1. It has to be invincible – rendered illegible by flying coffee or left on bus cannot be reasons to miss a task. I love paper, but hate that it burns, smudges, rips, etc. Digital was the only answer.

2. It has to be everywhere – Paper didn’t just lose because I’m a klutz – I’m also forgetful. A digital task system, accessible from every device I’ve ever owned AND anyone’s computer, was the perfect solution. I couldn’t leave it behind.

3. It has to be simple – If entering a task takes 10 minutes, I’m not going to do it. Duh.

When I decided on those 3 rules above, I never thought about the data that I would generate after using these tools for 4 years. On a lark, I went through three months of data today in Toodledo and was amazed. It’s actually interesting!

Although it’s thoroughly geek, I thought I’d share, just to show how powerful the data we’re generating can be. I’m not sharing anything personal, professional or even the numbers. The graphs of relative values speak volumes.

First thing I did was pull my tasks completed by month from Toodledo.

The result made sense: Late November, I started using Toodledo. December was spent working my tail off. January was when my little girl was born – huge dip there – but by February, I was completing tasks again at full force. March I started a new job, so mid-way through the month, we’re already heading for a record breaker.

Next I tried to find a trend, something to make it more than just a total. Here is how I complete tasks based on the days of the week:

Interesting eh? I come out of the weekend strong, completing fewer and fewer tasks until Friday, when I  push before the weekend. My theory here is one word: meetings. As the week goes on, I have more and more meetings, reducing the time I have to complete my tasks. There is something to explore here…

My personal tasks, often the lesser quantity, generally don’t get done on Saturday and therefore Sunday is higher. This probably contributes to that sinking feeling I get on Sunday when I have to pack in my tasks and try to enjoy the last of the weekend.  Again, something to explore…

Next I grabbed the planned due date of my tasks:

What I love about this data is that it shows how I think about tasks too… These are the tasks by the day I schedule them for. Notice that I tend to come out of the weekend with a lot scheduled for Monday, but Tuesday – Friday, I plan to complete pretty much the same number of tasks. To me, this supports the meetings idea – I’m adding tasks to the list because new things are coming up. However, as we saw before, I’m not completing them.

In a similar story, on the weekend, I tend to forget how hard is to complete tasks on Saturday and I schedule equal efforts for both days.

Finally, I decided to compare how I’m finishing tasks this month vs last month:

The month isn’t over yet, but it looks like I’m getting better at closing out  my tasks on Fridays and keeping a steady stream of completions going through the week. Thursday is still a low point for me. I’m sure it’s related to meetings, but it’s a point of focus for improvement!

After playing with all this data from Toodledo, I exported my data from Remember the Milk going back to 2007 and did the same sort of analysis, finding almost identical results. I’ll spare you the details, but one favorite was that I seem to start the year off strong in January every year, but slow down as the summer approaches. I guess that’s why my resolution each year is to be more organized :)

Thanks for indulging me. The bigger point is that I was collecting this data without really thinking about it. I wonder where else I’m capturing useful information that could improve my efficiency? I’ll poke around and get back to you.

~ab

When babies are born, in case you are not aware,  they need to be swaddled, rocked and given something to slobber upon… As I see it, the result is that technology tends to focus on rocking and/or white noise. That’s about it. Sigh… I write this as I sit up waiting to do our late night / early morning feed and wish that there were magic bullets I could use from my bat belt. No dice.

Instead of telling you about our Fisher Price Cradle Swing (god send that it is), I’ll focus on the tech that I’ve found useful, rather than helpful, for life with a baby.

Camera(s) – iPhone and DSLR

She’s cute and everyone wants to see her, thus we’ve snapped away with both our iPhones and the big DSLR. Although in the beginning we went a bit overboard, expect to take tons of pictures. Having the DSLR, with its incredible resolution, reassures the compulsive in me who worries that we’ll miss the perfect shot. The iPhones have pretty decent cameras too, for all those times when you don’t want to lug around a baby, six pieces of matching baby luggage AND and camera bag…

Ways to share pictures – Picasa and Dropbox

Picasa lets us share our photos with the family, but Dropbox is where we consolidate. With two Macs, two iPhones and a SLR, there are lots of places where pictures end up. We combine our photos into a shared folder in Dropbox and then I upload them to Picasa. Easy peasy.

