Tag: technology

Zune HD, as good as last years iPod

Microsoft’s Zune  sales for 2008 show a 54% year over year decline. In other words, after a dismal start, Zune sales fell off a cliff. The decline in revenue is partially explained by heavily discounted Zunes. I’m talking about the, “Hey buddy, here’s $20 if you take this Zune” kind of discounts. 

Today Microsoft officially announced the Zune HD, due out this fall. Microsoft is famous for entering markets with terrible products, and then improving on them until they end up with something good enough to compete in the marketplace. The Zune HD will be Microsoft’s third attempt in the MP3/portable music player market.

I hereby predict that the  Zune HD will not be “good enough.” I further predict it will achieve results in the market quite similar to Plays 4 Sure devices and the existing Zune: dismal.

When used in public, the Zune is a device that gets you sympathetic looks, “aw, you asked for an iPod and got that.” The Zune has one ‘advantage’ over the iPod, its subscription model. It’s too bad that the vast majority of consumers have pulled out their wallets and voted for the $0.99 per song model. The market share Microsoft “gained” with the Zune came at the expense of their Plays 4 Sure partners, who offered that same subscription model.

By the time the Zune HD arrives, Apple will have released updated models of the iPhone and iPod Touch. The killer feature of the iPhone/iPod Touch will have added another 10,000 apps to its portfolio. The Zune HD won’t be eating dust in November. The iPod Touch is so far ahead that the dust has settled before the Zune HD arrived on the track.

car cost per mile

cost per mileWhile car shopping, I  built a spreadsheet of vehicle costs. Here is a graphic presentation of that data. Costs are based on Consumer Reports data and 12,000 miles per year.

The cost per mile is nearly identical between the family sedans. That is largely because the largest cost (40%) of car ownership is depreciation. 

My 09 Fusion V6 with everything except AWD costs are lower because I paid cash (no interest) and paid $10k less than retail. I could have gotten the same low cost per mile on a Jetta TDI, but it would have been a 2006.

Nobody was offering deals on the Prius in December ’08/Jan ’09. In most cases, dealers were charging above retail. Now I’m hearing of people getting $5k discounts on them right now. A recent news article was titled, Hybrid sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed. With the tax benefits, available discounts, and low cost of ownership, the Prius might be worth considering right now.

AT&T account secret

I have a mobile phone number based in Michigan. I live in Seattle. I have a Seattle mobile as well. I wanted to merge them both onto a single AT&T Family Plan account. Quite a few AT&T reps told me it couldn’t be done without changing my numbers to both be in the same “business area.” 

I wanted to keep both existing numbers. So I persisted. The magic incantation is “NBI account.”  Tell the first AT&T rep you speak with you want to transfer a line to an account. Or activate a new line, or whatever you need to do for your 2nd line. When you get to someone that is supposed to be able to help, ask if they are authorized to do NBI accounts. If not, ask for someone who is. If they don’t know what that is, hang up and try again. 

I didn’t get anyone helpful through AT&T phone support. But at my local AT&T store, the manager exclusively has NBI account access. He set me up with a NBI account, dropped both lines into it, and put them on the family plan. I have an AT&T Family Plan with two lines, one in Michigan and one in Washington.

Microsoft SYNC phone integration

Surprise surprise. Microsoft SYNC doesn’t suck. It is far from perfect, but it is one of my favorite Fusion features.

It did not start out that way. I became acquainted with SYNC when the car salesman tried to show me how easy it is to sync with my Bluetooth equipped phone. When he resorted to the manual, I politely steered the conversation elsewhere. When he got busy filling out paperwork, I skimmed the 78 page manual and paired my iPhone and uploaded all my contacts.

Then I tried to use the voice activated calling feature. “Call Jennifer Simerson,” I would say. And it would pick some other person from my 548 contacts and start calling them. Grrrrrrr. Finally I figured out that the sync process was a bit retarded. Microsoft’s NIH syndrome keeps them using reference implementations of  standards like OBEX and SyncML. They write their own, get it badly wrong, make some fixes, and eventually arrive at something usable. They weren’t there yet when my car left the factory.

After calling the wrong party a couple dozen times, I finally deduced that when it imported my contacts, it mapped them all last name first. And it also included middle names. If a contact had a middle name, I could not call them without saying their middle name in the voice command. After a few days, I figured out how to call home, “Call Simerson R**** Jennifer.” 

Then I discovered the version 1.2 update. Duh, it’s from Microsoft. Of course. It needs an update! I downloaded the update and installed it but it didn’t help. Days later, insight struck. It’s from Microsoft. You can’t just install it the update. You also have to reboot! So I performed a “Master Reset” of the SYNC system. Then I re-paired my phone to it and had it sync all my contacts. Voila! All my contacts synced properly. I can call home by saying, “Call Jennifer Simerson.” 

The handsfree functionality works superbly. Talking while driving is now fun and much safer. I predict that in another decade, every car will have this functionality. My kids will be hard pressed to remember a car that didn’t have phone integration built-in.

SYNC also supports text messaging via Bluetooth, but it doesn’t work with the iPhone. Yet.

Apple TV, it doesn’t suck

I have wanted an Apple TV since shortly after they came out. I read the articles about how to hack them and was interested in poking around under the hood. During Apple’s black friday promotion, the Apple TV was discounted enough to pay my sales tax. I bought one.

 

Since then I’ve come to really appreciate the addition to my living room. There were several things about the Apple TV that I didn’t realize. In addition to storing and playing my iTunes library from its local disk, it also streams iTunes music to my stereo system. Voila, I no longer need the Airport Express in the living room. 

