As we stand at the edge of the end of a decade, I can’t help but reflect about how entertained I have been. There were some seriously cool toys and gadgets created in the past 10 years. These are my favorites:

5. Digital Camera – goodbye film processing and hello instant gratification. It’s been nothing short of amazing being able to check and re-shoot on the spot. The downside – the people who work in film processing labs probably see a lot less incriminating photos.

4. iPod/MP3 Player – no more having to trek around with clunky CDs if I want to enjoy music on the go. Now I simply have to remember to keep my iPod charged and I can slide it into my pocket and listen to thousands of songs or watch videos anytime/anywhere.

3. USB Flash Drive – Being able to back-up, transport and store documents, audio, video and everything in between in a compact drive has been brilliant! I can’t believe that only a few short years ago computers used to have a 1.44 MB floppy drive. Now it would be unheard of to find a floppy and not a USB drive. What would have previously taken 15 disks or CDs, can now be done on a memory stick that can attach to a keychain, fit in a pocket or in a purse. It’s genius!       

2. Rock Band – combining two of my favorite things – music and gaming has been epic! I was SOLD the first time I tried Rock Band at a friend’s house. The only thing that stopped me from buying it on the way home is that the store was closed. So I had to wait until the next day… It’s social, it’s fun and even non-gamers can appreciate it.

1. iPhone – I have only had my 3GS for a few months and I have to admit that it is always on me or at the very least nearby. Having so many functions in the palm of my hand has been absolutely incredible. A phone, instant messaging, calendar, all my contacts, internet access, email access, a GPS, world clock, videos, thousands of downloadable apps… I haven’t even gotten around to adding music yet! iPhone I deem you gadget extraordinaire!!

I don’t know what technological advances the next 10 years hold, but if they are going to be anywhere near as amusing and useful as the ones in the past 10 years have been – bring ‘em on!

Lockscreen

Screenshot

SMS Theme

This is a very kool iphone theme that includes more then 100+ icons, Custom Lockscreen, Custom Wallpaper, SMS Theme, Dock and Status Bar. created by iTito Designs for www.JustAnotheriPhoenBlog.com. if you have any question are need more custom icons please feel free to contact me via Twitter or Email.

NOTE: Reflective Dock, Apple signal bars, 5 icon Dock, Umbrella Logo, T-mobile logo and Wi-Fi logos are not included and i am not the author.

Here Is My Thoughts,

******PRO’S*********

Keeps My Touch Nice And Clean.

Sturdy, Compact,Clean, Does not interfere with the touch controls

Durable,Safe,Convince

Portable, and nice

Adjustable armband

******CON’S******

Hard To Remove

…………….

Thanks For Reading!!!!!

When we think of the 80’s or the 50’s it is clear what we are referring to in terms of fashion, culture, etc. I was having problems defining the 90’s and calling it a decade and now we are faced with the 2000’s. I can’t believe it happened already, it seems just like yesterday when we were so scared of Y2K. I called myself generation Y2K cause I finished junior high that year. So to be incredibly original I am going to do a recap of what Technology and Performing Arts did in the 2000’s. And what I think had big impacts on how we do things. No particular order.

1. Social Media . In the 90’s it was the internet, but this decade we really started to discover new ways to it that we couldn’t imagine before. Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, Wikipedia had brought information to new levels and privacy no longer exists. I just read two articles in TechCrunch about how now we choose what to keep private, instead of what goes public. They also talk about a website called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine where you can enter all your information, and a machine will delete yourself from the internet with no turning back. So far, more than 300 people have commited social media suicide. Bummer.

2. iPod and iPhone. I am an Apple sucker, I have to admit. But seriously what started as a cool MP3 player became standard for music. My parents call iPod now to any MP3 player. But not only that, then the iTunes store made music downloads legal and to many people who didn’t think it would succeed, it is now the #1 music retailer in the US and getting stronger worldwide. There are still good people out there. And the iPhone, well, just see how cellphones were made before and after the iPhone.

