In the Parlance of Our Times

Back in 1964 my parents took us to the World's Fair in New York City. I was 10. One of the things I remember most about the Fair is something I didn't do - try out a picture phone at the AT&T exhibit.

Not that I didn't want to do this. I did. But we had to wait in line for what seemed like a really, really long time. The reason I never got to try out the picture phone is in dispute. My memory involves me selflessly letting the rest of my family go ahead without me when they said they couldn't accommodate all of us in the booth. For some reason, the others don't share my recollection. But the fact is I never got to experience the picture phone.

I didn't mind giving up my chance to try out the AT&T picture phone at the fair, because I believed the hype that real-time video communication was just around the corner. I'd get another chance to try it out soon.

Soon turned out to be more than 40 years later. During this period the prospect was raised time and time again in the media, only to never really amount to anything. But all that has changed in the last year or so. I'm video chatting on a more or less regular basis with my parents and my kids and occasionally my husband when one of us is traveling. Sometimes the technology gets in the way - a slow internet connection or some occasional mac - pc problems - but generally it's much more satisfying and fun than talking on the telephone, and just as easy.

It's been worth the wait.

I can't parallel park for beans. Ask anyone. I'll walk an extra mile to get a parking space I can drive into, rather than even attempt to parallel park, especially in a city.

So I was very excited to see the new Lexus ads, with the car that parallel parks itself. Not that I'm in any danger of being able to afford this car. But I'm excited that the technology is being developed and that maybe, one day, it will be good enough and cheap enough to be a worthwhile option.

The New York Times published a review of the Lexus parking system this weekend. It sounds like it has a long way to go before it will be useful. Currently it (a) requires that you identify an appropriate space yourself and (b) recommends that such a space allow three feet of clearance at the front and the rear of the car. Even I can parallel park in a space with that much clearance!

But the article also talks about other manufacturers working on similar systems, some which hunt for appropriate spaces for you. One scans both sides of the road as you slowly drive around. Even better would be a system that scans the internet for open spaces - there are already web sites online for certain cities to help drivers find open parking spaces.

The big question is whether the public will embrace these automatic parking systems enough for them to become both better and cheaper. City dwellers, apparently, don't see the need. They're happy to bump and scrape and most likely no automated system will ever be able to get into as small a space as these expert parallel parkers can manage on their own. People living outside a city usually have plenty of parking choices available, either nose-in or parallel spaces with lots of clearance. So I'm not really sure who the audience for this system is, except those like me with a pathological fear of parallel parking. I don't think there are that many of us.

I'm afraid this will be the picture phone of my senior years--a promise that will take another 40 years to be fulfilled. Time will tell.

The first house we bought, in early 1981 Ireland, didn't have a landline. The previous owners had applied for one, but there was a long waiting list and we were facing into another 18 months before we'd finally have a phone. Having lived until that point with a telephone in every dwelling, life without a landline was a bit inconvenient but we managed.

So I find it amusing that my children have chosen not to install landlines in their apartments. Not that it's the same now as it was for us. Back then we used a neighbor's phone or, if we could find one that worked, a payphone. We made appointments to be near a phone so that we could receive a call at Christmas or for a birthday. These arrangements had to be done via mail - international mail at that - since there were few other communication options at that time.

My kids use cell phones, of course. They're not giving up anything when they choose not to install a landline. Rather, they're simply doing away with a redundant utility. It makes perfect sense that they not bother installing a service they don't need, especially at this stage in life when they tend to move often.

So we share an early adulthood experience with our kids - no landlines - but the results couldn't be more different. We were never reachable. They're always reachable. I kind of think that we had the better deal. Our parents couldn't call us and we couldn't call them. We were truly on our own, figuring out for ourselves how to do all those things that you do when you first leave home. There may have been times we'd have liked some advice, but mostly we were quite happy making it up as we went along. Besides, the parents had already spent years preparing us for this time, to the point where we could pretty much predict what they'd say to any situation. Michael used to say every time he got soaked in a downpour that he heard his mother in his head saying "Change every stitch!"

I need to remember this the next time I reach for the phone because it's been a while since I've heard from one of the kids. They're fine. And if not, we're in their heads telling them exactly what to do. I just hope they're listening.

I love my iPod. Seriously.

Thirty years ago I made the first of a series of moves, two of which crossed an ocean. In each case, I had to limit what I could bring with me and for every move a part of my record (read: vinyl) collection didn't make the cut. Michael went through the same thing, both with me and before we met. By 1987 we were reduced to a dozen or so records between us.

