Last year when Apple released the iPhone 3.0 software update, it gave the ability for integration between external devices and applications running on the phone. To showcase this TomTom was featured in the Keynote presentation where they announced not only their turn-by-turn navigation app, but the windscreen mount to securely hold your phone in the car.

So no, this isn’t some kind of crazy just released news, but it had taken some time for the cradle to become available in the Australian market. My thoughts prompting me to write a post however were more around what I feel is the almost obscene price that TomTom are looking to charge for this application & mount.

The price for the application to run on your phone is somewhere in the vicinity of $99, now that is pricey in application standards for the iPhone. Infact this app is one of the highest grossing apps currently in the store – so some people must be buying it. In me swallowing the thought of spending this amount on an application I thought about it and, yes this is probably a worthwhile price to pay considering the costs that would go into developing and providing the service. Then comes the window mount…

The window mount allows you to dock your iPhone on your windscreen, charge your phone, call handsfree, enhance the GPS performance of you phone, and enhances the turn by turn voice instructions. All for the wonderful price of $129.00. My question here then is, with the increased popularity of portable GPS systems they have severely come down in price. What would compel a customer to spend as much on an application and a windscreen mount when you can spend the same amount or perhaps a little more and have a dedicated device which is centred around providing you with turn by turn directions.

The charging of your phone is certainly convenient, hands free calling is also great, however for this a large number of GPS systems incorporate Bluetooth to this this now anyway, or your car may have the function built in. As or the enhanced GPS function, well wouldn’t you get the best performance from a dedicated GPS??

Admittedly it certainly has it’s merits as well, given that if you don’t already own a GPS you can probably get away with a slightly cheaper option in buying the TomTom for your iPhone. You do get the great touch screen on the iPhone which completely beats all of the other touch screens on GPS devices I have used, and it’s one less device to worry about.

So I can see that it certainly has its pro’s and cons, but I don’t see this as something that I would run out and get. Especially given that we already own a dedicated GPS, however when the time comes that the current unit needs replacing, this could be a viable option.

This is a nice and handy little tool so we don’t have to rely on navigating to other URL shortening services like bit.ly or tinyurl. It is only a minor thing I know but if it means cutting out the need to have to navigate to other websites that I don’t need to go to then bring it on!

You will notice when you are creating or editing a post that under where you put the title of the post there is the permalink underneath. Next to the permalink you have the option to edit it, or now ‘Get Shortlink’  as you can see in the screen shot below.

When you click on this it pops up a little window with your shortened URL to copy and paste as you like. For example the shortlink for this post here would look like this: http://wp.me/pDhmW-7p now that certainly beats the alternative that is this: http://lukeandmelissah.com/wordpress-2-9-gets-url-shortening. Especially when it comes to tweets where you are character limited.

Buzz sounds awfully promising in what it intends to deliver, in that it is intended to be a central online place that brings together all aspects of things that you want to share with others whether its just your family or the whole world. If you want to share pictures – Buzz links up with your Flickr or Picasa web albums to ingeniously show off your photos. Same idea for videos from your YouTube account, or tweets you publish from your Twitter account.

Buzz allows you to link up all of these aspects of your social networking life and share them. I guess what it intends to do is to give a central location so that there is no need for you to post to twitter, do the usual copy and paste and re-post it for your other friends on facebook who don’t use twitter. While doing this is does away with the need for users to navigate away from Buzz as it shows videos and pictures as part of the timeline that you’re viewing.

There are a few detractors here, as with any social network it relies heavily on you’re friends also being a part of the same online community. If you have a lot of friends using Gmail already or that you communicate with through Google Talk etc you will probably find that Buzz works really well for you. However if you – like me – have become so centralised around Facebook I’m seeing may not work as well for me. Where is the fun of posting and putting content into a social network that never gets any attention from the people I want to see it.

Apart from this as one drawback I see, I have had nothing but trouble trying to get this to connect to my different sites. It just seems to lock up and freeze all the time. To add to this it just doesn’t seem to come across as being polished or elegant to use. This may just be a part of me needing to get connected with more people on the service, or it could also be that I’m so used to using Facebook now that I need to re-train my brain.

So it may just be me but it seems to be a little under-ripe, and perhaps in time it will mature and become more of a useful service for me. However, while I’m willing to sign up and give it a go I just don’t know whether it is going to be a game changer for me. If you have any suggestions for getting more out of Buzz or have opinions one way or the other about the service feel free to leave a comment and let us all know what you think.

It will be the third anniversary of the iPhone since the 1st Gen (America Only) was released in 2007, and two years since the worldwide release of the 3G iPhone. To me this means one thing! All of the customers – worldwide – who purchased the 3G and in doing so signed up for a 24 month contract, are coming up to the expiry of their contract. What this means is that Apple will need to have something on offer to all of these customers with expiring contracts otherwise they will see people jumping ship to other recently released iPhone competitors.

Hardware wants…

I would love to see a front facing camera in the iPhone. I think that this is something that has been lacking since the introduction of the device. Just look at that awesome large screen, this is a perfect device for video calling either over a cellular network call or via a VOIP service like Skype.

