buy dead trees. I am green. I save the planet. I jump tall buildings with a single bound.

eReader - Free - my favourite reader. Connects to my bookshelves on fictionwise.com and ereader.com and allows me to carry my collection of 243 eBooks (and growing!) on my iPhone 24/7. Wish I could do the same with my 1500+ dead tree ones.

Classics - $2.99 - Collection of 20-or-so public domain never-go-out-of-style-or-become-irrelevant classics packaged in a great UI. More promised via free updates.

Kindle - Free - Haven't tried this yet since I haven't bought any Kindle ebooks because of copyright restrictions in selling outside of the US. But may become useful in the future now that the Kindle is being sold internationally.

Stanza - Free - Looked promising but it kept locking up on me. Others have good reviews, so maybe it's just me. YMMV.

News:

Netnewswire - Free - Spiffy RSS reader that syncs with your Google Reader account

NYTimes - Free - Access to the latest and greatest of the New York Times. Good UI.

WSJ - Free - Access to the latest and greatest of the Wall Street Journal. Good UI.

Streaming Music: Sure, there's the built-in iPod, but you know you always need more music, right?

ConcertVault - Free - Internet radio stations are all over the place, but where do you go when you want to listen to entire concerts by the biggest names in rock? There's only Wolfgang's Concert Vault - http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/concerts/. The site itself is an incredible cornucopia and the app puts all of that on your iPhone. Technology rocks. Literally.

Utilities: Can't live without these.

Convert - $1.99 - aka Convert the unit calculator - easily convert kgs to lbs, kms to miles, C to F and many more such indispensable aids to transnational communication and global integration. Also forex currency conversions. Plus, an object lesson in iPhone UI. They should give this one the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dropbox - Free - www.dropbox.com is the best file sync solution out there. It just works - between my laptop, home machine, daughter's laptop, wife's laptop, friend-I-want-to-share-file-with. And now my iPhone.

Box.net - Free - access to my box.net shelf should I need stuff from there. Occasionally, I do.

Evernote - Free - Access my notes and web clippings from anywhere

Remote - Free - Controls iTunes on my home iMac and everything on my Apple TV so I can couch my potato and keep watching/listening.

Zenbe Lists - Free - Syncs browser-based to-do lists at www.zenbe.com across my laptop and my iPhone

Emoji - Free - Emoticons to the max to incorporate into my SMSes and Pings and Notes and wherever I can type

1Password Pro - $7.99 - Yes, steep, but who can remember all those passwords and PINs and girlfriends' names? I can't. And this helps me keep them safe.

Communication: Proof you can communicate via phone without opening your mouth.

Echofon for Facebook - Free - Haven't actually tried this out yet, but the UI looks fast and its Twitter sibling is sexy and hey, it's free. 

Facebook - Free - Duh.

Echofon for Twitter - Free - Does everything you need to Twitter. In style. And now that they have a free Mac version I no longer need to read the same tweets on my Mac and my iPhone, this little babe syncs the two. Neat.

Skype - Free - Works like a charm on WiFi and helps you stick it to the Telecom Man.

Ping - Free - Hands down the smartest way to SMS a fellow iPhone addict. And with emoji, it's sexy too. With a data plan and/or WiFi it's basically free international SMSes between iPhones. Keeps me in touch with my daughter in Singapore and my wife in touch with her family in the US. All for f-r-e-e.

I also have a bunch of other stuff that I use occasionally or specifically, e.g., city Tube maps, city guides from Frommers and the Collectorz suite of apps for tracking my collections of music, books and movies. But that's specialist stuff.

It's pretty amazing that the most frequent word in this entry is Free.

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Ruminations 2 of 3: Adam Lambert - For Your Entertainment

The first time I heard Adam Lambert scream his heart out (and his head off) on American Idol, I sat up. To my mind, this was Robert Plant reborn. All he needed was his Jimmy Page alter-ego and we would have our very own Led Zep of the new century.