It has to be said, I was never too gone on the vinyl. I hated having to get up from what I was doing to flip the record every 20 minutes or so. As we replaced the vinyl with CDs the time I had between changes doubled, but it was still far too inconvenient for me. So when I got my iPod in 2003 what I loved the most was that I could connect it to my stereo at home or in the car and have hours of my music playing without having to lift a finger.

But today I walked by Tom's room and noticed that all his CDs are still here. He left them behind when he moved to Boston, but he didn't leave any of his music behind. It all went with him in his pocket.

I really love my iPod.

The New York Times has an article today, Real-Time Traffic Reports? Get Real, about services that attempt to deliver real-time traffic reports to your car navigation system, cell phone, or satellite radio. It would be cool if it worked, but according to the article there are lots of obstacles in the way of a system that can really keep you out of traffic.

I'll be watching this technology with detached interest, as I have no need for it. My commute takes five minutes and is not dependent on traffic. Or a car, even.

Michael likes to accuse me of wanting to buy any new technology that comes down the road. I'll have to keep this one in mind next time he challenges me to name a technology item I don't want.

Shopping. 'Nuff said.

For the past several weeks, Michael and I have been watching a TV show over the internet. It isn't something we'd normally do, but a fall show we'd been watching, Kidnapped, was dropped from NBC's schedule, and they decided to show the last 8 episodes on the internet only. We had to keep watching to see if poor Leo would be rescued.

Michael and I gathering around the laptop to watch an hour long TV show was not an appealing prospect, so we've been connecting the computer to the TV set in order to watch on a bigger screen. It's gone fairly well, all in all, but has not been quite the quality of a broadcast show. There have been occasional streaming hiccups. And then there's the set up time - changing energy and screen saver options, hiding the dock, hiding toolbars on the browser, making the connections.

In the end, it's been worth it to see out the show, but unlike the author of the Wired article, Goodbye TV, Hello Broadband, we won't be giving up the cable any time soon.

Back to work today after a break that started Dec 22nd. It's always hard getting back into the swing of things after a break, but a line from a NYTimes article gave me a chuckle this morning.

The article is about Autonet, a new service which gives you internet access in the car. Basically you plug in a router that uses 3G cell service to connect to the internet. This allows you to use your laptop with an ordinary wireless card to connect to the internet while driving around in your car. I can only think of a few reasons why you might want to do this, rather than buy a cellular card and service, which would allow you to connect not only in your car but most anywhere else, too. Maybe you have a laptop like my 12" Powerbook, that doesn't have a slot for a cellular card. Or maybe you have a van full of kids each with their own laptop.

The article is mostly about a report that Avis is about to announce a deal with Autonet to provide the router in their cars. That makes more sense to me than a family using the service.

But where's the funny part? It's the last paragraph, in response to a comment questioning both the legality and the safety of such a service:

Autonet said the service was for passengers and that Avis would require renters to agree not to hold it liable for accidents resulting from irresponsible use.

Sometimes the right thing just appears at the right time.

I've been working with people who recently adopted so-called "smartphones" like the Treo and the Blackberry. These are very cool and can do a lot. I've been playing with them a bit and can see how they would be useful, but I've been less than overwhelmed by the user experience. My sense is that if I got one it would end up with my Palm. That is, at the bottom of my bag and rarely used.

At the same time I've been traveling with my laptop, and finding myself frustrated by lack of internet access in hotels whose wireless wasn't working as promised and airports that either don't have wireless or charge for it. Whether or not I should be so bothered - dare I say despondent - when I'm forcibly off-line is perhaps fodder for a future post or a session with a shrink, but let's just accept it as a fact for now.

Yesterday, while I was off-line, Apple announced the iPhone. Wow. If it works as promised it addresses all of the shortcomings of the smartphones I've seen. The fact that it's also a video ipod - which I've been threatening to buy for a year - is a huge bonus. The internet access looks fantastic and works through the cell phone network as well as wi-fi. I can see traveling with just the iPhone and leaving the laptop at home. That would make packing a lot easier and lighter! And being a quad-band phone is a plus for trips to Ireland.

Michael, take this as official notice. I see an iPhone in our future. It's not going to be available until June, so use the next few months to get used to the idea.

In anticipation of the return next week of Lost, I was going to do a Desert Island Technology post - top 5 technology items I would want with me on a desert island (ignoring realities like whether power would be available, of course). But as soon as I added GPS Device and Satellite Phone to the list, I realized I could use those to be found, and that would be the end of my desert island experience.

