freethinking.isdangero.us

I got a Palm Pre

2009-07-14T06:07:21+00:00

So I’ve been using the Pre for about 72 hours now, and after having an incredibly thoughtful drunken iPhone vs. Pre text message debate with a friend last night, I have decided to collect my thoughts in one spot, here. This is going to be fairly straightforward and simple as I haven’t had a ton of time to play around with it yet.

Design

The design of the phone is fairly stunning. As much as I am a fan of Apple’s long legacy of revolutionary industrial design, I think Palm has equaled the iPhone in just general sexiness. Holding it in your hand is an absolute joy. It feels (as Engadget said) like a “polished stone” and fits perfectly into your hand. The weight is just right, not too heavy, not too light. You can tell Palm put a lot of time into making the design just right. Though I had heard and read that the phone feels topheavy with the keyboard out, I haven’t noticed that yet. Even when I was trashed last night I was able to get the keyboard out, type fairly well (considering) and didn’t drop the phone. Having the large lip just below the keyboard really helps give you something to hold on to.

webOS

I have never used iPhone OS regularly, and before the Pre I had been using Palm OS on a Centro for the last year and a half. Before that, I was using flip phones. For this reason, using webOS is like a revolution of sorts for me. Firstly, even for someone who considers themselves very tech-savvy (which I generally do), there is a fairly steep learning curve getting the gestures down and discovering how to do things quickly. But once you figure it out…man. Palm has really made some innovations here regarding how we interact with the mobile device. The gestures let you get things done quickly and efficiently once you’ve figured them out. Swipe right to left to go back, left to right to go forward (in an app), hit the button to get to card view and flip through apps and close them by throwing them up and off the screen. Really intuitive stuff. I haven’t had a single crash of webOS yet, even though my first instinct after turning the phone on was to open as many apps as I could and try to stress the poor TI OMAP 3430 right off the bat. No issues there. On a side note…my first computer (when I was 7 or 8) was a Packard Bell that ran at 200 Mhz and had 72 MB of RAM with a 1 GB hard drive. This tiny little thing I now carry in my pocket has a 600 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. Amazing. Oh and the Pre kicks the iPhone 3G’s ass when it comes to flipping the screen. This wasn’t a 3GS I was racing but it was still about a second behind or so.

Syncing contacts to Google went really well. Took little time for my to have all 125 contacts names, emails and phone numbers there in my Pre. I do have one problem with this whole Synergy thing though—it’s just very, very straightforward. For example, once you set up AIM on the phone, it automatically adds all of your AIM buddies into your contacts. I don’t need “bbpink34” in my phone contacts. It did do a great job of linking AIM with most of my friends, since I use their real names as their aliases. For example, Chris Vincent’s AIM alias on my buddy list is…Chris Vincent. And on Gmail, he’s…Chris Vincent. So it took those contacts and put them in one contact on the phone. Cool stuff. However, when you sync to Facebook, it will just add information on every single one of your friends. I don’t need 400 people in my phone, with the majority of them being only a picture and an email address. The ideas here are great, and to some extent it works really well, but with some tweaks by Palm (which I hope they push in a new update), it could be fantastic. I’m patiently waiting on this to happen, because I think it could really change how we communicate.

Speaking of communicating, the phone does make calls, and it works pretty well. Pretty easy dialer. My complaint here is that I can’t start typing someone’s name and just have them show up and hit “call.” I can do this when texting, but not when calling. Pretty annoying. This was one of the best features of Palm OS and I’m puzzled why it’s not here in webOS. Texting is very cool. One thing Synergy did well was this: when my buddy (let’s call him Rick Steves) was added, it found the Google Contact Rick Steves and the AIM contact Rick Steves and put them together. This means when I go to messaging, I can choose to either text Rick, or send him an IM, all in one place. And it puts these conversations together as to create one nice flowing conversation across different mediums. Very cool. The email works very well so far, although admittedly I haven’t used it much yet.

Music…it syncs to iTunes just like an iPod. Plugging the phone into USB gives you these options: Media sync, which lets you sync to iTunes; USB Drive, which makes it show up on your computer as an 8GB flash drive; and Just Charge, which clearly just charges the phone over USB. When you’re in “just charge” mode, you can easily tap a button at the bottom of the screen to enter USB Drive or Media Sync mode. Very easy to use and pretty cool.

The camera is one of the better ones I’ve used on a mobile device. 3MP and it has a built-in LED flash that works really well. My favorite thing is that (unlike every other mobile camera I’ve ever used), this is actually very snappy when taking multiple pics. When you hit the button, it takes the pic and less than a second later it’s ready to take another one. My old Palm would take upwards of 10 seconds at times to take a second pic. Here’s a sample pic I just ran outside and took of one of my trees:

Apps

While the App Catalog in no way even begins to compare to the thousands available in the Apple App Store, there are several very good apps available, which is to say nothing of the included ones. I’ll break down some of them that interested me:

Calendar—Pretty cool. It snycs with your Google Calendar, which I already use. Pretty basic – add events, remove events and within a minute or so it’ll sync that to Google. So far I’ve been using the Phone to make events, which then sends them to Google, and from there my friends can view them through calendar sharing on Google, and then I sync back to my iMac with iCal. Unfortunately iCal can’t sync back for some reason, I need to figure that out. But, it’s cool that I can update my calendar in several places and it’ll automatically be updated everywhere. This is the Cloud at its best.

