My iPod Touch broke a couple weeks ago. It still plays music and games, but the home button broke and now I can’t get back to the home screen. I can’t believe Apple made this device with such a serious flaw. There is absolutely no way to get to the home screen without getting really creative.

I was complaining to my brother-in-law, who really likes Apple products. He asked if I had called a “Genius” yet. Nope, I haven’t. I don’t even know where an Apple store is, I’ve never been in one. I got this device at BestBuy. After going around and around with him he finally said, just throw it away and buy a new one.

After all you will get another iPod… No matter how much you complain, when you need a music player you will get an Apple product.

He was absolutely right! I don’t even know of another mp3 player on the market. Do they still make the Zune? iPod is so branded into my brain, I could complain all day long, but in the end I will get another iPod.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. To start, I hate it when he is right, and second, there has to be a way to get all the benefits of an iPod without an iPod. After all it’s just an mp3 player.

A few days ago my wife got the Samsung Vibrant, or Galaxy S, whichever you prefer to call it. It’s simply amazing. Big screen with a thin body. It’s powerful and fast. Best of all, it plays video and music to perfection. It comes loaded with Avatar. You can jump to any part of the movie and in a second it continues to play… It’s super fast.

Android has solved my problem. Why should I buy an iPod when I can get an mp3 player built into my phone. Why would anyone buy an mp3 player again? whether it’s an Android device or an iPhone, the iPod is getting absorbed by another device. Just like the PDA was absorbed years ago by the smart phone. I don’t see too many PDAs anymore. That market tanked… and so will the mp3 player market AKA the iPod market.

So, that’s bad news for Apple.

You might agree or you might not, but when I see analysts on on CNBC giving Apple targets of $350-$400 I wonder why. A couple days ago I was listening to the radio and Rob Black gave Apple a target of $1,000??? A joke right. Of course he planted his target to five years from now, but seriously let’s think about this rationally. Let’s think about this from an Android fan boy perspective.

As I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to buy an iPod any more. You can replace it with a very solid iPhone 4. I’m sure you’ll be happy with it, millions of people are. But you can also get an very good phone from any one of the major carriers, including At&t that runs on Android.

The Droid X is awesome. The EVO is awesome. The Vibrant is awesome. The iPhone is awesome. Are they iPhone killers? not really, but they are definitely iPhone competitors.

Even with the iPhone rumored to make it to Verizon and T-mobile, when you look at an iPhone and a Droid X on the same table. I’d have to give the edge to the Android phone. They are very sexy phones. Looking at the home screen with the live background and widgets looks sharp. Compare that to a home page filled with apps on the iPhone and right away you are guided away from the iPhone.

Sure the iPad is huge right now, but you know Android and WebOS tablets are right around the corner ready to take even more market share from Apple.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been waiting to get my wife an iPhone for a long, long time, but we have both had bad experiences with At&t service. I was waiting and waiting to hear any news about the iPhone going to T-mobile. I would have bought her one, and I’m sure she would be thrilled to own one. Long story short, her Blackberry broke, she now has an Android phone and I’m sure she will have one for many years to come.

In Summary

I think the iPod is on the way out, Android is Hot, and $1,000 price targets for Apple are absolutely ridiculous!

Here is a simple introduction:

I was lucky enough to register for the beta trial of swype. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and would like to provide a review.

My phone:

T-mobile G1 – Rooted, Running 2.1 Cyanogenmod

My texting habits:

Last time I checked, I’m not a high school girl that has tons of friends in my network and have to be in constant contact with everything dealing with everybody. In other words, I don’t text very much. Mostly twitter, search queries, market searches, etc…

My Review:

After you install swype, your default soft keyboard is replaced with the swype keyboard. I got the following message displayed when activating the Swype keyboard:

This input method may be able to collect all the text you type,  including personal data like passwords and credit card numbers. It comes from the application Swype. Use this input method?