A revised design. While the style of the iPhone is now almost iconic. The look of the phone itself has almost (in my opinion) started to date a little in comparison to some of the other smart-phones that have been released lately. I know that they have already done the phone with the metal back on it. But wouldn’t it be really nice to see an iPhone that utilised the unibody aluminium design like in the Macbook Pro’s – even though I know they ditched the old aluminium design for signal quality issues, but I can still want it right??

I would expect to see a newer, higher resolution screen on the device also. Technology has come a long way since the phone was originally released, and I can only imagine it would be inevitable for a new version of the phone to possess a better screen.

It would also be nice to see a refinement in the quality of the few buttons that they use on the device. To me the side buttons feel a little cheap, and not only that, I know of cases where both the flip switch between normal and silent modes has gone bung as well as where the ‘home’ key gets used so much that it also goes into a state of non-responsivness.

Software wants…

As far as software goes, the first thing on my list here is a big cry out to Apple. Please, please, please fix the damn Mail app. This program is so clunky and painful to use if you have any more than one email account. The way it expects you to have a separate inbox for each and every mail account is certainly not elegant, nor is the four of five finger taps it takes to get between two accounts. They need to simplify this and give you the ability to have one main inbox like they do in the Mail app for the Mac.

Ringtones are no problem on the iPhone, its simply a matter of either forking over a dollar or two and buying the ability to make one through the iTunes store. Or if you have a few more moments spare you can make you own either through Garageband for Macs, or through iTunes for PC. However I really think that it is time they opened up the ability to either buy additional SMS & Alarm alerts, or to give the ability to make them like it is done with ringtones.

One of the last things that I would love to see added to the software capabilities of the iPhone is the ability to have badges for apps like Mail, Messages, Phone appear on the ‘unlock’ screen after you have just woken your phone up so you don’t have to physically unlock you’re phone just to see whether you have new mail or have missed a call.

These are just a few of the things that I would love to see in the next revision of the phone and its software. Its a matter of a few months yet before we will even know. I’m just wishing and hoping *fingers crossed*

Luke

This is only one of a few stories like this recently. The other most notable one in recent times is that of the battle between Finnish company Nokia and computer company Apple. The contention here was similar in nature to that of Kodak in that Nokia is claiming that Apple is infringing their patents in many of the ways that the iPhone works such as multi-touch technologies. Apple true to form have of course counter sued Nokia claiming that in fact Nokia is exploiting up to 13 patents that Apple holds.

I do understand the importance of companies in such highly competitive markets to protect their competitive advantages however it almost seems as though the ‘underdog’ company, in these cases Nokia & Kodak are suing to help bump up their incomes.

Would it not prove more productive for them to put the energy and money into developing products that have increased appeal to the consumer? I would certainly prefer to see companies pouring their resources into developing some compelling offerings rather than into senseless efforts to gain a quick buck. Not only that, but what what does all of this legal action mean for the end price that the customer needs to pay ? Well when a company is paying out big bucks for lawsuits and lawyers it must get factored into the pricing of their products some how.

Unfortunately it does seem to be part and parcel of operating a business in todays litigious environment so in a way I suppose we will see this more and more as it becomes more important to protect your intellectual property and the things that you have that give you an advantage over your competitors.

It really has become apparent to me that before you even consider illegally downloading a movie or song the Music & Movie industries already have you labeled as a thief and a criminal, otherwise why would they show the same rotten message at the beginning of every movie. In my opinion these industries are petrified of being left behind as new media overtakes them with more modern distribution methods leaving them with no means of income.

It is truly disgusting that after you go to the cinemas and pay anywhere between $15 to $30 dollars for a ticket and some overpriced food you then get accused of being a pirate with this message they continue to press on with. Does this seem a little wrong to anybody else? Shouldn’t these ignorant companies start moving forward with the rest of us in seeing that adding copy protection to absolutely everything isn’t actually helping any cause. Pirates know how to get around copy protection, and copy protection is only a major pain in the proverbial behind to all honest citizens of the world.

I say that its a pain for all honest citizens in that content we have legitimately purchased is so laden with copy protection that it is almost impossible without some level of technical knowledge to actually transfer a movie that you own from a DVD to your iPod to view on the go. These companies are actually game enough to expect us to go and purchase another electronic copy to achieve this same end result.

This plain insanity on the music & movie industries behalf became really apparent to me today when I came across this article Woman arrested for trying to record ‘Twilight’ on digital camera from American newspaper Chicago Sun Times. Essentially the gist of this story is that the Woman was holding a surprise birthday party in a Cinema, and legitimately enough was taking a video recording of the party on her camcorder. The insane theatre manager then decided to go on a rampage after seeing her video recording and call the police who proceeded to search the tape and arrest the woman because there happened to be footage of the Twilight movie ‘New Moon’. Which had been captured accidentally.

This is all a little over the top if you ask me and it might be about time for these industries to wake up to themselves and realise that trying to act like anti-piracy God’s isn’t going to get them anywhere fast. They need to accept that things change and innovate new ways of delivering their content while treating their paying customers like humans rather than assuming off the bat that they are criminals.