Alas, the music industry machine has grasped Adam in its maw, swallowed him and spat him out again as a cookie-cutter nondescript papster (yes, a popster who proffers pap is a papster).

On For Your Entertainment he dabbles in electronica, techno-pop, strange popping arrangements and generally forgettable gimmickry. (Case in point: Sure Fire Winners. Blech.) Occasionally, he goes completely over the top with strings and orchestra as in Soaked. Aerosmith or Guns n’Roses could pull that off. Adam sounds uncomfortable. Even the hard-working guitar solo in the middle of Sleepwalker can’t quite wake me up.

Adam shares writing credits on no fewer than four songs of the fourteen, so he really must get a fair share of the blame for this pedestrian run-of-the-mill affair.

It’s not that these are bad songs. From an artist with lesser potential, I would probably have rated this album higher. From Adam Lambert, however, this is a disappointment. I doubt that this album merits too many re-listens.

About the only song worthy of a re-listen is the one from the mega-disaster movie 2012, Time For Miracles. Mega-disaster this album, may not quite be, but it is time for a miracle to pull this chestnut out of the fire.

On my personal, arbitrary scale, I’ve rated none of the songs of the fourteen as five stars, one as four stars, most as three stars, and one poor unfortunate as two stars and a half.

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Ruminations Interrupted by: Allison Iraheta - Just Like You

Another great album from a talent show finalist. I had intended to review Adam Lambert’s offering next, but I just got Allison’s album and on listening to it, I decided it merited a review way before Adam’s.

Her distinctive rocker husky growl and yell is put to good effect in this selection. Forget about her being 17 years old. She’s a natural who sings with the authority and experience of a thirty-seven year old - that’s a heck of a compliment. Reminds me of Joan Jett, Janis Joplin, among others.

Good, solid songs, not a turkey among them, but the standouts are Holiday (co-written by another talent show finalist, Dilana - we have a lot to be grateful for as far as these shows go) and Still Breathing. Honourable mentions to Friday I’ll Be Over You, Robot Love, Beat Me Up.

Allison plays to her strengths and doesn’t put a foot wrong. 21st century girl pop/rock with strong hints of classic rock chops. 

On my personal, arbitrary scale, I’ve rated two songs of the thirteen as five stars, seven as four stars, two as four stars, one as three stars and half a star, and two as three stars.

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Joys of open source and customer satisfaction how-tos

Quicksilver b57 was not working for me - a specific little bit was not working. I posted a question on this on the Quicksilver forum 14 hours ago. 

3 hours later I got a response from one of the developers saying that they were aware of the bug and would post an update, date not specified as it wasn't a priority, but if I wanted a quick fix, he'd upload a patch. I responded after 9 hours (time zone differences, I was asleep) saying it wasn't a big deal. 

34 minutes ago, the developer notified me via the forum that he'd made a patch available anyway and gave the URL it could be downloaded from. I downloaded it, it works like a charm and I thanked the developer 8 minutes later.

14 hours from problem to resolution across countries, time zones and languages. Customer satisfaction to the max. Customer treated as king even though he doesn't pay a dime. Lesson in professionalism, labours of love and how open source works. Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, et al - you guys listening?

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Back in QuickSilver's arms - b57

Apropos my last post on QS problems on Snow Leopard - just found beta 57 update, downloaded it and am feeling the Quicksilver love again. Truly a remarkable program. The only thing that still ain't working for me is the Large Type display on the CalculatorAction. It's a geek thing.

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Top 2.5 programs for a new Mac

I'm setting up a new Mac for a neophyte. I discovered that without thinking about it, the first two programs I downloaded immediately after setting up Snow Leopard were Caffeine from Lighthead (http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/) and Firefox. Caffeine does one thing and does it very well - temporarily prevents the Mac from going to sleep; indispensable when doing stuff that requires you to watch the screen and not play with the keyboard/mousepad, like downloading tons of updates. And, Firefox, well, naturally.

