Monthly Archives: April 2007

When technology just works

Posted on by

After getting to Bowling Green, Ohio for the the conference I mentioned in Thursday’s rant, I found out that I was only about ten minutes away from a good friend of mine. As I had never been to Bowling Green before, I used my XV6700 and Bluetooth GPS receiver with Mapopolis to guide me and track mileage for reimbursement next week. On the way up, I listened to some Fair Game podcasts in Windows Media Player on the PDA via an FM transmitter on my car’s stereo, while Mapopolis and the GPS guided me safely to the hotel with accurate directions. As I drove, someone called me, Media Player paused itself, and I answered the call on my Bluetooth headset with the press of its button. When done, the call ended, and Media Player resumed right where it left off.

After I got some time away from the conference at the end of the day Thursday, I arranged to visit my friend and his family at their house. As I’d never been there before I was not familiar with the area, he gave me directions, but I decided that I wanted a little technological backup. I fired up Microsoft’s Live Search on the phone, told it to use the GPS, and asked it to generate directions to his house from the current GPS position. It worked perfectly, downloading map data as I drove via the EvDO connection and updating the display with the next turn as I approached it. While it doesn’t do text-to-speech, spoken directions, rerouting in the case of a missed turn, or many other driver-friendly things that Mapopolis does, it definitely shows where navigation technology might be headed in the near future. As wireless data becomes more ubiquitous, things like this will become much more useful and common. I look forward to devices having built-in GPS receivers so the need for a separate receiver is a thing of the past.

I went to his house again after the conference ended on Friday afternoon, this time giving Google Maps for Windows Mobile a try. I found it to be much more clumsy than Live Search; it lacks the finger-friendly features of Live Search which make it simple to locate things with a minimum of typing. The GPS position indicator is small, hard to see, doesn’t indicate the direction of travel, and I found that it often didn’t center on my location automatically after switching from map, to directions, and back again. I do like the large finger-friendly zoom in/out buttons on-screen, which seem easier to use than Live Search’s method of zooming.

The one thing I did notice is that Google often has more current, and much higher resolution satellite imagery than Live does, but Live Search wins in just about every other way in my book. Neither one is a full replacement for dedicated navigation software — yet — but I do see myself using Live Search more than Mapopolis in the future.

Hmm, somehow this became a product mini-review… The point of this post is that my trip was a technological success. My gadgets all just worked with the exception of my laptop and the hotel’s Internet access which never worked. Except for when I was on my friend’s wireless network, the laptop never got used and in retrospect, I could have just left it at home and not had to tote it around the conference. I was able to keep up on e-mail, listen to some fun podcasts, read my RSS feeds via Google Reader, and was able to find new places and meet up with friends because of my PDA, a reliable phone network, and mobile technology that did what it was supposed to do. I was very impressed!

Mobile phone etiquette in planes, trains, and automobiles

Posted on by

I am writing this (edit: started writing this) on my PDA as I ride a chartered bus to dinner and a Toledo Mudhens game at Fifth Third Field in Toledo, Ohio. I’m up here for a three-day conference with a bunch of other IT people  from various organizations as well as many technology vendors, so I would bet that almost 100% of the people in attendance have at least one mobile phone on them.

What prompts me to write this is the man sitting in the seat across the aisle from me who is speaking very loudly into his phone about clients, meetings that he’s rescheduled for next week, and other assorted things which I guarantee are of no interest to anyone on the bus. And yet we must listen.

I flew to Florida last winter and was seated next to someone who called six people in the span of half an hour while we waited our turn in line for the runway. I know that he spent the night sleeping in and wandering around the airport, that there are exactly seven minutes between automated announcements about no smoking in the teminal, and that he had only one coffee and a donut to eat since last night. I had the luxury in that case to hear both sides of his calls as the volume on his phone was turned up so high that every word the other person spoke was clearly audible.

There is debate now about whether mobile phones should be allowed to be used on aircraft. Whether for technical, health, or safety reasons, I am pretty certain that there will be violence erupting on planes if the use of phones is permitted as passengers become irritated with inconsiderate people carrying on conversations for the duration of multi-hour flights. If you want to check your e-mail, browse the Web, or some other data-related thing that doesn’t disturb others, fine; heck, I do it all the time. When you are speaking, however, you are basically forcing everyone around you to listen to what you’re saying, and that’s a different situation.

Have some consideration for those around you, especially in an enclosed environment such as an airplane, bus, or train, where people can’t get away from you when you annoy them. You may think your phone call is important, but everyone around you probably doesn’t need to hear it. Very few people in this world are so important that they can’t wait until they’re off the plane or vehicle to talk on the phone in a more secluded location. And if you are that important, I feel sorry for you that you can’t get even a little bit of time away from work to sit quietly on a plane and read a book.