I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

The 160GB hard drive on my five-year-old iMac G5 died a few days ago.

I’m not sure what happened. I’d like to blame Microsoft and I actually have some justification in doing it. For some reason, it froze in the middle of a Microsoft Office automatic update and it never recovered.

I’ve tried everything I can for free. I took it to the Apple Store on the Plaza…they couldn’t even see it. I bought a SATA to USB adapter on eBay that arrived today…it didn’t work either.

So I called a data recovery specialist. They told me that if they didn’t recover anything (which they assured me rarely happens), it would still cost me a $200 attempt fee, but if they did, it would be closer to $2,300! (They give you a range and the price is based on how much they recover - minimum $500, maximum $2,700.)

As much as I’d like to recover the data, I’m not down with dropping that much money. The only absolutely heart-breaking thing that I lost was a bunch of pictures. Fortunately, I moved many of the 10,000+ in my iPhoto library (especially the almost 2,000 from our Italy trip) to my Macbook and I’m thankful for that. 

I’ll likely discover over time more of what’s missing, but what’s disheartening is that if I’d upgraded to Leopard I could have used Time Machine to automate the backups, but unfortunately I was still running Tiger.

If there’s one bright spot regarding the crash, it’s that the computer itself will still work and I can upgrade the drive to 320GB…twice the size of its predecessor. Still, it sucks.

Besides The Catcher in the Rye, my all-time favorite book is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. The main character (played by John Cusack in the movie version) is obsessed with making lists.

I love making lists. In fact, one thing that I like to do when interviewing people I will potentially work with is I ask them their top five movies of all-time. Say what you will, it’s my version of a personality test and I think that your top five movies say a lot about who you are as a person.

My love for making lists is what led me and my brother to name our company topfivedesign.

So when my friend Allen came to me with his idea for a site - a place where people could list their favorite of anything.

“I always seemed to be looking for recommendations from people on products and places and wanted a site where I could easily find something like ‘Favorite brand of refrigerator’.”

I’ve been beta-testing Topulist for the past several months. It’s a straight-forward website that’s easy to use and very addicting. Think of it as a social networking version of Consumer Reports, only it’s not limited by anything. You can list your favorite Marvel Comics character, your favorite game for the Wii, your favorite hybrid car or even your favorite McDonalds Dollar Menu item.

You can create your own Topulist and Allen’s ninja Rails skills make sure that it’s not already up there.

It’s a cool site and you should totally go check it out.

I was exposed to TED a couple years ago when Internet semi-celebrity Ze Frank spoke and pointed his many feed followers toward the TED site. TED is essentially the smartest conference in the world. It stands for “Technology Entertainment Design” and people pay $6,000 just to be able to go to the conference AFTER they get the invitation. The waiting list is about 2 years long to go and you have to be amazingly accomplished in order to become a part of the conference.

Speakers include such folks as Bono, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Clinton, Frank Gehry, Peter Gabriel, Seth Godin and Al Gore. The motto of the conference is “Ideas worth sharing” so I thought I’d share one today.

The above video is “rock star physicist” Brian Cox talking about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe. The LHC is a fascinating piece of scientific machinery and to hear someone like Cox describe its purpose is nothing short of remarkable. Cox purports that there is an equation that helps to explain the universe and how it works, but it requires one small little thing - a subatomic particle called the Higgs particle that has not yet been discovered.

I mention this because it is a fascinating piece of science. This Higgs particle is what gives matter its mass. It is a part of everything, yet has not yet been seen by scientists, but is essential to proving all their theories and such. According to Cox, it’s what gives matter its mass. To me, the Higgs particle sounds an awful lot like the presence of a power greater than ourselves.

Part of the goal of the research at the LHC is to try and find sub-atomic particles not yet seen, like the Higgs particle. I don’t claim to be an expert on all this scientific stuff, but I think it’s completely fascinating. Scheduled to be turned on sometime this summer (I think…the date is a bit difficult to find), the LHC will answer some pretty big questions about the universe. Or maybe it will just raise more…

Discuss.

(All apologies to my friends that work at Sprint…this is a rather long post and it’s not exactly complimentary of the Instinct…)

Sprint and Samsung are really putting the full court press on with the new Samsung Instinct. They’re promoting the heck out of it and have given it a terrific price point and coupled with their $99.99 Everything plan, they’ve got a compelling reason to take a look at the phone. The press has even been complimentary of the phone, calling it a “decent iPhone competitor.”

Unfortunately, Sprint bought into the iPhone comparisons and continued to tout it as a competitor to the iPhone. This was their first mistake. If you compare the two phones solely on features, the Instinct probably comes out ahead right now. However, when you factor in the iPhone 3G coming on July 11, some of those features (like true GPS) become irrelevant.

I spent about 30 minutes playing around with the Instinct on Thursday after receiving an e-mail invitation to preview it in stores. Many things came to mind…here are my most significant thoughts:

GPS - From what I can tell, this is a great feature. I didn’t go anywhere, but the interface was nice and easy to use. Again, it’s irrelevant to compare it to the iPhone once the 3G comes out, but right now, Sprint has the edge.

