Last weekend, I was one of the 1 million who was crazy enough to wait on a 3 hour line to buy an iPhone 3G. Until last Thursday, I was quite content to be a BlackBerry user for the foreseeable future. I really liked my BlackBerry 8800. A lot.
So why the switch? Let’s face it…the iPhone 3G is a mighty fine web working smartphone.
As fantastic as the BlackBerry is for letting you connect to your office while you’re on the go, you have to have that office to connect to in the first place. I have a home office so I can telecommute to my Virginia-based job from New Jersey, but lately due to family demands I’ve been out of that office more than I’ve been in it. Next month I’m moving to a different part of New Jersey. The app store convinced me that I can lead a crazy web working life and still get done what needs to get done for my employers without keeping my laptop and its associated gear with me all the time.
Thinking about joining me in switching fruits from berry to apple? Here’s a quick look at what’s to love (and not-so-love) about being a new iPhone owner from the point of view of someone very used to the BlackBerry experience.
When I was invited to have a video chat on my MacBook Pro with SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy to discuss today’s announcement that their software would now be bundled with Dell computers, I was skeptical. I expected to be making apologies for my poor home DSL connection which usually makes VOIP calls and webcam video look and sound like I’m underwater.
I was pleasantly surprised. The SightSpeed software installed easily on my Mac, and the video conversation with Mr. Csathy was crisp, smooth and effortless as compared to any I’ve tried with Skype. He had a fancy headset, but I was just using the MacBook Pro’s built-in speakers and microphone. For once, video conferencing felt approachable to me beyond Apple iChat.
It’s exactly this “good for everyone” mentality that is guiding Dell and SightSpeed’s partnership. Dell laptops will now ship with specially branded SightSpeed software built-in and ready to go with a single click. The software enables users to participate in free, unlimited one-on-one video, audio and text chats worldwide. Users can invite anyone to participate in chats, regardless of whether or not they have a Dell computer. For non-Dell owners, the software can be freely downloaded from the Dell Video Chat website in versions for both PC and Mac. For $9.95/month, users can upgrade to service that allows for 4-way group video conferencing, longer video mail recording (up to 3 minutes) and other features.
It’s okay if you don’t recognize the name Nancy Duarte. You know her work. She is a Principal at Duarte, the agency that designed and produced Al Gore’s stunning Keynote presentation for the movie An Inconvenient Truth. When a business presentation is done really well it can be magical and change your perceptions, as anyone who has gathered for a Steve Jobs keynote knows all too well.
Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Duarte as she is getting ready for the August release of her new book, slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. While her firm is best known to the public for their work on An Inconvenient Truth, they boast a client list of many Fortune 500 companies.
Not everyone is going to have the chance to deliver their presentation in front of millions with a 50 foot screen behind them. As web workers, we’ve all suffered through those webinars where you have half an eye on the boring, dry PowerPoint in the WebEx window and half an eye on your email. A few of us have had to present such webinars. They’re tough. You have no feedback from body language or eye contact. After all, you can’t hear people nodding and smiling, you can only imagine their nose hitting the keyboard as they doze off. These presentations can be almost as painful for the presenter as the attendee.
Never fear. Nancy offers us some tips for engaging an audience while presenting remotely…
When talking mobile platforms, we tend to consider Symbian a separate platform along the lines of Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone. Now it’s official:
Nokia, already a stakeholder in mobile OS maker Symbian, has announced that it will buy the remainder of the company and throw all the assets into a new platform called the Symbian Foundation, which will unite all the flavors of Symbian into a single, common software platform that will go open source in two years. Major mobile players such as Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone have all signed on.
Om Malik offers considerable analysis of what the new Symbian Foundation means to the industry and its stakeholders. What do you think it means, if anything, to the mobile web worker?
When we review a new web office/productivity/collaboration application, we tend to focus on the features. To get everything we’re looking for, we tend to have to use many of these applications at the same time.
Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni isn’t convinced this is the direction we should be heading. He’s so sure that smaller, more specialized web office plugins are the way of the future, he left his job as Sr. Engineering Lead for Adobe ConnectNow to start Balsamiq Studios. It’s a startup focused on “adding flavor to web office suites,” launching today.
I spoke with Peldi about his vision for web office plugins and what it all means to the web worker.
So you’ve got precious few seconds in between tasks and you want to check out some online video to clear your head, get entertained or maybe even learn something?
Don’t waste your time mindlessly clicking around YouTube. Instead, head over to our sister site’s new baby (does that make it our nephew?) NewTeeVee Station and figure out what’s worth watching.
Are you thinking of getting a new iPhone 3G next month? Do you like to send/receive text messages? If you’re thinking of lining up on July 11, you’ve already budgeted the $30/month for the data plan. But did you know that you should also select a separate messaging plan?
OM: Has there been a change in the cost of data plans?
RDLV: The data plans are different on the 3G iPhone versus the 2G iPhone. Consumers will pay $30 a month every month, while enterprises will pay $45 a month. This is what you pay us on other PDA devices such as Blackberry Curve. The SMS messages are not bundled anymore, and you pay for what you want. Again the prices are based on what you buy.
What he neglects to mention is that the $45 PDA plan for BlackBerry is also available to consumers (it’s the plan I have on my BlackBerry 8800) and that it includes 1500 text messages.
How much more will this set you back? AT&T will charge you $0.20 per message sent and received if you don’t have a plan that includes messages. It adds up quickly. No warning until the bill comes. No way of returning unwanted messages to sender. Plans start at $5 per month for 200 messages, going to $20 per month for unlimited messages. That’s on top of the data and voice plan.
The old iPhone rate plan was $20 per month and included 200 messages.
Last weekend, my mother-in-law, a recent Mac convert, sent an email out to family with 111 photos embedded in the message. Yes, one hundred and eleven. My synagogue has been trying to save postage fees by emailing out the monthly bulletin…a PDF file that has averaged 3-6MB in size every month. My inbox is always overflowing with attachments from my co-workers.
Still I have to wonder…is this a problem that really needs solving?
This isn’t about the 75 MB video file. Even the novice knows that email won’t work for sending files that big. The challenge lies in the smaller, but still-too-bulky-for-email type files–photos, audio, PDFs, etc. The space-filling stuff folks attach to email without thinking twice.
It’s okay if you don’t recognize the name Nancy Duarte. You know her work. She is a Principal at 
Last weekend, my mother-in-law, a recent Mac convert, sent an email out to family with 111 photos embedded in the message. Yes, one hundred and eleven. My synagogue has been trying to save postage fees by emailing out the monthly bulletin…a PDF file that has averaged 3-6MB in size every month. My inbox is always overflowing with attachments from my co-workers.
