I received an email this evening informing me that my XML Data Feed account was now subject to new terms of service.  In order to continue using it, I needed to log in and agree.

The big part that stands out for me is this:

“YOU MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE TO CREATE WEATHER AND WEATHER-RELATED PRODUCTS TO BE DISPLAYED ON HANDHELD OR OTHER WIRELESS DEVICES”

Highlighted below for clarity…  Nice…

So, I suppose I could still use this for weather display on my site, but who the hell wants that?  Do you really care what the weather conditions are, on or around what ever web site your visiting?

If when I need weather data I know where to go look, weather.com being one of them.

Clearly they don’t want additional traffic that they can’t get revenue from?

That’s OK, I’d rather not publish or link to data that is usually wrong more than it’s right.

This is why I love analysts.  They state the obvious and people care…

According to Citi analysts the 3G iPhone will be announced on June 9th during Steve Job’s keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The conference is scheduled for June 9-13 in San Francisco.

That’s going out on a limb if you ask me.  For what it’s worth, I predict the sun will rise in the east and set in the west on June 9th.  (WTF).

WordPress 2.5.1 is out…  Fixes a bunch of stuff.  It installed here without a hitch.

It was a slow weekend, what can I say?

Granted the software is still beta, and I’ll try not to beat it up based upon that, but I will expose some of the issues that may or may not be a problem for switching from a CrackBerry to iPhone.

First some clear facts:

1. Edge simply blows.  It’s too slow for this.  Things are good when on Wifi, but edge…  Not good.  (3G should fix this right?)
2. The Microsoft Active Sync stuff leaves a little to be desired.  If your organization really leverages the security and lock down aspects of Black Berry Enterprise server you may have a hard time convincing them to let you do this.  (I’ve played with ActiveSync in the past with WinMobile phones and it’s been better than it currently is on the iPhone.  Again, it’s still Beta so we’ll see).
3. I have not tried to nuke the phone remotely from the Exchange console.  I will try that later this week.

First things first, it works, or will work at some level.  If you’ve totally been brainwashed into the BlackBerry messaging management then you probably aren’t going to like the way Apple, the iPhone, and ActiveSync work.  Simply provide your account details, and viola, your contacts, cal and mail are synchronized as it should be.

Email:

Blackberry sort of consolidates all your inbox messages if you so choose (and I do).  Meaning messages that are filtered and put into other folders by default are still in my messages application on the BlackBerry if I choose to sync those underlying folders.   With ActiveSync you only get notified of new items in the inbox.   This could be bad if you organize your inbox as I do.

If I wanted to know about new MGMT_Meeting emails which are filtered into that folder, I won’t know unless I look there.  That folder isn’t initially sync’d until you open it.

Mail works and is beautifully rendered as you’d expect.

It doesn’t appear to support landscape mode which kind of sucks for some emails.

Beta Warning: So far email notification has been spotty at best.  There are times I’ll open mail and the last updated time will be hours behind the actual time.  The mail app hangs a lot.  Generally 2-5x a day I’ll need to hard boot the phone.  It handles some attachments well; Excel, Word, even Cisco Voice mail messages are playable, others, not so much.  I have a couple attachments that will hang the phone in a really bad way, one is a pretty simple PDF.

Contacts:

Contacts work just as you’d expect them too.  Create contacts in Outlook and they magically appear on the iPhone with full details including the photo.

This is the most stable part of all of it at this time.  I have no complaints or issues to point out here.

Calendar:

This is where things get quite fugly.  First, you end up with a second Calendar.  One which can still by synchronized with iCal, and another that goes with ActiveSync.  While you can turn off the iCal synchronization within iTunes I haven’t found a way to delete it from the phone.  As a result you end up with two calendars without visual clue as to which one is which.  You can pick which one is the default, but again, it’s not immediately clear which one is which.

1. There is no week view.
2. Meeting invites work provided you’re the one invited.  Standard Exchange/Outlook responses are:  Accept, Decline, Tentative.   Apple however chose; Accept, Decline, Maybe…
   
3. There’s no facility to invite someone when creating a meeting or scheduled item (I hope this gets fixed).
   

Last but not least is the keyboard.  Nope, it’s not tactile, no you really can’t two-thumb type worth a damn (at least I can’t yet) and the predictive text will bite you when you least expect it but it’s pretty good otherwise.  I suspect that a good portion of Blackberry users primarily ‘read’ and don’t respond to anything in detail.  If you’re that type you will be just fine.  It takes some getting used too and touch is a big thing.   It took me quite a while to adjust to the Blackberry’s lack of touch screen when coming from a Palm even though it had a keyboard, I still used the touch screen a lot.  After using the iPhone I again found myself wanting to touch the icons on the Blackberry.  If there is an adaptation of Graffiti for the iPhone that would rock as well.