Interface - With the way they’ve advertised it, I expected the interface to be comparable to OS X on the iPhone. Not so much. It was pretty clunky and not terribly responsive. Not only that, but since the touchscreen on the Instinct is pressure-sensitive rather than heat-sensitive like the iPhones, I found that I had to push pretty hard on the screen in order to get it to do what I wanted. As someone who has played with the iPhone as well, this is a big disappointment.

Web browsing - This was probably my biggest disappointment with the Instinct. One thing that’s great about the iPhone is that it will adjust portrait-to-landscape just by turning the screen. All applications work both ways (with the exception of the included YouTube app, I think), including browsing. On the Instinct, you can only browse (and type) in landscape mode. Couple that with Mobile Safari’s ability to zoom and its far superior navigation capabilities, the iPhone wins this one hands down.

Form factor - This one’s a wash. They are about the same size and they feel the same in your hand.

Keyboard - This is kind of a duplicate complaint, but the pressure-screen makes typing kind of a chore. Not only that, but the iPhone has auto-correct built in while the Instinct only suggests misspelled words. The typography of the Instinct is far inferior to the iPhone’s (to be expected) as is the color saturation, making the Instinct’s screen a lot harder to read.

Lack of sync - I’m not sure why I should be surprised with this. As someone who has made the choice to live better in a Windows-less world, it’s difficult for me to find a phone that will synchronize with my Macbook. Windows Mobile-based phones OBVIOUSLY won’t do the trick, so I’ve got very few options - Blackberries (ew), Palm-based devices (I like the Centro, but HATE the typography) or iPhones. Everything else just kind of sucks. The amazing thing to me about the Instinct was that it doesn’t even sync with Windows. That makes no sense to me. Synchronization is one of the key reasons to have an advanced phone like an iPhone or a Blackberry. The fact that the Instinct doesn’t even sync with Windows is a HUGE failure by Sprint’s project planners. Sure, you can view your mail on there, but if it doesn’t synchronize, what benefit is there?

Bells and whistles - There’s no doubt that Sprint made a lot of effort in making sure that the Instinct was packed with features. That gives them the ability to point to lists like this and say, “SEE, our phone has more features.” The problem is that with a lack of a good platform, the Instinct’s features don’t feel cohesive and they are all difficult to find (the technician at the Sprint store on the Sprint campus spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to add an e-mail account). I’ll admit, the Live TV function is cool (although I can’t for the life of me find where the list of channels is) and the addition of Visual Voicemail is great. But with the opening of the iPhone App Store, the applications built for the iPhone will all be vetted by Apple’s developer standards and are going to be sweet. The applications I saw for the Instinct fell far short of anything on the iPhone.

Summary

I really wanted to like the Instinct. I really did. But there were so many places where it was so far inferior to the iPhone that it was laughable. Even the Sprint employee that was checking out the Instinct said that it “didn’t hold a candle to his iPhone.” That’s just sad.

Even sadder was that when I asked one of the people in the Sprint store (REPEAT: this is the Sprint store on the Sprint campus) why I shouldn’t just leave Sprint and go get an iPhone, his response was, “Well, if you’re on the Employee Friends plan, that’s why.” And it’s true, but not for the reasons he thinks. The Friends part is the important thing to me. As many problems as I have with Sprint (small by comparison to my problems with Comcast), I won’t leave their network because I’m a loyal person who wants to support a local company that employs about half a dozen of my friends. The cheaper plan is nice, but the friendships are more important. I just wish that the company wouldn’t rely on my friendships for my loyalty and instead provide me with great phones and great service.

The Instinct’s failure is not entirely Sprint’s fault though. The media who touted the phone as “a viable iPhone competitor” really sealed its fate. Sprint would have been better off to not believe the hype and just sell the phone for what it is - a touch-screen phone with media features. They should not have tried to go head-to-head with the iPhone for a lot of reasons, but they certainly got some great press out of the deal. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t live up to the hype. There are some neat features for sure, but if you want to compare it to the iPhone, well…you just shouldn’t. Compete with Blackberry or Palm…don’t compete with Apple. For an example, see the Microsoft Zune. Microsoft has TONS more money than Sprint and they still can’t compete in the MP3 market.

For me, I’ve been waiting for this phone to come out before using my hardware upgrade that Sprint offers every 18 months. I’ll probably now use it to get a Centro because it at least will synchronize with my Macbook. I wish that I liked the Instinct because there are some great features there…I just felt like using it was too much of a chore.

As someone who has been a loyal Sprint user for many years, I have been really looking forward to the release of the Samsung Instinct, a phone that many are calling one of the first decent competitors to the iPhone. When the iPhone first came out, I was jealous, but it was way too expensive to even consider. Tack that onto the fact that I am a member of Sprint’s Friends and Family plan, which makes things all the more inexpensive.