If such a desert island technology list ever made any sense, surely I would want to put a DVR (TiVo or the like) on it. We got one of these a bit less than a year ago, and it's made TV watching much more fun and convenient. Sure, we can skip ads, but that's the least of it. In keeping with my original idea of a top 5 list, here are the Top 5 Things I Like About DVR:

1. I can pause the TV when life around me - a telephone ring, family member needing attention, etc - disrupts viewing. This works even when watching live TV. We can usually catch up with the live broadcast during the ads.

2. I can set up a series recording. Instead of saying I want to record ABC at 9 pm every Wednesday, as you would with a VCR, I tell the DVR I want to record Lost. And only new episodes, thank you. The DVR scans the schedule for all new episodes of Lost, so if ABC decides to put one episode on at 8 pm, or move the series to a new day or time, I'll still get the episode recorded.

3. I can watch a recording while it's recording. Say I settle onto the couch at 8:55 pm, expecting to watch Lost at 9, and it turns out there's a special 2 hour episode that started at 8 that night. My trusty DVR is recording it, so I know I won't miss it, but I'm not stuck with a choice between waiting until 10 to watch the whole episode or picking up the episode in the middle. I can start to watch the recording from the beginning, even while the end of the show is still being recorded. Tres cool.

4. I can watch a TV series that airs at 10 pm. I go to bed at 10, and not just because I'm old. I started doing this when Louise was a baby and now it's habit. Lost is moving to 10 pm starting next week and a year ago I'd have been very, very bummed about that. Now I'll just watch the episode the next night. I know what you're saying: I could watch a 10 pm show the next day with a VCR. True, but I never did. Messing around with tapes, rewinding, etc was way more work than I was willing to go through on a regular basis for a TV show, plus the quality was pretty awful with our VCR. With DVR, you watch recorded shows by picking from a list. No rewinding. No swapping tapes.

5. Recording a show is EASY. We had our VCR for 19 years. Half the members of our household never figured out how to record a show - or if they figured it out once, could never remember how to do it the next time. Recording with the DVR is so easy there's nothing to figure out. Just press the big red record button. Done. Not only that, but in many cases you can record the whole show even if you just decide part way through it that you want to record it.

There's more, but I'll stop at five. And, yes, there are some things I don't like about my DVR, but they're mostly limitations of the particular implementation of the technology that we have. Maybe I'll do a post about those sometime.

I've been reading a lot lately about Facebook, MySpace and the like and especially about parents seeking out their kids' sites. Does anyone else think, as I do, that reading what my kids would put on such a site may be more information than I want to know? If one of them went to a party on Saturday night and then later posted a picture of him or herself looking like a bit too much drink had been had, is this something I want to see? I don't think so.

Now, my kids are both of age. And they don't live at home. But it hit me a long time ago that I needed to be careful not to use the web to cyberstalk them. I think it was when Louise first went to college. Out of curiosity, because I was working with the web myself, I searched her college's web site to see what use her professors were making of the web. I found a site for her math class, complete with details about each day's assignments.

For a few days I followed this site, watching to see what assignments were being posted. But then it hit me. Would I have wanted my parents following a class I took so closely? What was I doing it for, anyway - was I going to call Louise and ask her if she'd done her homework? Shouldn't I leave her alone and let her figure out for herself how to make her way through college? No, no, and yes.

I stopped visiting the site. Louise told us later that the professor wanted to post grades - identifying students only by their ID numbers - on the site but she objected on the grounds that we might be watching. Smart girl.

I read today that an exercise equipment company is adding iPod integration to their commercial equipment:Life Fitness to Deliver Seamless iPod Integration with Exercise Equipment. The really interesting part is that through this integration you will be able to watch your iPod videos on the equipment's larger LCD screen.

For year's I've avoided the gym. I prefer to do my exercising in private and so have accepted the monotony of using the same piece of equipment over and over at home rather than go for the variety of equipment available at a gym. But a gym with this new equipment could change all that.

Not that I needed it, but this gives me a new - and healthy - excuse for getting an iPhone. Can't wait.

My co-worker just ordered an iPod (the $250 video ipod) for her son's 9th birthday present. It amazed me that a 9 year old would ask for this, but my first reaction was to wonder how long it would last in the hands of a boy that age. As I was imagining all the ways he could find to abuse - or lose - an ipod, I remembered Louise and Tom's experiences.

Tom barely had his ipod a year when he treated it to a walk in the pouring rain. That was the beginning of the end of his hard drive. Fortunately we were able to salvage the ipod with a replacement hard drive purchased from ebay.