That message is a little scary, and obtrusive. I figure it is because I’m using the beta and they (developers) need to see how accurate the swyping is.

I agreed to the warning, simply because passwords on mobile phones are unsecure anyway and I’m not going to be doing any texting that incriminates me. Which brings up a good question, do you enter credit cards, passwords and other personal information using your cellphone?

Pros:

• The Swype soft keyboard alone is nicer then the default Android soft keyboard.
• It’s fun to swype. When you first install Swype, you’ll quickly realize that you will have to memorize the keyword for swyping since you can’t see half the keys as you move your thumb around.
• It’s amazingly accurate. Even on words that you know you messed up on, Swype will either get the word right or pop up suggested words. Only a few times did Swype  return the wrong word.

Cons:

• There is a learning curve. I’m still learning a couple weeks after I first started to us it, which means that swyping words is getting faster, but still takes some time to put together full sentences because I have to wait to make sure the words are correct.
• It’s a little slow. I don’t blame Swype for this, since I am using a G1. I’d like to try it on a more powerful phone. When I say slow, I mean, I swype a word, then have to wait because I’m not confident the word will be correct, but again, most likely it is… I just need to man up and trust it.

I’ll definitely use this technology for soft keywords from now on, but I have to admit, I still like the real keyword on my G1. Mainly because I use both thumbs to type and it has a better feel to it.

There are a few competitors in the app market that allow for sliding keys for text input. Most notably, Shapewriter. Which I haven’t tried, but it does get good reviews. When I tried to get is from the app market, I couldn’t find it.

I found this message on Androidzoom.com

We plan to take ShapeWriter off the Android Market on June 20 for an indefinite period of time. We ask you to update your ShapeWriter to version 3.0.9 which will not expire. In particular, the paid user should upgrade to the latest version ASAP.

Slideit is another sliding input keyboard. It costs money, so no download or review from me… Not because I’m cheap, but because I have Swype installed.

FeedSquares for Chrome provides a refreshing way to experience Google Reader on Chrome and read your favorite feeds in style. To begin using FQ, please first login to your Google Reader Account.
SOURCE: FQ Chrome

You can find FeedSquares in the Chrome extension website. It’s not hard to find since it’s a featured app. after a quick install, you’ll see the icon in your extension bar.

When you first load it up, you’ll see all your feeds as little squares. If you have a lot, like me, you’ll have to scroll left and right to see them all. This did drive my CPU crazy, averaging about 40% CPU Usage, but that happens a lot to my laptop. My CPU also spiked when I opened a post, or changed feeds. Again, I have a ton of feeds in my reader. this extension makes me want to go in and do some organizing.

The coolest thing about FeedSquares is that it is HTML5… It’s not flash, but looks just like a flash app. It’s definitely a site to check out for good HTML5 examples.

On a side note, I found another good HTML5 example at 9elements.com. Not only is their HTML example app groudbreaking, but their homepage is wonderful too…

Overall, if you’re into new HTML5 examples, you have to check out FeedSquares, even if you don’t plan to use it as your Google Reader replacement.

You can also get FeedSquares for your Android phone, but unfortunately I can’t really comment on it, because it’s not loading on my rooted G1 running Android 2.1. It’s hanging on the screen to authorize FeedSquares to access my Google Reader account.

What would make FeedSquares a killer app?

• More options for customization - Currently I think you can only adjust the background color from light to dark, and adjust the refresh time
• go real-time, Integrate pubsubhubbub to update feeds

Lately I’ve been getting spammed via SMS. The most recent spam SMS was trying to get me to visit 1stdebtstop.com. Since I do work in the mortgage and finance industry, when I see fake debt relief websites I get really upset.

First of all, I don’t think this scam has anything to do with debt relief. The same number (404 693-2475) sends out many different types of SMS messages. Doing a Google search I found people complaining about e-cigarettes, debt modification and facebook friend requests. This scam is all about getting more information from you, mainly just finding out if you are human. below is a quote from 1stdebtstop unsubscribe page.

