| | | Back in June of 2007 I wrote a post that asked a simple question: "Does your email inbox reflect your productivity level?". I mentioned that I had just successfully cleaned out my inbox, and that I was going to keep it that way.
Today, three months later, I still have zero (0) emails in my inbox. Sure there are times when I'm out and about and it gets up to 10 or so, but they're quickly dealt with, and I go back to zero. See the screenshot below.
David Cohen just put up a post about his success with the Inbox Zero system and how he feels about his productivity.
I can't stress enough how right he is. Having an out of control inbox was like having a constant reminder that my life wasn't was well organized (chaotic?) as it could be. Now, I know without a doubt in the world that no one is waiting on a reply to an email from me. I know that support email for HyperSites is answered in minutes. It just feels great.
Head over to David's Colorado Startups blog and read Inbox Zero Is For Me yourself.
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| | | | Today Apple released the details of the iPhone Store Credit program. The process was simple, and effective.
Simply visit the iPhone Store Credit site, enter your phone number, serial number, and the confirmation code that Apple will send via text message. If you qualify, you'll get a page with a bar code and some numbers to redeem with your next purchase. Simple.
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| | | | For the past three years, my wife and I have had a group of friends over for dinner on Thursday evening. The intent is to relax with friends, have dinner (spaghetti, bread, dessert, beverages) and watch several time-shifted TV shows (Survivor, Hereos, Eureka, Smallville, Lost!, and Grey's Anatomy) and any other video content that the group deems pertinent.
Last night, however, was special.
Last night there were a total of 10 people. One totally new person, and one relatively new person were on hand. But the one that held my attention throughout the evening as a friend that brought his unopened iPhone... to unlock and move to T-Mobile. By 12:30 AM, we had finally succeeded... everything worked.
If you're interested in the gory details, ping me, and I'll do a post on it. But those details are not the subject of this post. Instead, I wanted to share with you the fact that yes, you can unlock it, and yes it does indeed work.
It is not a second rate experience. As a matter of fact, the only difference I could see was that the voicemail button directly dials the T-Mobile voicemail system instead of providing the elegant visual voicemail interface. | | |
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| | | | Someone make textcastr.com please. Yes, the domain is available.
The service is simple. A user creates an account at textcastr.com, enters their user names at twitter, pownce, facebook, etc. Textcastr.com provides their SMS short code to the user... messages sent to the short code are then relayed to the appropriate services.
The way you get the message to the available services will depend on the service of course. Twitter and Facebook have APIs, Pownce? No one knows yet.
There. Take it. And be sure to let me know when I can sign up. | | |
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| | | | At Apple's fall special event, Steve Jobs introduced a whole new lineup of iPods. From the Shuffle to the iPod touch, everything was refreshed. But the big news for iPhone users is that the 8GB iPhone price dropped to $399 from $599. Now what?
I'm an Apple user. I upgrade to the latest versions of everything, budget willing, which usually works out great. And sometimes this behavior puts me squarely into the "Early Adopter" group.
If you're not a tried and true early adopter, and unfortunately many that bought the iPhone are not, you're going to be upset by the $200 drop. Good news... if you bought it within the last 14 days, you're entitled to a refund for the difference. If not? GET OVER IT.
Every single product you buy, especially electronics, is going to have a price decrease or is going to be replaced by newer and cooler products. It is how the market grows.
Personally, I don't have a problem with the price drop. I AM an early adopter and view that $200 as the price of being one. It was so very worth it to me.
Bottom line, if you don't want to pay the early adopter premiums, don't buy 1.0 products. From anyone. | | |
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| | | | In what I think is a totally unnecessary (but certainly welcomed) move Apple announced that they'll be giving the original owners of the 8GB iPhone a $100 store credit.
As I mentioned in my previous post, if you're going to be an early adopter, eventually you're going to pay the price. I was perfectly OK with paying that price.
I was reminded however that a lot of buyers of the iPhone were not only first time Apple customers, but were also not your traditional early adopters. They were the ones with the loudest voice, and ultimately Apple caved.
I can't wait to see the market's reaction to this one. | | |
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| | | | Broadband is definitely here. Now, what kind of fun applications can we build around it?
