So the iPhone 3G comes out next week (11th). I won’t be busting the door down, but I plan on purchasing one shortly after the release (probably over that weekend). While I like the customizability of my WinMo T-Mobile Wing, I’ve found that it is a bit slow and cumbersome. I like the fact that I can write .Net applications for it, but I’ve only written a few and hardly use them. Plus, the one I use the most, I’ve basically rewritten as a JavaScript web-app anyway. I’m sure I’ll use the web browser a bit, but I’m curious about how I’ll use the iPod functionality and how quickly the GPS novelty wears off. Geocaching will be fun and I might create a few caches myself initially. Geotagging pictures is an interesting concept, but, honestly, who’s interested in exactly where I take pictures? I’ll probably watch my podcasts on it, maybe audiobooks, but I love my 60GB iPod for carrying my music. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is on order with Amazon and so far is looking like August for shipping The wife and I played with a coworker of hers and his wife over the weekend and had a good time. I DM’d 2nd Edition for the first time in probably 10 years. My descriptive skills need a little work, but I was able to wing it pretty well with a dungeon I threw together sometime in college (about 10 years ago). For the 4th Edition game, I might put a good interwoven plot together. Laura played a tree-hugging druid, but I think she’d get more out of playing a slightly-evil rogue (my favorite, too). It’s so much fun to cause strife in an imaginary environment when you have to be so good in real-life.

I also installed Vista Ultimate on my “server” box at home. I wanted to play with the Media Center Extender functions with my XBox 360. So far it’s crashed a couple of times and rebooted itself (probably driver issues). I see why the Vista Nanny is getting so much press. As the saying goes, “At least she’s pretty.”

So, after the kid was sick, the wife was sick, I was sick, trying to catch up on work, prepping and stressing for daughter’s upcoming Cochlear Implant surgery, falling behind on mowing the lawn and watering plants, etc. I find that the site’s been down for a week. It looks like everything’s back up and maybe the well-oiled machine will continue to churn after all.

We watched a little of the US Open, then Laura and I took off to see Indy 4. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’d been to the theater since Revenge of the Sith. I was amazed at how low-def the picture was. It was good seeing Harrison Ford don the hat and whip again, but it seemed like a large-budget made-for-Sci-Fi movie. Without Harrison Ford, it could have been called “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and shown on a Saturday afternoon on TV. There were a few cheesy “remember when” scenes (”remember the warehouse at the end of Raiders, that’s where they are now” “remember the girl from Raiders, she’s in trouble again” “remember Indy’s school buddy, he’s dead now”), but it took a large suspension of disbelief. It was an okay movie, though: 3/5 stars. I think I mentioned this somewhere before, but the “holy relic” Indy movies were the better ones, required less suspension of disbelief, and did better in the box office. Hopefully Shia LeBouf doesn’t take over the reigns as the new adventure hero. He was decent, but just doesn’t fit right.

We came home, played some more with the munchkin, finished watching the US Open, I watched “When We Left The Earth,” then went to bed. It was a good day.

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving somewhere and wanted to see a list of restaurants and gas stations that were nearby along my route. My car can display the POI (points of interest) on the map, but can’t list them out.

Both of those features would be very cool to have on the 2nd-generation iPhone with built-in GPS. I got to thinking and had an idea for an application that could handle both features and be Web 2.0-y. There would be 3 parts: a map display on the iPhone, a map display on the web, and a database. The iPhone interface would show your location on Google Maps. An “Add POI” button would ask, “Where is the POI located?” with three options: current location, select location, and enter address. Current location would use your current lat/long, select location would allow you to select a lat/long point on the map, and enter address would get the lat/long from an address (after locating it through Google Maps). Then, you would enter the POI name, a short description, and several searchable tags, then pick an icon and/or snap a picture of the POI. When you save the POI, it would call a webservice on the server and save the POI. When you load the map view, you enter your search criteria to view the nearby POI. When a POI is selected, it would display the distance from your current location (units of measure would be an option: feet, meters, yards, km, miles, etc). You could also view them in a list, ordered by distance.