Later that year he borrowed my ipod shuffle. That went missing in the space of about two weeks, but happily turned up under his bed. Not before he'd been all over town looking for it, though.

Then there's Louise's ipod nano. She sat on it within the first four or five months of ownership. It seemed totally dead, but once we replaced the screen it lived again. Not unscathed, however. There's still only one channel of sound coming from the headphone jack. It's enjoying semi-retirement connected via a dock to our kitchen stereo, a setup which allows full sound output.

Last but not least, there's Louise's experience with my shuffle. It went all crazy on her when she attached it to her iMac and couldn't be used again until we found and applied Apple's ipod shuffle reset utility. But that probably wasn't her fault.

So if these 20-somethings have such a hard time keeping an ipod in working order, how much worse can a nine year old be? I'll be watching with interest - and probably helping her do ipod surgery before too long.

Around here we have three choices for broadband service - DSL, cable and satellite. DSL came first and so that's the one I signed up with. When the others came along it didn't seem worth the bother to swtich, though I'm often told that cable is faster and cheaper. Inertia never seemed like a very good reason for sticking with the DSL, but until now it was all I had.

My new reason for not switching to cable is outlined in this Boston Globe article. Cable companies are cancelling broadband service of heavy internet users. They say that the heavy use of one household can degrade the service of many users in the area, so it's worth alienating a few customers to make many more happy.

Two things strike me here. First, these heavy users aren't running businesses or massively popular web servers or anything else extraordinary. They are just taking full advantage of some of the many things we can do on the internet these days - downloading movies (legally), video chats, and other high-bandwidth activities. There are many business models being developed which revolve around some of these activities, and count on a critical mass of people having broadband available. If cable companies are going to cancel the broadband of people using these new internet services, where will that leave the businesses?

The other thing that strikes me is this. Whenever I've tried to argue against cable internet based on the notion that cable users share their "pipe" with neighbors, I've been told that I don't understand how it works. Seems now that I did understand all along.

I'm sticking with my DSL.

Some technologies just fit so well into our lives and lifestyles that eventually we don't even remember how we used to do things before they came along. I'm reminded of this each time I watch an old episode of Magnum, P.I.

There's always a scene in the end where Magnum figures out who the bad guy is, and said bad guy is usually across the island at that very moment with Higgins (or Rick, or T.C, or the woman Magnum's been flirting with the whole episode). This leads to the scene where Magnum races the red Ferrari around the island and, just in the nick of time, saves his friend. When I watch that scene now, I want to shout "You'll never make it in time, Thomas! Just call his cell phone!"

We often don't even realize how ingrained a technology has become until we're faced with a situation, like in the old Magnum episode, where that technology doesn't exist. Here are some other technologies that have become so much a part of my life that I expect them to be there:

DVR I've written about why I love DVR before. But it's only when I'm away - maybe in a hotel - and watching TV that I realize that DVR and digital cable are no longer extras for me, they're the norm. During each hotel stay there is at least one time when I pick up the hotel remote expecting to get a 15 second replay or program information or on-screen TV Guide before I remember that not everyone has DVR and digital cable. Yet. I wonder how long before we start seeing this as a standard feature in hotel rooms?

Google Maps Sometimes I find it hard to believe that in 1993 our family drove across the country, stopping off at various campgrounds, attractions and public parks, without the aid of Google Maps or the internet. Or a cell phone, for that matter. We had the whole trip planned out ahead of time, knew where we wanted to go, where we were staying, etc. How did we do it? I can't even remember. But I'm pretty sure I prefer trip planning via Google Maps and other internet resources over whatever it was we did back then.

Digital Cameras I was watching Father of the Bride II the other day. The family is moving out of the house they've lived in for years and the daughter asks if the mother took a picture of the tree in the backyard. "Just a roll", the mother replies. A roll? What's that? The days when we counted how many pictures we took, tried to squeeze 37 or 38 pictures out of a 36 picture roll, or stopped taking pictures because we only had a few left and wanted to save film in case something really special came up seem very, very distant. Not to mention having to wait days to see how the pictures turned out.

I'm sure there are more, but I won't know what they are until I'm in a situation where I miss them.

Just about a month ago I gave my well loved 12" Powerbook to Louise as an early birthday present. I'd been planning to get a new laptop when Apple released a new operating system and updated the Macbook Pro hardware, but handed over the powerbook before that happened because we were visiting Louise in New York last month.

