Niki Dinsey on... whatever

iPad vs Netbook - on Holiday

Just a little on our latest holiday to the Isles of Scilly last week. We camped on St. Agnes, the most westerly “off-island” and I have to say it was fantastic. Quite expensive but I can easily see why our neighbours come back year after year. Speaking with one couple in a lovely 80’s monster tent they said they had seen kids our age grow all the way from 3 & 4 though to teenagers.

It’s safe to say we’ll be going back again, probably in 2012 when the kids are a bit older.

Anyway, seeing as I like talking about tech I thought a quick post about two of the devices I took with me worked out. The Jolicloud loaded Asus Netbook and the Apple iPad.

Easily the most useful device was the netbook, both devices were used daily, but the iPad was only used as a kids games machine where the netbook worked out really well as an emailer, browser and movie machine. 

Firstly just getting content onto the netbook was extremely easy, a 600Mb AVI file would work without any issues at all. I dumped our entire collection of Disney films to the device as usual 6 hours before we left to get in the car and drive to Penzance. The netbook plays 4(!) whole movies on a single charge. Trying to upload my AVI files to the iPad was a whole other experience, basically the device will not play files without conversion. Conversion is easy enough using Handbrake on Mac, problem is Handbreak every frame in the whole movie needs converting, which mean per movie to convert I would need to spend 45 per 90 min flick! so with 6 hours to go.. the ipad had no movie content.

The other thing to mention is just how difficult it seems to be to create any word processing content on the iPad. With the kids hogging the netbook to watch movies in the late afternoons (after trekking around the island), my wedding speech for Ian had to be written up on the iPad. The problem is that although it works /ok/ to create content, editing or cutting which without a proper set of cursors ok *keyboard* writing anything substantial becomes very laborious.

So to end this quick post, the netbook is easier to use for creation, where the iPad is better for consumption but with the problem of taking your existing content to the device, plus the problems with editing content it makes the device in a lot of ways.. irrelevant.

Completely unimpressed with the Android day to day

For a few short weeks I have been using the HTC Desire as my main phone, swapping my O2 SIM from my aging iPhone 3G to the Desire while waiting for the iPhone 4 to arrive on the scene.

To be honest so far, with light usage using a PAYG t-Mobile SIM I’ve had no problems with the Desire at all. But since moving over to it full time I’ve seen a gradual but constant decrease in performance or the device. Even to the point where somebody is calling me and I can’t for the life of me click the “answer” button and get a response.

I’m really sure this has something to do with the multi-account linking aspect of the phone. This initially was one of the greatest WOW factors of the phone, within seconds of unboxing I had all my contacts and linked to facebook/twitter everybody had pictures, birthdays and even telephone numbers I didn’t previously have.

This was all tickety-boo until I tried to use the phone in anger properly. Curtain contacts were being given the wrong “primary mobile number” (with a missing 0 at the start) meaning I couldn’t call them directly from the contacts list and not obvious way of changing this primary number. I had to rely on the incoming numbers to call people back with the right number. Then I started to get the dreaded “arrowed circle in the top toolbar menu”… When this bugger turns up, the phone grinds to a halt and you can barely swipe screens and couldn’t make a call even if your life depended on it. With this sync icon the phone would also get EXTREMELY hot, hotter that the outer layer of the sun I do believe.

So I’ve done the old “standard: everything I could thing of” process. Clean out the apps, delete anything non-essential, wipe out all the widgets… but with no joy, so the next move is a complete rebuild.

So…. is Android the answer to everything bad about the iPhone? in a lot of ways yes, but certainly this release isn’t and I’ll bet a tenner the next one isn’t that better.

Roll on v3 in November [make believe from today’s news sources], until then a factory reset and wait for 2.2 to reach the Desire

iAd - Apple misses the trick and plays catch-up

I’ve just been reading a couple of articles from last weeks PPA conference:

PPA Conference 2010: Publishers warned ‘Apple expect to make money off our backs’

PPA Conference 2010: Publishers struggling to generate revenue from apps

This seems to be about two things, and they’re getting mixed up:

1. iAd - Apples soon to be released ad platform.
2. In-app purchasing

A lot of what is being discussed here is speculation (or maybe dawning realisation) about iAd. The problem is, as I understand it, publishers are worried that they are moving from a print medium with an advertising market where you earn 100% revenue to this new world where iAd will take 40% (which I think is the same cut as Google’s AdMob).

