Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic Mini-Review

Published
by
rob
on January 13, 2009
in Electronics
. 1 Comment

So I have an iPhone 3G. And I’d like better headphones. But I love the mic on the packaged earbuds, so it was music to my ears (groan) when Apple said they’d launched these. Despite not being officially supported by Apple, it does work with the 3G.

In-Ear Headphones 2.0

But they had a fatal flaw: you could hear every sound the cable makes as it hits you while walking (possibly because it uses that odd new rubbery material). So, great sound, except I could hear myself sing and breathe. And the bouncy bouncy of the cable. Sadly, I returned them.

Pros:

  • Better sound than stock earbuds
  • Blocks exterior sound well
  • Multiple sizes of earpieces for a good fit
  • Look great, taste great

Cons:

  • Not exactly cheap
  • Insufferable noise when walking, which is when I wear my headphones

Caveat emptor…

Palm Pre Pix

Published
by
rob
on January 9, 2009
in Electronics
. 0 Comments

As promised, here are some pictures from the Palm Pre + webOS release. It’s not comprehensive as there is a ton of deep coverage (see the last post), but I thought I’d post unique stuff.

Phone mode
Chat

Just a sense of scale
Sitting magnetically on the charger

Stuck to a TV!
Scale

The potential packaging...
A Removable Battery


Palm Pre & webOS @ CES - Webkit Powers the Browser

Published
by
rob
on January 8, 2009
in Electronics
. 4 Comments

First post in quite a while!!! 

So Palm was very kind to let a nerdy non-reporter into their meeting room today where they were showing off the Pre. It’s a cool machine with a cool UI reminiscent of the Palm OS mating the iPhone.

There are lots of other places with detailed coverage, but I was most interested to learn that the browser is based on Webkit (and a modern build at that). I think that’s a scoop for me as I haven’t seen that anywhere else.

I’ll post pix soon, but in the interim, check out the cool posts:

Google Reader + iPhone - The Right & The Wrong

Published
by
rob
on July 17, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments
As part of the iPhone 2.0 / 3G release, Google has updated the Reader interface for iPhone. The hub of my iPhone browsing centered around Google Reader, so it was critical that Google get it right. To my chagrin, the update leans towards the negative.
Pros
  - Feels like the desktop version with AJAX pop-open stories, which saves needless navigation as the last version required you to pop to another “tab” in Safari to read an article
  - The ability to switch between new / all items within a given view, and even mark all as read when browsing by category

Cons
  - The biggest one by far, at least for me, is how difficult it is to browse by tag. I have many feeds and they are grouped by tag. The browsing difference is as follows:

Old UI:
  1. Navigate to my bookmark that shows me all my tags
  2. Browse by tag
  3. When finished, go back to tags
  4. Repeat

New UI:  
  1. Land on All Items page (you cannot easily bookmark the tags page)
  2. Tap Feeds to see your tags
  3. Tap the tag you are interested in
  4. Tap the “tag folder” to see the relevant articles
  5. When finished, go back to tags
  6. Repeat

  - Unless I’m crazy, the iPhone view seems to be sync’ed with your desktop reader such that if you filter by New Items versus All Items, they seem to be remembered across platforms (which may not make sense)

  - It seems that you no longer are directed to a Google-stripped down page to read an article; rather, you are taken to the source site directly, adding up on bandwidth (and in Canada, that can be a bit expensive).

Anyone else bothered by this? Anything else I’ve overlooked? 

Inspiration

Published
by
rob
on May 9, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Well, it’s my first post… wow!! I want to thank Ken Seto for the inspiration to get this started. His blog is currently focused on user experience in software as well as current events. I’d suggest taking a look!