Web—Very good browser. In an informal test against my roommate’s iPhone 3G (not S), I kicked his ass in loading pages over wireless-g, and especially over the Sprint/ATT networks, because ATT hasn’t installed 3G here yet. It’s pretty sexy overall, very intuitive and loads pages really well. Flipping the phone and reading in widescreen makes for large, easily readable text. I was able to follow the Royals to defeat in stunning clarity last night.

GPS Stuff—Included with the phone is Google Maps and Sprint Navigation. Google Maps is pretty much the same as it is everwhere: awesome. Sprint Navigation is basically simple turn-by-turn GPS, which is really cool because it’s actually free from Sprint. Most carriers (cough VERIZON cough) will make you pay extra for turn-by-turn and it’s pretty cool that Sprint is letting users actually USE their GPS instead of just trying to milk more money out of them. Maybe this is part of why Sprint lost $30B last year, but I digress.

Pandora—This app is an out of the park home run. I love it. The layout is very basic, the load times are low and it seems to have no trouble streaming over the Manhattan, KS, Sprint network (or my WiFi at home, or the WiFi at several bars in Aggieville). When it’s running in the background, it appears at the bottom of the screen in the alerts area. From there you can skip songs, pause and hit the like/unlike buttons, all without leaving your open application, while Pandora runs in the background. Great stuff, and a really well done app.

YouTube—Basic YouTube app a lot like the iPhone. Videos play in widescreen by default. It works, not a lot to say here.

Fandango—I’ve never used Fandango but it is pretty cool. It uses GPS to figure out where you are and the closest theater, then lists movies and showtimes along with widescreen previews, then lets you buy tickets using your credit card. Once you do buy them, it adds an event to your calendar.

The Sprint Nascar App—Look Sprint, I understand that you sponsor the big Sprint Cup and all that, and that’s awesome, but I don’t do NASCAR, and I don’t need an included NASCAR app on my Palm Pre, and I don’t need it to ask me who my favorite driver is, or anything like that. I just want to delete it…but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to. Yet.

PDF View/DOC View—They work as you’d think they would. Phone does a good job of loading PDFs quickly.

AccuWeather—Similar to the iPhone’s. Gives you weekly and hourly forecasts and local radar, using GPS to figure out where you are.

Connect 4—I downloaded this last night. It’s as amazing as you’d think it would be. Unfortunately it’s a demo, and very addicting, which means I might eventually pay money for fucking Connect 4. colzie-INT

mCraig—Cool little beta app for browsing through CraigsList. By God, if I want a hooker, I can get one wherever I happen to be. Thanks, Palm!

Final Thoughts

This is a really well-done phone by a company with a long history of innovation. After they became stagnant a few years ago, I was worried that Palm would be dead and we’d all end up using iPhones. That would be cool and all, but a little healthy competition is good for everyone. It’s great to see Palm push out something like this, and I think it’s going to save their company and definitely help Sprint out in the process. As ths and I agreed last night, the Pre is probably equal to the iPhone 3GS at this point. It will definitely be exciting to see what both of these companies have in store for us as updates for both webOS and iPhone OS 3 get pushed out, and the Palm App Catalog grows.

Things I learned last night

2009-06-09T07:23:05+00:00

1. Full nude strip clubs are great, but honestly it’s better to just go to the titty bar so you can get a drink
2. Paying $175 for a hotel room and not sleeping in it is awesome
3. “Slot machines” are actually “take Chris Carpenter’s money away machines”
4. Makers Mark is fucking phenomenal
5. The beds at the Hilton in downtown KC are insanely comfortable
6. MSTRKRFT is awesome live
7. I still hate tequila
8. Getting on the roof of your hotel is not as easy as they made it look in The Hangover, in fact it is impossible

My heart

2009-05-29T05:22:23+00:00

My heart is racing down the track in a bright-red car with fuel injection. It has its foot on the gas and its eyes are peeled wide as it maneuvers past the other cars. The competition doesn’t stand a chance, for my heart is racing faster than a hummingbird, a cheetah, a deer, a cat. My heart’s ears flap in the wind as it careens around curves and zips down the straightaway. A look of concern appears on my heart’s face and it nearly loses control. But even with this concern, my heart races on, because it can and because it must. My heart should not consider consequences. It mashes the accelerator flat against the carpet and flies uncontrollably down the track past spectators and farms to an unknown destination, all the while not considering what will she think, what will her parents think, is this a mistake, do I have a condom. My heart only feels the urge to race and does so because it cannot resist.

My heart is racing down the track in a bright-red car with fuel injection.