3. 3D Movies. I know this wasn’t invented in the 2000’s but it was until this decade that we start to see them in regular theatres all over the world. And I would like to use this opportunity to invite you to see Avatar in 3D. When will 3D Broadway will get here?

4. Cirque Du Soleil. You may disagree, but I think this a new way of artform. And even though they did a lot of work in the 90’s (Including their best show to my opinion “O”) it was this decade where it started to spread all over the world and they started opening shows like crazy. Good for them for raising the bar in performing arts.

5. Wicked. Avenue Q. In 2004 this two big musicals where conceived and why I think it is so important in the decade? Well Wicked unfortunately I believe is the only musical that will run for a long time and will become a classic of this decade. On the other hand, Avenue Q winning the Tony for best musical stated that you no longer needed 30 actors and a multimillion dollar production to win and to be good.

6. Harry Potter. Yes, again, I know that this started in the 90’s, but worldwide, it was until the 2000’s with the release of the movies that the Potter Mania really flourished outside of the english speaking world. I truly bow to the genius of Harry Potter the revival of Lord of The Rings, Golden Compass and Narnia. Kids needed to read something as they waited for the Potter books to come out. Hard to make a 7 year old read a 700+ page book in the PS era.

7. TV on DVD. I bet that no one in the 90’s had a full TV series on DVD. Suddenly we discovered that we could watch those shows that we love over and over again without commercials. We had seen a couple of good episodes on video, but nothing compared to what you see in music stores these days. Its a new way to pay for our content and it has been forcing advertising to rely a lot in product placement.

8. Musicals on the Big Screen. The biggest and most appreciated revival for our circle. Moulin Rouge opened a Pandora box introducing again musicals on the big screen and followed by Chicago winning the Oscar, encouraged film studios to explore again musicals on film. I’m surprised that Les Mis is not out there yet.

9. YouTube. I think youtube is just the first step on how our computer will take over our TV, most teenagers now spend way much more time watching YouTube than open TV and therefore I’m sure advertising will get only stronger and stronger in here.

10. Hot Ticket. MET Opera Live. It was this decade that Sony’s Hot Ticket started bringing concerts and live events that only a few could enjoy to Movie Theatres worldwide. And the MET Opera started also broadcasting their opera’s in movie theatres. It is wonderful to see this and I hope this encourages producers to do this more often so we can spread the knowledge and invite new audiences in every town and therefore encourage local producers once they have a bit of an audience.

Ok, so this is my list people. Please feel free to add any suggestions on your comments. (Look for link next to the title). Then again if you would like to subscribe use the RSS button, or join the Facebook Group to receive updates through there and invite others who you think might like it.

Happy 2010 everyone.

Tweet This! Click the bird!

Lifehacker has put together a list of the most popular free iPhone/iPod Touch apps of 2009. Well worth a read!

I have an iPod Touch, but thank the gods I didn’t buy it, work provided it as a test.  I am disappointed and frustrated constantly by this thing, and had I purchased it myself you had best believe Apple would have given me a refund for it.  While it teases at being an amazing device that combines MP3/ media player, PDA, wireless device, etc in one slick slim little touch based toy, it fails on many many points.  Here is why it’s not worth the cash:

