Recently in Review Category

A femtocell (AT&T's is pictured left) is a mini cell tower you connect to your broadband internet to extend the cellular signal of your cell carrier via your broadband connection. The device installs like a typical WiFi router would and increases the cellular coverage in dead or over-subscribed areas where normal cell service is failing or unavailable. The range of a femtocell is small and while your phone sees no difference between a femtocell and the big cell towers atop buildings, femtocells are usually setup to allow only 5 to 10 pre-specified phones to connect at a time and in AT&Ts case can only offer 3G speeds if your Internet connection is fast enough to support it (3.5Mbps).

The recent pilot program to test AT&Ts femtocells in Charlotte, North Carolina raises some interesting question as to how the company is going to deploy and use femtocells to address widespread and well documented service failures in New York, San Fransisco and other major metro areas where the wild success of the iPhone has caused over subscription and saturation of the cell towers. The result of which is 20-30% of iPhone calls result in a dropped or fail connection NYC. Things have gotten so bad on AT&T that my girlfriend went out and got a second Verizon based phone just for work calls, forwarded her iPhone to it and now takes calls on this crappy little LG phone, that is how much her AT&T calls were dropping.

In the Charlotte femtocell pilot program AT&T has set the cost at a onetime (and in my opinion outrageous) $150 hardware fee. With the option of paying an additional $20 monthly to make unlimited calls via the femtocell you install and supply the backhaul internet connection for. If you choose not to add the unlimited femtocell calling plan then all calls (femtocell based or not) use minutes from your std plan just as it would normally.

Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche has a carefree, irreverent written style rarely seen in books this technical.  And while I often find it hard to read more than the first 75 pages of a technical book, referring to the rest of the chapters only as needed, Beginning iPhone 3 Development was easy to stick with and I can tell how the clear explanations and logical buildup to progressively more difficult concepts would be a easy to finish for anyone needing a real world, under the hood, hands on look at iPhone development.

I won't drone on here, but I will say I did appreciate the Author's choice to assume we are all smart, witty, hard studying students. That said, you will require some C and Objective C background if you plan to achieve anything significant on the iPhone, so don't expect miracles, but it a very good walk through the factory floor for those, like myself, who's Objective C always needs polish, but knows enough to read code and can follow along inquisitively, all the while piecing more of the puzzle together.

Of all the books I have on the iPhone and Objective C, this is the closest any of them have gotten me to feel like I was in an actual course and I most certainly felt that my iPhone Dev learning curve was starting to level out by the time I finished reading it.

Hope that helps the many students, like myself, who look at all the reading choices on iPhone development and wish someone would pop over their shoulder and say, "get that one".


  

I owned a Nokia n770 and a n800 long before the smartphone market went ballistic. Basically, the n770/n800 were tiny, underpowered PC's with an open source Linux OS customized with std nested menus, WiFi and a stylus. 

The n770/n800 had no phone, no keyboard and they were instantly relegated to my personal tech museum once the iPhone came along, they sit on the shelf right next to my Helio (another epic FAIL).  Neither the n770 or the n800 could make traditional calls, though the n800 did sport a webcam and a skype client over WiFi.  Ever try to roam over WiFi?

And while neither of the two Nokia's would hold its own next to an iPhone today, in a pre iPhone / netbook world (circa 2005-2007), they were "cool to have" geek toys, if Nokia only added a phone to them.  But adding a phone would have conflicted with the Nokia n95 and they could not allow anything to muddy the waters of the S60 based flagship Noika, the n95 (again, epic FAIL). 

Enough Nokia history, now we have the n900 and the sad news is, while the n900 now sports a Phone and is the most impressive Nokia ever, it is also just a test mule while Nokia ever increases it's position and exposure to the aging and weak Symbian S60 OS.

Nokia has never invested to much into the Linux platform and as stated by Nokia, the n900 is just another high end, early adopter, geek toy, and not a full out change in OS strategy and direction toward Linux, which IMHO the company desperately needs. I hate to be disappointed with such cool bit of kit, but n900 is just another in a long line of Linux test beds for Nokia, each one only slightly better than the last, as the company halfheartedly weighs its smartphone options, yet again.  So let's keep this in mind as I go further into the details of the n900.

This does not represent a new Nokia OS philosophy.
"This is just a test!"

Every wondered what all the hubbub about Akira Kurosawa is, the B&W Samurai movie guy? And what is all this about Orson Welles being the best American director ever?

Well, this weekend is a rare chance to catch both of these movie legends interpretation of Macbeth. Shakespeare's medieval tale of decent into madness on the big screen, here in New York. How apropo.

Orson Welles released his Macbeth in 1948 and while not a perfect film, it has been restored to the original directors cut with original sound track and was recently called a "visually stunning film that has the brooding atmosphere of a medieval nightmare."

Earlier this week I saw a performance that moved me. It was not grand and it was not hip, but it was astounding and as American as Apple pie, or should I say tea and crumpets.

Last night I saw a performance that also moved me. It was grand and it was big and there was not a dry eye in the room at one point or another. "The Soloist" with Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Fox satisfies that rare itch. A modern film that you actually want to talk about after the fact.

As for earlier this week, I present to you Susan Boyle, her humble, rich voice is not at all expected and that is exactly what ties her and Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (the main character in The Soloist) together. These two have been around for a while, forgotten in plain sight and now seen, as if for the first time, to all our delight.

Neither of these gems are what you expect them to be, neither are what they appear to be, yet both are going to move you and maybe, just maybe, this return to reality is what will be best of 2009.

For your consideration:

The lady: Susan Boyle - Singer - Britains Got Talent 2009
The movie: The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.
and
The not wholly dissimilar story of Paul Pots - Singer - Britains Got Talent 2008

Lucky me, today I got a chance to test the new G1 on T-Mobile almost a month before it's release date. The G1, also called the Google Phone, runs Google new Android OS on new HTC hardware and it is the only other phone that has any real star power next to the iPhone.

First impressions:

Ok, let me start by saying the G1 is NOTHING like an iPhone. It does not feel as refined as the iPhone in construction or function. The iPhone is in a whole other league when it comes to fit, finish and polish of both the HW and the feel of the OS.

That said, the G1's OS "Android" is no slouch, and is the smart phone the Nokia N-Series should have been. But Nokia never got it right with the N-Series S60 OS and Nokia will have trash the S60. Android is the final nail in S60's coffin. Cause unlike the S60 or even worse, Windows Mobile, Android simply works and works well. And with it's solid Linux underpinnings it very well should.

But take a second and note my choices for comparison, I can't help compare Android to more traditional smart phone interfaces cause a direct comparison to the iPhone does not seem fitting. Yes, they are close in functionality, but they are miles apart in execution.

here is the run down of my brief time with the final release G1.