High dive

2009-05-17T21:46:29+00:00

Climb the rungs, one
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine steps to the tippy top
Shivering hesitation
Frozen solid in the hot sun
Summon courage from within and jump—
Flutter for a moment halfway between up and down
Arcing high, curling tight, air whistling past faster than was previously imaginable
Plummeting triumphant through the clouds of my own personal storm
Rushing fast faster fastest water looming brace for impact
SPLASH

PFC Jake Riley

2009-05-14T22:26:53+00:00

Jake came to camp fresh outta high school.
Nth-generation soldier with a love for jazz.
His dad, and his dad, and his dad, and his dad,
And so on, were soldiers. Jake had to be, too.

Jake could play, though, the sarge called him,
Satchmo reincarnate. Though none of the guys
could ever figure that one out. All they knew was,
you had to tap your foot when Jake played his horn.

The boys piled out of the truck, ready to kill.
Jake thought only of his mute horn back home.
Shoot, Jake, shoot! Aim for the head!
And with tears in his eyes, Jake aimed for his own.

The pickle-king

2009-05-12T03:01:03+00:00

I originally wrote this three years ago when I worked at a sandwich shop. Those times are past, but I thought it would make for a good post while I’m busy studying for finals.

It was around one-o-clock in the morning, and all was well at the shop as I came back from a delivery.

Sandwiches being made. Ice machine clinking. A man talking to a pickle.

There were a few people in line at the moment, and my manager was making their sandwiches. She leaned over to me when I came up to the table to help and whispered that the guy over at the booth seemed a little strange. Her story was that he babbled a little before ordering a pickle, and only a pickle. After we finished making sandwiches for three or four drunks, I took a casual look over and saw that she was wrong.

The man was not a little strange. The man was genuinely and completely insane.

Let me paint the scene for you here: a group of people at a booth, talking loudly about their drunken escapades, another group getting ready to leave with their sandwiches in bags, and in the middle of all the action, a man, alone at a table, gesticulating wildly in a fierce argument with a pickle. It was all I could do not to laugh.

He held the pickle directly in front of his face, examining it closely. He peered at it, shook his head, then rotated it, peered at it again and shook his head once more. He held half of the pickle in one hand, and half of the pickle in the other.

This whole time my manager was busying herself with some chores. I stood transfixed. I couldn’t tear myself away from the shelf I was leaning against. I watched as he studied both halves of the pickle, lining them up side by side, nodding, then shaking his head, then saying something. I was too far away to hear, but still I stood in amazement. It was then that he extricated himself from the booth and stood up.

He glided toward the counter, every step calculated, a walking motion so smooth that his entire upper body stayed completely still when he moved. He calmly approached me and in a very normal tone of voice asked me for a knife.

Knife!

I nervously said something about how we’re not allowed to let customers use the knives, but that if he wanted me to cut his pickle, I could cut it for him. He slowly hovered back to the table, and then slowly came back to the counter, presenting his pickled prisoner to me. He said to cut each half straight down the middle to make fourths. I did so. He smiled devilishly as I did it; getting some sort of joy out of torturing the pickle before he devoured it. He was the pickle-king, and I was the man hired to torture his prisoners before he ate them.

Tears streamed down my face as I completed my dark task.

He took the pickle back, carrying it ceremoniously back to his chosen booth. He sat down and placed the remains of the pickle directly in front of him. It was now quiet enough in the store that I could hear very clearly when he thrust his hand forward in a cutting motion and screamed at the pickle:

“Straight down the middle!”

The pickle-king began to feast, slowly. It took him nearly half an hour to finish his feast, and the look of delight on his face was so genuine that it made me reconsider my life. After this was over, he continued to stare strangely around the shop, even stumbling awkwardly into a conversation with some guys at a booth near him.

After the feast was over, he got up, walked to the front counter, grinned at me and dropped about sixty cents into our tip jar. I suddenly realized that I needed to get very far away from this man and found an excuse to run to the back. There, I found a broom, and on pretense of sweeping, came out to the lobby and watched him from further away.

I watched him walk away as I swept the lobby. He pushed open the door and strolled out into the night, presumably to hunt down and mercilessly torture more vegetables. And in that moment, I was envious of him. In that moment, I wished that I was the pickle-king.

Blogging out of control

2009-05-10T00:24:09+00:00

My blogging history is an interesting one. Every year or so, I get the urge to blog again, and I start one, spending weeks on design and all the assorted intricacies associated with independent blog operation, only to fizzle out in a few weeks, with no inspiration to continue on.

This time, however, I plan to go in a different direction. I aim for this blog to be something more than random stories from my life and commentary on society and politics. Make no mistake, those topics will be covered, but the primary function of this blog will be as an outlet for the creative side of my brain, primarily in the form of poetry and prose. This being my first foray into regular publishing of any kind, I am quite excited to see how it all turns out.

For this reason, I believe my interest and fascination with this blog will remain constant, and that it will last longer than a few months. I need to thank the effervescent Chris Vincent for his help getting this set up. The similarity in our URLs is not by chance; “isdangero.us” was the result of a random late-night AIM conversation (it was totally my idea, by the way). The similarity in our first names, however, is largely coincidental. That’s essentially all I need to explain at this this point, so I’ll end here before I end up rambling nonsensically.