The white noise app on my phone

Hm… This one was almost a magic bullet… We were told that white noise would soothe her on our way out of the hospital room and by the time the elevator arrived in the lobby, I had a white noise app for the car ride home. The great part? It actually works (provided that she isn’t hungry, sleepy, wet, dry, too hot, too cold…)

If you want extra geeky points, go grab yourself a pillow speaker (very cheaply online) and use an old iPod to make your white noise machine. It’ll free up your iPhone for dropping calls.

Amusements – all hail the iPad

You will spend a lot of time doing nearly nothing (other than rocking your child) and your brain doesn’t have capacity for the russian novels you were planning to read. My iPad holds my books, my RSS feeds, Netflix, Hulu and my email. With a bit of balancing, I can use it one-handed. Late in the evening, ’round about 1-2am, this will become very important.

That’s it. Like I mentioned above, no true magic bullets, but there are plenty of ways to add techie flair to staying up late with your newborn. Best of luck – duty calls…

~ab

As a result, I like to practice using features when I find them.  Some stick, becoming part of my daily routine and ritual, others fade away as simple novelty.  Knowing what your iPhone or Android phone can do is good.  Learning which features are right for you is better.

Just to give you an example, I was waiting for the wifie at the wine store and remembered Google’s photo search called “Goggles” that is part of the iPhone Google App.  Not really needing an excuse to buy wine (“google told me to”), I tried it out on a nice bottle of cabernet.

Googles Goggles (a tongue twister ain’t it?) went to work on my cab, using the image as the search query.  The result was pretty spectacular – even by the standards of the ever impressive Google.

In less than a minute, I was reading a great review of my selection and soon after SOLD.  It was a great shopping experience.  I was selected a bottle that looked about right (2 minutes), Googled it (30 seconds), learned about it (1 minute) and finished my purchase.  Not bad!  The process was fast enough that I would have happily continued to photograph bottles for a while, but the results rich enough to help me make an educated decision.  Sweet.

In closing for this rather short post, remember that the point isn’t Google’s Goggles.  The point is that my phone had a feature that was worth exploring and that a little practice was enough for me to see how I could use it in future.  That’s the key – use it and see if it’s useful to you.  If not, no sweat.  There are another 999,999 features to look into.

For the record, the wine was excellent.

~ab

Anyway, pushing my soapbox back under the bed, I have an iPhone and looking back at my activities for the last few weeks, I am struck by how little I’ve created with my new toy – it’s as if someone crammed every form of media into an all powerful demon in my front right pocket (the left pocket just doesn’t feel right after years of carrying my blackberry in my right).  I figure that, rather than fighting these forces, I should embrace them.  In that vein, here are my favorite apps on the iPhone, purposely split into groups, consumption and creation.

Consumption

1. MobileRSS is an application that I started using on my iPod touch. I’m sure that there are updated RSS readers, but this one does everything I want.  I can sync to my google reader feeds, so that I only have to mark something read once.  I can also tweet, save for later with ReadItLater, open in Safari etc.  The real kicker of the app is the design, which is fluid and intuitive: swipe left or right to move between posts, pull the page down or up to load new posts.

There is a free version that is add supported, but if you’re consuming feeds through a firehouse, it’s worth the 3 dollars to have a cleaner experience.

2. ReadItLater is a way of bookmarking things that you want to (duh) read later.  It’s pretty simple and their site walks you through the details of getting the app.  I like the integration with MobileRSS, but I love how ReadItLater content is available via the web too.  I can bookmark something on my computer and read it on my iPhone through the app or I can grab something on my phone (usually large videos) and read/watch from the comfort of my Mac.

There is a free version of this that suits me just fine, as I rarely share via Twitter or other outlets from the app itself.