The .5 program? That would be Quicksilver. Used to be my numero uno go to program but though it works fine on my iMac on Snow Leopard, it's become buggy on my Macbook Pro on Snow Leopard. Dunno why, but that's the reason I no longer automatically download and install it. My fingers though still automatically go to the Ctrl-Space. Old habits.

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Guidelines for Good Clear Writing - school notes rediscovered!

1. Subject and verb always has to agree
2. When dangling, watch your participles
3. Do not use a foreign term when there is an adequate quid pro quo
4. If you must use a foreign term, it is de rigor to spell it correctly
5. It behooves the writer to avoid archaic expressions
6. Do not use hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively
7. Avoid cliches like the plague
8. Mixed metaphors are a pain in the ass and oughta be thrown out the window
9. Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct
10. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas
11. Consult the dictionary frequently to avoid mispelling
12. Don't use tautological, repetitive or redundant statements
13. Don't use tautological, repetitive or redundant statements
14. Remember to never split an infinitive
15. Puns are for children, not for readers who are groan
16. The passive voice shouldn't be used
17. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed
18. Don't use no double negatives
19. Proofread carefully to see if you have any words out
20. Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
21. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do
22. Avoid colloquial stuff
23. No sentence fragments
24. Remember to finish what you
    

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Quickfox Notes

I spend most of my online life in Firefox. And when I need a scratchpad to jot down stuff I tend to use Stickies (Mac only). Now, there's Quickfox Notes. http://inbasic.mozdev.org/root/ext3/home/index.html

Looks interesting. Also, the notes sync online via XMarks, so theoretically they will be available on any computer I use to log in to Firefox. Let's see how much use I actually get out of it.

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Ruminations on Albums Three - Primo

Susan Boyle - I Dreamed A Dream



A glorious showcase for this lady’s remarkable voice with some predictable song choices and one truly inspired, unlikely winner. For Ms Boyle to have recorded I Dreamed A Dream (from Lés Miserables) was a foregone conclusion since that was the song from the British talent show that launched her into YouTube stardom and brought goose bumps to millions, yours truly included.

Other chestnuts, while perfectly worthy renditions are nevertheless fairly predictable (though no less beautiful for that) when a voice like Ms Boyle’s is on display. Amazing Grace? Check. Cry Me A River? Check. How Great Thou Art? Check. Silent Night? Check.

Ms Boyle’s voice seems custom-fit to soar in cathedrals and echo in spires and the apparent preponderance of religious-themed songs or, at least, songs that sound religion-inspired on her album is not very surprising. A hint that Ms Boyle may be more than a one-trick pony, however is provided by three song choices on the album.

One is Daydream Believer, originally recorded by The Monkees as a chirpy, peppy uptempo pop song. Ms Boyle slows it down and gives it gravitas and depth. Another is Madonna’s You’ll See, again suitably measured in pace yet dramatic.

But the song that really blew me away was the unlikeliest choice of all: Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones. Susan Boyle doing Mick Jagger? Holy guacamole! She pulls it off and how! Wild Horses is a stand out bluesy number from the Stones’ Sticky Fingers album and Ms Boyle treats it with great respect. The delicate piano accompaniment and her wonderful voice, restrained at first, then soaring gloriously through the chorus makes this an instant and complete classic, a beautiful reinterpretation of a great song that transforms it into something wonderful and fresh.

On my personal, arbitrary scale, I’ve rated seven songs of the twelve as five stars, two as four stars and half a star, two as four stars, and one as three stars and half a star.

Ruminations on Albums Three

Over the last three days, while alternately galloping and plodding through the dying days of NaNoWriMo, I encountered three new albums, one by an established multi-Grammy Award winning artiste and two freshman efforts by newcomers, each of whom had been the runner-up in their respective talent competition.

The contrasts could not be starker.

