by Ryan on September 10, 2007
I just got a new TREO 700wx on Verizon after 1.5 years with the first Windows based TREO, the 700w. I know a lot of people out there dislike Palm but I’m giving it a shot. I was an early adopter of the TREO 700w and I must admit that the device originally did have freezing issues and until I performed the OS update for the Windows mobile platform that the device came packaged with, the memory (RAM) and particularly the memory management system, which would cause the device to freeze, was insufficient. After performing the upgrade, the device was the bomb.
I used that TREO until I dropped it on the pavement and the microphone no longer worked. Even though my device was well out of warranty and devoid of insurance, Verizon sent me a brand new TREO 700wx for 50 bucks, which I am writing this post with as I sit in the LGA airport. This new device rocks. It has a much larger memory chip with 60MB of program devoted memory and it does not freeze at all. This new device also came with a built in .pdf viewer and you can also use the device as a wireless modem/PC card using the built in, out of the box software. Other than the little chunky external antennae, the TREO 700wx is the perfect smartphone for me. I loaded my 2GB SD card up with .mp3’s and they play flawlessly with the Windows Media Player. The calls are perfectly clear. Call quality, regardless of device, is a problem for all AT&T, Sprint, and T-mobile users because of their ghetto networks.
Enough about my new TREO, let’s move on and talk about why the Blackberry is just not all that. I’ll use bullet points…
* no touch screen. this would drive me crazy. You have no idea how slowly you will navigate the machine and surf the web without a touch screen
* the stupid wheel or nub or whatever you wanna call the joystick. the pain in you fingers will never go away after the first time you do any serious work with the device
* The crummy operating system
* the garbage calendar
ok…my flight is boarding…I will finish the post later…in the words of fake Steve Jobs, “peace out”
by Ryan on August 31, 2007
Exciting times they are when we can stop watching reruns of Friends and focus on some real world combat. College football kicked offs off for real this weekend and the Tennessee vs. Cal game is surely the one to watch – Saturday night at 8pm EST on ESPN. The only other show on TV that even compares to the mindless joy of watching football was Man Versus Wild, but Bear Grylls‘ killer show was apparently kicked off of The Discovery Chanel and replaced by some backpack and tent wielding pansy that calls himself “Survivorman“. This guy is a real goon and the real outdoor survival expert, Bear, needs to be put back on DSC full time.
UPDATE: Bear came back in 2009 in full force. He’s the craziest guy on TV.
by Ryan on August 15, 2007
I got a great piece of advice from a custom furniture maker today. He commented on how high school popularity contests carry over into real world business. It’s not enough to just have the brains and the bright ideas, being able to convince others both inside and outside your organization to vote you for class president and thereby actually winning the high school election race is a far more determing factor in business success than brains and smarts. I would love to be able to argue against this point and then I realized that it came from an artisan who was basically telling me that his creative skills have nothing to do with how his furniture sells; it’s the salesmanship and networking that actually permit him to make a living off his craft. A interesting reality of both the business and art worlds.
by Ryan on July 2, 2007
You know the market is gonna rally when all the business news is about a phone. It’s kind of like knowing that the market is going to rally when we have a major war going on in the Middle East and the world’s most popular headlines are Lindsay Lohan in rehab and Paris Hilton in jail. Disclaimer: This is totally conspiracy theory BS here but somehow it seems to me like when the media focusses on the rough and not the fluff, that the Dow moves down and when all we hear about is fluff and $600 cell phones, that the market moves up.
UPDATE: USA Today actually ran a story with this premise in late 2009.
by Ryan on June 27, 2007
Just a quick comment here on the dot, dot, dot…It’s superiority in communication when compared to the period (.) has become so apparent to me that I had to write a quick post about it…I love the fact that it allows one to be brief in his/her communications so as to say…I am on the go (perhaps writing from a mobile device) and I do not have time to make complete sentences or thoughts and so I will use the dot dot dot on you and get the business taken care of swiftly…I think the dot dot dot should make it’s way into our elementary schools as an accepted form of punctuation that’s taught to all.