Back then I thought it would be about a month before everything was in place and I could make my purchase, but I'm still here without a new laptop. We now know it will be October before the new operating system is released. OK, I can live with that. October is far enough away that I don't mind buying a laptop now and then updating the OS later. But I'm still waiting for new hardware.

So Apple, please hurry up and release new versions of the Macbook Pro. I've been living in a Windows and Linux only household for a month now and it's not a pretty picture.

The Boston Globe had an article today about a new service from one of the founders of ZipCar. This new service, GoLoco, combines car-pooling and social networking. I'm a huge ZipCar fan, so I was interested in learning more.

You know that little bell that goes off in your head when something doesn't seem quite right? It sounds like a 4-alarm fire in my head right now. There are so many things wrong here I could write for the rest of the year about it.

At first, as I read the Globe article, I was only a little uneasy. I grew up in the time when hitchhiking went out of fashion because it was proving so dangerous. The idea of arranging a ride share with a stranger definitely goes against the grain. But carpooling is a good thing, so I took a look at the GoLoco website to see if my fears could be eased.

They were, somewhat. The site describes all sorts of attractive rideshare opportunities that sound safe and pleasant - going to a ball game with like-minded fans, or using the site to arrange a night out with friends, for instance. So now I'm starting to feel better about this and move on to their terms of service. I was looking to find out more about how the fees work. Like Ebay, the site wants a piece of every shared ride you arrange through it. The total cost of the ride is calculated, divided evenly between driver and passengers. Passenger's pay their share to the driver and everyone pays 10% to GoLoco. That seems a bit steep to me, though on a short trip 10% may just be about 25 cents per passenger.

As I read through the Terms of Service the touchy-feely let's all ride to the park together feeling from the home page was replaced with those alarm bells. Not surprisingly, the tone of the TOS is more along the lines of "it's a big bad world out there and if anything goes wrong it's not our fault". The TOS touches on insurance issues (it's up to you, not them, to be sure the driver has adequate insurance), identity issues (they explicity state they do not verify identity), and privacy issues (you grant them full rights to your data which they can use any way they please, as long as they state how they will use it in their privacy policy - which can be changed whenever they like).

By the time I got down to the 13th item in the TOS I already knew this wasn't a service I wanted to use. So all I could do was laugh when I read it. It says this:

"13. Carbon Credits
You agree to assign the rights to any Carbon Credits resulting from any trips arranged using our service to GoLoco."

This whole notion of Carbon Credits - driving your SUV and then paying someone to plant a tree so now you're "carbon neutral" - is loony. But some people are buying into it and others are making money off it, and it looks to me like that's what GoLoco has in mind. You car pool and then GoLoco owns the Carbon Credits, which they could decide to sell to that guy in the SUV.

I expect this will all be a non-issue, as I don't see GoLoco really taking off. I don't think there's a big enough user base willing to pay a 10% fee to arrange a ride share. GoLoco is no ZipCar.

One of the things I like most doing online is video chatting with my family. Considering that I hate to put myself in front of a camera, this is somewhat surprising.

But I love video chatting because it's a much richer experience than talking on the phone. I can ignore the fact that I'm in front of the camera, because I so much enjoy being on the receiving end of video from my family. It's fun to be able to see the current state of Tom's facial hair, or to watch as the flowers on my parents' coffee table change each week.

In fact, video chatting feels much more like spending time together than like having a phone conversation. Louise often does a crossword with us while we video chat or sometimes we'll both look up a web site together. Michael might notice Louise drinking from an unusual beer bottle and ask about the brand. Last week, my father demonstrated the latest advice on how to hold the steering wheel of a car (forget 10 and 2 - it's 8 and 4 now). And often we have more than one person involved on one or both ends of the conversation. These are all interactions that are more commonly associated with in-person get togethers than with telephone conversations.

Does this mean video chatting is a substitute for in-person contact? Definitely not. But when getting together in person is out of the question, as it is for so many of us living far from family, it's a great way to stay connected.

If the rumor sites are to be trusted, my wait for a new Macbook Pro may soon be over!

Yesterday ThinkSecret posted sources as saying there will be a new 15.4" Macbook Pro with LED screen available in early June. Today I saw that many PC manufacturers have begun shipping models with the new "Santa Rosa" chipset. Putting two and two together, it seems likely the Macbook Pro with the LED screen will also have the new chipset.

Either one of those would have been enough for me to decide to go ahead with my purchase. Getting both upgrades at the same time will just be a bonus.

Now if Apple would only throw in a free iPhone with each new mac.......