Watch this space for entirely subjective reviews of:
I Dreamed A Dream - Susan Boyle
For Your Entertainment - Adam Lambert
The Wall - Adam Lambert

NaNoWriMo Euphoria

50,000 words, 30 days, blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Okay, skip the blood, sweat and tears (and the Earth, Wind and Fire), but make that t a capital one: Toil

And Fun with a capital F.

I'm now tuckered out from all that writing but two consecutive years of this puts me up there up Herman Melville, no? Probably not.

Watch this space.

Euphemisms, PC and problems

The continuous trend towards the use of euphemisms in the service of political correctness has resulted in a dangerous blindness (visual challenge).

Let's take the current economic crises (there are more than one of them around) that are plaguing the world. The crises have some of their primary roots in the collapse of the US housing market and its consequent domino effect on the hundreds of financial institutions that were participating to some degree (often third- and fourth-hand) in this bubble.

This participation was encouraged and facilitated largely because either nobody understood what was happening or nobody gave a damn as long as their short-term goals were being met. Assuming a charitable mantle and discounting the effect of the second alternative, why did no one understand what was happening?

Because, financial markets and marketeers have proven themselves past masters of the euphemism.

"Subprime" is such a reassuring, gentle description. It has the merit of having "prime" in there, which conjures up such rosy optimism that the mind shuts off the prefix "sub". No one really cares that sub denotes "below" - it doesn't register. That's a classic euphemism. These weren't just subprime loans. They were loans that never had the remotest chance of being repaid.

Ninja loans, in fact. Doesn't that sound macho and action-oriented? Try (loans given to those with) No Income No Job as an Acronym. Ninja. Masters of spin.

Let's get back to calling a spade a bloody shovel. That way, we just might recognise it when someone clobbers us over the head with one.

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Federer - Nadal / Michelangelo - ?

The 2009 Australian Open final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal made me restless. Not the duel - that was entertaining. But I couldn't think of a suitable analogy to compare these two artists and my reactions to them. Until the morning after.

Nadal is all power and fury, brute aggression, grimaces, grunts, mad dashes across the court. But one can't deny that he has the shots, he finds impossible angles and he can play the delicate drop shot as effectively as any. Federer is grace, artistry, elegance, magic - understated power and effortlessness.

Federer never looks like he's trying like mad, even when he is. Nadal always looks like he's trying like mad, even when he doesn't need to.

Nadal shares a name with a sublime artist - Raphael or Raffaello. Raphael was Michelangelo's contemporary and competitor, though he was eight years younger. The comparison is tempting, given the five year age gap between Federer and Nadal. Federer is undoubtedly Michelangelo, but Nadal is no Raphael.

Nadal is Jackson Pollock - insane energy, controlled chaos, relentless, pumped-up, tireless - "action painting". Federer is Michelangelo - sublime wizardry, poetry, adriotness, legerdemain, finesse - "beauty for the ages".

Jackson Pollock's "No. 5, 1948" became the world's most expensive painting in 2006, when it was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer for the sum of $140,000,000.

Michelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel are a priceless gift to humanity.

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Facebookness

After several days of steeping myself in Facebook-ness (for which Suzy is mostly to blame :)), I have come to the conclusion that being on FB is like living in a commune. Privacy dissolves into transparency. The Wall is really a glass window. Or a mirror.

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Loose? Please lose!

I've about had it up to here with misuse of "loose" when the stupid idiot means "lose". I just received a spam SMS (don't get me started!) on how to "loose body weight". This seems to the most popular malapropism out there, ranking at the top of the charts with "your/you're" and I've seen this in the newspapers (almost daily some team or the other manages to loose the match), on the Net (particularly in comments by obvious loosers) and now on my phone. Enough already. Go back to school.

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Posterous | Re: Blogging technology hiccups

So, now I can link either of my duplicate blogs into FB or I can link Posterous into FB, but I can't post directly to Posterous via Flock's internal blogging editor, but if I post to Posterous that can autopost to my FB.

