B. Mann Consulting

Looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet at 12:15pm today, talking about Rogers bringing the iPhone to Canada.

Of course, the funny thing here is that there are many many people in Canada who already have the iPhone, in its "unlocked" edition. John Biehler's iPhone category is my source for all the latest in unlocking and cool applications.

The rumour seems to think that part of the delay and secrecy is because of the possibility that we might get the "new" version of the iPhone, with 3G (which is a faster data network connection). The other rumours about the new model (or models? maybe a "business" version to compete with RIM's BlackBerry?) are things like a much upgraded camera, or even a front mounted camera for video calling.

I'm genuinely happy that we're getting the iPhone "for real" in Canada, but I'm worried about a) the price of the contract and b) the length of any contract from Rogers. We're in a monopoly situation here, since there aren't any other GSM providers in Canada. Expect Telus and Bell to start heavily pushing the HTC Touch and various consumer BlackBerry devices like the Pearl.

Update: here's a direct link to my video clip.

After the jump, the email I received from LoadMyTracks -- saying that the Globalsat DG-100 is now supported on Mac OS X with their application. Here are my previous posts about the DG-100.

Yeah, I know, I've been *really* bad about using it. I got busy right when I received it. Now it's time to re-invest some time into using it consistently. I want my Flickr map to have more photos on it (I recently uploaded my 9000th photo).

I fully blame Chris Heuer. I signed up for an Utterz account, after trashing him quite thoroughly over Skype some time back :P

What is Utterz? Well, it's mobile blogging, sort of. The only capability I've taken advantage of so far is the audio. You get a local (yes, even in Canada!) phone number that you can call, hit a few buttons, record whatever you want to say, hit some more and your recording will get posted. It posts (within 10 minutes) to the Utterz site, but can then also be set up to auto post to a number of other different places, like your blog or send out a Twitter notification. And yes, of course there is an RSS feed of your Utterz, so it's easy to pipe into Jaiku as well.

Aside from audio, you can also send pictures, video, and text to a special email address, and it will associate that with any audio Utterz you made in a 10 minute period.

So, you'll notice an Utterz widget in the sidebar top right, and I've also embedded a horizontal widget right in this post. Tonight, sore throat and all, I opened up my delicious bookmarks page and talked about the last 10 bookmarks I made.

Chris Bovard just left a great comment on the iPhone Nano thread -- here's the closer on his post about why he's unlikely to get an iPhone and why he can't understand why everyone is so hyped about it:

My next phone purchase will be N95 8gig because I love my current N95. If I buy another bigger phone it will be a http://www8.garmin.com/nuvifone/ when it is out. I own an older Garmin GPS I use for mountaineering. You can drop it and it goes under water. If Garmin puts this much though into their phone well the iphone will be just another toy.

Maybe time for everyone too look at the big picture instead of yet another Mac babysitter product for the mass.

"Mac babysitter product" is a great post. Except, well, the masses WANT babysitter products. I replied in the same thread -- here's the last bit of my comment:

Food for thought. I am all for competition, so I hope that Nokia continues with Series 60 development and also innovates in their new Linux-based systems (ref: their purchase of Trolltech, which makes cross platform GUI stuff). What these other players MUST realize is that the time has come where the mobile phone is moving BEYOND the bounds of the walled garden telcos, into the open platform of the Internet, and all competitors MUST strive to engage with network and platform effects in order to succeed long term.

The mobile market is one of those areas where so much interesting stuff is happening. I'm glad that we're having these types of discussions.

So...who else thinks there is going to be an iPhone Nano?

The main complaint against the iPhone seems to be the price point. Looking at things like the widely popular Motorola RAZR, which ended up in the mass market price bracket, I just have to believe that Apple is thinking along the same lines.

A similar form factor as the Nano, except screen taking the place of the click wheel. What else removed? Not sure, maybe no wifi? Limited storage?

Anyway, just thought I would record this crazy idea. I have no inside information, only time will tell if I'm right. And without a photoshop mock up, I'm not going to get tons of traffic :P

Update: Alexa commented and made a Photoshop of an iPod Touch Nano / iPhone Nano:

Since I've written about how expensive mobile data plans in Canada are, I should probably praise Rogers for finally getting some sane(r) pricing.

I saw via John Biehler that Engadget had posted rates from Rogers as low as $65 / month for 1GB (recall that in comparison the chart in the previous link which shows 1GB at $4000 / month). Well, as Engadget mentions in the title, my jaw did drop, but it quickly snapped shut again when I looked closer and saw that this applies to PC Cards only ... not to the GSM or 3G phones we've been toting around for years.