Update: More rumor sites are posting what their sources say. They seem to agree the LED screen will show up soon. But few say there will be Santa Rosa machines, and some come right out and say there won't be any next month. Bummer.

Last month we took a quick trip east to the Boston area. Two technology trends struck me.

First, the NY State Thruway now has free wifi at all of the service areas along Rt 90. I noticed this on a trip in April and thought it was cool, but wasn't all that sure when I'd ever want to use it. Now I know. Just outside Buffalo on the May trip I realized I'd forgotten to download the NYTimes crossword before leaving home that morning. So when we stopped, I signed on to the Service Area wifi and downloaded the crossword while Michael ordered his coffee. Back in the car, we were able to complete the crossword offline while driving.

I can think of other times it might be useful, too, like booking a hotel from the road. In the past couple of years I've been in more than one situation where I had to make or change hotel reservations while enroute and it's been a pain to do it by phone. I'm hoping next time I have to do this I'll be near a Service Area with wifi.

The other trend I've noticed lately is that hotels are providing computers in the lobby for guests to use for free. I'm a little perplexed by this. Why, when laptops are cheaper than they've ever been and more and more people are buying them, are hotels adding lobby computers? Is it easier or cheaper for the hotel to provide a computer than to support guests who are trying to use their own computers on the hotel network? Or is there some other reason? I'm curious about this.

Last week Apple came through with the long-awaited updates to its MacBook Pro line. Michael and I took a trip to the Shadyside Apple Store the evening they were announced to pick up one of the new models. Not that I was anxious to get one or anything.

I love the new laptop. The LED screen is gorgeous. I took it outside on a bright afternoon and it was very usable even in full sun. That's going to be helpful when trying to use some of the free wireless available when traveling - in NYC parks, for instance.

It's fast, too, though nearly anything seems fast compared to the 12" G4 867 I was using up until March. I do still miss the size of the 12", but I'm getting to appreciate the added screen space the 15" offers.

At the moment I'm taking advantage of my new computing power to rip DVDs using Handbrake, for putting on my future iPhone. By the time I actually get my hands on one I should have our entire DVD collection iPhone ready!

I have my iPhone!

Friday was Michael's birthday, and he wanted to have dinner in Shadyside. I warned him that there was an Apple Store there and that I would probably not be able to resist visiting it - crowds or no crowds - and he was cool with that.

So we arrived there mid-afternoon to spend some time shopping and exploring the area before dinner. At 3:30 there was a small (maybe 20 or 25 people) line outside the Apple Store. At 5 it was maybe double in size, still not too huge. We headed off to the restaurant for dinner (Casbah - highly recommended, but bring your credit card with the high spending limit) and then after dinner wandered by the Apple Store around 7. The line was short - maybe 8 people - and they let all of us in the store after about one minute. The other people ahead of us in the line were just browsing and I was able to walk straight up to the desk to buy my 8 GB phone. In and out in 5 minutes!

When I got it home I connected it to the laptop (which I had updated with the necessary OS 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 earlier) and activated in a matter of minutes. From what I read, others haven't had such a smooth experience.

Since then I've been playing around with it a lot. I should be pretty proficient in typing by the end of the weekend, though I'm not too bad right now. Definitely faster than I ever was on a Palm PDA. Internet speed is slow, but usable for things like email and Google Maps, on EDGE. It's even fairly usable on some web sites, but obviously WiFi is faster.

I look forward to using this in my travels this summer - that will be the real test of it for me.

I've had my iPhone for a week now, but haven't had a lot of time to practice typing. What better way to practice, I thought, than to write up my impressions of the phone using the phone?

So what do I think after a week? I love this thing! It's the best toy I've had in years! And that really gets to the heart of it - this is a toy for consumers, not a business tool. A lot of complaints I see online and in print about the iPhone come down to the fact that it's not a Blackberry with an iPod built in. But it is a great iPod, with amazing video, and it's a cool mobile Internet device, and it also makes phone calls. In that order.

Next time I make a short trip I'll be leaving the laptop home. With the iPhone I can do most of what I use the laptop for when traveling - like checking email, watching videos, browsing the web. Two things it can't do - yet - will keep me lugging the laptop on longer trips for now: video chats and the NYTimes crossword (which requires java).

But it's not all about what the iPhone does and doesn't do, rather it's about how it does what it does. As with other Apple products, a great deal of thought has gone into the user interface. The predictive typing is amazing. I'd estimate that I've typed about ten percent of this entry without error, yet the built in intelligence has correctly guessed what I actually meant to type at least ninety percent of the time. So either it's pretty smart or I'm pretty predictable!

