Otto – Page 15 – Nothing to See Here

T-Mobile's new killer phone feature

An article in the New York Times talks about a new thing T-Mobile introduced last week, but which few people noticed… It’s called “HotSpot@Home”, which is a dumb name, but still:

For $10 more on your cell phone bill, T-Mobile will give you a cell phone that also works over WiFi, and a WiFi router at home for you to hook to your own broadband internet connection.

The plus side to all this: When your phone calls are using the WiFi, they’re free. No minutes get used up. When the calls are using the normal cell phone network, you’re charged as per usual. It can also seamlessly switch between the two.

Think about this.. You’re at home, so your phone calls are using your own WiFi and therefore are “free”. No cell phone minutes used. Or you’re at the Flying Saucer, having a beer… The saucer has free WiFi… your phone detects that, uses it, and your calls are free there too. Walk out of the saucer on the phone and out of range, and the phone switches back to the normal cell network and you never notice it.

With a phone like this and the plan to allow it, you could probably reduce the number of minutes you actually pay for each month. If, for example, you pay for 1000 minutes but use 800 of them while at home or work (assuming you have WiFi at work), then you could switch to a 250 minute plan and save the difference.

Neat idea, I thought.

Great Amazon Deals

Found a neat post a while back that described how to mess with Amazon’s URLs to find the best deals, like everything in a category that was 90% off and such. Then this morning I found a post with all the URLs pre-made for you. Very neat.

So, here you go:

Apparel & Accessories : 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Beauty: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Bed & Bath: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Books: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Camera & Photo: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Cell Phones & Service: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Computers & PC Hardware: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Computers & Video Games: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

DVD: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Electronics: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Furniture & Decor: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Gourmet Food: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

GPS and Navigation: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Grocery: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Health & Personal Care: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Home & Garden: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Jewelry & Watches: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Kitchen & Housewares: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Magazines & Newspapers: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Musical Instruments: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Office Products: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Outdoor Living: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Pet Supplies: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Shoes: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Software: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Sports & Outdoors: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Tools & Hardware: 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

Toys & Games : 90% — 80% — 70% — 60% — 50% — 40% — 30% — 20% — 10%

More about the iPhone

I made an iPhone post earlier, and Paul pointed to it, which was cool of him and got me a lot more views than I’m used to. But I got some feedback on the topic as well, so I figured I’d go into it a little more.

First off, If you’re getting the thing for free (like through work or something), then go for it. It’s cool looking, the interface is neat, and it’s very blingy. My issue with the thing is that it’s $600 and somewhat “low-tech”. Here’s what it breaks down to: Stuff they can fix, and stuff they can’t.

Stuff they can fix via a future software update:

No custom ringtones. Period. It doesn’t allow for MP3’s, music tracks, or anything else. What’s in the phone is all you get. Although iTunes 7.3 appears to support selling ringtones. Look forward to rebuying your songs as ringtones.
The camera is 2 megapixels, but can’t record video.
The phone cannot send “MMS” messages. These are like text messages with pictures or video or what have you. For some people, this is no big deal. And it can still send email, so that’s something to consider as well.
There’s no instant messaging in the thing. It can do “iChat”, but it can’t do AIM, MSN, GoogleTalk, any of that.
The only “push” email it supports is Yahoo Mail. Don’t use Yahoo Mail? Tough luck. It can do IMAP based email, which excludes most email systems and isn’t “push”. Blackberries can do better than this.
No games. None. Zero. Zilch. Which is annoying, since they sell iPod games on iTunes that, in theory, could work on the thing.
It’s not user expandable. You can’t put your own apps on it, yet. Even if they fix this, it’ll probably be a purchase mechanism thing.
The Bluetooth only works with phone calls. So you can’t use your neato Bluetooth stereo headset and have a wireless iPod functionality.

Stuff they *can’t* fix:

The massive SLOW of the thing. Unless you’re able to find a WiFi access point, you’ll be using AT&T’s “EDGE” network. Which, as you’ll notice very rapidly, is extremely slow. What really irks about this is that HSDPA is available in cheaper phones and is much faster and extremely reliable (albeit only found in big cities). This can NOT be fixed with a future software update, it’s a hardware problem. Who wants to bet that the “iPhone 2” comes out just as the iPhone price drops down to “free” in a year or so? Who wants to bet that the iPhone 2 will have HSDPA?
No GPS. If you’ve seen the commercial with the big screen Google Maps giving turn by turn directions, then you’ll be disappointed to discover that a) the iPhone does not have GPS and so it has no idea where you are (you have to tell it) and b) it can’t actually give turn by turn based directions. You have to tell the iPhone when you make each turn. Which makes it pretty useless for this unless you have a buddy using the phone as you go. No software fix for this, the GPS hardware ain’t in the phone.
The thing works as an iPod Nano, basically. It has 4 or 8 GB of storage. But not all the iPod capable things will work with it. Also, because of the jack plug size, you’ll need to buy a special adapter to make some of your normal headphones work with it.

