Precioussssss.....
I recently underwent a major personal technology upgrade.
This was in two parts. The first was to buy a second-hand Kindle 2 which was being offered on a mailing list I read. I've wanted an e-ink device ever since I read about the technology in the blue-skies column of some computing magazine or other, and the legibility hasn't disappointed: reading on a Kindle is a positive pleasure, nothing like the tiring experience of reading a backlit screen. So far, though, I haven't used it as much as I'd thought I would. One of the main things I bought it for was reading scientific papers; while it's possible to read A4 PDFs on it in landscape mode, it requires a lot of scrolling, and referring back to something a page or two ago is a hassle. This wouldn't be a problem for novels, but I've got a lot of treeware novels I feel compelled to read first. Another intended use-case was for travelling (I always take too many, and simultaneously too few, books whenever I go anywhere), but the only trip I've made since buying it was a cycling-and-camping holiday round Orkney: not ideal for sensitive electronics.
I'm experimenting with converting PDFs to .mobi using Calibre: we'll see if that fixes the excess-scrolling problem.
The second part was an upgrade of my phone. Owing to years of inattention and a major Ugh Field, I was paying an embarrassingly high amount for a phone that just did the very basics: calls, texts, er, that's it. It had a camera, but getting photos off the phone was such a hassle that I rarely bothered to take photos. No Internet, no maps, nothing fancy. I didn't much miss mobile Internet at first, but I've been training myself not to wonder, and the lost opportunities to learn were increasingly starting to grate.
So, I reasoned, I could either keep my existing level of functionality and pay a lot less for it, or I could pay a bit less and get a totally bitching-ass phone¹.
Then I got very, very lost trying to find my way to a pub in an unfamiliar part of town without a map, and decided to go for the second option.
So I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, walked into a phone shop, and asked to see their range of Android phones. The Android-versus-iPhone choice was very simple, since I have access to precisely zero devices capable of running iTunes². I didn't even consider a Symbian or Maemo phone, though perhaps I should have. I had a brief look at the HTC Legend and HTC Desire, but fell instantly in love with the Google Nexus One - it's basically the same phone as the HTC Desire, but with (IMHO) a slightly nicer case design and a noise-cancelling second microphone. Slightly less RAM, but then it doesn't have HTC's proprietary Sense UI (which I didn't want), so it gets on fine with less. And so, after a week of hassle with my previous provider to get my number transferred over, that was the phone I took home.
"Phone"'s the wrong word, though: it's really a general-purpose portable communication, computation and sensor platform. Out of the box it was a street map, an email client, a news-and-weather feed, a camera, a calendar, an address book, a web browser and, yes, a phone; within the next few days it became a device for playing text adventure games, a weight-tracker, a compass, a hiking map³, a star chart, a device for recording my hikes and bike rides, a tricorder, an ssh client, a graphing calculator, and a spirit level. Yes, a spirit level. What would Robert Hooke think? Most recently, it's become a handy reference for arguing with climate change deniers, a facility which I have yet to use in anger.
I've also been working through the Android development tutorials, which have really impressed me; so far, it looks like a very sane and well-designed platform, though my little netbook struggles rather with Eclipse.
But I'm surely missing something. A device like this must be capable of things I can't begin to imagine. So, what else could I be making it do? For those of you with smartphones, what useful/surprising/cool apps have you found? Don't hesitate to mention iPhone apps: I can go looking for Android equivalents, or have a bash at writing my own.
There's one thing my phone definitely can't do, though, and that's dissipate wormwood_pearl's envy³ - which was made even worse when we went round to visit friends a week ago and they both pulled out their new HTC Desires. I guess I know what I'm getting her for her birthday...
¹ Or possibly a totally bitching ass-phone.
² And then there's Apple's distinctly unsavoury management of the App Store, my fear of getting caught on Apple's Treadmill of Shiny, and my general preference for open systems over closed ones. Android's less open than it could be, but hell, give it time.
