Buy your 3G iPhone on a Microsoft Surface Computer?

I find it interesting that one of the biggest initial customers for the Microsoft Surface computer is AT&T who will be rolling out the Surface at their consumer stores to sell/configure/personalize mobile devices and "woo" customers with their bleeding edge storefronts.

This got me to thinking... Hmmm. I wonder which device AT&T will want to be be showcasing come July 11?

Wouldn't it be ironic if AT&T uses the Microsoft Surface computer to market/sell the Apple 3G iPhone?

I'm surprised no one else has picked up on this.

3G iPhone rant & desire to just wait for 4G

At first, I was excited. Following the WWDC events unfold live via Leo Laporte's choppy Stickam stream, then listening to that guy who was broadcasting on Yahoo Live!. Then switched to UStream which had the audio only. All to hear about the new iPhone. Turns out UStream was most reliable for the audio stream, although Leo had crazy numbers of viewers 7k+ at times.

So Apple announces that developing apps for iPhone is easier with tools, apis, etc. Ok. And new iPhone is announced with 3G HSDPA capabilties (which is actually more like 3.5G) and built in GPS. A bunch of games and other apps (ebay? mkay). Better email/productivity tools aimed at the business customer demographic. Great.

The biggest thing missing in my opinion is a better camera (or two cameras for that matter) and the ability to stream live video over 3.5G HSDPA. Well, it turns out they stuck with the same 2.0MP camera and no built in video support (more on this later).

Overall, I'm also pretty disappointed that the 3G iPhone still only has a 2MP camera when other phones that support Qik streaming - like the Nokia N95 - come with a 5MP camera. I want to use my iPhone for rapid fire posting of pics to Flickr and other photo sharing sites and socnets, and more importantly streaming live video on sites like Qik, Flixwagon, UStream, etc. If I'm going to be limited to a 2MO camera, I think my UMPC w. EVDO and Logitech webcam is a better setup for mobile streaming.

The bottom line is that I'm not sure that GPS & 3G HSDPA is enough to convince me to switch plans and providers from Verizon to AT&T and buy a new 3G iPhone. I got a pretty good deal with Verizon as I have 1 mobile and 2 USB EVDO cards on this account and I get a special discount so the EVDO cards only cost me $39/month.

I'm sick of hearing about 3G anyway. It's been a huge failure by the wireless companies, especially when we see 4G and 5G being tested/rolled out in Europe, China, etc.

I talked to a guy at the Jeff Pulver breakfast event the other day about T-Mobile's plans for a 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network capabable of speeds of 50-100MB downlink. Good article here from WWDC coverage (scroll to the bottom to get the plans for 4G network plans). Still a ways off though. Double Sigh.

The question is do I switch my mobile from Verizon to AT&T and get the 3G iPhone or wait and see if Verizon has any more powerful devices in the pipeline? At this point I could be swayed in either direction.

Convince me why I should buy the 3G iPhone.

Qik Launches new UI & Announces iPhone support

Popular mobile streaming vendor Qik announced upcoming support for the iPhone as Apple gets ready to roll out the new 3G iPhone on AT&T's network on July 11. Looks like they updated their UI and may have sprinkled a few features in as well. Sadly, I still don't see any support for my Verison 3G EVDO REV A LG VX9900. Sigh.

Check it out here: http://qik.com

Some of my favorite qik'kers:

http://qik.com/johnculberson
http://qik.com/scobleizer

Mars Rovers Mission Planning - Behind the Scenes

Want the inside scoop you'll never see on Nasa TV. Check out these Qik videos from John Culberson: http://qik.com/video/98040 (part 1), and http://qik.com/video/98088 (part 2). Amazing use of Qik to get the inside scoop on the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Awesome interviews with Dr. Steve Squyres - lead principal investigator of the Mars Rovers mission at Cornell. Amazing stuff. You can see other cool videos from John Culberson here: http://qik.com/johnculberson

Mission Site: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Social Media Tagging Breakfast w. Jeff Pulver, Robert Scoble, & Friends

Three days ago I had no idea that this event was happening. I happened to be trolling the FriendFeed river of meta, when I see this conversation thread that Robert Scoble started. I hopped over to scobleizer.com and found the post on the event. Unfortunately the link to get the juicy details took me to the deep dark abyss of a socnet I call Facebook.

I had previously deactivated my Facebook many months ago when the Beacon and Scoblegate news broke. I've been quite content keeping my account in deactivated status until I couldn't get the info for the event that Robert commented about in another conversation on Friendfeed.

So I decided that it was worth reactivating my Facebook account to see what this event was all about and I'm glad I did. Warren sums up the morning events quite nicely with his blog post here. It was great to meet some of my existing twitter "friends" in person, putting a name to an avatar as Warren puts it, and to make some new friends as well. Really good conversation.

It's always a pleasure to have a few minutes to speak with Scoble, and I got to meet Rocky as well. Great people all around. Thanks to Jeff Pulver for organizing this unique and interesting event.

Next up: barcampseattle this weekend! I might bust out my post its and lead a panel/session. Will see.

Crazy Seattle Weather today. Definitely NOT Summer

2x meta - Taking a pic of my Panasonic AVCHD High Def Video camera.

2x meta
Originally uploaded by pplpwrd

This is what I'm using to record in AVCHD. It's the Panasonic HDC 501 High Definition Video Camera. I got it almost a year ago and am quite pleased with how well it works.

Using My Macbook for something else besides Firefox, Adium, and Flickr Upload

Just got done editing my first video! Ever! That's why I supposedly bought my Macbook in the first place right? So after an awesome outing with Logan yesterday, I finally had some decent HD quality content (after losing a year's worth of pics & vids when my macbook HDD failed) to make my first attempt at editing raw video into something less...well... raw. Yup, that's right...I'm a video editing noob.

I do have a rather nice Panasonic HDC-501 High Definition Video Recorder that is capable of shooting 1080i, so I figure I owe it to myself to do something with the HD content I'm supposedly producing.

Happy to say that I just finished my first iMovie 2008 project and I'm in the process of converting it so I can email/share with others. Figuring out iMovie was pretty straight forward, but I did run into a couple usability issues that left me scratching my head. iMovie does have a few quirks (or at least I did) - like when reviewing my movie project (after adding all clips), sometimes the Frame preview panel goes blank and the only thing I could figure out to get it back was to change the display options for frames/sec using the slider thingy.

Overall, it was pretty easy to start using iMovie though, yet the whole process can be pretty time consuming (editing, adding effects, previewing, etc). At least I now know, and can appreciate what others go through to edit their video content! I could so see myself staying up late night / early morning stuck in the zone editing footage.

I'll update this post with the actual video as soon as it is done rendering and I have a chance to upload it to You Tube or somewhere else.

One final question - what video sharing site do folks use most to share videos online with Friends, Family, the public? You Tube is clearly "the place", but I'm just wondering if there are features/other reasons to use one site over another.