cell phone

So I was reading a magazine this weekend and saw that Samsung has just released another slider type phone (1, 2). There are a ton of these style phones available and I keep wondering why. Every time a new one is released I hear nothing but bad feedback on how the slider system works; either they keep breaking or they’re just not as cool as the one from the Matrix. Gadget makers just keep producing new versions, though. Because everyone wants to be Neo.

A few weeks ago I had dinner with a really nifty guy — a professional boxer — who has a new slider phone. It was cool. I wanted it. Why? Because everyone wants to be Neo.

In case you’re wondering, you can buy the actual Matrix phone. You can probably even find a carrier that will service it. But why would you want it? Even if some company decided to take this body style and add all the new GPS and mp3 and camera features that every phone has now, who would want this brick? It’s huge! But I know some of you are going to click that link and buy it. Why? Because everyone wants to be Neo …

Also, make sure to read “What code DOESN’T do in real life (that it does in the movies)“.

After several years of mostly neglecting my Flickr account, I have finally started uploading the tons and tons of photos I’ve taken. Flickr is — if you can stomach the missing “e” — an incredibly cool site. Everything is intuitive and as far as I can tell, they haven’t done anything “wrong” anywhere. It’s everything a good website should be.

I particularly like the way they do their best to determine the camera model used to take each photograph. The majority of mine were taken with my PowerShot S500. So many, in fact, that my battery has started to fade away. A full charge used to last days and days, but now it barely powers a day’s worth of snaps. Luckily I have the internet at my command.

It took me about five minutes to find a replacement battery on eBay for only $5.00 (with free shipping!) from a company called iTrimming. Their site isn’t brilliant, but they do have a ton of inexpensive cool little geek accessories. My battery arrived in three days and, as a “bonus”, they included one of those silly cell phone antenna boosters. Now, I’m going to guess that this thing is absolutely worthless. (How can a little sticker with some metallic ridges on it possibly improve my cell phone’s reception?) It was worth it to open the package, though, if only to read the Chinese instructions. “THE ANTENNA WILL WORK MOST EFFICIENTLY WHEN INSTALLED PRORERLY,” it exclaims.

I dig how the package lists “Elevators, tunnels, buildings and more” on its feature list. It doesn’t say that the antenna improves reception in these places or anything; it simply has those words in the list. The “Validity” section of the instructions is the best part. It states, “The Cell Antenna is generally not affected by extreme heat of moisture, however, users ate advised to protect the antenna from physical damage such as scratches. Under normal use, the Internal Antenna will have a 18 month lift span.”

Last week while I was returning from lunch, I found a lost cell phone near Quizno’s. I scrolled through the contact list and called My Sister. My Sister said that the phone belonged to her sister and that she was probably very upset that the phone was catching rays, lounging in the grass instead of chillin’ in her purse. I told My Sister where my office was and that I’d leave the phone at the front desk. At some point My Sister’s sister came and got her phone and left me a Starbucks gift card. And the karma wheel roll’d …

<rant>
I have to say that I am completely unimpressed with AT&T Wireless‘ service in the Los Angeles area. I have experienced more dropped and missed phone calls than I ever did with SprintPCS. The calls that do manage to connect often suffer from horrible audio - inbound and / or outbound. They supposedly have a ton of features: find the nearest movies, directions to restaurants, etc. But you can’t use the “extra” features if you can’t frickin’ call anyplace, y’know? The thing that really is bugging me is that I’m not 100% sure it’s AT&T’s fault. It might be my phone. I have a trendy little electric-blue Nokia 8260. I love that it’s the tiniest phone in the world, but I’m often suspicious of its quality. The user interface is nowhere near as lovely as it was on my Samsung. The power button is on the top for who-knows-what-reason. The phone book search is not intuitive. It’s even a pain to simply switch from audible to silent alert. And, perhaps most annoying of all, the AT&T voice mail system is el-ay-em-ee. SprintPCS’ service was smart enough to know if I was calling from my own phone! That meant that I didn’t have to enter my soopah-secret PIN to get my messages; the system already knew it was me. And another thing: If I don’t listen to the entire voice mail, AT&T considers that message to have been “skipped” … so I have to listen to it again when I invariably have to redial my voice mail because I’ve been disconnected. And how’s *this* for annoying? Most of the time the service is so bad that the voice mail system can’t hear when I hit “7″ to delete a message until after I’ve listened to the entire thing.

I’m going to cancel my AT&T service and return to SprintPCS. Luckily I still have my phone and my phone number with them.
</rant>

If you’re wearing headphones and listening to the Foo Fighters then you won’t hear your cell phone ring at midnight but it’s okay because the cell phone ether waves will make your monitor all fuzzy …