Back and Forth Forever

Tonight 9 EST.

And this is why I look forward to them.

As most of my close friends know, I get a bit nuts-o during political conversations and have the tendency to say mean things to people who follow the other party. Since I’m at work and haven’t had a drop of alcohol in over 24 hours I think now is a safe time to prove that I’m still as biased and rude even when not drunk. That said, here’s my totally condescending and one-sided reason why McCain should not be president.

He’s a lair, two faced, and a coward.

There, that’s done with. I won’t back that up by any facts either. If your head is too far buried in the sand that you haven’t noticed by now then you need to turn off FOX news, and wake up to what is really happening.

On second thought, there might be a few people who read this that are exactly those people I just mentioned: head-in-sand FOX news watching zombies/sheep/sheep-zombies.

The amount of respect I had for McCain was just cut in half… if it was at all possible to divide from zero. McCain choosing to suspend his political campaign and, more importantly, the debates is a ploy. It’s a political stunt. Wow, you’re totally the hero Sen. McCain. The government wouldn’t be able to fix this economic crisis without you. I feel much better now that you’re stepping in to rescue us from our government you clever Maverick, you.

Lets cut the sarcasm for a second and pretend that the government was totally inept and that McCain is the only person that could save us from certain demise.  He’s essentially proven that he’s capable of only one thing, and everything else takes a backseat to what’s right in front of him.  Yesterday Obama said, “Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time.”  He couldn’t have been more right.  Iran, Afghanistan, the Economy, Kim Jong-il, domestic issues, natural disasters, Sarah Palin… he better hope all these horrible issues don’t hit at once.  (See what I did there?)

Lets pretend that there’s a few people out there that don’t quite have their minds made up yet they should have every opportunity to watch the two presidential candidates debate more or less unscripted.  The debates are inherently broken and nothing is truly unscripted but anything is better then nothing… unless you’re scared of confrontation.  Cowardice.

This is a theatrical stunt.  Putting the country first?  Give me a break.  This is a dubious attempt to come off as a hero in the midst of a national crisis.

I seriously hope people see this as what it is.  A stunt.  American citizens have a right to know where their potential leaders stand on all issues.

That’s it, I’m done.  No more politics.

Google has officially announced the first Android phone, G1, which will be released on T-Mobile some time in early October.  I remember when Google first made their announcement that they’d be entering the cell phone marketplace and I was ecstatic.  At the time I was fluctuating between the first gen iPhone and HTC’s 8925, more commonly known as the AT&T Tilt.  Both phones were great in their own right.  The iPhone had a great web browser, was sleek and shiny albeit slow (EDGE) whereas the Tilt was slow overall but had a good deal more features and worked on AT&Ts 3G network.

Overall, the iPhone lacked a ton of features (and still does) that it should have had out of the box.  Thankfully people much smarter then myself did some voodoo magic and opened up the phone to third party applications which were unsanctioned by AT&T or Apple.  The Jailbreak community took off in storm from re-engineering the main screen interface, Springboard, and adding all sorts of useful applications.  Unfortunately Apple would break the Jailbreak applications almost monthly with their upgrades.

Fast forward to July ‘08 and the iPhone 3G and we’re more or less in the same place we were last year, and maybe not a lot better off.  The iPhone 3G added aGPS and connectivity to 3G networks around the world, and most of all they saw the value of releasing a developer API to create and distribute native applications via the Application Store.  At first everything seemed great, a lot of people made a lot of money and if you want to use your phone as a flashlight or play sudoku you have about 100 different applications that will help you reach that goal; and that’s where things get sticky, and the Android phones seem more and more viable.

There’s been a bit of nastiness surrounding the Application Store in the past few weeks, which should be good news for Android phones.  There have been two stories that have gotten pretty good press lately.  The first is a guy who created a Podcast program that will download new podcast shows over the air directly to your phone.  The second application, MailWrangler, brings the enhanced functionality of Google Mail to a native application on the iPhone.  Both applications were rejected from the application store because they rivaled functionality in Apple’s products.  The moral of the story is, make whatever you want for the application store as long as it’s a flashlight application or some variant of Sudoku.  Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch but however great Apple’s applications are an outright rejection based on competition is a poor move.

