greenthinks

It’s a Razr!

I’ve got a new cell phone, as of Saturday evening at around 8PM. What’s the big deal? Well, it’s a black RAZR:

That would be enough to go crazy about, but it’s replacing utter crap in the form of the Sony Ericsson T635. I’ve now used each model of this phone from the original iMac-inspired one on. My previous phone was the SE T610, and when that was stolen I lived out the remainder of my T-Mobile contract with an old Nokia. I then got the (then new) SE T635, hoping and hearing that they had indeed fixed some of the major flaws of the previous models. Alas, after about a year, I can safely say that not only have they not fixed those problems (hanging interface, no I/O interrupt system, bad joystick hardware implementation, etc.) but they actually introduced some new ones!

Anyway, this is supposed to be about how overjoyed I am with my new phone, the Motorola Razr V3 Black Edition. First, the geekiest thing I love:

Yup, that’s a standard mini USB connector right smack on the phone. In fact, it’s the ONLY connector the phone provides other than the cellular connection and the Bluetooth wireless. The included power plug is an AC/Mini USB cable. This is absolutely amazing for me – after years of struggling with Sony Ericsson’s flimsy proprietary connectors, I finally can connect my phone to anything over mini USB/USB. Proprietary connectors are not inherently evil. Case in point, my iPod mini uses Apple’s own private standard “Dock Connector” for connection to computers and other devices. But it has never broken on me, I have never had a problem with either the cable or the port on the iPod (am I jinxing myself) and believe me, I am not so gentle with either sometimes. SE’s connectors, on the other hand, even when I treated them like newborn babies, would stop working, need to be jiggled, and any time a cable went bad, it was back to eBay to see how much it would be for a new one this time, cause buying one of those charging cables out in the real world is just too damn expensive. OK, so I love the USB connection (the same as on recent Palms and Digital Cameras, like my fiancée’s Palm Z22 and our Canon S410).

Not that it should be much of a surprise, but Boing Boing’s coverage of the Katrina disaster has been absolutely stellar. Anyone remotely interested in a slightly techy perspective on what’s going on down on the gulf coast should really head over there and check out their archives for the last week or so.

It began on August 31:

And the incredible Xeni Jardin kept it up, posting great piece after great piece, pointing us at content from the MSM, as well as the individual stories that were coming through the internet and cellular networks.

She provided background and informative analysis from experts, like in Civil Defense in Cuba and Disease Threat Analysis.

There was the anonymous message from the relief worker and the updating on the state of the New Orleans nuclear power facility.

She chronicled the horrible responses from Barbara Bush and the Army Times.

She also followed the FCC’s attempts to restore some kind of infrastructure.

Last, there was the heart-wrenching video from the president of Jefferson Parish, and the applause-earning statement from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

This is the new media. When the Lusitania was sunk, Americans read about in the newspaper. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, they listened by their radios. When JFK was shot Americans watched it on the Broadcast News. We tuned in to CNN and Cable News as the Towers fell on September 11. Let history now show that when the levees broke in New Orleans, Americans turned to the internet and to a new breed of journalist – a journalist who has as much heart as she does guts, and a journalist who isn’t afraid to publish something controversial, but is equally unafraid to correct her reports when new facts are brought to light.

We are living in a bright new age of technology and communication, all the while the world around us becomes darker and more dangerous. Let us continue to build this new transparent communications network as it makes weathering the gathering storm just a little bit easier.

Weird name I know, but one of the coolest things I’ve downloaded in a long while.

Anyone who manages a website knows that you spend quite a lot of time in your FTP client of choice. This is one of those few areas where I simply must have my mac, because the FTP clients out for Windows are absolutely horrible. (well, except for Windows’ built-in FTP in explorer, which is really quite good for basic tasks and puts Apple’s similar efforts to shame) All the Windows clients are a mess of buttons with no labels, and feel like they were designed by someone who couldn’t decide what he loved more: DOS or UNIX. In absolute stark contrast, Fetch has been the mac client ever since ever and it is really quite a nice program. Nowadays, though, with Mac OS X and modern Cocoa software, there are some great options like FTPeel and Interarchy. My personal favorite though, is Panic Software’s Transmit.

With all the public angst around spyware, worms, viruses, and trojans, and with all the negative reactions to Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” attempts, it’s nice to see someone who not only reacts to what goes on on the net with an updated product that works, but also finds a way to make the system both secure AND usable.

Enter Apple. Tiger was released with a bit of fanfare, touting Spotlight and Dashboard as the two most important—and most valuable—features. Dashboard, however, quickly became marred by the realization from outside Apple that it was quite the security risk. Safari automatically downloaded and installed widgets and there was no built-in way to manage widgets. Many on the net proposed that this would usher in a flood of spyware and other malware via Dashboard on the OS X platform. Well, that hasn’t happened. Not only has that NOT happened, but Apple has solved all those problems while keeping Dashboard the friendly development platform it was built to be, all in the new 10.4.2 release.

Yes, there’s not a built-in widget manager. No, it’s not a Preference pane (the Mac equivalent of a Windows Control Panel). Instead, it’s actually just a widget itself, but it works just great. Widgets now prompt the user to be installed and upgrading prompts the user to replace—both good improvements.

The best improvement by far, though, is the “test drive” mode into which all new widgets launch. It looks like this:

Visually the user can understand that this widget is closed off, though perfectly usable, and there are clearly marked buttons to keep it or delete it. Underneath that though, Apple has adjusted the dashboard engine so that these widgets that are being “test-driven” cannot harm the system in any way. Score 1 for Apple.

So, yeah, I’m really loving Tiger. I know you’re not supposed to buy into the hype of “a whole new computer for $129,” but I really do feel like I have a brand new machine. I find myself wanting to whip it out and show it off, and only then realizing that I’ve had it for almost two years.