IMHO: Bold vs. iPhone
Let me start by saying a couple things. First, this is by no means an in depth review of either, and all information is ‘as is’ and is subject to truthfulness and change and in no way is a representation of either AT&T, Apple or Blackberry. Second, I know this is about 4 months too late, but I’ve now had enough time with both to find all the quirks. Lastly, I love both of these phones. They are hands down 2 of the best phones you can buy via carriers today. Do not mistake my criticisms for fanboyism for either product.
1st up, the crowd favorite, the iPhone:
Pros:
- App store: If there is one thing that I miss the most about the iPhone, it’s the app store.
- Touch screen: Now, I haven’t had a lot of face time with the big competitor on this one, The Storm, but it is hands down better than any other touch screen phone I’ve handled.
- Texting: Full keyboard, auto correct, threaded text that is so simple and easy I can do it one handed. drunk. in a windstorm. with a chimpanzee on my back beating my skull in. You get the point.
- Accessorize: There are more cases available for the iPhone than you can shake a stick at, plus many more cool accessories.
- Email: It looks pretty, full html email support is awesome, especially if you actually want to read those emails newegg.com sends you.
Cons:
- Everything already stated by everyone criticizing the iPhone: mms, copy/paste, background tasks, video, etc…
- Email support sucks: It does. It’s pretty (above), but between the pain in the ass setup process and limited support. Have you tried to set up a charter.net email on an iPhone? Don’t bother.
- No insurance: I couldn’t trust myself with that thing.
- No Turn by turn GPS: Or traffic rerouting for that matter. I think there is big money to be made here.
The Underdog (Blackberry Bold)
Pros:
- PUSH. EMAIL. SUPPORT.: For everyone, any email service. end of story.
- Solid keyboard: I’m pretty picky about my keyboards now, the Bold is definitely hands down the best physical keyboard. When you pick it up and start slamming out some text, you’ll notice the difference.
- Less app restrictions: Less restrictive API and no manufacturing blessing necessary. Opera mini and Youmail are my two favorite apps, which will never be available on the iPhone if things stay the way they are.
Cons:
- Coolness: Definitely less cool than the iPhone. Yes I am that vain and self centered.
- Leather Back: While it looks classy, mine is already all torn up.
Either way, you’re getting an awesome phone, and do recommend both, you just need to decide what is important to you. What phones do you guys recommend?
Donnie Darko 2 (S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale)
First off hat tip to @Bryanclark over at Nerdgazm.com (One of my new favorite sites) for pointing out that there is a new donnie darko flick coming out. It’s titled S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale. Go ahead and watch the trailer so we can get down to business.
Okay, so they pretty much took the Donnie Darko name and Richard Kelley’s vision and ran with it their own direction. Richard Kelley wrote and directed the original Donnie Darko, now he’s only a writer in the sequel (Characters according to imdb). Good or bad, we won’t know until it hits theaters, but one thing is for sure, it definitely has a different theme to it. And I suspect that it won’t have the same cult following because of it.
People loved Donnie Darko because it was so fucked up. Well, people that I knew anyway. The whole time travel concept was kinda along for the ride, not the focus of the movie. We were more concerened about how all the characters came together, how Donnie got so fucked up in the head, what a fuckass is, why everyone was so weird, it was so similar to our world, yet so distant at the same time. And Frank, we all loved Frank. I really hope the next movie has that special “what the fuck?” feeling when you walk out of the theater, the trailer unfortunately doesn’t show it…
Do you promote twitter?
Do you talk to people about Twitter? Do you talk to NEW people about Twitter? I’ve talked to friends about Twitter, they know how big of a dork I am. But new acquaintances I’ve never really said anything. Working in sales, I could very definitely talk about Twitter to customers too. I guess it’s hard to explain the concept to non-social media junkies. I’d love to get more people interested, especially if it means I can better connect with my customers.
How to you explain Twitter to acquaintances or customers?
Why my Facebook is Private
If you’re my friend on facebook, or twitter, you’ll notice my facebook profile is next to barren and a lot of things set to private, and I still think I have too much stuff on it. There are a couple of reasons for this.
- I don’t see a need for that much information about me to be floating around on the Internet. If you haven’t seen all the articles about would be or ex-employers finding something on employees pages, well you’ve been living under a rock.
- I had a good friend who I had trusted, use my facebook information against me, most of it was private.
- If you haven’t seen the new facebook terms of service, you should. While some people are getting overly paranoid about it, it’s still important to know that they have the rights to what you put on their site. EDIT: While facebook has returned to the previous TOS, the point still stands, do you read the TOS? Do you know what websites can do with your information? Maybe you should
- The least important to me, but most annoying, is targeted ads. I really didn’t realize it until Bev and I got engaged, but every ad is targeted to you. Ingenious really, but I don’t want any ad company with that much information about me. Silly me for giving it to them…
- And finally, app requests. Note, this is different than apps themselves, it’s the automated requests is what I hate. I don’t fucking care. Yes, there are some fun, interesting aps, but none that you sent me. There is a search box for that. If you really want me to do something , send me a personal message, I’ll think about it.
So, by all means, be my facebook friend, chat it up, I love meeting new people, I just don’t want to get burned somewhere down the line. Facebook is a wonderful tool, but you must be smart with it. If you want to see what you can do to increase you privacy, check out this awesome article on protecting your privacy on facebook at Lifehacker. Also, I would check yourself out on People Search to see if you have any old accounts that you have forgotten about that need to be deleted. Aparently I had a friendster account at one time…
Tweetup Sucess!