3. Kindle for iPhone provides a remarkably comfortable reading experience.  If you have a Kindle and have purchased content, you can download one of your books from the digital library and start reading (in seconds).  I’ve forgotten my Kindle while traveling a few times and the iPhone/iPod Touch version allowed me to keep reading.  You can also email passages of text, something that even my real kindle can’t handle.

The Kindle app is free as in beer and speech (but you can only access your paid content as far as I can tell).

4. Games, games, games… I don’t play games for long, but when I’m sitting on a runway, or waiting in line, it’s a great way to pass the time.  I recommend: Collapse, Angry Birds, Ragdoll Blaster 1 & 2, Trenches, Finger Physics free, Unblock Me, Zen Bound 1 & 2, N.O.V.A (this last one is an action packed 1st person shooter, but the rest are simple puzzle games).

These apps may run you from 1 to 3 bucks…

5. Pandora, Last.FM and Grooveshark are all streaming music services that have iPhone apps.  It has to be said: these crush your battery life.  However, in a pinch, it can help relieve the boredom of your overplayed music collection.

Pandora and Last.FM are free.  Grooveshark will require a pro account (worth it at 3 bucks a month) but you can listen to anything in their vast library.

6. This American Life and NPR are streaming radio.  Again, the battery thing is a problem, but it’s sooooo worth it if you’re stuck in an airport and need to drown out the angry people on cell phones…

This American Life is paid but supports NPR.  The NPR news app is free.

Creation

1. Twitter is what it is – love it or hate it, there is an app.  Including Twitter proves that my definition of creation is not terribly strict. I like the official version of the app as it’s free and full-featured, but there are other clients out there that work just fine.

2. Evernote is the app form of the service Evernote.com that I’ve written about before.  Their tagline is “remember everything” and that pretty much describes how I use the app.  I take photos of whiteboards, notes during meetings, voice notes or meeting recordings, and even iPhone screenshots and upload all that to my Evernote account to work on later.  It’s my memory dump for everything that isn’t a task and it’s the starting point for nearly every blog post I write (including this one).

Evernote is free, but you can get a pro account for a few extra features.

3. Remember the Milk, like Evernote, is the app form of a larger service.  Remember the Milk (RTM) allows me to create and save tasks to my master task that I view on my computer, but it also allows me to mark tasks complete, set reminders, etc all from my iPhone.  Like I said before, most of my content goes to Evernote, but if it’s a task (again loooooooose definition of creation) then I use RTM.

RTM requires that you have a Pro account, which runs $20 per year, but you can use the web interface for free.

4. Dragon Dictation is a natural language processing app for your phone that allows you to dictate text and then copy it into emails, text messages or anywhere else that you can hit paste.  I was blown away when I first tried this, as the accuracy is freakishly good. You might be dubious about the benefits of an app for this, but try it out.  It’s fantastic.

Dragon Dictation is free.

5. Sketchbook is for drawing.  I can barely draw a circle, but I love scribbling out rough ideas to return to later.  I can save my images and then suck them up into Evernote for storage (see what I mean? Evernote is awesome).  It’s a one-trick-poney, but then again, how many tricks do you need your ponies to do?

Sketchbook is $2.99.

So the final score is 6/5 Consumption/Creation.  I probably could have squeezed in another one or two on either side, but to be honest, consumption could have destroyed creation: I didn’t even include the “reference” part of the consumption family.  Apps like Menupages, Google Maps, Yelp, and TripIt are also a huge part of my iPhone usage.  I was nice to creation and drew the line closer to the middle…

What apps do you use to consume/create?  Shout it out in the comments.

~ab

Note: I’ve written about the iPod touch and my apps before, but I think that this post shows off some of the iPhone specific functions (as well as things I’ve learned since my last post).