1. Unlike previous generation and “normal” iPods, the Touch can not be used as a USB disk.  This is a massive failure, and the iPhone suffers from the same problem.  I have no idea why, on the top of the line products, Apple removed a massively useful feature.  Further, Apple prohibits 3rd party software makers from allowing this to be done.  The only way you can use it as a storage device is to use some kludgy wireless disk app which is slow, unstable, and very very limited.  My old iPod could be used as a boot device for a Mac as well as mounting as an external hard drive.  The fact that this is removed on the Touch is unforgivable and instantly should knock off half the price.
2. Getting video on the device is very difficult as it must be in a very particular format at a particular size using a particular codec and framerate, etc.  Finding an app to convert your video to the format used by the Touch is difficult at best unless you want to pay for something that Apple should have provided for you.  The Mac can play tons of video formats, it should convert them for the iPod/iPhone automatically when you drop them on the device.
3. Getting pictures on the Touch is nearly impossible.  What?  Yes, something that should be amazingly easy is almost impossible.  Why?  You can drag and drop MP3 files to the Touch in iTunes, but you can’t do this with images, it just kicks out an error that it can’t be played on that device.  Bull.  In iPhoto, the Touch shows up like a camera, you can pull off but not put on.  iTunes again should be automatically doing any needed conversion in an Apple like way, but instead it just fails.  What won’t it take?  Oh, png files created by taking screenshots on a Mac for one thing…  So what do you have to do?  Create an album in iPhoto, drop things in there, then set up the syncing for that album only (lest you get everything in all your albums) for the Touch.  Far to many steps for something that should be drag and drop simple.  Once you do all that, you still can’t see the pictures in iTunes, OR iPhoto, which makes no sense.  You can only see the pictures in iPhoto that you downloaded on the Touch, not what you loaded on it.  Huh??  So there is no place to see what’s on the Touch other than the Touch, after using two applications and a lot of time getting them on there.  So much for iTunes being your place to organize your media on your Apple mobile device!
4. On the topic of Syncing, more fail.  Massive fail.  It just doesn’t work most of the time.  For one thing, before every sync it wants to back up the iPod.  You can’t skip this step.  It never explains what this is doing.  It takes FOREVER to do.  Even if it was copying the entire contents of the iPod to a backup file, it takes easily 10 times longer than the size of the data to do this.  What the hell Apple, what’s going on??  That’s also assuming it works, which over half the time it doesn’t.  After 30 minutes of backing up, it freezes and never goes further.  You wait another 30 min then cancel it.  Then try again and wait another hour and repeat until it works.  You spend all day trying to get one little app or photo on the damn iPod.  The ONLY thing you can do without pain is drop on MP3 files.  I wrote the whole blog entry waiting for a backup to run, and it’s still not done.
5. The 2.x OS was fast and stable in all ways.  3.x killed that.  Now it’s slower, less stable, and VPN is a disaster.  Since the 3.0 update VPN connections are so unreliable they are pretty much useless.  Apple has no idea why and denies any issue, yet there are many out there ranting about this.  Many have downgraded back to 2.x because it’s better to have fast and stable than have copy and paste.
6. The touch abilities of the Touch are also not all they are made out to be.  It routinely is off just enough to react with the wrong letter on the keypad so typing messages is rough.  You try to scroll and it clicks instead.  You try to move the cursor to type at a different point, good luck.
7. Download speeds are not what you see on TV.  They make it look like you can pull down an app from the store in seconds, with the iPhone, over cellular.  Bull.  Even on high speed wireless it can take several minutes to download a 10mb app that should in fact take seconds.  It’s unclear where the issue is, but given the same app over the same wireless comes down at normal speeds in iTunes on a Mac, it’s got to be an issue with the Touch.  In addition, if the normal sleep time due to inactivity kicks in, it stops the download, so you have to keep it awake while you’re waiting for it to download the app.  You can’t load another app though, since the device can only do one thing at a time, you just have to slide between app screens keeping it awake to finish the task you gave it.
8. Setting up mail… wow.  Again, it should be easy, but it’s very hard unless you’re using a simple insecure vanilla pop3 server, which even gmail and hotmail aren’t.  My home and work email certainly aren’t either.  As a result, you try to set up the Mail app, and it tries to connect before you can put in all the advanced settings you need, so it fails.  Then you try to fix it, but since it failed, it’s done.  You then find that you can’t configure what you need in the app, you need to go in to the system settings.  What?  Yep, no idea why it’s split up like that, and they don’t tell you that, and the error messages are nondescript and misleading.  Again, something that should have taken 2 minutes to set up took me half an hour.  And this again is a feature they love to talk about how cool and easy it is.