I had also forgotten that the Apple TV would sync with my iPhoto library. While playing with it the first night, the screen saver kicked on and photos from my computer were gracefully sliding across my screen. As I watched, I recalled researching LCD picture frames. For any of them under $100, I’d have to specially format my photos and then transfer them to the frame. The AppleTV syncs them wirelessly from my computer and scales them automatically.

The value of the photo feature was manifested over the Christmas holidays. We had a Christmas party for family, and then a birthday party for Ricardo. During both we had the photos playing. Having them play in the background evoked many memories and sparked many conversations. It also sparked several, “how are you getting your photos on the TV” conversations. They couldn’t believe it could be that easy or fun. Oops, I just boosted my Apple stock a bit. 😉

Finally, the Apple TV motivated me to do something I hadn’t yet. I have quite a few DVD movies stored on my file server. I started ripping them all to mp4 and dropping them into my iTunes library. After adding them into iTunes, they automatically sync to the AppleTV. Now I have a library of movies available in the living room and the DVDs are safely away from harm (Kayla) and mayhem (Lucas).

And can barely remember the urge to crack it open and start tinkering. I like it just the way it is.

e-delivery of invoices

While I’m ranting about business practices stuck in the 20th century, there is a simple reason I frequently decline online delivery of statements. What assurance do I have that after I terminate my account, I will still have access to my account records?

If you want me to sign up for e-delivery, give me some assurance that my records will remain online and accessible for a reasonable period of time. Regardless of the status of my account with you. In other words, match the functionality of paper statements.

If I cancel my account with you, my paper records don’t self-destruct. If you want me sign up for e-delivery, implement and publish your document retention policy that is client friendly and aligns with IRS guidelines. If I have an account with you and cancel it, my account history must remain accessible to me for at least 3 years. 

Considering the cost of printing and mailing statements versus the incredibly cheap cost of storing electronic records, this seems like a no-brainer.

Here are a few more suggestions for a good implementation:

 • Provide a simple method for downloading multiple statements. Quite often I don’t care at all about my statements until the end of the year when I want to download all of them. Selecting a period, clicking download, renaming the statement, and repeating a dozen times is tedious.
 • Give the downloaded files a name useful to humans. Filenames like 82383423546602382_08-08.pdf are not  human friendly.
 • Prefix filenames with a date nomenclature like: YYYY_MM or YYYY_q1. That way, when I’m looking at a folder with several years worth of statements, they are sorted properly.
 • If I cancelled my account with you N years ago and you’re about to expunge my records, make a good faith attempt to inform me prior to that event.

too mobile?

iPhone 3G white 16GB
iPhone 3G black 16GB
iPhone 4GB
iPod 40GB white
AT&T Tilt 8925
Palm Treo 755P
Palm Treo 700P
Samsung A900
Nokia 1100b

    My policy of getting rid of old electronic goodies before buying more has been laxly enforced. It’s time for another round of Craigslist/eBay postings. All but the iPhones will soon be sold. Jay Simon, does that answer any of your questions about how we like the iPhone?

    iPhone resurrection

    On Saturday, I attended a housewarming party at a friends. He’s got a great house in Lake Washington and his party coincided with the Blue Angels air show. During the afternoon, a few of us helped him take a dip in the lake. The humor would not have been lost so suddenly if he hadn’t come up minus his iPhone, which went into the lake with him.

    Between the cadre of tech geeks present, we had spare iPhones but this wretched soul had not synced his iPhone since January. I dove in and concluded that the bottom was about 20 feet deep and my lungs are only conditioned to free dives of 15 feet. So we formulated a plan. Jen and I drove home and fetched our SCUBA gear. Nelson fetched his tanks and BCD. We found a couple bricks to use as weights and went in. Nelson took a turn diving and then I did. After 10 minutes of swimming around face down and fins up, I found the phone.

    There was much rejoicing but after 3 hours underwater, there was little hope of the phone working again. To prevent any further water damage I disassembled the iPhone and removed the battery. What surprised me was that I could find no evidence of the magic smoke having leaked out. That meant that either a component I couldn’t see had fried, Apple had some type of circuitry to prevent shorts, or we were just plain lucky.

    Having the battery removed, the phone could now be safely “washed.” As we may remember from high school chemistry, pure water does not conduct electricity. It is the impurities in the water that allow water to conduct and wreak havoc on electronics. To stand any chance of recovery, the dirty water must be removed. Better still if I can also get as much of the lake sediment removed as well. Instead of distilled water, I prepared a bath of isopropyl alcohol and immersed the iPhone for a couple hours.

    Why alcohol? Because even if I placed the phone in a ziplock full or rice, or my warming oven, it would take 3-6 days for the phone to completely dehydrate. Alcohol evaporates much, much faster. Isopropyl alcohol also acts as a water scavenger which further expedited the drying process. Finally, it is a mild solvent, which will help clean up any sediment that found its way in into the phone.

    After a 2 hour bath in alcohol I removed the iPhone and set it out to dry. Exactly two days later I plugged it into my USB charging cable. The Apple logo came up but it failed to boot all the way. Suspecting that it couldn’t draw enough power via the 5v USB adapter, I plugged it into my iPod FireWire charging cable and it booted right up. Voila!  A working iPhone. 

    The grand finale was soldering the battery contacts back onto the phone. After doing so, the battery still had plenty of charge left and the phone booted up off the battery. Our victim was able to sync his iPhone with his computer. Everything on the iPhone works (touch screen, applications, wifi, etc) except the phone radio. I dropped the SIM from my iPhone into it but got only a generic “call failed” error.

    Interesting things learned: The iPhone has an immersion sensor at the bottom of the headphone plug. White is good, pink means it has been immersed. A USB cable does not supply sufficient current to power the iPhone when it doesn’t have a battery. A FireWire cable does. WiFi will not work on an iPhone without the battery. Alcohol worked well as a cleaner, solvent, and drier.