“More than 30 years ago, RiceSelectâ„¢ introduced Texmati®, the first basmati Rice to be successfully grown in America, and still the most popular because of its unsurpassed flavor and aroma. Today, RiceSelectâ„¢ offers a wide variety of delicious rice and other dishes all grown and packaged in America, all inspired by cuisines from across the world. Requested by name in countless recipes and cookbooks, RiceSelectâ„¢ tastes like no other rice.”(Source)

What they didn’t add, but certainly should have, is the following: “RiceSelect products, like our amazing Sushi Rice, can be used to rebuild shattered hopes and dreams!” By now you’re probably checking the URL to make sure that you didn’t mistype the link, but I promise you that this is a technology story.  It’s just a roundabout way telling it…

Virginia Beach is a great getaway spot for a good time in the summer. The beach is packed but there’s sand enough for everyone.  The collection of bars, restaurants and hotels make it easy to find entertainment.  If, like me, you have an iPhone 4 and decide to visit, I hope you’ll heed to the following advice: keep the darn thing off the table and away from your margaritas.

I had just Googled “dog fighting experience” for my brother-in-law.  He had told me of a childhood love for fighter planes and I figured, why not actually get in one?  That’s the beauty of having a great smartphone, you can look this stuff up!  I had the data and we were chatting about whether the rather hefty price tag was worth it, when I gestured a bit too energetically and tipped over all 16 ounces of sickly sweet lime margarita right on my phone.

Panic.

“GIVE ME A TOWEL!” I screeched, while almost overturning the chair of the small boy sitting behind me, and whipped a damp pool towel into action.  I wiped every surface clean of the mess and powered the phone down. I sat stunned back down in the chair and stared blankly into space while my family members discussed the best next steps.  My only thought was “this is why I can’t have nice things”, over and over again,  while I slipped into a self-hating catatonic state. My brother-in-law gets full marks for taking over the situation. Someone at a nearby table mentioned that rice might help dry out the phone and so he sprinted off to the nearest store to buy some.

I’m not sure how many stores he had to visit in Virginia Beach before he found one that would sell him rice (it’s not that kind of place), but 20 minutes later, he returned with RiceSelect Sushi Rice in a very convenient plastic container with a screw-top lid. We dumped out a small portion and shoved in my phone.  It felt a bit like someone was putting one of my chopped-off appendages on ice, to be reconnected later “if there are no complications”.  I ordered another margarita and tried not to pray out loud.  I rallied through the rest of the evening, but my mind constantly strayed to my severed limb, crammed into sushi mix back at the hotel.

The next morning, the second I woke up, I sprinted to the hotel desk and tried to resist the urge to fling the rice everywhere, as I dug out my iPhone.  It looked a bit gritty, but there was no visible damage.  As slowly as I could, I removed the rice grains from the charging port and the headphone jack.  It was time for the real test – I turned it on, half expecting it to catch fire or sizzle in my hands… The beautiful silvery Apple logo appeared and the phone’s main menu appeared. Ok, I thought, now for test two.  My wife, who somehow still loves me despite my complete obsession with technology, called me from her phone.  She could hear me and I could hear her.  Test two passed.

At this point, I wanted to test the headphones, so I was about to plug in when I noticed a lone grain of rice stuck in the bottom of the headphone jack.  Test three was on pause, as I searched my travel gear for a pin. We had to leave the hotel, so I juggled my iPhone, the pin and the steering wheel as we meandered over to pick up the rest of the family.  Again, my wife is unbelievably supportive, so she only yelled at me a few times to pay attention to the road.  After careful prodding, the grain of rice fell out but the iPhone shut off.  I thought I was going to have a heart attack as I tried in vain to get it to start again.  After a few painfully long seconds it started and … worked perfectly.  Our vacation was over, everyone else was disappointed and dreading the coming work week, but I was smiling ear to ear.

Summary:  My unscientific, one data point study brought me to the conclusion that sushi rice saved my phone.  The technique worked for me and I haven’t seen any side effects from the event.  Could I have tried to reboot right after the spill?  Probably.  Would it have fried my little phone?  I have no idea.  All I know is that leaving it overnight in sushi rice worked. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I hope you get as lucky as I did.

On the other hand, you would probably have more sense than I did and avoid the spill in the first place…

~ab

After all that, I was utterly stupefied to learn that I had missed the biggest, humdinger of an argument for the upgrade.  I went on Gazelle.com to try to sell my old Blackberry and iPod and discovered that  Blackberry + iPod really does equal an iPhone.  I had known this would be true functionally (phone + music player = iPhone), but I had never really thought that selling my old hardware would cover the cost of my new stuff!  As a thank you to Gazelle, I thought I’d give them a bit of a shout out.  You will get more money if you try to sell your stuff with Craigslist, but the added convenience of this service is worth checking out.

