Results tagged “iPhone” from Green Mesh

Aside from your hand or pocket, there are two ways to carry a Motorola Droid available from the Verizon store.

One is a hard plastic snap in holster where one face of the phone is exposed and the other a horizontal leather holster.

The open face holster warns to place phone face in to prevent scratching it. Personally, I worry more about a scuffed camera lens. A scratched face is usable.

The horizontal solution lacks a belt clip that locks and unless you are fat the brunt of shock to the phone will twist it over your hip bone. It leaves no room for a waist belt lens system.

I needed a padded, secure case that is water resistant (a flap), a belt clip that won't come off when you are crawling and a vertical pull out so that the phone is grabbed securely on the longest side. This makes it less likely to get dropped.

The generic holster websites are swarming with holsters "specifically for the Droid", but many have magnetic closures. Many of these sites combine BlackBerry holsters with Droid.

A magnetic closure on a Blackberry automatically puts it to sleep, while on the Droid it puts it into a docking mode, something that is directly opposite of what you want to accomplish with a holster - prevent drain of the battery.

I found a generic case at Target today that works perfectly for the purpose. It says Golla on the case and is probably for an iPhone, but they are the same size.

As an added measure of lens protection, I sewed in the cleaning cloth you get with the screen protectors, as eventually the nylon in the case will damage the lens surface.

The Android Market pushed a $.99 cent app overnight for journalists and scanner junkies called PoliceStream. The App has archived over 2500 police scanner streams and streams them from your Android phone.

Cities are searched by letter or state and has a nifty spin bar down the side that finds your stream fast.

For York County, the streams are broken into two streams, one for fire and the other for police. The delay is several seconds from real-time but is about the same as the stream we cooked up at ydr.inyork.com/ydr/crime

I haven't listened long enough to determine if it's missing anything, but the inherent nature of scanners is that two scanners running at the same time will usually be prioritized differently.

I was told by a Verizon rep that the data plan on the Droid is unlimited (I keep asking people because of the 5gig included cap on wireless access cards), but using WIFI when available will cut down on data use on the Verizon wireless network.

As AT&T will tell you with their popular iPhone, data use on a wireless network is eventually everyone's issue whether it be the cost structure or network experience.

The excellent multitasking abilities of the Verizon Droid allows this app to run in the background while you use other services like email. The loud clear internal speaker is excellent for the task.

As 911 communication systems migrate away from analog systems into trunked digital systems, journalists have been forced to junk their old scanners. A new trunked scanner can cost over $600. My Droid just paid for itself.

Apps from the Android Market are only available for download and purchase via and Android based phone.

If I hear one more news clip calling the Droid an "iPhone killer" or a blogger saying it's not, I'm going to throw up.

Verizon's Motorola Droid Android 2.0 smart phone was released yesterday.

After a weekend with Verizon's Droid, I have concluded that the phone is an evolution of things.

I see bits and pieces of other phones that are successful and departures from corporate philosophy of competitors that Verizon and Google have attempted to capitalize on.

I was a Blackberry Storm user for the past year. I loved the phone. The multitasking, the great camera/flash, the integrated multiple pushed email and SMS/MMS. That is what I use 90% of my phone for. I'm not much of an app person beyond using core apps like Facebook and Twitter.

I like to create and spread content and that end needs a strong blend of hardware and application.

If RIM can be be criticized for anything with the Storm 1, it is that they tried to make it do too much before their hardware and operating system could handle it. The hardware in the Storm 2 seems to address these issues.

Potential that needs to be executed with care is an asset and sure beats limitations and walls.

The first thing a Blackberry user notices about Droid is a return key and the list of multi-tasking programs off a long press of the home key.

Droid has unified email, like BlackBerry, but oddly the home base Gmail account is a separate feed. Although, I haven't set up other email accounts to see how this works. I tried.

My Microsoft Outlook web work email didn't work (need to wait for IT for exchange help Monday) and using it to connect to Yahoo web mail requires that you pay Yahoo $20 a year premium for POP access. The Droid unified email says it supports POP3, IMAP and Exchange. My BlackBerry synced with all of these from day one with little effort and no extra expense.

Update 11/11/09 Yahoo is working in the combined inbox for free.

Update 11/09/09: Synching 2000 Exchange via IMAP was easy with the right information. Both Gmail and the integrated inbox holding me work account have the same look so it has an integrated feel.