It’s to bad the Touch has all these massive issues, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something else.  If it had USB disk mode, they hadn’t pooched stability in 3.0, and the syncing wasn’t a disaster, it would still be a good IT tool and I’d recommend we get more for work.  If usability wasn’t such a disaster it would be a great device for the consumer.  As is, it’s overpriced for how broken it is.  At half the price, ok, it’s still cool for all you can do with it.  Amazingly Apple keeps selling these things by the shipload, despite all the complaints I made, which I see all over forums on Apple’s site, and they continue to not address them.  Add to that being locked in to AT&T with the iPhone, I don’t understand how they are selling these things.  I’ll take them for free, but I’ll never buy one until they fix this list of issues.  Now that the Droid is out, and the adds make it look much like an iPhone, I wonder if we’ll see a ton of apps just as cool made for that.  Could the Droid kill the iPhone?  We’ll see, someone has to give me one to play with first.

Verizon & Apple iPhone - quite a possibility.

I have an Apple iPod Touch and love the little multi-media device to death.  But imagine if I could make calls on it?  A Verizon customer can only dream…or can they?

I have heard through the technological rumor mill that Verizon may be partnering with Apple once Apple’s contract with AT&T runs out this year.  This is very exciting news to a Verizon customer such as myself.  Having scoured the internet and  blogs I have  found the general consensus to be that  AT&T coverage is significantly sub-par to that of Verizon. This means that if Verizon hooks up with Apple we will have a faster iPhone that any steadfast Verizon lover will be ecstatic about.

According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt on CNNMoney.com, “…there are a lot of cellphone owners in America locked into Verizon (VZ) contracts who would buy an iPhone in a minute if they didn’t have to switch carriers to get it.”  As with any contract or deal there are some existing problems.  For starters the iPhone makes AT&T the official carrier for the U.S. and “Verizon’s network (based on CDMA2000 technology) is incompatible with Apple’s smartphone (which uses W-CDMA (UMTS))”(http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com).  This means that negotiations will be heated in a three -way company battle (And you thought the so-called “Battle of the Service Maps” was bad) and Apple will have to set their nose to the grindstone to make a Verizon compatible phone.  With Apple the competitive company that it is, there is no doubt that they will attempt to make it a phone that can be used worldwide.  According to AppleInsider.com, ” The report by OTR Global, provided to AppleInsider by an industry analyst, says the new “worldmode” iPhone will gain compatibility with CDMA2000 networks”

However this situation turns out as far as deliberations go, there will probably be an Apple iPhone in the future for Verizon customers.  Now we can all be happy.

I have been slacking on posting this blog… I am sorry for it coming so late.

Deck The Hall Ball 2009

On December 15, 2009 Sophia and I went to 1077 the end Deck The Hall Ball concert at the WaMu Theater in Seattle. I have to admit over the past years I have sort of tuned out traditional FM radio stations due to either my iPod or XM satellite radio. When I was in the high school The End was my radio station. Over the past few years The End has gone through some restructuring and they sort of went off my radar with their music selection. They went so far off my radar that they were not one of the pre-set 6 in my car. The End is making a comeback for me and I love every second of it. They are playing my style of music again, finally. Deck the Hall Ball was really what brought me back to 1077 and put them back on my top 6 in my car.

The concert lineup for Deck the Hall Ball when it was announced all I cared about was Muse.  Muse was going to be in town!  I love Muse. I do not buy too many CD’s a year but the new Muse CD’s was one of the few that I went out and bought for 2009. While I was so excited to see Muse I sort of passed over the other bands. Here are some of the other bands that were in attendance for the show Vampire Weekend, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Metric and 30 Seconds to Mars.