The software problems are enough to keep me from buying one until they fix them. But these last few hardware issues are enough to make me wait until new iPhone hardware appears in a year or two. Why pay extra for something worse than what I already have?

Gizmodo published a list of things you should know before getting one, so don’t take my word for any of the above.

Why I won't be getting an iPhone

Kat wrote about wanting an iPhone yesterday, but I’ve known for a long time that I’m really just not interested in the thing. Today I found this story on Gizmodo that really lays out why:

Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

Songs as Ringtones

Games

Any flash support

Instant Messaging

Picture messages (MMS)

Video recording

Voice recognition or voice dialing

Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)

One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)

Stuff we already knew it didn’t have

3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)

GPS

A real keyboard

Removable battery

Expandable Storage

Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)

For reference, my existing cheap-as-in-free LG CU-500 phone has all but 3 of the the things above. The iPhone looks to be like it’s a major downgrade. I kinda wonder if it’s even capable of making phone calls.

On the plus side, you’ll soon be able to find out which of your friends has more money than brains, because they’ll be sporting their shiny new useless blingy phone! And that is going to be the most useful feature ever.

Edit: I just noticed that Amazon has several books available for a phone that actually hasn’t even been released yet! Including “iPhone for Dummies“. Amazing.

Twitter

I signed up for twitter today, and installed a plugin for the blog that hooks into it. It’s kinda neat. The basic idea is that you can send “what you are doing right now” to it at any given moment, and the site posts it. Not complex, basically like a blog for one-liners. The WordPress plugin I installed lets you show the latest twitter messages you’ve sent to the service on the sidebar, or in a post, or what have you. Very nifty.

So if you look on the bottom right of this page, you’ll see the latest info on what I’m currently doing. The cool thing about it is that you can post what you’re doing to the site via email or IM or even text message. Quite entertaining, albeit somewhat useless, information. Still, fun for a while, and maybe I’ll figure out something useful to do with in the long run.

Geekery and Beer

So, I’m sitting here drinking some of my new homebrew. It’s a rather nice cherry wheat that came out a tad more spicy than I was actually expecting. I think I rather overdid it on the cinnamon. I figure that after another couple of weeks of bottle conditioning, it might turn out to be a rather good beer.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s a lot stronger than I was expecting. After just one, I’m catching a buzz. Very nice.

Anyway, while I’m basking in the sun and enjoying a frosty beverage, I figured I’d putz around with the website a bit. Those of you of a geekish bent might try looking at the site on your mobile phone or whatever handheld device you happen to prefer. Through the magical power of the interwebs, the blog should now look different on the handheld devices, more suited to smaller screens. It’ll eliminate the sidebars and rejigger the display a bit. Since I’ve been using the mobile web a lot more, I find this quite cool.

Also if, for some demented reason, you feel it necessary to produce hardcopy of my random meanderings, you’ll find that the excessive imagery disappears on the printout, leaving you with just the basic text and little else. This should all be automatic if you have a modern browser, no strange trickery required. Although I’m dubious as to why anybody would want to print out my worthless words, the option is now there, if you happen to come up with a reason.

Those of you interested in the technical details can read on after the jump…
Continue reading “Geekery and Beer”

Getting me a TV

Thinking about buying me one of these. It’s a Samsung 46″ HDTV. I kinda like it, and the price seems good.

Anybody got any opinions on televisions? Bigger? Smaller? Different brand? Whatever you got, post a comment, let’s hear it.

HOW-TO: Make WordPress Blogroll's smarter

Warning: Heavy geek content ahead. If you’re not interested in PHP code, you can safely skip this post.

One thing that not a lot of people know about is that WordPress is capable of checking your bookmarks/blogroll links for you and organizing them according to the time they were last updated.

The reasons people don’t know this are:
a) It’s not automatically setup and working, and
b) It rarely works in the first place.
Continue reading “HOW-TO: Make WordPress Blogroll's smarter”

Death of a PC

My home computer did not survive the move. It appears fine at first glance, however the power supply seems to have taken some sort of fatal injury. This is a non-trivial fix (as it’s a pretty heavy duty power supply), so I’ll be offline for quite some time while I repair or replace it. Not looking forward to that, just getting it out of the case is major surgery.

On the plus side, everything else has gone really well. If I can finish getting all my stuff out of the apartment this weekend, and then finish unpacking, I should be good to go. I really like the new condo.