The Android (App) Market is easy to use and allows you download apps outside the market after checking a security warning. BlackBerry also allows you to download apps from the wild.

A nice feature of the Android Market is a refund if you uninstall an app within a short period of time. This takes the question out of trying apps that may not be designed for different hardware and OS builds. And some Android Market Apps just don't work with this phone.

I love getting the whole chemistry set to play having no rules with no risk.

Verizon learned that some people don't like to see their branding and red menus. Aside from a Verizon logo at the bottom of the Droid, there is absolutely no Verizon in this phone.

The Verizon has been replaced with Googleness.

It's refreshing to see a different influence in the software integration on a Verizon phone and I already use many Google services so it feels comfortable.

However, try and get rid of the Amazon MP3 store icon and it just reappears and I really don't understand why there isn't an app for Yahoo Mail. There are a list of other Yahoo content apps in the Market. You would think someone would build something.

I guess we will wait and watch the Google evolution.

For the IPhone folks used to an integrated one stop shop of apps and Itunes created especially for their devices and running them one at a time in singular memory management bliss, the Droid will hardly be a killer. This is not a plug and play device.

Shall we start with hunting for USB drivers Motorola/Verzion? This phone operates entirely wirelessly, so the drivers and tethering really aren't necessary. I would still like to back up the memory card without pulling it.

If you are looking for a screaming fast science experiment on a great network, that runs with the multitasking idea, in a light Linux operating system with a growing app base this will excite you.

You like to go, Wow, that's cool... how do I figure out how to do that with no big, fat paper Verizon manual, then you will probably like this Droid.

Check back for more on taming the Droid and follow me as I run wild with the beast.

Flash video is a universally compatible format for desktop browsers and a universally lame format for mobile phones.

YouTube fixes this by processing dual streams - Flash for the desktop and 3gp for mobile applications.

Solution: Publish a high resolution video (480x382) from the BlackBerry Storm directly to Twitter (via YouTube) using only the handset.

1. Create a YouTube account.
This provides you with an email address specific to you (xxxxxx@m.youtube.com) that you can send your video to YouTube for processing.

2. Upload the video from your phone via your email account. The BlackBerry email system that synchs all your email accounts allows for a maximum attachment of 3 mb with Verizon. A stand alone app for an email service might have larger download capability. I find that 45 seconds of 480x382 video is under 3 mb.

3. Go to your YouTube account in the BlackBerry browser after the download and copy the page address of your video to the clipboard in the phone.

4. Using Übertwitter, I paste the YouTube URL of my downloaded video into the Tweet. Übertwitter supports embedded link shrinking using bit.ly. It's a one operation click off the BlackBerry key after pasting in the long link.

5. Send video tweet

Now you have a shortened link to a mobile browser page that will open and play your mobile video from any mobile browser and most desktops.

On Mac destops the 3pg video file opens in QuickTime. On PC's you will be asked to open the file in whatever video player on your PC that plays 3gp files, like QuickTime or RealPlayer. You may already have this file type associated with a player on your computer. Windows Media Player traditionally doesn't play 3pg files out of the box.

As an added bonus, you can track statistics and promote your video. It is universally search-able, can be sent and embedded by viewers.

paulkuehnel Youtube direct download tweet test via BlackBerry http://bit.ly/2hOxQ3 http://myloc.me/NMkt

Interesting study by the Environmental Working Group that rates radiation of hundreds of cell phones. The Blackberry Storm was rated as a low emitter while the study hinted that many very popular phones like the Apple iPhone 3G and Blackberry Curve 8330 emit much higher levels of radiation.

These studies, usually not very popular with the cell phone industry, have been going on for years.

Recent studies find significantly higher risks for brain and salivary gland tumors among people using cell phones for 10 years or longer. The state of the science is provocative and troubling, and much more research is essential. (ewg.org)

The effects of electromagnetic radiation is a long-term health study, which translates into the reality that those of use who use handsets the most next to our heads are the test subjects of future clinical studies.

With any phone limiting exposure to the head can be accomplished with using a blue tooth ear piece (that emits a fraction of the radiation of handsets), the phone's speaker and texting.

Maybe 30 years from now we will be talking about the effects of electromagnetic pollution.

