Jace Cole (dot) com

I recently purchased ans subsequently returned Google’s Nexus One.  I’ve been trying to figure out an easy way to get back to T-Mobile and my company’s corporate mobile plan (while maintaining 3G data).  I unfortunately was not able to make the Nexus One work for mobile life style.  The Nexus One is a good device, it is not able to top the superiority of the iPhone.

What I liked about Android

Integration with Google Voice is absolutely amazing.  I’m looking forward to the day where I can free myself from the wireless carrier and only rely on Google Voice.

Google Maps and Turn by Turn direction are absolutely on spot.  A rock star feature.

Google Latitude integration with Google Maps ,  real time updates…   I know this feature is not really useful.  However,  when I’m the road I enjoy taking a look at where my friends are.  Especially, given a lot of my friends are mobile like me.

Voice to text input is a nice start,  still has a bit of polishing to become useful

What I did not like

These  3 showstoppers ultimately ended up making be box up my Nexus One and send it back to HTC taking the $45 restocking fee hit:

Showstopper # 1

No ability to use User Certificates to provision Exchange Email ActiveSync in the native email client  (had to purchase a $20 app that did not integrate with native address book , calendar)

This functionality is one of the top issues to be addressed by the Android community.

Showstopper #2

Capability to integrate multiple Google Calendar accounts into the native calendar.  I use multiple Google Calendars accounts, well only two accounts.  I have a personal account and an account for work.   My work policy does not allow you to share detailed event levels with anyone outside of the domain.   This means I must have the ability to configure 2 Google Calendar accounts to view both my personal and work events.  I was shocked that Google wouldn’t get this right,  given it’s Google technology.  Not to try to make this an iPhone can, the Android can’t ,  but using CalDAV with the iPhone I’m able to view and use both my Google Calendar accounts.

Showstopper # 3

Capability to integrate and sync my digital media via iTunes.   I manage my digital life via iTunes.  I do not want to carry around multiple devices.   I must have the ability to sync my device with my music, videos, and podcasts via iTunes.   I experimented with DoubleTwist an app that was advertised to allow iTunes syncing.   I was able to sync my music but not able to sync video or iTunes.  It lacked the robustness I’ve come to expect with using any generation of iPod , or iPhone.

I found the touch screen sensitivity to be a major annoyance.  Several times in the text messaging application I would have to pound on the text input field to get the keyboard to display.

I’m not sure if this was a specific issue with the Nexus One.  I’ve read there are several issues with the 3G radio in the Google Support forums.  I found myself to drop to EDGE coverage on T-Mobile pretty much anytime I was indoors.  I only experienced 3G coverage outdoors.   I’ve never been a big fan boy of AT&T but this is the first time in writing I’d say that I feel more confident that AT&T has been indoor 3G coverage than T-Mobile.   This may be in large part to how much effort AT&T has spent over the last year migrating 3G spectrum to the 850 MHz frequency.

This was too funny not to share. You all know how much of a fan of I am of the mobile device that has changed the game. It’s crazy to think of how much the iPhone has changed the landscape of mobile technology. I have a good friend that is working in Motorola’s mobile User Experience team that recently shared this video with on the eve of Verizon’s Droid launch.

Enjoy… 

I’m starting my countdown to more iPhone withdrawal , according to the Wired & other great sources there will be some nice and modest upgrades in the new iPhone. I’ve been relegated to a Blackberry since my firm will simply not wake up and support Microsoft ActiveSync.

I’m thinking of at least taking it for a spin … too bad AT&T is the only choice for these things.  T-Mobile’s service is far superior but unfortunately T-Mobile has put their 3G UMTS on the 1700/2100 MHz freq … AT&T’s is on the 850/1900 MHz.  The iPhone does not support T-Mo’s 1700 MHz band

Still … It’s something for me to get geeked out about and look forward to, even if it ultimately it is not compatible in supporting my work mobile life. I’ll be sticking to my antiquated and ugly Blackberry 8900.

So I’ve got the new 2.1 iPhone 3G firmware installed and immediately there is a noticeable difference in the 3G reception in my condo.   Pre 2.1 I would be very lucky to get more than 1 bar of 3G signal strength in my condo.  With the new firmware I’m now getting full bars.  I think to throw some “lip stick on the pig” Apple also changed the 3G signal strength logo ,  it’s no longer in a white box, now just pretty letters.  There is also noticeable improvement in the speed of navigation between SMS messages, contacts, and your e-mail.