I’m not sure how to do the POI along a route, though. I guess you could plot the route, then search POI at certain intervals and display them that way.

Anybody got the developer chops to do something like that? Most of the hard work would be on the web server end, since the webservices would handle most of the heavy lifting (searches, uploads, etc). The iPhone application would just be a front-end that leverages the location functions of the device. Or perhaps the web-side is already done somewhere?

1. Windows applications exit when you close their window, but there are some that live in the System Tray or as Services. In general, when you’re done with it, it goes away.
2. Mac applications exit only when you explicitly tell them to Quit (closing the window doesn’t quit the app), but there are some that live in the Menu bar or as daemons. In general, it stays running until you tell it to quit.
3. Windows Mobile applications almost always remain in the background until you kill the process. In general, it stays running until you tell it to quit.
4. iPhone applications will all be single-task. When you’re done with it, it goes away.

The mobile offerings from both companies are backwards: WinMo works more like Mac OS X, and iPhone works more like Windows! I understand wanting to conserve battery life, but it would be nice if that were an option for the user. By default, spoonfeed the user one app at a time, but allow power users to multitask. Maybe Apple has a thing against power users. OS X seems to be focused on the lowest common denominator user. I haven’t checked, but does “jailbreaking” your iPhone allow background processes?

iPhone 3G: “thinner at the edges, has a full plastic back, solid metal buttons, 3.5-inch display, camera, flush headphone jack, and improved audio.” Looks nice. Battery life is meh, but decent. GPS is in there, too. But what for? Tracking/recording your movement? Surely there’s more in the pipeline and stuff in the App store will probably take advantage of it, too. Hopefully photo geotagging soon. Price? $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB (also available in white). Available July 11th.

MobileMe (www.me.com): “Like Exchange for the rest of us” (the few enterprises w/o Exchange, that is). Push email, contacts, calendars. Web 2.0 apps. Photo hosting, etc. AKA new .Mac ($99/year). It might be worth it.

App store: Sounds like a $10 price point is the norm. 10MB limit for cellular data download. Enterprises can distribute apps to certain iPhones via intranet. Ad-hoc distribution allows up to 100 installations w/o App store. Developers get 70% of revenue (Apple keeps 30%).

Save images to local Photos: This is nice (does it work in Safari or just Mail?).

Scientific calculator: Sure, why not.

Push notifications: Instead of running an app in the background to listen for IMs, etc., Apple is hosting a service for everybody to use. This, of course, means you need to be running a server. This is probably just a work-around until they can get background processing balanced w/ battery.

So, I’ll probably bite on a black 16GB version sometime in July (then again, I might wait a little bit). I like the flush headphone jack, metal buttons, and plastic back. I like GPS and hope that the app support will be there for it (especially geotagging photos). The price is good. MobileMe might be a good option for the wife and I to share calendars. Really, though, it’s all about the better browser for me. It’ll definitely be a great device, especially if the jailbreak apps go legit (or jailbreaking becomes less larcenous). We’ll see…

UPDATE: Officially, “iPhone even geotags your photos with information about where they were taken.” That’s good.

iPhone v2: The 2nd generation iPhone device. I think this is a strong possibility, but it probably won’t be available for a little bit. It will have 3G cellular data capabilities, higher capacities (16-32GB), a better headphone jack that doesn’t require a special thin plug, and GPS. The 3G capabilities will scale back to 2G speeds when checking for email and other background tasks. The next version of the iPhone SDK will include the GPS functionality, but they will only demo it using the Google Maps app. The higher capacities will be needed for user-created applications via iTunes App Store. There may be a front-facing camera for video chat, but I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mobile version of iChat instant messaging, though. The 2.0 firmware will probably be released with the MS Exchange (ActiveSync) integration.