Per device pricing for data rates seems....well, it seems underhanded if not down right illegal. I wonder what the rules around pricing of telecommunications services have to say about this? Paging Michael Geist!

Still...this hints that Rogers *could* offer prices like this for, say, the iPhone?

Thanks to the TorCamp Swarm on Skype for discussion around this.

Remember the DG-100-GPS? That cheap data logger that I've been really bad at finding the time to use consistently? Jaako left a comment letting me know that he got the DG-100 working on the Mac:

Hey Boris! Wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I managed to get a pretty decent solution to the DG-100 / Mac issue. The key lies in Mirko Parthey's dg100.c script he wrote as a basis for implementation into GPSBabel. I made some tweaks to his original code and added a GPX output mode and have a pretty reliable command line interface for the DG-100. Check it out ( + the relaunch of my blog ) at Blog-Shmog.com and let me know if you have any luck!

My usage of Facebook has dropped. At the same time, people messaging me / contacting me through there has increased. At least the message shows in email now.

What I am still using quite a bit is the SMS integration for status messages. I know that updating my status sends out SMS notifications to a bunch of my friends, and vice versa. Yes, this is not new -- it's microblogging / Twitter / Jaiku, etc.

The mobile integration grounds the social in the "real world". There is an element of serendipity in sending a ping out to the world, and wondering who might respond back, who else is wandering the streets, cellphone in hand, ready to go for a drink or join an activity.

I imagine when Jaiku gets their US / Canadian mobile integration up and running, I'll use that more.

What SMS services are you using in Canada? Travis' description of SpinVox sounds great -- except for the whole Rogers is the devil and expense of it :P

Me showing Monique the magic of flagging and unflagging and showing how it changes the starred / unstarred in the Gmail web interface. Photo by Duane Storey, you can buy some great photos of Vancouver from him.

I've spent this past week or so having switched to using Gmail's new IMAP interface. I had switched to using the web-only interface for perhaps the last year or so, and it worked quite well for me. POP3 doesn't cut it when you have multiple machines (laptop and home desktop) and devices (Nokia smartphone, iPhone, etc.). And that's exactly what the IMAP protocol was invented to take care: keep folders, messages, and other status (read / unread, flagged, etc.) synced across multiple devices.

I wasn't sure whether I would like going back to using a desktop email client. And it's been great. Email is fast, I can go back to having a couple of drafts open as separate windows to remind me to get to them today, and so on.

Gmail's labels become folders....with a few funky side effects, in that thinking of them more as folders rather than things you might use multiple labels for will be less confusing.

A big thing I miss: I'm so used to the Gmail search interface that I find myself typing "from:Some Name" in Mail.app's search box, rather than typing the name and then clicking the "From" button. I bet some enterprising soul could do a good job of an AppleScript or something that could change this to work Just Like Gmail Search.

OK, enough just talking about the outlines. Head over here for extended instructions on setting up Gmail IMAP for Mail.app or your iPhone, which has the excellent extra tips of "mapping" your Gmail Trash, Junk, Drafts, and Sent folders to the right folders in your local app, and everything "just works".

Those of you with iPhones (or Nokia phones or any other device that can talk IMAP to get email) will want to go this method, so you can actually quickly manage email on the go and have all those changes reflected when you get back to some other device.

Now what? Well, I need a way to sync my contacts in Gmail to my local Address Book. A Plaxo plugin already takes care of synching between machines, and the standard Bluetooth iSync syncs to mobile.

John and Igor at Handimobility are following the mantra of ship early, ship often, and have launched LiveVote.ca. It's a service that allows you to set up free SMS polling -- you sign up on the LiveVote website, and then you can create as many free polls as you like.

I've been kicking the tires on this for a bit and already have some feedback in to them. If you click through and read this entry on the blog, you'll see that I've got a Flash widget embedded in the upper right where you can see the live results from SMS voting. The vote I'm running is "what are eggs cooked in bread called?", after the long thread of comments that erupted on my Flickr picture.

So, if you come to the site here with your web browser and text one of the choices to 868464, you'll actually see the pie chart update in real time. Note: Canada only for now! You can change your vote at any time by just texting a different choice: your last choice before time runs out (you've got another 7 days) is what will count.

Follow their progress on the new Handimobility blog. I'm looking forward to seeing LiveVote evolve, and also to see what else John and Igor have up their sleeves.