Developments like PhoneGap – the HTML/Javascript bridge to the iPhone’s APIs – a project that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise and may be the reason I finally pick up one of these crazy devices.

They also have an interview with Hampton Catlin – the famed Ruby developer behind iWik (Cullect says it’s MobileOrchard’s most important post).

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/31/switched-on-apples-brash-flash-clash-rehash/

I find my mac loyalty waning as they become a bigger player in the world of consumer electronics. Has anyone noticed that Best Buy is now an Apple Authorized Reseller? I’m sure that has something to do with CompUSA closing half it’s stores, but I digress.

I was excited when I heard about the iPhone and although it’s way outside my budget and not really a necessity, I’d been thinking that an iPhone was in my future somewhere. Now that this Flash support issue has been a present for over a month and there’s some possibility it may not get resolved anytime soon, as a flash developer I’m thinking this may not be the phone for me.

Now I’d still tell you any day of the week that Apple is on so many levels, a better company then Adobe. Don’t even get me started about Microsoft. That said, I’ve got to start to consider what (from a Flash Developer’s perspective) is the best mobile device competing with the iPhone? Any thoughts?

[source: randomgoodstuff]

I can imagine getting lost in the rain while walking is a scenario we’ve all been in numerous times and this is the gadget we’ve been waiting for.

My only question- how usable is this? I like the idea of watching people walk down the street  staring up into their umbrella watching CNN or the lastest episode of Family Guy and running into people.

Looks to me like a great (yet annoying to consumers) way to advertise.

Would you buy it?

So, 5 years ago I bought my first digital camera–a Canon Digital Elph. It was great and sturdy and still works amazingly well. Alas, it never took indoor low-light shots very well and so this xmas I decided to upgrade to a new camera.

I got suckered into buying a Sony Cybershot. The guy  behind the counter really liked it and managed to show off enough doo-dads to convince me. It’s an OK camera. I guess. I thought the interface was decent, and the screen is definitely bigger, and, to be fair, it does take better low-light pictures. But, it’s plastic, and still not all that much better than the ol’ Canon. I’ve since seen the new Canons and I (and apparently a majority of Flickr users agree) now only suggest Canons to anyone that asks. Digital camera? Canon. Laptop? Apple. Fridge? Anything but a Frigidaire.

But now I’m rambling on. Back to the topic at hand: How in the *$&#(@ do you delete ALL the photos off the camera? Is it in the manual? Not that I can find. Intuitive? Not at all. Use iPhoto? Nope. Cybershots apparently don’t listen to iPhoto to well. So, after some googling and experimenting, I FINALLY figured it out:

1. Turn on camera
2. Press the PLAYBACK button (button with triangle above screen on back)
3. Look at the top of the camera and slide the ZOOM control to ‘-’
4. The playback screen now shows multiple slides per screen.
5. Press delete button (the one on the bottom of the back of the camera)
6. Press theUP button twice to select ‘delete all’
7. Press the CENTER button in the middle of the arrow buttons to delete.
8. All gone!

Easy! Well, easy once you figure out that you need to use a combination of 4 different buttons on 2 different parts of the camera.

I miss my Canon.

First, to be fair, the pros: It’s a nice piece of industrial design. It’s rugged, which is a big plus. It also has very large buttons that even our 2 year old has figured out  (when he can steel it form his older brother). The nicest feature, IMHO, is that the volume is limited, so the young’uns can’t blow out their ear drums quite yet. In terms of the device, FP did good.
Now, the con. Can you guess what it is? (This is me afterall…that should give you a clue): DRM. Really nasty DRM.

For starters, the software comes on a CD with the player. This is the *only* way to get the software. You can not download it anywhere. If you loose it, you pay $5 to have FP ship you a new one. Secondly, Windows only. Third…both the software AND the FP3 player can only be registered to ONE machine. That means if your brother was gracious and installed it on his machine at xmas to transfer some songs to the player that your son has since then fallen in love with, you now have to explain to him why you have to delete them completely so you can connect the player to your home machine.

Finally, this biggest headache: you only have two options for getting music onto the device: Buy from Fischer Price online in FP3 format or re-rip the songs from CD into FP3 format via the software.

That means none of the song you’ve already ripped to MP3 or have purchased online via iTunes or the like can be easily put onto the player.

So, long story short, here’s the process I had to go through after I casually promised my son a few weeks ago that we could put a few new songs on his player for him:

1. First spend an hour looking for the disk only to not find it.
2. The next day, pull out the credit card and call customer support
3. Wait a week for the mail to come
4. install the software
5. reformat the FP3 player
6. Take the songs you want to add and make a new playlist in iTunes
7. Burn a CD
8. open the FP3 software
9. Rip the CD
10. re-enter all the song titles and artis information
11. copy files to the FP3 player
12. repeat steps 6-11 if you want to fill up the other half of the 128mb space on the FP3 player
13. Enjoy the new drink coasters.

Bottom line advice for anyone stumbling upon this thread researching this as a gift for their child: skip the toy store and walk over the the Apple Store and grab the iPod shuffle. It’s only about $10 more but will save you more than half the headaches.

My older son, now 5, likes music and Grandma decided to get him the Fischer Price FP3 player for his birthday last year. It’s not a bad device. It’s rugged. Easy controls. And the volume can’t be turned up to a point where it’d damage any ears.

6 months later he tells me he’s tired of the nursery rhymes on it and wants me to put some better music on it for him–specifically Jimmy Dean’s ‘Big Bad John’ and the theme to Batman. No problem! Let’s go hook it up to the computer and toss some songs on there.

Hmm…wait a minute. These are FP3 files. WTF is an FP3 file? Off to FP’s web site. Oh! It’s another #*$&#^ proprietary DRMed music format. Ugh.

OK, well, it says I can buy FP3 files online from their site (yea, right.), or I can convert any CD into an FP3 file myself. Well, maybe I can convert MP3 files too. Let’s give it a shot.

Hmm…why can’t I download the conversion sofware anywhere? Oh…I can only install it from the CD that came with the player!? You mean the CD that we got 6 months ago? You expect me to know where that is? Ugh.
Long story short, if you get the FP3 player, DON’T LOOSE THE CD unless you’re fine spending $5 and waiting 2 weeks to intall to make your 5 year old happy.

( sorry I decided to post to another blog I contribute to, but seems to sort of fit what we’re covering here as well )

A half-decade ago I worked for a wifi startup, tablet pcs were all the rage, and the company was continually exploring “interesting” uses of both technologies. One of those explorations was the Aureole Restaurant at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.

In hindsight, I imagine the project kickoff going something like this:

“What if we put their 3500+ wine list on a flakey, hard-to-use, linux-based, tablet computer?”

“Seth Godin will mock us 5 years from now at the Good Experience Live 2006 conference.” [video]

“Totally worth it.”

On a related note, recently the Daily Giz Wiz reviewed 3Com’s Audrey tablet pc. Dick said, he actually didn’t have one because they were so awful – I wonder what he’d say about the SonicBlu ProGear? Maybe something like this.

St. Pauler Tim Kehoe has discovered the holy grail of kid’s toys: colored bubbles!

Well, 3G apparently has realized that there is a need for a phone that (surprise, surprise) makes it easy to make a phone call.

Unfortunately, it’s really ugly. But, maybe a step in the right direction–at least for us cell phone luddites.