We got tickets to go to the show as Andrew Gamblin and his girlfriend Stephanie bought his ticket for his birthday. It was a surprise for him so I had to keep it on the down low for a couple of weeks that we were all going. So I had the rough job of chaperoning my high school brother and girlfriend. Sophia had to work so we missed Vampire Weekend but got to see Phoenix. Phoenix was awesome!  Little did I know that they are French (I will not hold that against them). Phoenix was so much fun live that I had to get there CD (got it for Christmas). Following Phoenix was Metric and to be honest I had only heard a few Metric songs but I am a sucker for a girl in a rock band. Following Metric’s stellar performance was 30 Seconds to Mars. I have never been a huge 30 Seconds to Mars fan as I feel like they are the screamer rock band that wants to have a boy band N’Sync cult following. I would not mind 30 Seconds to Mars if it were not Jared Letto’s ego. While he is on stage I am surprised he does not have a mirror for himself so he can give himself an occasional wink.

Sophia with cousins Otto and Jasper

After 30 Seconds to Mars departed the stage it was time for the band of the night. Most of the bands only played 30 minutes sets which sucked. Muse on the other hand played for a solid hour, a mix of old stuff and their new stuff from their most recent album “The Resistance.” They played there most recent hit Uprising which was expected along with a couple of other songs from their new CD. Other greats included Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole and Knights of Cydonia and stuff that was on there Absolutions CD.  For a 3 person band Muse rocks live is one of the best bands I have seen live. I was ecstatic to hear that they were planning on coming to Seattle in April in 2010! Tickets that I have already bought!

Thank you The End for finally reaching out to me and bringing me back to the great station of 1077

Here are some videos of the night the audio sucks and so does the clarity but still whatever!

Currently Evernote does not currently support outline structuring for notebooks.  This means that you can’t group notebooks into collections (e.g. folders) or have sections/sub-notebooks.  Recently I posted about why in many cases it is often better to use tags rather than notebooks as this allows you to better mark-up notes for searches and the like.  However there is a desire to sometimes have information hierarchically organised and this is where an outline structure for notebooks in Evernote would be useful.  Until the Evernote developers catch up on this popular request across all of the software platforms tags can provide you with a workaround.

Interestingly whereas notebooks cannot have ‘child’ notebooks, tags can have ‘child’ tags and so these can be used to create a hierarchical structure.

Windows client tag structure

Rather than simply using “normal” tags I would recommend prefixing these hierarchy tags with something special so that they can easily be identified.  The Windows 3.5 client allows tags to be sorted by note count or alphabetically.  Since the alphabetic sorting appears to prioritise symbols over alphanumerics I would recommend using a symbol to prefix the tags with.  My preference is for an exclamation mark (“!”) as this appears to put the hierarchy tags appear as early as possible in an alphabetically sorted list and is something I can visually use to identify that this is a hierarchy tag (at first I thought the sort was ASCII based but it seems a little different).

So for example you might create a tag structure similar to this one shown here on the Windows 3.5 client.

iPhone client tag structure

When viewing this on the iPod/iPhone 3.2.1 client (also illustrated here), under the advanced search options for tags you can still discern the structure by the order and indentation of the tags.

Once you have some tags set out into the hierarchical structure It is then simply a case of adding these tags to your notes.

I would also recommend creating some saved searches for often used notebooks.  These can synchronise across platforms so it is often easier to create them on a desktop client and use them on a hand held device.

One of my best technology purchases in 2009 was my Huawaei E5830 MiFi.  The best way I have to describe it is like a smart phone without the phone bit.  It connects to a cellular data network and shares the connection over a self-generated WiFi network with up to five other devices such as a laptop or iPod touch.

What I wanted to share was the case for the E5830.  I struggled to find something that I could clip onto a belt or drop into a bag or pocket that wasn’t particularly bulky, flimsy or poorly fitting for the device.  Eventually I found that LifeVenture produce a “small digital case” that is perfectly sized for the E5830.  If like me you like to protect your devices and carry them with you everywhere then this is a good purchase.  They’re stocked by many outdoors shops and I managed to get it for less than £8 which is less than most phone or camera cases might cost.