A few days after these incidents caught the attention of bloggers around the world Apple revised their strict NDA to restrict App Store rejections to be made public knowledge.  Alex Sokirynsky, creator of Podcaster has stated that he “will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted.”  I’d wager a guess that he’s not alone.  Perhaps this will turn more people to release these apps via Cydia, the premier distribution application for the Jailbreak community.  Perhaps it will turn more people to Android.

Apple and Google are very different companies, at least from a third party perspective.  Apple is about making money and apparently stamping out competition, whereas Google seems to welcome competition and rewards worthy competitors.  Not only will the Android application store be unrestricted but they’ll also have a variation of the iTunes mobile store which connects to Amazon’s MP3 store which provides very reasonably priced music free from DRM.

From videos around the web and reading many tech blogs posting about the Android phone I can deduce that the G1 is very first gen.  The interface seems very inconsistent across the board and a bit clunky at times.  It definitely doesn’t have the polished look and feel that you get from the iPhone.  The interface seems a bit less then smooth and doesn’t feel as usable in comparison to the obvious rival.  However, Google long since embraced the Open Source community and their platform will be free to modify by anyone that chooses to do so.  My gut is telling me to hold off on the first round of Google Android phones and wait for things to get cleaned up considerably before jumping on the bandwagon.

Apple seems to be toeing in shark infested waters by restricting the platform that has made them boatloads of money, Google on the other hand is jumping in head first and the water looks mighty nice… maybe a bit cold right now though.

After debating with myself for a long time I finally decided to make the plunge and grab an Amazon Kindle.  After a few days of playing around with it I’m very impressed it.  My biggest concern was if the battery life would really hold up during a long weekend away from home and potentially without power.  The result was all I could hope for.  After having the device powered on and actively used I’ve managed to get about 25 hours of use out of the device with it still being at 1/2 charge.  Most impressive indeed.

The screen is definitely easy on the eyes and does a great job rendering text, although pictures don’t look so good.  It’s about what I’d expect from a greyscale E-Ink display.  There iss minor ghosting of the previous “page” but not enough to be overly distracting.  After switching to the next page the screen will go black for a split second then render the next page.  This is a bit distracting at first but I’ve gotten used to it.

The biggest downside of the Kindle is most definitely the shell’s form factor.  The device itself is small and very lightweight but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to hold it without accidently hitting either the Next Page or Prev Page buttons accidentally.  Maybe with more use or a protective case I’ll be able to get past this obvious design flaw, but out of the box it’s definitely cumbersome.

The Kindle reads a good variety of formats: .mobi, .prc, .txt, .jpg, .gif, HTML, MS Word, and Amazon’s own .azw format.  After a bit of browsing I found that Mobipocket can convert .pdf files to .prc with little effort.  All in all, you should be able to convert any eBooks to a format the Kindle will recognize.

One of the biggest benefits of the Kindle is the considerable discount on purchasing a book from Amazon.  After unboxing the Kindle for the first time it was pretty cool to see that it had been preconfigured to my Amazon account with a personalized “Welcome Aaron” message, which is a nice touch.  I recently purchased “Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China” which can be bought in hardcover form for $18.48 (list $25) or through the Kindle for $9.99.  Most New York Times best sellers are all $9.99 or under so if you’re an avid reader the Kindle should pay for itself in no time.  Whether you purchase the book on the Kindle or on your computer in under a minute the book will automatically download over a free CDMA connection to your Kindle.

One of my favorite features is the search.  I did a search for China and five results came up in the books on my device or I could select Dictionary entries, Wikipedia, Web, or Kindle Store.  Also if you come across an unfamiliar word while reading if you scroll up to that line and click the scroll wheel you’ll get definitions from The New Oxford American Dictionary for all words on that line.

Besides reading books and E-Books you can use the Kindle to play mp3s browse the web and grab RSS feeds.  It’s a wonder that you can do all this without any additional fees.  The internal storage space is relatively small at 200mb but that should be more then enough space for most people, and if not, it’s expandable via an SD memory card slot.  All in all, it’s very impressive for a first gen device and if you’re not interested now I’m sure the next iteration will turn more then a few heads.

There’s a small but active Kindle hacking community that I’m still discovering I’ll talk about that and some cool shortcuts and Easter Eggs after the break. Read more..