1stDebtStop is a consumer product and services text message alert service. Receive 1 offer per week. Standard text message charges may apply.
Source: http://1stdebtstop.com/unsubscribe.html

Again, the unsubscribe page is only used to capture your phone number and verify that you are human. Do not use the unsubscribe page to opt-out.

Red Flags:

1. 1stdebtstop.com is registered in China on the worlds friendliest spam network Xinnet
2. 1stdebtstop.com has a huge unsubscribe link at the top of their website.
3. the domain name was created may-13-2010
4. Google 1stdebtstop or 404 693-2475 and find complaint after complaint
5. Any company that spams you doesn’t respect you as a customer

Just like getting email spam, if you don’t know who it is from, DO NOT unsubscribe or in the case of SMS, do not reply. These spammers are sending out thousands of text messages to random numbers. If you reply to the SMS, they now know that they have a real phone number. Best solution is to just block the number.

I use Chompsms for Android on my G1. Chompsms allows me to blacklist any phone number, but I’m not sure I completely understand it. There seems to be confusion on the Chompsms forums as to how this actually works and if it really blocks spammers or just hides notifications.

You can also try to block the spammer with help from your carrier. I use T-mobile, which cannot block a single phone number from sending SMS.

Google Voice is another option. GV has a very simple way to block SMS spam that is similar to blocking spam email. At google.com/voice you can flag any message as spam and in turn block that number.

What is really sad is these guys will make money from you. There are some people out there that will fall for this scam and either buy a product or service from them, or more likely, get their identity stolen…

The iPhone was game changing. It filled a need for a much better smartphone. It’s strong enough for power users and easy enough for old ladies, although I still think the blackberry is going to stay king of executive phone use for a long time, just because of the email abilities.

The problem with the iPhone and all other Apple products is the closed system. Steve Jobs basically says “You’re in my world now!!!” and if the innovation doesn’t live up to the expectations people are going to bitch. The iPhone was awesome so people didn’t complain. The iPad is a lackluster device, topped with a restricted system, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

Unfortunately we’ve come to expect that from our smartphones. For a larger device that’s supposed to replace your netbook as a complete portable computing solution, though, this is almost unprecedented — at least from a device that’s likely to have a great deal of influence on the market and on the design of future devices. That’s bad news no matter how you spin it.
Source: Mashable

Seriously, you can’t even share files between the iPad your home computers… There might be a way around this, like uploading to the cloud.

I love you Google… Not really, but this was a big win for them and the Android OS. It’s coming on strong, because it’s open, it’s got many more carriers and phone makers, and Apple dropped the ball.

Here are just a few of the problems with the iPad

• No Multitasking – WOW, I can’t listen to music and work on a spreadsheet at the same time?
• No USB – the universal adapter.
• No GPS – Where am I, and more importantly, where are cool places to hang out in my area. Location based services are all the rage, someone should have told Apple this!
• No Camera – I heard there was going to be a camera that let you use hand gestures to control the tablet… That would have been cool.
• Not OPEN – You have to play by Apple’s rules.

Don’t even get me started on the name iPad… iSlate was cool, iPad has already been coined iTampon which trending to #1 on Twitter today… That’s bad. I can’t believe…

Nope, not going there, gotta stop…

mobile computing on smartphones has been around for a long time. Probably the most well known smartphone was the palm Treo. That phone was the first to take people from owning a cellphone and a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). I owned a couple of them and would install apps all the time. There was no app market, we had to get them the old fashion way, by searching the internet and downloading them from personal homepages. I was able to find a disk once with about 700 apps on it. Everything from chess to SF Bart maps to GEOtagging. Of course, it was nothing like it is today, but don’t forget, apps have been around for a long time.