Do you want to know how awesome the St. Louis Tweetup was? Twitter failwhaled out of shear amazement! (Well for a second there at least…)
First off, I’d like to thank everyone who came out tonight, it couldn’t have been done without you guys. Special thanks to @chrisromer for playing photographer, I’ll try to get a link to his flickr as soon as he gets pics uploaded. I think we all were very impressed how fast we all populated the STL Twitter Homepage and got the ball rolling on this. Again, thanks for all the RT’s and talk about it to make it a success!
Schlafly’s was packed, but I hope I got around to everyone, I’m pouring through tweets to put names to faces to nicknames to avatars. I had a blast, and I’m really glad I got out of my social “box” and met some new people. I definitely learned some things tonight, which I will proudly display in a snazzy bullet list.
- The bar was awesome. It was also packed, and loud… I had a ton of fun, but I feel like I missed out on some good conversations.
- As dumb as it sounds, nametags would actually be a great idea, maybe even ones with our avatars on them for those who have comics or funny bannanna costumes on as their avetar.
- I don’t care what you say, the band was AWESOME! How many people get to see an electric mandolin? Much less playing “Devil Went Down to Georgia” behind their head!
- Always state your intentions to move any chairs…
- Charge your battery up before you go! I know I wasn’t the only one with a dead battery. I really wanted to stream the band on Qik.
- The correct spelling of Shlafley’s… Schafly’s… SCHLAFLY’S!
I hope to see you folks again soon!
St. Louis Tweetup Friday 13th
This Friday we’re having a Tweetup at Schafly bottleworks it Maplewood at 8 pm. If you haven’t heard already, you must have fallen of the face of the earth. Either that or you’re not on twitter, in which case you should be. Please RSVP on the St. Louis Twitter Homepage so we can get a headcount.
Qik for mobile. In case the world doesn’t see you enough.
Qik is a awesome program that lets you record (and live stream) video from your phone, upload it online, and update a number of social media sites, all seamlessly and simple.
I’ve seen quite a few twitter users that are on Qik, and never really had a phone that would support it. Recently, I retired my company Blackberry Curve, and opted for a Blackberry Bold. Since the Bold is 3G + WiFi it was much better suited for Qik. Current Qik is supported on a pretty wide range of smartphones (including the iPhone) as well as a ton of Nokias. Supported Devices.
Qik then is downloaded on the phone. A super simple interface will then title, tag and then start your video feed. This will start to stream live on Qik’s website. Once you stop it will upload the movie in it’s entirety online.
You can integrate a number of sites into Qik. From their website you can add twitter support and youtube (the 2 I did). If you want facebook support, you actually have to add a facebook app to do so.
It’s that simple to start live streaming video from your phone, and keep your social web apps updated automatically. I did a post earlier chronicling how it’s a pain in the neck to get Qik onto WordPress.com, along with a video of the new car.
p.s. My Qik account is here, add me!
Doctorsound now on Qik!
Can I post a Qik video on WordPress? Well not easily, but you can link your Qik account and have it automatically upload it to youtube, which you CAN embed on wordpress.com.
I think I’ll do some more Qik videos soon, should be fun. After I took this I realized the follies of Qik on a phone, namely the constant downward shots, I’m pretty sure you guys didn’t want to see my dashboard the whole video.
I’ll run in the WRX again soon, maybe I’ll get a phone mount so I don’t have to hold it, kind of hard to shoot and shift. If you haven’t seen the car pics on facebook, check ‘em out. Also, there’s a couple facebook apps that you can post youtube videos into your news feed. Unfortunately, I haven’t found one that does it automatically though. Video Below.
Youmail, Voicemail on steroids
I recently started using youmail for my voicemail, and I have to say, it is AWESOME! Essentially it’s voicemail on steroids. There are a lot of cool features that definitely enhance how I use my phone. It’s VERY easy to setup, and they lead you through the whole process (With pictures!).
First off it you can listen to your voicemail from any computer, pretty nice if you loose your phone, and you can receive voicmail updates via email and text. They call this “Visual Voicemail”, but if you’ve used an iPhone, it’s just not the same. But wait, there’s more! If you have a blackberry, you CAN have visual voicemail like on the iPhone! The Youmail program does the exact same function of the iPhone visual voicemail. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting there. All of this is FREE too, can’t beat that!
Youmail also offers a transcriber service as well, at reasonable prices. If someone leaves you a voicemail, within 10 mins you get an email with a transcription of their message! I signed up, just to see how well it worked, 5 out of the 5 messages I got were spot on, the 6th was close enough.
There are a couple other cool features such as, ability to import contacts, set assigned voicemail to certain people and block calls (Or assign them a voicmail that states the phone has been disconnected!). My phone is for business and personal use, so I’ll setting my friends for a more personal greeting, and my work contacts can have something a little more formal.
There is some room for improvement, mainly the phone application support. The blackberry should definitely be able to recieve a push notification from youmail, and alert you that you have a voicmail via audio and vibration, without having to have a text sent to you. Hopefully they’re working on this, as well as more supported phones. Also the transcription service sometimes takes up to 15 mins on high quality. Youmail still seems like it needs some work before it can go mainstream, but it’s definately worth checking out if you can benefit from it’s features! Below are some pictures of the service, unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the visual voicmail app though. 
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- Mailbox Screen
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- Email Support
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- Main Login Screen
STL Twitter Users page is LIVE!
Go head over to http://stltwitter.ning.com/ and check it out! Hopefully we can put this to good use!
