Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Here's a rough podcast me and Sarah did while driving to Minneapolis on the highway. I've cleaned it up as much as I can using Audacity but theres little we can do about the car noise and the laptop internal microphone. For now, its best not to link directly to the mpeg3 file because I will move it to archive.org when I get back online.
The subject for the podcast is that old chestnut, America or the states. We talk about oil prices, cars and the people. Enjoy…
Yes its that time again, time for me and Sarah to visit the in-laws, see old friends, sample mexican food and stock up on gadgets. I'll be spinning around Chicago, Madison, Racine, Minneapolis/St Paul, etc for the next few weeks. So my blogging will be low due to the cost of roaming GPRS/EDGE in America. But fear not, there will be lots of pictures on my Flickr stream when I get a Wireless connection. One of the best things about going to the midwest is going clubbing in Minneapolis, seriously its like clubbing in a more european city. Can't wait to try it out during a less cold season.
My and Sarah's 8th podcast is now available online. Enjoy and please leave a comment if you've enjoyed it or simply hate it. This is really part two of podcast number seven but its unique enough to simply make it another number. As always, enjoy.
This time me and Sarah explain what happened after the last podcast and spend most of the time talking about Black White, a TV series we've been downloading recently which tries to tackle black and white culture in America. We talk about the difference between Black American culture and Black English culture. The weirdness which is simply the extreme American way and how I love to mess with people stereotypes and perceptions of young Black men. We settle on the fact that a whole range of things keep up the perceptions and that people hate change.
If I hear someone say EVDO again, I'm going to scream. I don't know any other country in the world which uses this 2.5g mobile data connetion? Except maybe Canada? Oh and Latin America? don't think so, but maybe someone could confirm this. I'm very sure its not used anywhere else including Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Eastern Asia or the Asia Pacific area. it seems to have been made by American mobile carrier to allow them to offer mobile internet type solutions without paying the stupid prices of 3G licences. Ok, Fair enough but now theres a split between the smartphones coming out (IMHO).
Theres a whole range which support GPRS, EDGE and UMTS (3G) which all seem to work together nicely. You can even go from one country to another with these phones and it works. Believe it or not I was able to get GPRS out of my SPV E200 when I last went to the midwest of America in 2004 thanks to Tmobile and AT&T. Then you got the rouge phones which only support EVDO. This would be fine but the rouge ones tend to be the Microsoft PocketPC or Windows Mobile 2005 devices. The type of device I've been looking forward to having one day soon. Thanks EVDO carriers for this split. Thank you very much. I can't really blame Microsoft because America is a bigger market when it comes to Mobile Data it would seem. I'm not only pointing the finger at American Carriers like Cingular but also much closer to home like my own which is Orange. If Orange would provide a more American like data tariff of 20 pounds for 100meg of Mobile data a month we may start to see more mobile data use and that would in turn attract Microsoft and others.
It must be killing Orange and other mobile operators over here that they paid such stupid prices for 3G and its actually better and quicker technology that EVDO but the customers are not using it much. They quote huge take ups of 3G phones but how many of those people actually regularly use 3G and how much data do they transfer? I bet the percentage of data per person is very low. And you can't be suprised when most operators are charging about 1 pound per meg if you don't buy in advance with a bundle. (This post could/should simply be about this really.) I do care that I can't get a 3G phone which runs Windows mobile 2005 in a smaller size than my ipaq. But also mobile data costs in the UK and Europe is stupidly priced and I would have thought in 2006 we would be moving away from these crazy prices. I mean can you blame me for waiting for a phone which supports Wifi? Roll on the Nokia N80 soon please Nokia.