Using the site is very easy, head over to Gazelle.com and enter your product in the search field.  In the example below, you can see when you start typing, the products that match appear.  Make sure you select the right “generation” or model of your phone or gadget because the price given will be based on this information.

Once you’ve found your gadget, choose Search and you’ll see some questions that will help Gazelle refine their offer.  Obviously, a gadget with the original cables and one in good condition are going to better than those which are broken and missing accessories.

If you like the price, click on Add to Basket and the site will ask you for your address so that they can send you a prepaid box!  They’ll also allow you to select how you want to get paid.  If you choose Amazon gift card, you get an extra 5% back…

The trick to making this site work for you (as I see it) is to clean house.  Do all of your electronics in a big batch and you might be surprised by how much cash you get back.  It beats the heck out of random meetings at Starbucks so that you can sell someone your iPod from college :)

Good luck selling your gadgets.  Know of a better place to sell your stuff?  Shout it out in the comments.

~ab

6am ( 5am CST) – woke up in NYC and unplugged
1 hr music on the plane – anti-screaming baby white noise.
2 hrs in Airplane mode – reducing consumption I suppose.
1 hr talking on arrival – conference call.
20 min facetime – interactive utilities repairman visit with my wife at our apartment on her phone.
30 read emails – over the course of the morning
10 sent emails
2 photos – whiteboarding session capture
1 video (<20 sec) – simply goofing off
1 youtube clip – again, goofing off
Google Reader push all day – I read the odd article while I walk between meetings.
Exchange push all day – email is set to PUSH.
50 + text messages – Wifey and I like the chat feature.
4:30pm CST – Check point: 48% battery life.
3 app downloads – I’m still learning what is good out there…
Chatted another hour – Calls for work + personal
20 more text messages – Wifey and rental car arrangements with the team.
more emails – they just keep on comin’
9PM CST – Checkpoint: 18% battery remaining… plug in phone to sleep.

That’s not bad.  My blackberry had slightly better battery life, but I couldn’t do a few of those things… Also, it’s not like I really need to facetime every single day… Anyway, hope this helps someone decide if this is the right phone for them.  I was using it for 16 hours and still had 1/5th left to go.

Good luck in your mobile decisions.

~ab

In truth, I get it. The idea is so simple: click a button, pay $100 for a year and receive your push mail, contacts, calendar, storage for your photos and files, plus a “find my iphone” application all in one handy interface to your computer. However, it forever irks me when I’m told about these services as if they are the only game in town. I mentioned my doubt to the Mac Store genius a few days ago and was told “yes but MobileMe is seemless and far less complicated”…

That sounded like a challenge to me, so I wrote out my alternative to MobileMe system.  I thought it would take longer, but it’s actually quite simple.  Here are my choices:

Push Gmail, Calendar, Contacts

Comes straight from Google for free (Mail was included back in September 2009) and here are the steps to set it up.  When you make a change to your email, calendar of contacts, the change appears almost instantly on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Photos

If you’re using Gmail, you have a Google Account. This means you have a Picasa account, even if you haven’t activated it. Just head over to picasaweb.google.com. Your storage is shared with your email (most people have about 7GB). If you need more space, it’s available for a reasonable rate (see my picasa post for more details).

Storage (iDisk)

Dropbox is a service I’ve talked about before.  It’s easy to use and it integrates with both Windows and Mac.

See the little icon with the box and the check?  i got that to replace the default MobileMe icon on my Mac with several hours of coding…  HA! Just kidding.  It was as simple as dragging the old icon off the tool bar and installing Dropbox (10 seconds).  I would love a free Mac product to store my stuff, but using Dropbox is a breeze and it’s free.

