Ken Summerall,Jr.
Sent from my iPhone
Follow me on Twitter – www.twitter.com/ksummerall

Ken Summerall,Jr. Sent from my iPhone
Follow me on Twitter – www.twitter.com/ksummerall

1. Buy 2 Kodak Zi8 camcorders, small tripods and wired lav mics
2. Buy a 27″ iMac
3. Get Final Cut Express
4. Get an Elgato Turbo.264HD encoder
5. Hire a Motion Graphics Designer to produce bumpers for your videos (He can add titles in FCE)

As I thought about the advice that I was giving him I was floored at what he would be able to do with this. It is amazing how far video has come in just a few years.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Did I miss something?

My wife and I decided that she “needed” an iPhone4 as well so this morning I decided to take a foolish run to our local AT&T store since today was the first day they were supposed to have the iPhone in stock for walk in purchases. I wasn’t really planning on finding one when I arrived at 8:45 am this morning, in fact, I was expecting to see a big line at the store. To be honest, it didn’t really matter because I already had one on order from Apple but it wasn’t going to arrive until we left for vacation in three weeks. I thought, what the heck, let me just drive by and see what the situation is.

When I arrived at 8:45 and saw very few cars in the lot I knew one of two things was going on, either they were already sold out or for some reason no one had shown up when they opened at 7am. I went in to inquire about an iPhone to be told that they had sold out but……..they were handing out tickets for the next shipment that would…get this…be there in a few hours, probably before lunch. Score! I gave them the info they needed to reserve an iPhone for Mickey and while they were doing that, I pulled out my iPhone and cancelled my Apple order!

A few hours later I got a call from Eric at the AT&T store saying that my phone was in. Nice! I went to the store and picked it up, they even let me pick it up without activating it so that I could activate it at home so that my wife wouldn’t miss any calls since I would have her new phone with me for the next few hours.

All in all it was a very positive experience. I will never say that AT&T is perfect and I am certainly not an AT&T fanboy, but they have taken a lot of hits over the past few months and it is time for some positive feedback.

Now I just have to take this thing home and get it set up!

1. The packaging is just what I expected, pretty much the same as my original 3G.

In the Box

2. It is thinner and slightly narrower than my 3G and even though it weighs the same it feels slightly heavier in the hand. It seems A LOT smaller than the 3G.

Much Thinner than the 3G

3. The fit and finish is exceptional. This thing is beautiful just like the unibody MacBook Pros. It seems very sturdy and very well built.

4. I love that just about everything that I need to know about my phone is included in the 20 page fanfold booklet. I remember the days of getting 150+ page books with other phones. This shows the usability of the iOS. The compactness and simplicity of the “Owners manual” is especially encouraging to me since my wife will be getting her first iPhone in a few weeks and this will make it a lot easier for her to learn how to use it.

Getting Started Guide

5. Once I updated iTunes the process of registering and restoring my phone was painless. Except that iTunes crashed in the middle of the initial sync after restore. That may have been because AT&T activated the phone right at the beginning of the process and caused a hiccup. (hey, when you can blame something on AT&T you take the opportunity!)

6. Speaking of activation, it took all of 2 minutes for the activation to take effect after I went to att.com/Activations and plugged in my info. I was a little concerned because the instructions that appeared after I had entered my info did not match what AT&T had sent me earlier. They indicated on one screen that I should turn my phone on and connect it to iTunes and on the other said that I should leave it off for at least 15 minutes. That was impossible since my phone was already connected to iTunes.  They promised dire consequences if I turned it on in less than 15 minutes, oops.  No problems here.

AT&T's Activation confirmation

7. OK, I understand the reasons for this but it is annoying since I wasn’t ready for it.  When you restore from backup your passwords do not restore.  This results in a pop-up everytime the phone tries to check your mail, sync to google calendars, etc. The problem is that the pop-ups almost block you from getting the passwords entered.  Once while I was entering a crazy long PW a new pop-up came up and interrupted my typing. Arghhh.

8. The Display on this thing is amazing.  Very crisp. Very Bright. I think that you really have to see it live to appreciate it. All of the photos that I have seen online do not do it justice. Text is much easier to read. All I can say is that you need to see it live. It is absolutely amazing.

Retina Display is crazy good.

9. Snappy.  That is the only way I know to describe the performance.  I use Tweetdeck and had almost given up on using it on my phone because it was terribly slow. On the new phone it is very snappy.

10. I don’t know why but typing seems a little easier on this phone.

11. The volume buttons are a big improvement.  The old rocker style was fine but the separate buttons feel more solid. I always felt like I had to press the rocker switch too hard to change it.

Alright, those are a few of my initial thoughts.  Overall, this phone is a big improvement over the 3G, I can’t say about the 3GS because I never had one, but a huge improvement over the 3G. I haven’t tried out FaceTime or multi-tasking but I will at some point. The unified inbox and message threading is very nice. One word of caution, the message threading is based off of the subject line in the email so if you have multiple emails with the same subject they will be threaded together whether they should be or not. Now I’m off to continue exploring my toy tool.

Now this note was not written specifically to me. It was to an Unleash participant. It didn’t have my name on it and Julie (NS Volunteer) has no idea who received her card, but that does not lessen its impact. The fact that volunteers took valuable time to hand-write thousands of these cards is what impacted me. It wasn’t what the card said, it was the card itself.

This card was the cherry on top of the sundae that the NewSpring Volunteers built for me yesterday. It began as I arrived on campus, greeted by volunteers lining the parking lot, waving, smiling and directing me to a parking space in a friendly, efficient manner. Then there were the volunteers that cheered as I got close to the building, those that smiled and handed me my conference packet, the ones that directed me through the doors, those that offered me free coffee, or helped me find a seat in the auditorium. Everywhere I went I was greeted by NewSpring volunteers in brightly colored t-shirts offering me encouragement and help. It was incredible.

I realized two things from all this:

1. Churches can learn from what I experienced yesterday. It was only my second time on the NS campus but I felt at home. I felt as though I belonged there. I know that coordinating all those volunteers was not a simple task but I think that it was worth it. (BTW, from what I hear Unleash is not that different from what NS is like on any Sunday!)
2. Because I did not have to fight to find a parking place, because registration was simple, because everything was easy to find, I felt at ease as I entered worship. I was ready to worship because distractions had been removed by an awesome team of volunteers.

Imagine if more churches made everyone (not just guests) feel that welcome on Sunday morning. I think it would go a long way.

Thanks NewSpring Volunteers!