Tag: Mobile

Apple, Starbucks, AT&T, and T-Mobile Suck

john 1 Comment

OK so I am in the grocery store this AM trying to check college football scores on my iPhone and what do I get? The stupid T-Mobile homepage because there is a Starbucks next door. And to support the iTunes store Apple slams you on to the stupid T-Mobile network, but no other web connectivity is allowed. This sucks. Here in the land of Starbucks, there is a Starbucks T-Mobile Wifi net about every 100 yards, so basically I have to turn off Wifi service continually. Sucks.

Apple — how is this a freaking benefit? You should let all my non-iTunes traffic default to a different wifi provider or edge. Starbucks — this is driving me out of your stores and pissing me off at you even when I am next door! You need to provide free Wifi. AT&T — this is completely screwing with customer perception of the network performance of the device. You need to help Apple get non-iTunes traffic onto your net. T-Mobile — I am never ever going to pay for your stupid service. You had better figure out fast how to shift to a free service business model or you will become completely irrelevant.

Ignition blog posts of note (or related blog content)

john

* Awesome Local Deals Content in Seattle & Atlanta at Starting Up by Rahul Pathak — Rahul talks about latest Judy’s Book release — the content is starting to vastly improve…
* Phil’s Blackberry app gets some good press coverage\
* The opportunity for Network Magic — home networks are just way too frickin’ complicated
* Marine forecasts for the San Juans — thanks Rich
* Rich also on how to read charts … I learned all this as a kid on Georgian Bay but a good refresher
* Brett finds the best guide to the west coast trail — good luck brett!

Turning your blackberry into a google phone

john

Andy wants a google phone — A Sack of Seattle: Google phone.

You can get a long way there today:

* Google mail for your domain — navigate to m.google.com/a and install. This is the app for your own domain mail, there is a gmail equivalent at gmail.com/app
* Google calendar — just go to calendar.google.com, it has a great mobile interface. and a great sms interface too
* Google reader — www.google.com/reader/m
* Maps — navigate to www.google.com/gmm/. another great app.

By the way, once you’ve installed all these, your blackberry will probably run out of memory and start autodeleting mail from your blackberry inbox with no warning. if you go to settings…advanced…applications, you can uninstall a bunch of cruft like all the language support you don’t need, all the crappy bberry apps and carrier apps you never use, etc. Love that MSDOS-style memory management

Ignition blog roundup

john

* Tong Family Blog: Best Seattle Restaurants — I use SeattleWeekly for recos but this is a good list too. Remember when CitySearch nee Sidewalk was actually useful for restaurant reviews?
* Lala’s music streaming plans get covered in TechCrunch
* Phil keeps knocking out Beyond411 features. And the app hasn’t bloated!
* Rich offers guidance on indoor sports photo lenses. I was super happy with my setup for lacrosse this spring but I will need to do something for basketball.
* Rich’s guidance on media players. VLC has saved my ass as well.

Ignition Blog roundup

john

* Network Magic gets some love up at eHomeUpgrade | Why Network Magic Kicks Windows Vista’s Butt in Networking and File Sharing Usability
* Andy loves referral hiring
 — spontaneous support for jobster
* Rich has all the blackberry pearl tips and blackberry games info
* Phil cranks out another version of Beyond411 for the blackberry. He also ponders the ineffectiveness of googlebase
* Martin (an ignition alum) has made another clean tech investment

Telenav slammed on my cingular blackberry

john

A TeleNav! app was slammed on my blackberry today. I didn’t ever install it, it just showed up on the homescreen. Basically a kind of spam from cingular I assume.

Anyway i tried it. It wasn’t terrible, but I can’t see why anyone would bother, the google maps app is so much better. The telenav app is a bit of size/speed pig, it doesn’t show traffic data, no satellite views, no white/yellow pages lookup, an annoying upsell ad on the front page. I deleted it.

Recent software/services of note

john
  • Jon Udell discusses web-based presentation software. S5 continues to intrigue me, if someone ran a hosted S5-like service I think i’d dump powerpoint
  • Mobile Seatguru now available. cool.
  • World of Warcraft the new golf? I kind of doubt it.
  • Jungledisk — using amazon’s s3 as a backup service. way cool.
  • WinSCP — the best FTP client? I’ve been happy with filezilla but..
  • URGE launches — so far it seems reasonable…going to sign up this weekend for a subscription

Ignition Net roundup

john

* Jason on the future of the online job market. Right or wrong, it is smart to have some view of the future of your market.
* Mark Maunder, another jobster blogger
* Livemarks from Sourcelabs‘ Alex Bosworth. Great great view of what content people are tagging. A great way to stay on top of hot content.
* Phil keeps on expanding Berry 411 — now restaurant referals. Seems like the Judy’s Book folks should collaborate with Phil.
* Also Phil has yoked Berry 411 to the google mobile reformatter. Amazing how Phil is making Berry 411 the best browser for the blackberry — all in his spare time.
* johnza’s analysis of newsgator — newsgator seems to be doing a great job — great investment by brad feld
* Hooper playing coy about MVNO investment.

Ignition Blog Roundup 9/26

john

* Phil thinks it would be great to listen to podcasts on his cellphone. Totally agree. I would listen to like 10x as many if I could use the cell.
* Phil talks about Jobster’s culture and how they encourage innovation — lifting the 20% idea from Google.
* Phil on the latest features in Berry411. I fyou have a blackberry and don’t have berry411, get going!

Maybe this entry should just be called “keeping up with phil”. Oh wait, Rich on online sites for trading in mileage points. Good stuff, I have a lot of idle miles.