This news article about Parents charged with child neglect due to video game addiction bothers me on many levels. I'm appalled that parents can neglect their children like this and that's what bothers me the most about this story.

But I'm also very concerned at where the blame is being placed. That video game addiction can be cited as the reason these parents neglected their children is very disturbing. I just don't buy it. As I see it, the parents didn't seem to have any trouble finding time to take care of themselves, to shop for a plasma TV and computer equipment, even to have sex (as evidenced by the second child). They just didn't find time to care for their children. To me that's neglect, plain and simple, and we shouldn't be making up excuses for them by saying it's due to video game addiction.

What people who don't use Apple products don't get is how Apple pays attention to the little details that make the difference between a product just functioning and a product functioning elegantly. (Miele is another company that does this.)

Take the Airport Express, for instance. I've had mine for nearly three years now and can't imagine being without it. At home I've used it to stream music, extend my wifi network, and to make a usb printer available on the network. And that's all cool. But here's where the detail stuff comes in: Apple lets you store up to 5 configurations, called profiles, in the Airport Express. Each profile allows you to configure the Airport express for the various purposes it can serve. One profile can make it a wireless client to stream music, for instance, but not provide network access, another can make it an access point to connect to a network and distribute IP addresses, another can just make it a bridge to a network, and so on.

Why would I want to change the configuration on any regular basis? Because when I travel, I bring the Airport Express with me and use it to provide wireless access in hotel rooms where only wired internet access is provided. When travelling with just one laptop, it's mostly a convenience factor (though I recently used the Airport Express to get free internet access in a hotel room where free wireless was provided only in the lobby). When travelling with two laptops, it allows both of us to use the internet at the same time while only paying one connection fee. And when travelling with the iPhone, it gives wireless internet access where otherwise I would have only AT&T's EDGE access.

It's the profiles feature of the Airport Express that really makes this all work easily. I've set up several profiles for handling the various situations and just switch between them depending on my requirements of the moment. No hassle, no fuss. I love it.

A couple of months ago, before the iPhone was released, I was telling Jason that rumors of a video iPod with wi-fi were making me rethink the need for an iPhone. After all, an iPod with video and wi-fi would do most of what I wanted the iPhone for, without the need for a monthly contract. No, Jason said, it's not the same; a cell phone with data service gives you the internet from anywhere and that makes all the difference.

Having just completed my first trip with the iPhone, I'd have to say that Jason was right. EDGE data service over the iPhone turned out to be way more valuable than wi-fi, and not just where wi-fi was unavailable. In three out of the three hotels we stayed at, wi-fi was available but barely useable. At the last place we stayed I did a speed test using EDGE and then again using the hotel wi-fi. EDGE won out over the hotel wi-fi by about 50%!

Since we were visiting big cities on the east coast, EDGE was much faster than it is here at home - usually 150 kbs or faster. So checking and sending email, using google maps, even web browsing all happened at speeds that didn't make me want to pull my hair out. I had decided to make this trip without a laptop, to see if the iPhone could provide all the functionality I needed. The experiment was a success; I never missed the laptop. The one thing I thought I'd miss about the laptop - access to the NYTimes crossword - was easily solved by buying the newspaper.

While using EDGE at the hotel kept me free from the frustrations of bad hotel wi-fi, the real value of the iPhone was in the ability to use the web and Google Maps wherever we happened to be. We were driving from Brooklyn to Manhattan in a cargo van and were forced (by a very nice policeman who didn't give us a ticket!) to make a sudden change in our route. Being totally unfamiliar with the area we would have had a hard time figuring out how to get to our destination without the help of Google Maps. Later in the day we used Safari to determine which, if any, of the IKEA stores in the NYC area had certain items in stock before deciding which one to drive out to. Another time we used the phone to pinpoint the exact location of a restaurant we'd visited last year, saving Louise and Michael the usual agony of following me up and down streets as I tell them "I know it's around here someplace; let's just go down one more block..."

After this trip, I think I need to revise my earlier description of the iPhone. It's not just a cool toy. It's my new cool travel essential.

I discovered recently that I can email a photo and text from my iPhone directly into a blogger blog. Very cool - just take a picture and send it as an email to the blogger email address. Within seconds the photo and text of the email is posted on the blog.

Unfortunately the software we use for this blog doesn't have this cool feature. The new version - which we may never have anyway - has an iPhone plug-in, but it's still not the same thing. So I started a new blog, iphoningitin.blogspot.com, for my iPhone posts. Think of it as twitter on steroids.