So you are at the gym streaming internet radio via Pandora on your Blackberry Storm and you hear an alert for an email. Without stopping the music, you answer the email, then swap to your Twitter application, then send a text message and this all works fine. You still have Blackberry App World and VZ Navigator running from this morning in the background and decide it would be cool to shoot and upload a video of your feet moving on the elliptical via UberTwitter to Facebook.... and the world freezes.

The Storm has the ability to do alot of things at the same time and it has the ability for the user to destroy that experience pretty quickly. Some phone manufacturers increase stability by only letting you run one application at a time, RIM decided to give you the option of running everything and letting the user sort it out.

Multitasking operating systems have been around a long time. Windows Mobile, Android and Palm are other examples of a multitasking operating systems. It's a nightmare when designing a phone. Decreased battery life and draining memory. On the Blackberry, the ability to download applications from third party creators not necessarily approved by RIM adds a new twist of freedom and horror to the mix.

You learn pretty quickly how far you can push the phone and multitasking is probably the most common reason people hate the phone. "It's so slow !!" "It's crashing !!" This is also the reason why the store display phone is generally horrible as the day grinds on. Everyone who has walked by starts running a new application.

The Switch Application tool bar is your friend (see photo above). From the Blackberry button, this is accessible while running any application. It provides a widow into what is running similar to Crtl-Alt-Delete/Applications on a PC. This window allows you to jump between applications and CLOSE THEM DOWN if you don't need them.

So it is possible to listen to music and text and email, especially when running multiple email accounts though the Blackberry mail server system rather than using dedicated applications like Gmail, just shut down the navigation application you were using six hours ago.

I like the free application (Blackberry App World) QuickPull. It simulates a battery pull complete boot for the Blackberry Storm. You can schedule this complete cycle automatically in the middle of the night and it doesn't affect your alerts or wake-up
alarm.

Purge your email and text/picture/video messages. Multiple accounts with multiple attachments combined with text, pix and video left in for days eats up memory and makes the phone sluggish.

You can select the number of days you want to keep in the mail in each account automatically. I prefer a 15 day window automatic deletion window and to pick a moment when I have time and Delete Prior for each account. While you can delete messages from your native mail account account via the Blackberry mail server system, the mail that appears in the phone from your Gmail, Yahoo, corporate mail server, etc. is a mirror of that mail. All that garbage still looms on a server somewhere unless you decide to manually select a group of emails in your Storm and delete at the same time.

About a month ago, I decided to move over to a smart phone from a good 3.2 megapixel still/ video phone, a Samsung ACH-990. I wanted to forward between a work/home phone without cost, so my decision was slanted toward the Verizon offerings.

This isn't an endorsement or an ongoing comparison, but rather an observation of using a Blackberry Storm for better or worse to help anyone with one or considering options for a phone application.

I considered the iPhone 3G from AT&T, as it is the dominant player in the smart phone game. Other smart phones in the running were the Samsung Omnia (5 megapixil !) and the HTC Touch.

Why I picked a Blackberry Storm

A phone is a tool. Like my plumbing, electrical and woodworking tools, I use the tool that works best for the job. I am photojournalist who is always looking for new ways to refine and speed up the process of transmitting still photos, video and data. I use multiple email accounts, picture/video and text messaging extensively.

I was intrigued by the iPhone but it quickly fell out of the running. No video capability, no picture/video messaging and a 2 megapixel camera with no flash or mechanical auto-focus. No multi-tasking of applications, no multi-threading of multiple server and web email accounts all running at the same time. No turn-by-turn navigation. No insurance. No replaceable battery. I have been going through a couple of phones per year. One got destroyed at a fire last year.

The iPhone is a fine tool for people dedicated to the Apple platform and find innovative uses sifting through a billion applications, but there were basic necessities of being a picture/video phone that I needed before considering all else.

The Samsung Omnia had a horrible screen and I never could get the Windows Mobile based phone to work right at the store. Like the Blackberry Storm, this multitasking phone usually has every possible application running opened in odd ways by every person who has touched it that day. The Verizon salespeople wouldn't let me cold boot the phones and they were tethered to an alarm/power source The Windows Mobile HTC Touch with a slide out keyboard seemed flimsy and cheap with a tiny screen.

Why I am writing this

While I have nothing against the iPhone, most of the reviews for the Blackberry Storm appear to be written by iPhone users comparing everything to their iPhone without connecting to the philosophy behind the Blackberry's design.

I want to share some tricks and observations that I figured out along the way without comparing the Blackberry Storm to anything.

Here's the tool, lets make it work.