Find My iPhone

Finally a service that doesn’t have a free alternative.  You setup your MobileMe on your iPhone and the service will help you find it if you misplace it or someone steals it.  I won’t downplay how great this service is, but if it’s the only part of the MobileMe family that you can’t get for free… is it worth paying $100?  There is a similar product on the app store right now (who knows for how long) that’s called “Find my phone” which does exactly the same thing (as far as I can tell) for only $0.99.

The moral of the story

I’m not trying to be a jerk.  My new Mac has made me very, very happy.  Moreover, I’m perpetually enthused about Apple products.  My only complaint is that MobileMe is $100.  It should be free or at the very least, uber-cheap.  If that were the case, I’d convert over from my google alternatives in a heartbeat.

In short, don’t believe all the hype quite yet.  If someone is asking you to pay $100, it should probably be for something entirely unique.

Enjoy!

~ab

If you’re trying to decide between the hot new Nexus One vs. the iPhone 3Gs, here’s the skinny on what sets them apart. Both phones sport the aesthetic appeal of that sleek “wow” factor sheen, but there are a few differences you should know about which may make one a better fit for your needs than the other.

Despite its light weight compared to the iPhone 3Gs, the Nexus One picks up where the iPhone left off in the bench-press department. Its faster processor and more efficient Organic LED screen will keep your video sizzling sharp and your images pinpoint crisp while making the overall screen color reproduction more accurate (though strangely enough the orange colors on some of the YouTube videos I streamed to the Nexus One appeared a little too red for my liking).

The built in camera flash on the Nexus One is a very useful feature in low-lighting. It’s also a feature that the iPhone currently lacks, though rumor has it that Apple already put in a big order for flash devices for its next generation of iPhones. No doubt Apple will also be ramping up its camera resolution which is currently only 3-megapixels on the iPhone compared to the whopping 5-megapixel deliciousness of the Nexus One camera.

Unlike the iPhone, the Nexus One sports a full hands-free driving GPS navigation system with turn-by-turn directions functionality included right out of the box. On the iPhone, you only get the standard Google maps directions right now which is basically a little dot moving around on a 2D map…not very impressive unless you are willing to shell over the cash for a third party navigation application such as the $70 Navigon or the $80 iGo My Way.

Aside from these extra perks included with the Nexus One, the main point of difference I encountered between the two phones was their dependence upon wireless connectivity. iPhone applications run as smoothly when you are out of wireless range as they do when you are in range because your data is largely saved to the phone and is re-synched when your phone reception returns. This approach keeps your most of your data on your physical phone device, at risk of being lost along with the device if that data has not been synchronized and backed up first.  The Nexus One takes the opposite approach. It seems geared toward storing as much of your personal data as possible on Google’s computer clouds rather than on your phone’s memory. Unfortunately, while it does mean that your data is theoretically safer, it also means that you have to have a strong wireless connection for many of your applications to be useful. This is particularly true if you’re looking to leverage some of the coolest features Google provides such as voice recognition (see below).

The included Android Calendar application is a perfect example of why storing data on the cloud isn’t always the best solution. The included Calendar application is barely functional without a direct link to the internet, and it will not operate unless you have first assigned it to a preexisting Google Calendar account. While these limitations may not be an issue for someone who already uses Google Calendar and who has frequent internet access, I found it an unnecessary burden, and wasn’t thrilled about being forced to use a the Google Calendar which was only recently endowed with integrated Task features.

There are a few other ‘gotchas’ you should be aware of before you buy, such as the not-so-multi-touch feature of the Nexus One’s touch screen. The iPhone’s multi-touch feature is more than just fancy hand-waving; it allows you to use more than one finger at a time to interact with your mobile phone screen. This makes the phone easier to operate and cuts down on the number of buttons that would otherwise clutter its interface. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Nexus One. Though the Android interface itself has been given an appealing facelift, (with live animated backgrounds and the like), it is currently limited to single touch functionality. [Note: You can enable multi-touch yourself if you are brave enough to attempt a ROM hack on your Nexus One].