It’s a wait and see now on battery life improvement.  My hope are up.  I want this thing to work like I’d expect of an Apple product.

It’s good to see lot’s of other Chicagoians are seeing the same improvements based on the comments from Scott’s iPTIB blog at the RedEye.

Update: According to Engadget Poll it looks like I’m not alone in seeing remarkable better reception / fewer dropped calls.  One of two of my biggest peeves with the new iPhone 3G.   According to the poll over 13,000 are claiming better reception and fewer dropped calls.

It’s too early tell on battery life,  it appears to be better , but won’t really be able to tell until I have a full week of normal use under my belt.

Amazingly and as promised, Apple has released the iPhone 2.1 firmware through iTunes this morning. The iPhone 2.1 contains the following updates as listed by Apple:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Significantly improve battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improve email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• Improved performance of text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

What’s even more amazing is they actually call out all the flaws I’ve been seeing,  rather than the standard line of “Bug Fixes”.

I’m installing now … I’ll give a full report after a few days on the new firmware.

After a long stint of working various sales and business development activities (aka the beach) I am finally moving back into a consulting and delivery role.  Starting next week I’ll be working for a client in North Carolina where our team will be augmenting and helping transform the client’s IT business analysts.

A bit of a stretch from the user centered design arena but still in the heart of my core competency area of design and analysis phase of Systems Development Life Cycle SDLC.  I’ll be working with this client through the end of March and what promises to be at least 4 days of better winter weather than the chi-town.  We’ll see what type of havoc mother nature will bring this winter with the travel in out of our favorite airport: ORD.

So I need some help from the tech world of my 22 average monthly blog readers.  We are trying to transform this team of sharp industry BAs and I’m just the person to help do that.   Do of any of you have any good suggestions for methods or traning that you’ve built or that can help ramp up a code junky turned BA?   I’m looking for things to build and strengthen typical BA skill sets.   I’m going to be creating training modules for requirements gathering, analysis, and management,  best practices for use case development,  tips on how to collaborate and work with offshore development teams,  unit and user acceptance testing methods, process mapping, and any other key components that make up a truly rock star BA.   Please, if you have any good suggestions, visions, materials, tips, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment.

Great news for me and traveling with my new favorite airline!

It’s the dawning of a new age, folks. In-flight Wi-Fi is slowly rolling out across domestic airlines in the US and Delta is looking to capitalize on it by outfitting their entire domestic fleet of aircrafts with Aircell’s GoGo service

Very good news for business travelers and anyone who needs to defeat the boredom of the sky.   I can only think of the things I’ll be able to do now and be productive.   Maybe a reason to leave even earlier on those Thursday home days??

Will be interesting to see how they handle content filtering,  I don’t want to watch the middle aged man next to me looking at porn.

Great news Delta!  Thanks for confirming my choice of airlines.

I’m rocking the new Wordpress app for the iPhone! Now I can blog from anywhere… Like right now I’m sitting on the toilet at my hotel in Atlanta… kidding

But seriously cool app, hope they develop some moderation functions soon. Right now you can just write new posts.  Big thanks to Jon Wilbur for pointing out how to get the app to work for root domains,  a bug that wasn’t quite worked out in the first release.

You can also add pix!

MobileMe finally has become stable enough to play around and get a good feel for what it has to offer.   Although stable (meaning I can access me.com consistently) it’s still not working 100% ,  I’m having partial contacts sync and missing contacts on my iPhone.   Overall though, MobileMe looks really nice though lacks functionality in some key areas. My impressions were that it was more along the lines of a final release product, not something more of a beta…   Apple has been running .Mac for years,  seems somewhat surprising Cupertino did not nail it on the first try.  I am hoping to see an updated release with performance improvements and additions to missing functionality very soon.

The biggest disappointment in my opinion is the lack of integration of personal domains.  I would love to be able to have the true “Exchange for the rest of us” experience with the capability to bring my own domain e-mail.   Similar to the service Google Apps is offering for domains.
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Woke up at 02:55 AM this morning CDT.  Stood line with my friend and neighbor… to accomplish the mission:

Unfortunately AT&T was only selling 1 per heart beat, so P is going to have to wait a bit for his 8gb (I’m going to head to the Apple store in about 30 minutes)  …  and iTunes activation is still down.  So I can either wait,  or try to jailbreak / unlock now.