If a 3G, 32GB version with GPS is released, I’ll probably bite. My T-Mobile Wing is nice, but I’m finding that the keyboard isn’t used much and I have to pull the stylus out to tap around. I don’t use the browser because it’s slow and doesn’t format correctly. I basically just read email, return the high-priority ones, text message, and talk on it. With an iPhone, I would do the same without a stylus, but I’d gain a more full-featured browser and be able to watch podcasts, listen to music, and view photos easier. With GPS, I’d like to tinker with some location-aware applications, do some geocaching, avoid traffic, and search more up-to-date local POIs.

They might mention OS 10.6, but it’s probably too soon after the 10.5 update. Stability and security are not quite enough for a version bump. I’d really love to see a Mac Mini update, though.

Oh…and we’ll probably see an announcement of Me.com and/or MobileMe.com (probably in collaboration with Google web services) to replace the .Mac service. As part of that (and in conjunction with the GPS functionality in the iPhone), we’ll probably see geotagging of photos taken with the iPhone and displayed on a Google map.

“Being green is no longer just for granola-loving hippies.” Nope. It’s now for the trendy, “I watch Sex and the City, drive a hybrid SUV, eat organic edamame, and wear $500 hemp sandals” crowd.

I was watching “License to Grill” with my favorite black Canadian grillmeister Rob Rainford on Discovery Home this weekend and found that the channel will be changed to Planet Green soon. When I first heard of Planet Green, I thought it was going to be a new channel. I hope Rob’s show continues elsewhere. Anyway, I have a couple of comments on Planet Green…

They gave a few tips while advertising the new channel. “Ladies, conserve water by washing your hair every other day. Up-do’s are all the rage now!” “Men, conserve water by not shaving as often!” So, in other words, grow a beard and join the rest of us dirty-haired hippies. Not that I have a problem with any of that. I usually shave every 2-3 days (thanks to slow growth), but a shower is like my “On” switch. I don’t feel right unless I’ve done my whole morning shower ritual (including clean hair). It was just very odd that the first thing that came to my mind after hearing those tips was that being a hippie is now the trendy thing. And I hate trendy.

I also saw ads for a couple of new shows. Renovation Nation with This Old House alum Steve Thomas. If you’re going to renovate, why not be environmentally friendly and incorporate new technologies? Wa$ted is like a hippie boot camp game show. They come in and tell you how you’re killing the planet and wasting money, then show you how you could save money by doing more eco-friendly stuff (recycling, limiting electric/water usage, etc). After a month, they come back and see how well you did. The amount you saved over the month, they give you 12x (a year’s savings) in cash. I don’t like the hosts much, though. Greenovate, a commercial, “how can we make money off these hippies” show. As much as I dislike the idea, when I have to replace a light bulb, I’d like to know which CFL or LED bulb to get. Greensburg, a documentary on rebuilding Greensburg, KS after a tornado leveled the town. It’s a model for a sustainable, eco-friendly town. I saw something with Tom Bergeron, too. If they’re jumping the shark on “Green”, they might as well Evil Kneivel it, right?

As much as I hate how trendy the whole “Green” thing is, it will do some good things. Public buy-in means that more companies will do more eco-friendly things like add solar panels or green roofing. It also means that consumer-level products (such as solar power systems and CFLs/LEDs) will become less expensive. When the price difference between an incandescent bulb and a CFL bulb is negligible or adding a solar power system to your house will pay for itself within 5-10 years, the “Green” bandwagon will have proven its worth. Until then, I’m content walking beside it. Do what you can, when you can, I say. Not because of “global warming,” “carbon credits,” “melting ice caps,” or whatever, but because it just makes more sense to use energy that the sun is giving off (it’s going to give it off anyway, why not, right?) than to scrounge around for stuff on the planet to burn. It’s like a guy coming up and saying, “I’ll give you $3 right now for doing nothing, or I’ll give you $5 if you wash my car, but you’ll have to buy some soap.”