I need kopi.

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Blogging technology hiccups

A post just to check if this Posterous thingie is working. The last post updated one blog but not the other. As an aside, this is how we complicate our lives. I had a blog called Return of the Son of Blog at blogusinterruptus.blogspot.com but that was linked to an email id that I don't normally use. I couldn't transfer that to my regular email id, so I duplicated the blog at returnofthesonofblog.blogspot.com (which was suprisingly easy).

If I want to link the blog into Flock, I need to use the second version which matches the GMail id I'm normally logged into on Flock. But I like the URL of the first blog better, so I want to keep that alive.

Enter Posterous, which allows me to post to multiple blogs with a single email. (But maybe that means using Flock's integrated blog poster needs to be tweaked - next to-do). I goofed on the blog id on the last post so it only posted to the old blog not the new one.

Hence, this post, which should post to both. Let's see.

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Privacy on Web 2.0?

I've been fooling around with Flock and the way it integrates a variety of services around the Web. I've been a reluctant user of much that is Web 2.0 and have taken more than a while to get the point of Facebook.

Well, I ain't got it yet, but I spent the better part of last morning chatting online with an old and very dear friend, something that wouldn't have happened if we both hadn't been on Facebook. So I'm willing to give FB a second look and more time. (It's all your fault, Suzy.)

The one thing that strikes me is the approach to privacy that use of these services entails. More so because privacy advocates have been decrying much of what is happening in the world of the Web. Essentially, when you use Facebook or Delicious or Picasa or Shelfari or any of the myriad other such services, you're putting much of your personal life out there for the world to peer at and pore over.

Of course, if you blog (as I do occasionally, more for the fun of it than as serious commentary, or as a way to experiment with online tools - as this post is with Posterous), then you are making a conscious choice to go public with your thoughts. And when you update your status on FB you're doing pretty much the same. So how is FB different?

I think the difference lies in the, well, for want of a better word, the spontaneity of the way in which one yields up one's privacy. In a blog, you think about what you want to write and you can revise it and republish it and so on. On FB, you twitter (and that's another service I haven't cottoned onto yet) on about what appears to be inconsequential stuff but a lot more people are privy to it and a lot more of you is revealed than you might realise.

Which may not be an unmixed blessing. Food for a weightier philosophical discussion here.

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PWC

PWC are the auditors of Satyam, the "Truth" software company that falsified accounts and earnings for "several years".

Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Perhaps We Couldn't
Pricey Watered-down Certifiers
Purblind Weak Consorts
Pusillanimous Wasted Cretins

Am I too harsh?

Shelfari

Interesting book library management online software. Good links to book info, covers and recommendations. Cool interface. Free.

www.shelfari.com

Beats most desktop solutions on aesthetic grounds, but the one to beat on features is Book Collector from collectorz.com

Satyam. Not really.

Satyam means Truth in Sanskrit. Ironic.

If generations survive, they will look back at the closing years of the opening decade of the 21st century and mark a cusp, a tide in the affairs of men. And women.

Sliderocket

Phenomenal!

Great online presentation software. Snappy effects, superb interface. Free account (more goodies with paid accounts). Rivals Powerpoint and Keynote. Create presentations to embed in your site.

www.sliderocket.com

In the interest of completeness, not that anyone gives a...

I shall upload the test posts I made to posterous earlier today.

Apropos this blogging thing

And it does! Typos and all!

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke approximately)

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Apropos this blogging thing

Prodded on by my posterous experiments, I re-checked my old blog and discovered, to my amazement, that has been two years since I last blogged. 2006 was the last one.

Except for the prolific Chiffonesque, it has been similarly long since the other bloggers I was following have blogged.

Which begs the question, what happened in 2007 to turn all of us off blogging?

Will 2009 revive the blog?

Will this auto-post from posterous to blogger work?

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