Entries from September 2008 ↓
September 23rd, 2008 — Opinion, Reviews
I recently had a chance to evaluate the Jesus phone. I have a lot of experience with smart phones including Blackberry 7000 series all the way to the Curves, many different iterations of Windows mobile phones, Palm OS via the Treo 650, and many more. The iPhone didn’t turn out to be quite deserving of its name when considered from a business user’s perspective. Read on for a list of things that I experienced while using the iPhone.
1. The battery life sucks. I’m fairly accustomed to not charging my phone for 2-3 days. I can’t even have a full work day with dinner and drinks afterwards without having to charge my phone. Why shouldn’t I be able to check my Active Sync e-mail once an hour or so, and take 3-4 calls per day without my battery running out?
2. It is kind of…big. When I hold this thing up to my face, people stare. I guess most die hard iPhone fans like this and imagine that the people staring are having gadget envy. I, however, felt like a trendy jackass.
3. No keyboard?! WHAT?! The touch keyboard sucks. The predictive text sucks. Training my dictionary was a huge waste of time just to hit a baseline productivity. For business communication, you just can’t allow typos and mistakes to come through. These kinds of mistakes cause one to appear sloppy and lazy. Even without this standard, the mistakes coming through on text messages, e-mails, notes, etc. are really irritating. I suppose that you could get used to it, or better at it, but I never needed that kind of “training” to use the keyboards on my Blackberrys, or my T Mobile Wing, or my Treos! It took me so much longer to get out a three sentence e-mail on the iPhone that I often asked myself “why don’t I just go to a computer to finish this?” It absolutely killed my productivity away from my desk, and irritated me to no end.
4. It isn’t really a phone with entertainment options on it. It is an entertainment device with a phone built into it. The primary purpose of the phone is obviously NOT a communications device, and the design of both the UI and the phone itself are a testament to this.
5. It sticks to your face when you talk on it for more than a few minutes. It is slippery, too, I dropped mine twice. That being said, it is quite durable.
6. The signal isn’t that great, side by side, my other phones were often in signal when the iPhone was out, or had a better data connection.
7. Oh the fingerprints. This device will have you cleaning it 20 times a day, if you have any kind of standards for appearances.
Those problems are really quite…numerous, for something people often refer to as a Jesus phone. This phone is meant for people that have a primary purpose for a device that they carry with them everywhere…entertainment. If you are often listening to music, and watching television/movies, reading websites, etc. on the go, then this is the phone for you. You don’t need a phone to talk to your Apple Store music collection. You never need to text your downloaded Season 3 of South Park. You probably don’t need to communicate much at all, just be sweetly and quietly entertained. For the people who are actually doing business and communicating with friends and loved ones often, this is not the right phone.
September 22nd, 2008 — Opinion
Fannie Mae ’s former CEO, Franklin Raines has actually been called to the carpet as recently as 3 years ago for manipulaitng financial reports, and was eventually had charges brought against him to reclaim some of the money that he obtained as a result of this intentional misreporting. The end result was his dumping a bunch of then worthless stock options, and for him and some of his colleagues to pay roughly 3 million dollars in fines and restitution. In 2003 alone, Raines’s compensation was over $20 million.
Why is it that we, as a country, continue to allow people who deliberately break the law to keep the bulk of their riches even after they’ve destroyed the company they were trusted with? Why should these compensations be any different than cars, houses, and money seized from drug dealers? Both are breaking the law on a very large scale and both are damaging communities in the United States.
This latest bailout/purchase of Lehman, sullied by Golden Parachutes once again, is symptomatic of the assumption of entitlement for CEOs and high level management all across the country. At the very best, these men allowed their institutions to fail, and should not be rewarded. At worst, they allowed the largest economy in the world to be placed squarely into danger of collapsing. This kind of activity should not be accepted, and in my opinion the damage caused by the willful profiteering of these men and others like them is much more harmful to many more people than many crimes which are prosecuted much more harshly.