I remember buying Tom Tom Navigation for my wife’s Treo. Worked great and was a cheap alternative to buying a separate navigation device for her car. Of course it was all disks, there was no way to get maps on the fly with a download, and you had to use an external GPS unit to receive the location signals, but that was just the standard a few years ago.

I use to make apps with a program called Codewarrior. Codewarrior for palm was discontinued a few years ago due to the fall in popularity of the Palm Treo, and the Palm OS. The new Palm apps run on a hybrid HTML language… but has yet to gain any serious following. I have only seen one Palm Pre on the streets.

Codewarrior basically let you make forms and pages with wrappers to handle all the behind the scenes activities. It was crude, but you could definitely build apps and distribute them to other users without having to jailbreak or hack the phone.

It makes me think how palm, and the earlier smartphone companies didn’t see how smartphone apps would change the way we use smartphones?

Why did it take a company like Apple to unleash the next evolution in apps. Even with inferior data plans from 5-6 years ago, the companies should have still seen this coming. Many times I complain about new technologies and new media getting a lot of attention, when in reality the technology has been around for years. All it take is a tipping point I guess for them to hit critical mass and society to find a use for them.

A few months ago, I was in Office Depot looking for a printer. I used my G1 to find the same printer at Circuit City for about $150 less, and it was less then a mile away. I called CC and placed the order for in-store pickup while I was still in Office Depot. My wife and I were so happy. From that day I was hooked on the G1.

Back to buying crush it. I knew I overpaid for this book because I had my G1 with me loaded up with the Amazon app for browsing pretty much everything. It’s a good app and I recommend downloading it, not because of the price checking feature, but for product reviews. The app allows for  3 ways to find a product. You can enter the title, scan the barcode or take a picture of the book cover. Some books I tried failed on the barcode scan, but worked when I tool a picture of the cover.

The app lets you add  the product to a shopping cart and then sign it with your amazon username and password to order. I almost did order it, but since I only had one book in the cart, I would have paid shipping. I know this doesn’t  makes sense since I paid a higher price for the book and tax, but still I wanted it now.

I think one feature that is missing from the Amazon app, is the ability to find related books. I think I might have placed and order if I found related books so I could get free shipping. I spent some time looking for books on the shelf, but after scanning the barcode and then reading reviews, I found it to be taking too much of my time.

Like I said before, I recommend this app for the reviews, but if you are looking for an app to save money, download Shop Savvy barcode scanner. With Shop Savvy you can view multiple websites and compare prices, but Shop Savvy doesn’t provide reviews. Walmart.com is selling Crush it for the lowest price according to Shop Savvy ($9.50)

About 3 months ago, we booked a trip to Hawaii… SO yeah, I have to lose some weight. I was watching TV one night and browsing the Android app market on my G1 at the same time. I was looking for pedometers to track how far I walk and to see if any had a calorie counter on them. I found 3 apps that got me on my new diet, which have helped me to lose 20 pounds.

I don’t know how my thinking got so screwed up, but I will not drink a normal soda. I hate sugar and carbs and try to eat as much meat as possible. Yet, I’ll drink 4 beers a night and not think twice about it? I blame it on the media,  Atkins craze and slow burn diets.

The first app is aBMI, which is a body mass indicator. This will tell you that you are fat and need to go on a diet. If you already know your fat, skip this step.

The next thing I did was find out how many calories I need to maintain my weight at 190 pounds. I thought there was an app for this, but I can’t find it… So I just do a Google search for “How many calories to lose weight calculator”. Brings up a ton of sites that have calculators for this. They all seem to have different calculations so feel free to choose the one that fits your needs.

Since about 3,500 calories equals a pound, I need to cut down on my caloric intake and add some exercise to my day to lose weight. My goal is to eat less then 1,500 calories a day, and try to exercise and lose another 500-1,000 calories per day.

