Blackberry Pearl Flip
Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Rachel Murray to the WebWorkerDaily team. Rachel has been building web sites for more than 10 years, and currently manages the online presence of a nonprofit in the Boston area.
I’ve only made the transition from a “regular” mobile phone to a smartphone recently. I had been able to hold off up until now, but then the trusty Razr that I had for three glorious years just gave up on me. After a heart-to-heart with the sales rep at T-Mobile, “we” agreed that perhaps I should try the BlackBerry Pearl Flip for the new contract price of $50 (as opposed to the Razr for $20). I didn’t want to be a slave to yet another device, but he showed it to me, and it actually looked like a regular phone. Read the rest of this entry »
For those of us who earn our living working online, the always-connected lifestyle can have its benefits and its drawbacks. I spend most of my day at my computer, whether I am in my office or working from other locations. When I step away from the laptop, I rely heavily on my phone as a way to check email, Twitter and RSS feeds, and I use it to look up information or get a map to the location for my next meeting. However, it isn’t always clear when using these devices violates the social rules defining acceptable behavior. In the New York Times, Alex Williams shares his views on the topic of smartphone usage and manners, so I thought that I would try to outline my take on appropriate use of devices in various social situations.
Photo by scriptingnews
Conferences and events: For most events, using a laptop or phone falls within the boundaries of acceptable behavior. We use our devices to take notes, blog or tweet about the event, and keep up with our email and other work during these events. Possible exceptions to this rule could be where the event is small and intimate, or where most of the attendees are not computer-savvy and so someone typing on a laptop might seem out of place. Read the rest of this entry »
As you may or may not know from reading my posts, I’m an iPhone guy. I’ve had an iPhone since its launch here in Canada, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Or at least I thought I wouldn’t, but now I’m not so sure. RIM recently unveiled their App Store competitor, dubbed BlackBerry App World, and while home visiting family for Easter this past weekend I had the privilege of installing and demoing it for my father on his Blackberry 8830 World Edition.
Believe me, I went into this with a sufficiently condescending attitude. There was no way I was going to say anything nice about this App Store wannabe, especially not in front of my two cousins, both of whom work for RIM. And I was justly rewarded when I had some trouble installing The Hockey News on my very first attempt. But other than that one minor hiccup, installing and running apps went surprisingly smoothly. Read the rest of this entry »
In an interesting post over at GigaOM, Stacey Higginbotham notes that at the SXSW conference this year, there were far fewer notebooks on display and, correspondingly, a much larger number of people were using smartphones to stay connected.
This certainly tallies with my experience since owning an iPhone, in that I’m far more likely to only tote my phone and not bring my laptop if all I need to do is keep an eye on emails and a few feeds. While at a conference, especially, I’d far rather not be lugging around a notebook when I can keep up to date via email, Twitter and RSS on my phone. Having to carry it around all day is one thing, but also the point of a conference, for me, is to get out and connect with people, something that’s much harder to do if I’m stuck behind my notebook screen, tapping away.
Unfortunately, I can’t use my iPhone as a general-purpose mobile device for doing “real” work: the screen is too small and the keyboard is inadequate for large amounts of typing. So I’m not ready to drop my notebook altogether just yet. But in situations where all I need to do is stay up to date, answer a few emails or maybe catch up on a little reading (via the excellent Instapaper app for the iPhone), say while on a train journey or at a conference, it’s great to be free of having to lug my notebook everywhere — something that I couldn’t have imagined just a couple of short years ago. Maybe in a few years smartphones will have gotten so good that I won’t need to bring a notebook with me at all.
Have you noticed that better smartphones mean that you don’t need to carry your notebook with you as much?
If we didn’t have enough mobility to keep us busy with Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and iPhone, now there’s the new T-Mobile G1 running on the new Google Android platform.
We at WWD haven’t said much about it because none of our team has had a chance to play with one yet. Our co-workers on the network have gotten their review units and posted initial impressions. We’ll have more on the phone as it applies to productivity and web working, but in the meantime, check out these early hands-on reviews.
Read the rest of this entry »
This Verizon Wireless morning announced a new pricing plan for customers. Dubbed “E-mail and Web for Smartphone,” the new package is priced at $29.99. Verizon has aimed this data plan at those who are looking for unlimited e-mail and Internet Browsing.
E-mail and Web for Smartphone is different than Verizon’s previous data plan because it doesn’t include access to enterprise e-mail systems such as Microsoft Exchange. To use this plan, you must have a Verizon Wireless SMT5800, Verizon Wireless XV6800, or a Motorola Q9M.
I have long thought wireless carriers’ data access plans are way too expensive, this new price is more in the realm of a reasonable offering.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