These men need to be held accountable for their actions within the corporation. As much as the corporation exists to protect the individuals within it from liability, we need to ensure that when there is wrongdoing, there is punishment. These men do not care about the institutions they ruined, they did not care for the American people (and people all over the world!) who invested in them, they only cared for themselves. They were able to take this position, because they knew that they would not be punished. Their powerful and well connected legislators, bought and paid for, would never allow anything to happen to them…and surely the “government” would bail them out. In this case, and in ALL cases, the Government IS the people. We are forced to pay for a mistake that we never made but there are people responsible. These people ought to face the American people in court and have an appropriate punishment given to them.
More and more, it seems that there really isn’t equal protection under the law. If I am one day late paying my car registration, I am forced to pay a hefty reinstatement fee, and I will be under the threat of being pulled over and more fully punished. If these men bankrupt a company that is of International significance they are given enormous bonuses. Is that fair, to anyone?
If we have the resources to enforce jaywalking laws, we certainly have the resources to audit these companies, and not just management, but employees all the way down to loan officers, and even home buyers who lied about their income.
September 20th, 2008 — Journal
One of my favorite authors of all time, the man who changed my mind about post modernism and showed me that commentary and opinion could be funny and tragic and beautiful and unbelievably complex died last week. His opus, Infinite Jest, changed my life :
If you haven’t read it, please do yourself a favor and check it out. The man was profound and playful and the best sort of intellectual. His other writings are similarly impressive and he will be missed by many. This generation has lost one of its most brilliant artists.
September 20th, 2008 — Cool Links
Please check out my new RSS feed at http://feedproxy.google.com/DbaWill if you like RSS!
This will help me to see who is reading my blog, if anyone is at all. I would appreciate it if you could update your RSS if you’re using my feed.
If anyone needs help setting up RSS, let me know in the comments.
September 20th, 2008 — Opinion
I have been a Republican since I was a child, but only in theory. True Republican ideals can be beautiful. Republicans are supposed to be the party for small government and responsible economic policies. I normally don’t agree with Republican social policy, but am willing to accept it given that the party runs the country with good Republican economic principles. They have not been doing this for decades.
At this point, I feel that the choice is limited to two parties who both prefer big government and fiscal irresponsibility. The soul of the Republican party is gone, and I’m forced to vote only based on social policies, which is very sad to me…but I think that if I am voting based on social policy the Democrats are the more sensible party if we are excepting the Constitutionalists.
I will be voting third party this year, even though I know it won’t matter, I feel that I need to send a message to the Republican party that compassionate conservatism and big government are not the path back to America’s real soul. The Republican party has lost its way.
Of course at this point all politicians, with very few exceptions, are not in office for the people, they are bought and sold by campaign contributions and corporate interests. All of this despite the fact that the Internet has enabled the power of the people through small donations and grass roots mobilization of the voters. Washington needs to get it through their heads that the people are the ones fueling their campaigns through their donations, and in the end the will of the people should outweigh the influence of the well connected corporations. Is this a lesson that they can learn before it is too late?
Approval for the congress and the executive branch is at an all time low, and the reason is that we’ve been on the path we’re on for far too long. The parties have clear directives philosophically which neither party is following. The veil has been lifted by the information age, and the idea that getting into politics is a vehicle to get yourself and your friends rich is one that will only lead to exposure and the unhappiness of the American people. We see what the politicians are doing, and we don’t need the traditional media to show us. The men and women in office now have been exposed as liars and cheats.
When the Democrats were given a majority recently, America was giving them a mandate for change. They did not take hold of this opportunity because they were far too busy chasing pork legislation and fulfilling the promises made during their campaign. This was more acceptable when the compaigns ran on large donations from large donors. In this era, though, the PEOPLE are able to finance a compaign.
Below is a message, from one of the people financing your compaigns, to all politicians :
Bring the balance back. Make government smaller if you’re a Republican. Enact powerful legislation to help people if you’re a Democrat. Keep each other in check. Don’t allow the center stage of American discourse to be dominated by social policy. Don’t cheat the American people by wasting all your time on pork legislation just because everyone else is doing it. Do something good for the entire country, not just your constituency, once in a while. Do something you can be proud of while you’re in office. Leave office with less money than you came in with. America needs help.