Over at TechNOcool, James writes about the urge to pick up a $200 computer at Wal-mart. While a $200 linux-based machine doesn't do it for me, I do understand his feelings. I have my own technology longing at the moment: to own one of the so-called $100 laptops created by the One Laptop Per Child project.

If I don't control myself in the next few weeks, one of these babies could end up on my doorstep by Christmas. Beginning November 12, and for just two weeks, we will all have the opportunity to spend $400 to donate one of these laptops to a developing country and at the same time receive one for ourselves, by way of the Give 1 Get 1 promotion.

The donate part you can do at any time, for $200. But for two weeks only you can pay an additional $200 to donate one of these to yourself.

I'm unreasonably attracted to this. I know that I'll probably never use the laptop, but I want one. Bad. It would just be cool to have.

I'm going to control myself, though. It's like the time in 1988 that Michael and I went shopping for a cassette deck for the Escort. We'd been in the country for a year, and had made a lot of purchases in that time - some a necessary part of relocating, some not so necessary. We were about to close the deal on the cassette deck when we were struck by the feeling that the spending was never going to stop. We needed to NOT buy something we wanted - really wanted - to prove to ourselves we could do it. So we walked out of the store, and for the 13 years we owned that car we never bought a cassette deck for it.

I can do this. I can NOT buy this laptop. Just watch.

A month or two back, when the Give 1 Get 1 promotion was first announced and before my newfound resolve to control unreasonable technology urges, I signed up to get an email reminding me when it was time to participate in the program.

The first such reminder turned up in my inbox yesterday. I should have just deleted it right away. But I didn't. I read it. And guess what? T-mobile is donating a year's free access to any of it's wireless locations to everyone who participates. And not just for connecting the OLPC laptop. No, you can use this access for any wireless device. Like the iPhone, for instance.

So not only am I giving up my one-chance-in-a-lifetime to own one of these sweet OLPC laptops, I'm giving up a years free wireless access for my iPhone at tons of locations.

This better be buying me some serious points somewhere.

I realized today that I'd made it through the two weeks of the Give 1 Get 1 laptop promotion. The addition of a year's free T-mobile HotSpot access - valued at $350 - made it hard. For $400 you get one of these cool laptops, $350 worth of T-mobile HotSpot access and another laptop gets donated. What's not to like about this? But in the interest of cutting down on unnecessary technology spending I had decided not to participate in this program.

Today I went to the Give 1 Get 1 web site to see if there was any information about how many laptops were donated during the two week period. Instead what I saw was that the program has been extended until December 31, 2007!

I think I've shown remarkable restraint up to now. But all bets are off from here on in.

For those of you wondering, I showed remarkable restraint this holiday season and did not buy the XO laptop. It helped that every time the thought crossed my mind I was busy doing something else so couldn't hop online and place an order.

I'd have to say I feel a twinge of regret, though there were definitely more pressing things to spend $400 on this past month. It sure would be cool to have one.

Maybe they'll do it again next year.

They say you can never be too rich or too thin. You can't have too much RAM or too large a hard drive. But can you have too many iPods? I started wondering about this last week as I was syncing and charging my myriad devices.

We have 5 iPods of one flavor or another in a household of two people. I'm beginning to think this is too many.

We didn't plan to have this surplus. I had just one iPod for quite some time, and that same iPod, a 15 GB one bought in 2003, still serves well - though only in situations where it can be plugged in, as its battery is shot. I bought my second iPod, a gum stick style shuffle, 3 years ago. It used to spend its time in my purse or coat pocket, ready to jump into action when I found myself stuck in front of a computer taking 20 minutes to boot or on a Walmart run. But now it's been displaced by my new iPod nano, which Louise was eyeing fondly over Christmas while repeating over and over "I still don't see why you needed this."

Somewhere along the way we picked up two more iPods. One is the iPhone, so it's really more than an iPod and shouldn't count. The other was adopted after being nursed back to a semi-productive life - so it shouldn't count, either. I prefer to think of its acquisition as an act of mercy.

Only as I was syncing all of these, it seemed I hadn't used some of them much lately. The shuffle, in particular, hasn't seen the light of day for a while. In fact, now, a week after the mega-sync session, I'm not even sure where it is. I'm sure I'll come up with a use for that shuffle, assuming I find it again, but right now I'm not quite sure what that will be.

It's beginning to look like five iPods are indeed too many. Darn. That's going to make it tough to justify an iPod Touch purchase.

Give me time. I'm sure I'll come up with something.