So all in all this looks very promising.   The data speed has to improve, reliability has to improve.   The email management will force me into a different email organization paradigm but I could probably work that out.   It is a straight forward shift from the Blackberry to iPhone?  No.  But I think this will make a lot of people happy in the long run.  As of now the Beta stuff is getting better,  Beta 3 was more like Alpha 1 to me.  It was completely unusable.  Beta 4 is much better but still not usable enough.  I still have to carry the Blackberry.

More later as things progress.

Frickin pants with built in keyboard/mouse.  Remember, someone spent money making this.  (yanko design)

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 is released into the wild.

new iPhone beta (5A258f) bricked my iPhone.   I is not happy at the moment.

– Well that was a Pain the a$$, the direct update from the previous beta 3 fails miserably.    iTunes would see it and offer to restore it to 1.1.4, that also failed after about 10 minutes.  After finally reinstalling the previous beta, that worked.   But then the phone wouldn’t activate (unsupported OS, please update).  So we start over.  That didn’t appear to go well again, as it would get to one state in the Organize and say ‘waiting for phone’, only the last time a second instance of a phone appeared in the organize.  So I told that one to update as well while the other instance was ‘waiting’.  We’re back, but that process sucked completely.

I’m allowing iTunes to restore it (data) I hope that doesn’t jack it up.  The new OS contains two new apps/buttons.   iTunes and App store

LiveWritter seems to be doing something bad with my drafts…

While there is no written rule, it’s generally accepted that you don’t release software on April Fools day.:

I would think a ‘security’ company such as SonicWall would be sensitive to that.

OS X on a UMPC

Windows XP SP3 is released to manufacturing to be released on the 29th.  So what exactly is there to manufacture?

Nice… Cracked LCD Wallpaper (via one mans blog)

(What can I say, it’s been a slow couple of days)

New COD Maps, play with the Dev’s and double EXP weekend coming to PS3 sometime in the future.  Now that the Ps3 is outselling xBox maybe we won’t be second class citizens for ever.

Google’s official ‘Code of Conduct’, it’s more than "Don’t Be Evil’, read it if you have nothing better to do.

VOIP calls from iTouch (via Engadget), now wouldn’t it just be ‘the shit’ if Cisco would put a Cisco Soft phone Cisco Telepresence’d Portable Unified Communications Software product on this and/or the iPhone?  Yeah, I’ll hold my breath.

Apparently, Xnobi, CRM4 Outlook Plugin, and X1 all on the same machine is a very bad combination.  While I do like Xobni, if it can’t coexist with CRM 4 that will be an issue.  If their goal is to be acquired by M$ (as it appears to be) they’ll need to address that.

Of course they say; “The server is fine”. So I’m looking for some good tools to prove them wrong when I can’tget to it.

I stumbled on host-tracker.com tonight and it’s pretty sweet.

It’s not fast, but the data they give you for free is pretty cool.

So yeah, currently, as in right now, the server is doing just fine.

Give it a look…

I guess it’s kind of slow if you’re viewing this from Iran or Germany, but that’s not our biggest target audience…

If you know of other good testing tools please post them in the comments.

Oh my, this battle might be worthy of pay-per-view:  Blue Jeans Cable vs Monster Cable.

Googleopoly:  (via Tech Crunch)

Speaking of Google, there’s a shiny new version of Google Earth 4.3

Today’s Dilbert is fitting… if I had a $1 for every time someone complained about someone else having better hardware, I’d be rich.

Laptop Privacy Scarf, I stand corrected, I thought the Music thing was the dumbest thing I’ve seen this year…  Nope this is.   (via Gizmodo)

Woohoo! New Call of Duty (4) Map Release Details (for PS3, the superior platform).

(Note: I had some really good finds drafted up but LiveWriter bit me in the ass and I lost them.)

• HP’s new ultra portable hotness, the Mini-Note 2133, I want need one of these, someone needs to buy if for me, perhaps that someone is you.  Only the loaded option is acceptable.
• Google App Engine…  Because it’s always good to use other peoples resources, especially for free and who better than Google?
• Beamz, not just a music system, but a Total Music Performance System.  Whatever…  Quite possibly the stupidest thing brought to market this year.  It must be good because it’s at Sharper Image…  I see an infomercial or perhaps a QVC spot in the future.  What’s most surprising to me is that Kevin Trudeau isn’t all over this.  I’m sure this cure’s something or enhances your Mega Memory.
• Today’s Dilbert is spot on, it is all about managing expectations.

It really bothers me when people have a beef about something and then tack onto someone else’s event to make a statement.  Trying to leverage their thunder for their own.

The Olympics have absolutely nothing to do with the Tibet/China issue.   So leave the Olympics out of it.

There are athletes that have trained their whole lives, often hours a day for the dream of competing in the Olympics.

  Protesters of some other non-Olympic related issue have no right to dick that up for them.

One has nothing to do with the other.    I *might* understand if there are security issues for the athletes, like in the 80s when the Olympics were in Moscow, but no politician should decide if or when these athletes should compete.  If I recall even back then the move was mostly political and not really a security issue.

So to you protestors, even if your cause is just, you’ve lost my respect and attention. 

Leave the Olympics out of it.