But what you have to remember with Adsense, AdMob and iAd is that you don’t need to actively do the selling like in the print market. These companies simply serve ads hopefully relevant to the content you’re publishing. It makes monitising your app/publication easy, you just have to bend over a little ;)

There is however, absolutely no way Apple will turnaround and ban all other advertising platforms (biggies like AdMob, or home grown), on future apps or devices. If they did it’ll bring down an anti-competitive shit-storm that would make Microsoft’s troubles look like a playground squabble.

This means publishers, if you have an army of sales staff that can generate ad placements for your print publications and you have enough niche companies wanting to buy your ad space, then there is no reason to use iAd/Admob et al. Keep the money yourselves, or just like anything else if you want an all-singing tool to help track and manage your ad sales (like Doubleclick DFP) expect to pay out either upfront or ongoing.

In summary I see it like this

1. Apple make pretty computers people love, but are too expensive/niche and it almost kills them
2. Apple notices music is going digital, makes a device (not the first of its kind I might add) then over time a multi-billion dollar industry out of thin air
3. Apple then sees a complacent cellular industry not innovating and take them to the effing cleaners with the iPhone v1
4. Apple notices that millions of developers are begging to build mini apps on their device (largely helped by a lack of Flash) and as if by magic, they make another multi-billion dollar industry out of thin air
5. Apple then misses the fact that all those app developers want to make money beyond the initial sale and start using AdMob, home grown Ads and the like to generate revenue
6. Apple creates iAd for iPhone OS4, deeply embeds it into the development kit reducing the app developer barrier to entry as low as possible, hoping to create yet another multi-billion dollar industry

The second thing being mentioned in those PPC articles is in-app purchasing, this to me is something that should be less important to publishers.

In-App purchasing, again in my mind, is essentially a way of getting your punters to part with more cash for the same thing. Think of it like The Sims being able to sell pack after pack of the same stuff that requires very little development effort. Now Apple of course got their knickers in a twist over this as it could mean they lose out if somebody basically gives away their app only to rake in bucks selling tractors or immigrant workers in their Farmville-style game. I can totally see why Apple would ban this type of activity this unless they get some skin.

For publishers though, what does in-app purchases actually mean? All I can think is Time-Life specials, “William and Kate Middleton’s Wedding Special”. Well in these instances isn’t it more likely in this new digital world you’re going to actually sell this content separately anyway? Maybe I’m missing the point I don’t know.

So I think to summarise you just have to think of Apple as this revenue generating machine that mostly gets it right but sometimes wrong (or late). Yes their definitely without doubt the first out of the starting block Usane Bolt style with this stuff. But the others will catch up quickly and most likely overtake them through simple openness, honesty and innovation just like the second generation browser war (MS IE vs. Firefox).

The smartphone market is much bigger that one shiny Apple device and with HP buying Palm, Google with its Android and Chrome OS it won’t take long for there to be a lot of awesome touch-screen technology opportunities which won’t have an Apple Tax.

Android Update

Just a quick post today, its already been a while since my last post.

I’ve been having quite a lot of fun with the Android device, its got some great features that really does set it apart from the iPhone, not least the lack of restrictions when it comes to what can be installed. Also the SDK I’m being told by a friend is amazing and I can’t wait to start building apps for it.

I’ve been playing quite a bit with trying to increase the battery life, although the iPhone was never terriably good, the HTC desire has been rubbish. I started by doing the normal things like switching off GPS, Bluetooth & Wifi when I’m not using it. But I never really had to do this with the iPhone so I thought there must be a better solution.

Well I think I found out how to fix it!

It all comes down to widgets. Widgets are great to be honest, having them auto-list your calendar, let you know the latest tech news at endgadget or facebook at a glance is great. But I couldn’t believe it when I found out that all these things, including stuff like stocks that I haven’t even setup from the default are *always* pinging the interwebs and updating! No wonder the battery dies in less than 24 hours.

So the solution has been:

• Keep widgets to a minimum, if you want to see facebook or twitter, open the app!
• In “settings” - “accounts and sync”, switch off all the stuff you don’t need instant updates for. So now that means facebook, flickr, twitter & stocks have all been stopped, leaving only weather and gmail.

Just doing the above has seriously increased my battery life, I’m seeing a good couple of days between refills if I’m not using the thing.

I’ll just sign-off with some great apps I’ve found:

1. 3G Watch Dog - keeps track of your data usage over 3G network
2. Appsaver - lets you backup and restore apps etc. to the SD Card (can’t wait for the official solution for this btw)
3. Handcent - great SMS app replacement (you would never see something like this on the iPhone!!)
4. DoubleTwist - “iTunes for Android” Says it all really, but uses Amazon not Apple

Stay tuned for more posts, if I remember :)

My first week with an Android phone..

Its been a while already since I posted! This blog really will be dead before its started.

