Why didn’t I think of this? Check out the Ratatouille/iPhone Photo Caption Contest over at Steve Ivy’s monkinetic blog.

[tags]Ratatouille,iPhone,Contest[/tags]

I’m sick of my default theme. I’m starting with something minimal, and then trying to improve it. Consider the look to be somewhat in flux.

[tags]Wordpress[/tags]

Addendum: I’m using the rather minimal Sandbox theme now. I like it. I’m going to try to tweak it as little as humanly possible.

Okay, my previous post detailed why I think most criticisms of the iPhone are off target. But what features the iPhone does or doesn’t have are for the most part irrelevent. I think that the iPhone is going to change the cell phone business at its most fundamental levels, and here is why.

The universe of cell phones is oddly split between two industries: the industry which manufactures phones, and the industry that provides the network.

The cell phone manufacturers would love to sell you phones. To do this, they want to add nifty features that people like: cameras, higher resolution screens, Wifi, GPS and the like. They’d love to sell you a new one every year. They’d love to sell you one every six months if they could.

Then there are the service providers. They sell a service to you. They don’t care whether you get new stuff on your phone unless it is somehow tied to a service that they can charge you for. If your phone had wifi, they have a decreased ability to sell you a $60 month data plan. So… your phone probably doesn’t have it. They don’t want you to upload music to your phone (say, by simply dragging music onto it like even the cheapest mp3 player), they want you to buy it from their online music store, likely paying again for a song that you already have. They want to ding you $2 for a ringtone or wallpaper, when making such things should be trivial.

Enter the iPhone. Half a million units sold in the first weekend. Half a million phones out there this week with wifi. With a fairly affordable unlimited data plan. With the ability to sync the music you already bought to your phone. No AT&T store icons. Merely the ability to use the web from your phone in the way you use the web from pretty much every other device.

Apple got AT&T to bite the poisoned apple, and now everyone is going to have to take a bite. Nokia and Motorola are going to ask for similar deals with network owners. Consumers from other networks are going to demand unlimited data and Wifi.

A caveat: the iPhone does come with the same 2 year contract that AT&T screws you with. I wonder how long such a thing will last. Ultimately Apple will have a new upgrade to their phone, and probably in a lot less than 2 years. All 500,000 of their customers will feel the urge to upgrade, but won’t feel that paying AT&T for the privilege of buying a new phone from Apple is reasonable.

It’ll be an interesting new game.

[tags]iPhone,Cellphone,Rant and Rave[/tags]

I must admit it: I’m beginning to contemplate purchasing an iPhone. They are just very, very cool. I mean, really cool. I know it won’t make me cool to have one, but it is a very neat gadget. That’s why I find lists like the below so amusing.

Buyer’s Guide: Wait! Ten Things You Should Know Before You Buy an iPhone – Gizmodo

Let’s work through them one at a time, shall we?

1. Not all ipod accessories work. Well, duh. You know what? Not all ipod accessories work with my cell phone either. In fact, it’s really annoying that most cell phones use a completely different type of jack than every every device with a headphone. My Dell Axim of courses uses one even different than THAT (at least for the microphone). Them’s the breaks.
2. AT&T is evil. Again, duh. Compared to? Verizon? T-Mobile? Sprint? I’ve used ’em all. I see no stellar entries in customer service among any of them. Long contracts are for most part the standard operating procedure.
3. No video recording or MMS. Valid, but given the poor quality of 99% of all cell phone cameras, perhaps this isn’t really such a big issue.
4. No instant messaging. I’ll grant you this one. Even my little LG CU500 includes AIM/Yahoo! chat (of course billed against SMS totals, which is completely absurd, especially given AT&T’s refusal make an all-you-can-eat SMS plan).
5. Not for business use. Duh. Not marketed for it. Mostly people complaining about this are really upset that they can’t justify getting their businesses to pick up the tab for a new toy.
6. It’s not a full iPod replacement, and has no games. I don’t play games on my phone or my iPod. It holds more songs than I need (or likely even have). Oh, and did we mention it is a phone and a web browser?
7. It’s not a smartphone. Given that smartphones aren’t actually all that smart, I don’t see this as the biting criticism that was probably intended.
8. The data connection is slow. Yes, they should have used AT&T’s G3 network. It does have wifi however, which depending on your situation, might make the point more moot than you imagine. I spend 90% of my time within range of either my own or other open networks. EDGE is likely good enough while trying to get movie times while standing in line. And AT&T bundled all you can eat network access with even the lowest cost plans.
9. No GPS. Yes, an obvious feature that I think it should have. But then I’m a GPS nut, and have sworn my next phone will have one in it.
10. No custom ringtons. Oh darn. No “La Cucaracha” for me.

Sure, people should be aware of these things. But I’m wondering what mythical phone exists that addresses these criticisms. Anyone got any suggestions?

[tags]iPhone[/tags]

Len Peralta has a nifty little website called monsterbymail.com. For a modest fee, he’ll draw you a monster with the name you specify, and he’ll give you a movie file of him drawing it as well. I told him to draw “The Brain Wagon”. Here’s what he came up with:

Here’s the picture on Flickr.