³ And jealousy; she's remarked a few times "I don't mind you spending time with your new girlfriend, but would you mind not stroking her in front of me?" I think she's only half-joking :-(
This was in two parts. The first was to buy a second-hand Kindle 2 which was being offered on a mailing list I read. I've wanted an e-ink device ever since I read about the technology in the blue-skies column of some computing magazine or other, and the legibility hasn't disappointed: reading on a Kindle is a positive pleasure, nothing like the tiring experience of reading a backlit screen. So far, though, I haven't used it as much as I'd thought I would. One of the main things I bought it for was reading scientific papers; while it's possible to read A4 PDFs on it in landscape mode, it requires a lot of scrolling, and referring back to something a page or two ago is a hassle. This wouldn't be a problem for novels, but I've got a lot of treeware novels I feel compelled to read first. Another intended use-case was for travelling (I always take too many, and simultaneously too few, books whenever I go anywhere), but the only trip I've made since buying it was a cycling-and-camping holiday round Orkney: not ideal for sensitive electronics.
I'm experimenting with converting PDFs to .mobi using Calibre: we'll see if that fixes the excess-scrolling problem.
The second part was an upgrade of my phone. Owing to years of inattention and a major Ugh Field, I was paying an embarrassingly high amount for a phone that just did the very basics: calls, texts, er, that's it. It had a camera, but getting photos off the phone was such a hassle that I rarely bothered to take photos. No Internet, no maps, nothing fancy. I didn't much miss mobile Internet at first, but I've been training myself not to wonder, and the lost opportunities to learn were increasingly starting to grate.
So, I reasoned, I could either keep my existing level of functionality and pay a lot less for it, or I could pay a bit less and get a totally bitching-ass phone¹.
Then I got very, very lost trying to find my way to a pub in an unfamiliar part of town without a map, and decided to go for the second option.
So I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, walked into a phone shop, and asked to see their range of Android phones. The Android-versus-iPhone choice was very simple, since I have access to precisely zero devices capable of running iTunes². I didn't even consider a Symbian or Maemo phone, though perhaps I should have. I had a brief look at the HTC Legend and HTC Desire, but fell instantly in love with the Google Nexus One - it's basically the same phone as the HTC Desire, but with (IMHO) a slightly nicer case design and a noise-cancelling second microphone. Slightly less RAM, but then it doesn't have HTC's proprietary Sense UI (which I didn't want), so it gets on fine with less. And so, after a week of hassle with my previous provider to get my number transferred over, that was the phone I took home.
"Phone"'s the wrong word, though: it's really a general-purpose portable communication, computation and sensor platform. Out of the box it was a street map, an email client, a news-and-weather feed, a camera, a calendar, an address book, a web browser and, yes, a phone; within the next few days it became a device for playing text adventure games, a weight-tracker, a compass, a hiking map³, a star chart, a device for recording my hikes and bike rides, a tricorder, an ssh client, a graphing calculator, and a spirit level. Yes, a spirit level. What would Robert Hooke think? Most recently, it's become a handy reference for arguing with climate change deniers, a facility which I have yet to use in anger.
I've also been working through the Android development tutorials, which have really impressed me; so far, it looks like a very sane and well-designed platform, though my little netbook struggles rather with Eclipse.
But I'm surely missing something. A device like this must be capable of things I can't begin to imagine. So, what else could I be making it do? For those of you with smartphones, what useful/surprising/cool apps have you found? Don't hesitate to mention iPhone apps: I can go looking for Android equivalents, or have a bash at writing my own.
There's one thing my phone definitely can't do, though, and that's dissipate wormwood_pearl's envy³ - which was made even worse when we went round to visit friends a week ago and they both pulled out their new HTC Desires. I guess I know what I'm getting her for her birthday...
¹ Or possibly a totally bitching ass-phone.
² And then there's Apple's distinctly unsavoury management of the App Store, my fear of getting caught on Apple's Treadmill of Shiny, and my general preference for open systems over closed ones. Android's less open than it could be, but hell, give it time.
³ And jealousy; she's remarked a few times "I don't mind you spending time with your new girlfriend, but would you mind not stroking her in front of me?" I think she's only half-joking :-(