The next app I download for the G1 is awesome. It’s called CalorieCounter and tells you how many calories are in the food you eat. It goes way beyond just hitting generic food. You can find menu items from pretty much every major restaurant like TGIF, and Burger King. This app also goes into all food brands including generic store brands. It has everything. One thing I wish it had was a way to combine foods and make a custom food item like a sandwich. It will let you save foods you eat a lot, but doesn’t let you combine foods to easily add to your daily intake.

My plan is to eat small meals that are 300 calories each. So I can have 5 meals a day. Egg white and toast in the morning. Tuna sandwich for lunch… it is actually very easy to eat this way. I’m not hungry all day and I don’t get sleepy from large meals. Since I do go to bed really late at night, I seem to need a snack at around 10PM… I usually grab a banana or something (100 calories)

I look up one of my favorites, a foot long meatball sandwich from Subway… 1,600 calories, WOW

For the exercise, I want to see how many calories I burn. I download Cardio Trainer to map out where I bike, run, or walk and see how many calories I burn. Another really good program. Uses the GPS very well. Even when I don’t have a connection to the phone it still tracks my location. I mountain bike in the Oakland hills all the time and there is really spotty reception. I think the calories burned is off a little from other calculators I found on the internet. You can choose what activity you are doing, but I think biking on this app, is roadbiking, not mountainbiking.

I don’t use them everyday, anymore. I used them to change my thinking about dieting and food intake. Of course, the apps really had nothing to do with it. I could have done the same thing by reading a book or searching the internet, but with all the junk and bad information out there it’s hard to get your head on straight. Forget about all meat diets from the 4 hour work week. Forget about fats, carbs, sugar, etc…

1. Find out how many calories it takes to maintain the weight you want to be at
2. lower your calorie intake and exercise more
3. be steady and it’s easy to maintain.

We already know that Google’s intentions aren’t to limit the Android platform to mobile phones. With the right hardware and expectations that these devices can truly be portable thin clients, an Android netbook might not be so far-fetched after all.

The problem with Google making an OS isn’t the fact that they are notorious for announcing products that turn out to be nothing more then feeble attempt to gain media exposure when a competitor is about to release a product or service. Google buys a ton of start-ups and Mark Cuban has an explaination why. Case in point, Opensocial. Opensocial was announce way too early because of the release of the Facebook platform, AKA Facebook apps. I was really excited about Opensocial and followed for about a year, learning how to implement it because all the major communities were jumping on like Linkedin, Myspace, Orkut (for you Brazilians), but it turned out to be absolutely useless. The concept behind Opensocial was to run common function across many website enabling personal data to exchange between communities.

Why did they release so early? Simple to create buzz. how cares what happens 2 years down the road. How many people will remember the service when it fades away? They got the press they wanted in 2007, they did their job.  Google needs to take notes from Apple about how to squash a release. Apple owned the Palm Pre on the release date.

So, why did Google announce the ChromeOS now? it’s still 2 years from release date?

1. Both Microsoft and Apple have new OS’s this year. Windows 7 is basically a service patch for Vista, or Mojave, or Longhorn, whatever MS calls it now… Hell MS just wishes Vista would go away too…
2. The New smartphone OS’s will run on netbooks. – Imagine the iPhone OS on an 8 inch netbook… To me that sounds awesome. Other OS’s include the android OS and the Palm OS, which is HTML based… All these have app markets which fits in nicely to the lightweight netbook market.
3. There is another OS out their called Linux, you might have heard about it from your grandma. It’s open source which is great, but also allows for many, many distributions. Will this happen to ChromeOS? too many choices makes people choose Apple or MS.
4. If you really think about it, ChromeOS, runs on the Linux kernel? so doesn’t that just make it another distribution? I would assume that Google’s not going to hide the terminal?
5. Linux already has an app market called Synaptic. Of course everything is free on synaptic and it’s not really an app market, it’s a GUI to apt-get, but can easily accommodate a marketplace. I even think Steam can be a full blown app market.

We all now Google is gunning for MS, and we all now Google has the power to make an OS… I’m just wondering why they are talking about it now.