I’d go as far to say that I was excited for the release of the Instinct…

Until today.

Today, my favorite company in the world released the second-generation of their industry-changing device. There are haters that don’t want to admit Apple’s greatness, but those people are kidding themselves. This is a phone that has sold 6 million units in ONE YEAR.

To put that into perspective…even though it was released mid-way through the year, the iPhone was the 2nd most popular smartphone in the U.S. (3rd globally) and outsold all Windows Mobile devices combined.

The iPhone 3G isn’t really a massive update overall. However, the fact that it is adding 3G wireless connectivity and dropping its price by half (the 8GB iPhone went from $399 to $199), combined with the best operating system a phone has ever seen…well…needless to say, I’m reconsidering whether or not I want to stick with Sprint.

So here’s what I’m proposing…those of you that helped me raise money to buy a dairy cow back in January…I’m giving you another opportunity to give.

If you donate enough money for me to buy an iPhone, I’ll give up red meat for the rest of the year.

You read that right…I’ll give up red meat through the holidays if you help me buy an iPhone.

I am typing this blog post from a location at which I have neither paid for any items, nor do I have a membership.

No, I’m sitting on the patio at the Panera Bread in Olathe, waiting for the oil to be changed on my car and using Panera’s free wifi while breaking one of the cardinal rules of free wifi - always buy something first.

Normally, I would abide by this unspoken rule of free wifi, but this morning, I’ve already had my oatmeal, I’ve got my to-go coffee cup full, and frankly, I’m starting to believe that free wifi is one of the easiest ways for people to gain business, but yet so few take advantage.

Free wireless internet is a service that is genius in this always connected world. There are places that it makes a lot of sense to just throw in some free wifi as a convenience to your customers who may be waiting. I’m thinking doctor’s offices, oil change locations (do you hear me, JIFFY LUBE?), and other locales where there might be more than a 15-minute wait for service.

Free wifi is easy. Take your existing connection. Throw it on a router. Drop in a splash page if you are so inclined. And there you go. Free wifi, allowing people like me to sit for longer than they might normally, very quietly working on whatever it is they might be working on (in my case, blogging).

For those looking for places where free wifi is available, check out this decent directory. And to those hotels and coffee shops (cough) that charge a premium for wireless? Shame on you.

Many thanks to Travis for notifying me of this service, although for all the money that the networks have put into it, I was expecting something that actually worked consistently.

For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, Hulu is free video service much like YouTube, only the major TV networks have put their weight (and considerable bank accounts) behind it because it is supported by advertising embedded into each video. The site allows users to watch their favorite NBC/Fox/etc. shows (somewhat) on demand.

Sure, people will say “it’s in beta” or “maybe it’s a user error”, but thus far, I’ve still been unimpressed. I wish that I could find shows easier and I wish that they had the full Season Two and Three of Arrested Development.

It’s a nice way to spend lunch at your desk, watching a show that is no longer on the air and you are too cheap to pony up the dough for, but my company has very stringent network use policies (which may be a contributing factor to performance, although I’ve experienced similar performance delays at home).

Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning. It’s still in private beta, so you have to sign up to be e-mailed access, but it only took a day or two for me to get on the list. For an idea of what it looks like, check this out:

I’ve been pondering purchasing a MacBook for quite a while now. It always has seemed like a no-brainer to me: I love Macs, I love portability. The MacBook is both a Mac and portable.

I’ve put it off for a while for several reasons…

1. Not a huge need
2. I have a work laptop
3. Concern about the newer keyboards
4. My desire to have a completely full machine, regardless of its intended use
5. Money

There’s still no huge need and I still have the work laptop. However, it’s a Dell and as free as it is, my computer has more problems than any computer rightly should (as I write this, I’m considering having our IT department wipe the hard drive for the 3rd time).

After spending some time with the new keyboards, I’ve found them completely awesome. I don’t know why I would have expected anything different from Cupertino. They are very nice…responsive and extremely elegantly designed.

As far as #4 goes…I’ll be frank. I’m a total geek. I want latest and greatest stuff across the board. My original desire for this computer was something to kick around with. I want to be able to easily move around my house not using my work laptop to blog, check e-mail, write that ever-elusive novel, etc. I’ve decided that after the Macworld Expo in January that I would just take whatever they are offering at the time in my price range. Now, after looking at all the rumors, it appears that Apple may be poised to release a NAND-flash hard-drive based compact notebook. It would be light, extremely portable, but it might not have an optical drive. One of the reasons I want a new laptop is that I want to be able to easily watch movies on trips. That might pose a problem.

Then there’s the question of which version to get. Really, that question boils down to issue #5. As much as I’d like the black one, it makes a lot more sense to stick with the mid-range white one so I can still get a SuperDrive.

This decision is very trying to my patience. Now that I’ve made the decision to get one, I can’t wait to get it. Uncle Steve Jobs’ Macworld Expo keynote on January 15 cannot get here soon enough.

Do you think I should wait?

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