Wednesday, March 10th, 2004
One step closer to the future
I switched to 3 as my cellphone service provider two days ago, primarily cause they are really cheap and include free multimedia content in their packages (games, videos, video calls …). Drop me a note if you haven’t received my new number yet (no number portability here in austria for at least the next few months).
So far i’m quite impressed. I got a motorola a835 and even though it’s far from perfect, i think i won’t miss my nokia 7650 too much. I already played around with 3zone (their mobile portal) and their offerings are nice - i downloaded two java games and a bjork music video, all for free, cause 33 downloads/month are included in my package. The music video was the most stunning experience thus far: it’s a 3.5mb 3gp movie file and the download took significantly less than 2 minutes via umts. Video calls are quite impressive as well. I wouldn’t say they are actually useful, but they certainly are nice. So far two friends also switched to 3 and my brother (who originally hooked me up) switched a few weeks back already, so at least there are some people to video call.
Experiencing umts in real live reminded me a lot of switching from 56k to broadband: you know there’s something vastly better out there, but aren’t convinced that you need it until you experience it first-hand. With my previous phone it was all about voice calls - sure, it supported sms, mms and gprs data transfer, but using data services wasn’t convenient and cheap enough to be significant to me. With the video calls, free multimedia downloads and free emails this has all changed - now it’s more about the data.
That’s it for now, but most likely i’ll write more about my new phone and the 3g experience in the future. Now i’ll play around with my new phone a bit more.
Bunch of new phones
Kinda busy at the moment, but the last few days brought too many phone announcements to ignore: sony ericsson s700 (1.3mp cam!), k700, z500, motorola e398, c650, e680, sagem.
Update: siemens s65 (1.3mp cam)
Monday, March 8th, 2004
Books to buy
I went to the roy lichtenstein exhibition (no link due to crappy flash site prohibiting deep linking) on saturday (one day before it ended, i really need deadlines to get my ass moving) and really enjoyed it. Upon leaving the museum you have to pass through the museum shop with a nice selection of books and heaps of cheap and ugly merchandise. Two books really grabbed my attention, but i didn’t pick them up right then (sort of a reminder, this post): writing - urban calligraphy and beyond offers interesting insights into graffiti art, very fascinating. The second book, fashion now, has been on my wishlist since it came out. Thinking back i really don’t have the slightest clue why i didn’t pick them up, would have saved me the visit back to the store that i see in my not-so-distant future…
Thursday, March 4th, 2004
Brighthand RSS feed
Finally brighthand offers an rss feed officially. There’s already been a preliminary feed (i’ve been subscribed to this for several months now), nonetheless i welcome this move. It has been (more or less) announced for quite some time. Now the only site i check regularly not offering a feed is mobile review.
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004
engadget.com?
Via boingboing: pete rojas of gizmodo-fame is moving to a new gadget weblog, named engadget.com. Coincidence? Perhaps, but unlikely, i know that peter rojas stumbled across my blog at one point or another as we exchanged e-mails quite a while back, so there’s at least a good chance of some subconscious inspiration from my side. At least i’m now at ease that the name of my weblog doesn’t completely suck, something i haven’t been so sure about in the past.