Well a quick update on the Android semi-adventure, it’s a “semi” as I’m still using the iPhone full time. It kind of remind’s me of the days five or six years back where I had Mozilla installed on my computer, but still had IE6 as my default.. You know the alternative is better than what you’re using, or at least it has such promise, but you just can’t make the “default leap” (..or I suppose it’s like the situation three years back having Ubuntu installed on a partition but still using Windows.. but that’s another story altogether which ends with my first Mac).

So anyway, I’ve had the Android with me at all times and I’m playing with it daily, here is a little rundown.

1, Battery

The HTC Desire battery like is dire, like really, really bad - if it wasn’t for the battery backup charger I carry this thing would die quickly even on idle mode it’s baffling. I don’t know if it’s the OS or the device but this is worse that my 3GS

2, Pay as You Go Surprise

Buying out of contract has found a little gem of a reward, worthy of moneysavingexpert if I could be bothered to tell them.

With just one simple £10 creation top-up for joining t-mobile, they have given me 6 months of unlimited mobile internet! Yes seriously SIX months and I don’t have to spend another penny.

OK so the Desire cost me £399 (justifiable business expense, more info on how that pans out in a later post). But if you’ve got an iPhone out of contract, this is an exceptional deal.

3, Why the iPhone days are numbered (for geeks at least)

You see jailbreaking the iPhone, while fun really is quite annoying, typical story, why shouldn’t I be able to use the device how I want etc. etc.

Jailbreaking means I can tether to a laptop without extra operator charges, it’s unlocked to work with any sim and simple things like turning the brightness up and down in less than a second. Most of all it means you can install applications not scrutinised, rejected, resubmitted, approved etc. by Apple and the lawyer army.

On the Android all of this is wonderfully missing, take tethering to start with.. I plugged the Desire into my Jolicloud netbook and a menu appeared straight away asking me if I just want to charge or share the internet! Seriously.. a pay as you go phone, with £8.25 of credit left on it and I’m currently sat in Morton’s coffeeshop Oxford writing this post on a netbook!

Take another subject, torrenting.. You type torrent into Apple’s app-store and you’ll get one game… yep one game called torrent something, (probably named just to show when people search for torrent apps).  I have rTorrent running on a server somewhere and I really want an app to control it remotely. Type the same thing into Android Market and you come across Transdroid (among many others), a cracking cross-client torrent control application. This equals one happy geek.

This list like this goes on: “turning the brightness up/down is as annoying as on the iPhone” quick search in market, download an app Android warns you this app is a “System Tool” and can “modify global settings” - anyway two seconds later I have an app that can do what I want the way I want on the screen.. It’s not genius, it’s just simple, fundamental control.. This is why for geeks the iPhone will be left behind in the long term. 

4. Android, it’s not going to be fun for everyone

Finally though I’ll end these points on why it’s probably only going to be geeks that move, you see Android is currently not without problems… For instance I have two twitter clients currently on it. Peep - which came with the device and Seesmic which is much much better. They currently compete for my attention, both working at once even though I repeatedly try to force peep to close I can’t seem to remove/tame it. Now I’m guessing it’s obviously being switched back on by some other app, Friendfeed or something but I can’t be arse to work it out.

So my point is say my wife had this problem, she would get annoyed and give up and just live with it, but my Mum for instance would be confused to the point of crying (or calling me). So no primetime, geeklessness consumer market for Android at least at this point.

— Right that’s it for now, I’ve had my coffee and posted to this blog, I have got lots of other things to discuss so you never know.. perhaps this blog will be the blog that makes it long term… I make no promises of not posting videos of cats though along the way.

Niks

MLB.tv

It’s funny really, being British and male, esp. in my part of the Dinsey family I should be football mad. I’ve never really been into it in a big way, although I do like the “run in”.

I have to say though, for the past 4 years, since going to Florida regular with my folks I’ve really started to enjoy baseball. It’s such a great game, mix of cricket and that Americanism pizazz they can only bring to sports.

Since the iPhone I’ve *really* been getting into it, “At Bat” is an excellent app, and MLB.tv, although expensive means that I’ll be able to put games on in the background at work during the working day and stay up to date with the daily in’s and out’s.

So this year, in order here are my teams:

1. Boston Red Sox (Just cuz)
2. Seattle Mariners (Family connections, underdogs)
3. Tampa Bay Rays (Their my “local” team, seeing as my folks have a villa in Bradenton)

I was hoping to not have to pay the MLB.tv subs, but with the iPhone app being so good, and you just know the iPad app is on the way it’s worth the £70 squids over the next 8 months :)