]]> http://lukeandmelissah.com/were-all-criminals-according-to-music-movie-industries/feed 0 http://lukeandmelissah.com/google-chrome-for-the-mac-is-here http://lukeandmelissah.com/google-chrome-for-the-mac-is-here#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:23:22 +0000 Luke http://lukeandmelissah.com/?p=425 It was back in January of 2008 when Google first released their very own web browser by the name of Chrome, since that time it had only ever been available to people running windows as their operating system. Unfortunately for those of us who run either Mac or Linux as our main operating systems we weren’t able to get in on the action of this new browser. Ever since the launch however Google had said that there were plans for a Mac and Linux based version of the browser which has now arrived.

I downloaded it late last night and thought I would have a quick browse around with it. I almost always use Safari on the Mac which I consider to be a very fast web browser and on par with Firefox, but upon opening up Chrome and using it for a little while you do notice the speed in which web pages load. Speed is always something that we are looking for in a web browser because we all want the fastest load times possible and Chrome certainly doesn’t disappoint here.

As far as appearance goes, if you have used the Windows version of Chrome at all you will notice that it is all very similar but with a more…Mac’ish feel to it, the colour scheme has been adapted to better fit within the OS X environment. Although Google have equipped Chrome with a host of different themes that can be added to it as well to change up the look. It does offer the now expected feature of tabbed browsing, however it does so in a different manner to what we are all used to. As mac users if you remember back to when the beta version of Safari 4 was released the behaviour of the tabs was to sit above the address bar? Well this is the same way that tabs are implemented in Chrome – I really like this way of setting out the tabs as it maximises your viewing area which can be especially valuable if you are on a laptop and it is something that I wish had been kept in Safari.

The other neat thing that you will notice is that you lose the search bar that we have come to expect, it is no longer a separate box to type your search into. Google Chrome integrates the address bar and search box all into one and they call it the Omnibox. Therefore if you know the URL go ahead and type it in, but if your not sure use the same box and do a Google (or other specified search engine) search.

One of the other things that has become standard in all modern browsers is the ability to browse the web in ‘private’ mode, Chrome also has this functionality which they call Incognito. Essentially meaning that there will be no cookies or web history saved from sites you visit while ‘incognito’ this is a very good feature if you are using a public computer and would like to further increase your safety while doing internet banking or shopping. I do however like the rather humorous explanation that Google gives about the Incognito function.

All in all this is a very capable browser and I like it a lot! I’m glad it is finally available on the Mac and Linux platforms for all to utilise. Google Chrome is available for download here: http://www.google.com/chrome

And further information about the browser is available here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features_mac.html

This all made me think a little about what actual purpose the ‘Record’ store actually serves in the current world that we live in. One of the biggest differences between the two and reason that I think that online music stores have been so successful is not so much the ease of purchase but more so the ability to pick and choose exactly what songs you want. No longer do you have to spend $30 for an album where you only get two or three songs that you actually want to listen to. It think this is the major appeal, but what about pricing?

While albums available for online purchase all come in at different prices depending on the number of tracks, when comparing their prices to purchasing a CD from a store there is a significant price saving.

I have a feeling that the preference to purchase music on a form of media like a CD may also be a bit of a generational thing as well. Given the fact that in the past people have always had a very tangible experience when purchasing music and movies, essentially they would walk into a store, hand over their hard earned cash and physically get something for it. From what I can see it seems that those generations of people still want that tangible experience. However for the younger generations that are used to the more intangible experience of handling their media I think we will slowly see the need and want to have a physical copy of a movie or music slowly fade, and with it will the need for bricks and mortar record stores. Just the way I see it anyway. What do you think? Let us know in the poll below!!

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In recent times LCD panel makers have been investing a lot of time in LED backlit displays to help improve contrast which was always one of the downsides of LCD televisions, and we are continuously seeing thinner and thinner displays.

As a personal preference I do prefer the picture that plasma television screens give off, they have deeper blacks and better viewing angles and all up I feel they have a superior picture. Whereas LCD has always battled (although they are almost on par now) problems with contrast, ghosting and the ability to view on wide angles.

Panasonic has just released their next generation of Plasma television panels to be included in certain models, this technology has been named NeoPDP. One of the big selling points of this new technology is that the new panels consume less power than previous plasma’s – another reason for people choosing to purchase LCD instead. However the NeoPDP also boasts full 1080 HD resolution with improved analysis of the picture data to supposedly improve the image quality in fast moving images on the screen.

The contrast on the panels have also been improved and they are now boasting 2,000,000+:1 Dynamic Contrast. This is intended to produce blacker blacks while maintaining the proper balance of darks and lights to help reproduce the picture the way it was intended. This is combined with richer graduation technology to help ensure colours are reproduced and even the delicate shades of colours in an image are reproduced accurately.

I’m happy to see that at least one television manufacturer is putting effort into ensuring there is a future for the plasma television so that we can continue to enjoy the benefits that this type of display provides. Below is Panasonic’s latest commercial advertising the new technology.