Another iPhone feature I missed in the Nexus One was a simple notepad. You may be able to download one from the Android Market, but not having one pre-installed is inconvenient, and it makes taking notes or jotting down ideas difficult when no pen and paper are handy. If you’re creative, you could record videos of yourself talking and then sync them with Evernote, but if you’re looking for more direct digital copies of you paper masterpieces, check out the Scan2PDF Mobile application which instantly converts phone photos of your notes into fully searchable PDFs.

As any personal trainer will tell you, you won’t see your best results until you’ve put in the necessary hard work and preparation. In the same way, the Nexus One really starts to shine brightest once you start using one of its most underappreciated yet most awesome features, its voice recognition technology. Leveraging the technology it has long been toiling over for its Google Voice telephone service, Google’s Nexus One makes searching as easy as pressing a button and telling your phone what you want it to find. Seriously, it’s that simple! After a few tries, the phone will train itself to recognize your voice patterns and will identify pretty much any word you throw at it. And since every search you do is logged with Google, I’m guessing that your subsequent search patterns will be used to teach the software so that it continually gets better at recognizing which of your verbal commands it interpreted successfully.

Even more useful, and novel by comparison to what the iPhone offers, is the voice-to-text feature which magically transcribes whatever you say to your phone into an email or text message. This voice recognition feature, in particular, turned out to be a big time saver for me, just like using voice recognition in the built-in GPS navigation made hands-free navigation that much easier and safer while driving.

If you currently have an iPhone and are looking for those extra features that will squirt a few more ounces of productivity into your life, you may want to wait until the next iPhone iteration comes out. The additional benefits the Nexus One offers are mostly under the hood, and while they do add up, the margin of difference they make depends upon how ambitious you are about tackling the learning curve burn cycle, especially if you’re already acclimated to the iPhone interface. On the other hand, if you aren’t in love with the iPhone or if you are upgrading from a previous non-iPhone model and are looking for a top of the line phone with tremendous long-term potential, the Nexus One is probably your best bet.

And in case you’re still deliberating over the technical details behind the gloss, I recommend checking out Gizmodo’s definitive smartphone comparison chart for a great side-by-side comparison of these top two contenders.

~jp

Justin Palmen is a recovering technoholic with a passion for everything fast, mobile, and cloud enabled.  When not working in cyberspace, he enjoys traveling to exotic locations and would love to travel in real space some day.  He’d also love to receive your questions or comments at jp@justanasterisk.com

In a discussion about possible posts with some colleagues, I realized that there were subjects that you might want to know that I either don’t want to or simply shouldn’t write about.  I say shouldn’t because it’s not an area of expertise or more realistically – someone has already written about it better than I ever could. This post will be a mishmash of links to sites that do what I don’t.  Hopefully, it will provide useful reading.

“Why don’t you write review’s on iPhone/iPod touch apps?”

I’d love to but I’m neither qualified nor quick enough to write useful reviews.  I recommend two simple strategies for keeping up with the fast moving app market.

1. Bookmark this link.  I know it sounds silly but keeping a Google search of “best iPhone apps” will give you a simple starting point for iPhone and iPod touch updates.  As an example, I’m writing this on 1/31/2010 and the results I found were:

   1. Top iPhone Applications – TIME

   2. The 35 Best iPhone Apps Of The Year (So Far)

   3. The Best iPhone Apps

2. Check the following sites periodically:
   1. AppVee – simple reviews on nearly every app I’ve every looked for…
   2. FreshApps – a neat  site where apps are ranked based on “freshness”…
   3. AppCraver – similar to AppVee.
   4. Apptism – another in the same vein (there are thousands of sites like this).  I really just liked the name.

“Why don’t you write about the iPad?”

Ugh.  I don’t have anything against the iPad, but isn’t there enough hype without my rather weak thoughts?  If you are interested, each of the following sites has provided full coverage…

1. lifehacker – more than a few articles on the subject
2. techcrunch – a slightly techie bent
3. Ars Technica – if you want the detailed analysis from all geeky perspectives (I couldn’t find a tag for iPad on this one, but there are plenty of articles).

“Why don’t you do more male modeling?”

Just kidding.

Anyway – this type of post might start to be a recurring segment on just an asterisk.  Keep the questions coming – I’ll try to help in whatever way I can.

~ab