Audio and video are being done. Tons of great services already exist in the media space. But what other kinds of applications will 1.3MB/sec bandwidth allow? Second Life is a great start, and maybe the full 3D internet will emerge soon, but those aren't what I'm thinking here.
Here's an idea from the past... NeXT (Apple) had the ability to execute applications on remote computers as if they were local. The GUI would be the only thing executing on your computer, the rest of the app lived on the other computer.
Are there some cool network OS ideas out there? Truly distributed apps maybe? I'm thinking along the lines of Amazon's Web Services and the EC2 platform. Remote storage like S3, integrated into the desktop?
What do you think? | | |
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| | | | Since the iPhone's release, it seems that everyone has an opinion on whether or not the features are worth the money, or how it will or won't impact the world. It has this, and doesn't have that, etc. Here are a couple of my observations.
First, I know 25 people with the iPhone - personally. I have never seen such adoption of any consumer electronics device. Say what you want about the feature set, but the numbers don't lie. The interesting part of this is that nearly all of them have (err, had) and iPod too.
If you doubt the draw of the iPhone, go to a local Apple store and watch not only which device draws attention, but notice the sheer volume of traffic in the store. People of all ages are there, from the dreamer in grade school, to the mature senior adult.
Second, I've noticed that iPhone users are less likely to use their computers after business hours. I noticed on Sunday, for example, that after my morning email/news checking, that I didn't open my laptop again until Monday morning coffee. If you know me, you know that this is very, very unusual.
It took a while for that to sink in, but once it did, I pinged a few other owners. The story is the same. The experience with the phone is so delightful, that it is actually enabling people to get away from their computers.
I bet Apple didn't anticipate that one.
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| | | | I'd like to test out Kevin Rose's new venture, but it is invite only. Can anyone reading this post spare an invite? | | |
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| | | | I was second in line at the Apple store in Boulder to buy the iPhone on launch day. I've been using every aspect of it since, and I've found things I'd like to see changed with the first update.
Instant Messaging
Whether it was at the insistence of AT&T, or that Apple just ran out of time, iCaht is the main thing I'd like to see added. I know I can forward my IMs to SMS, but that isn't the point. The experience isn't the same. I've been trying for days to do it, but for some reason AOL's verification process fails every time.
Tethering
This was a feature that I used only occasionally with the Cingular 8125, but it was those times that made the feature priceless. If you're unfamiliar with the term "tethering" here, it means the ability to use (via Bluetooth or USB) a mobile phone as an internet access point. You connect the phone the EDGE network, then tell your laptop to use that connection for internet access. So in the middle of a park, you could get to the internet on your laptop using the phone's internet connection.
To-dos
This is a biggie. I use iCal's to-do lists frequently. The Cingular 8125 and The Missing Sync managed this beautifully. The iPhone has no concept of to-tos at all. None.
Video Codecs
I subscribe to several video podcasts and normally view these on my Apple TV. The iPhone can't play several of them even though it is touted as having video iPod features. One great thing about the video podcasts that do get to the iPhone is that the iPhone will play the audio track alone. It sees the podcast as a podcast and makes no distinction when playing it. Very nice.
True widgets
I would really like to be able to access the battery widget that shows when you're charging the phone. I'd like a wifi signal strength indicator, and several other widgety displays. Given that the Stocks and Weather "applications" are widgets, would it really be that hard to replace their icons with a Widgets or Dashboard icon that you would then use to get to that stuff?
The keyboard
Special note to Blackberry keyboard users. If you start using the iPhone with the "it doesn't have physical keys so I can't possibly like it" point of view, you're not going to like the keyboard. I came from the mother of all mobile keyboards and I like the iPhone's just fine. I'd really like to see a globally available horizontal keyboard though, not one that is only available from Safari.
Flash
Flash is a mainstay on the net. As much as it has annoyed me in the past, modern implementations are actually useful. CNN video, Google Video, etc. are Flash based. Since this is a new CPU architecture for Apple, I'm willing to let that one slide. As a matter of fact, I'll bet that Apple will be the porting Flash to the iPhone, not Adobe.
There you have it. My summary of some of the things I'd like to see fixed on the iPhone. Thoughts? Comments? | | |
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