WebCrush.Blog

Well, today’s toy was the Motorola Rokr S9-HD BlueTooth wireless earphones.  For the past two years I’ve been using the Oakley/Motorola branded O-Rokr sunglasses and found them great, but the volume was limited and given their high price I was always concerned about their care.

Another problem lately is that I’ve been taking longer and longer bicycle rides and considering the New England weather, I’m finding that sunglasses aren’t always wearable this late in the day.

I picked up a pair of the new earphones at BestBuy for $99 and found the fit and finish great.  The battery wasn’t charged out of the box, but after only 15 minutes on a charger they lasted for an hour long bike ride.  The sound controls are intuitive with volume up/down on one side plus track forward/back on the other.  They also have a built in microphone so you can take calls from them as well.

I found the sound quality to be really high — better than my O-Rokrs.

A problem I’ve always had in the past when cycling was the wind noise would drown out the music–not on these puppies, you can crank the volume WAY up and drown out your own thoughts.

They come with a carrying case, charger, different size ear ‘nubs’, and instructional manual.

Overall I think this is a great product and would recommend it for anyone interested in having earphones without the wires.

I frankly hate having to have several devices with me to do different things–that’s what this whole convergence of devices is supposed to be about.  So when the weather starting clearing up and I took to the outdoors again on my bicycle, I wanted a way that I could listen to my music, track my speed and distance, and still have my phone with me in case of emergencies.  Naturally the iPhone seemed to be the solution for this problem.

Now the goal for me is to be complely wireless, and when exercising its often ideal.  Unfortunately, the 3.0 OS hasn’t been released yet so my bluetooth headsets won’t work with the the iPhone and I had to resort to use wired headphones (eww).  I initially purchased an athletic arm band which had an enclosure for phone and worked pretty well, but once I found some nice cycling apps that would double as a GPS device showing me my current rate and distance, having to look over at my arm repeatedly became a chore.

Enter the bicycle handbar mount, designed for the iPhone and sold at USBFever.  Its touted as an ‘iPhone’ mount but its really a universal holder for any device.  What sold me on this model was its ability to rotate 90* so I could view an app in landscape mode.  The display video they provided seemed proof enough, so I ordered one.

Today it arrived.  Shipped straight from China, and how nice of them to include a tasteless image behind inside.

First and foremost is the mounting–to attach the base to the handbars is quite simple, you unscrew the retaining knob and place the tubular mount over the handlebar and retighten.  Included is are two rubber strips to place between the handlebar and the mount, but the fit is so tight that I found them impossible to use.  Just make sure you tighten the mounting nut all the way.  I can’t imagine this fitting handlebars thicker than normal.

Afterward, you just snap the mounting bracket to the tube mount and you’re ready to go.  The mounting bracket expands and contracts so many different devices can be used.  It will ’snap’ into place when properly connected to the base.

Now for the test ride.  I started my typical cycling easy, smooth level roads.  I had my GPS application running as well as the iPod and I have to admit, this was feeling pretty nice. Thinking tomorrow the new 3.0 OS would be released, I wouldn’t be tethered with earphone wires, I could get used to this.

And then I hit a bump.

The mounting bracket came unconnected from the base unit and flew off into the road.  Fortunately I chose to use my silicone based case this day for such a catastrophe and my phone was unharmed.  Hmm . . . I thought I had that snapped in tightly, let me try that again, ‘click’,  yes, thats solidly on there.  Went another 100 feet and it came off again from a bump.  Clearly the mounting unit was not going to stay on–and I’m on a public road here!

I ended up stopping at a local store to pick up some super glue to permantly fix the bracket to the handlebar mount but found that one of the holding arms was cracked badly and a firm grip was no longer possible.  Back into the store for some velcro to create some sort of monstrosity that could at least get me home.

Bottom line, product is a great idea, lets you view your screen while you ride, the bad is that the connector is so lousy that it comes unhinged from a tiny bump.  I’m tempted to return this one and demand a replacement and make sure to superglue the bracket on before I use it again.

Oh, and the GPS on the iPhone is pretty lousy unless you have complete unfettered sky for miles around.  So much as a mailbox in the way and you lose signal and it’ll pull from the nearest cell tower which can skew your results up to miles.  My hopes is that the new 3gs model has a better receiver.

It should be common knowledge that Apple did NOT create the MP3.  They didn’t even create the MP3 player.  MP3 players have existed long before Apple jumped into the consumer electronic market, all the way back in 1997.  I know, I owned them.  In fact, I’ve had many non-Apple MP3 players over the years and sort of prided myself on the fact that not only had I not owned an iPod, that I didn’t intend to purchase one.  What Apple had done was created a means of MP3 distribution that took the medium into the mainstream with their iTunes store.  No longer were MP3s synonymous with piracy–they were accepted.

So, if I had other MP3 players, what did I need an iPod for?  Status symbol?  I’ve never been cool enough to need one.

By the time the iPhone and iPod Touch came out, sure they were sexy and sleek, but still unnecessary for me.  I was ahead of the curve and already had a convergent mobile device which incorporated phone, pda, and media player.  Like the iPod, the technology in the iPhone was not anything new, although marketed as such to make it mainstream.

So, here I am in lawschool and one of the best study guides I use is the Law in a Flash series of flashcards.  Say what you want, I love them.  What did I quickly find–hey, they offer these things for the iPhone.  Can you get them for Windows Mobile or BlackBerry?  Nope, iPhone only.  Crap.

So, the dilemmna was whether to pickup an iPod Touch just for using the flashcards, or stay tried and true.

Enter Kluper, a fellow lawstudent on Twitter who offers me her used 16gb iPod Touch for a low low price.  How can I say no?  Well, I don’t, and after only two days of using this thing I can say I’m addicted.  It’s not the fact that I can email, Tweet, Facebook, play music, check the weather, surf online, etc all on my little phone.  I was able to do that before.  It’s that I can do all of these with such ease.  Aside from the superiorness of the touchscreen (all other screen on the market suck compared to it), its the sheer simpleness of these applications.

The developer community and the applications provided are the heart and soul of the Apple platform.  Not only are they far more numerous that what is available for other mobile platforms, when they exist for both the Apple version still outshines.

For the past six months I had my personal phone, a Windows Mobile based Samsung Omnia i910 with touchscreen skinned and themed to look like an iPhone, and you know what, it was pretty similar to the Apple product, but it had its flaws, namely the clunky system interface and crappy touchscreen.  With a bunch of add-on applications, I had touchflow like music players, photo slide viewers, finger friendly calendars, etc.  But it just was missing ’something’.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late)–its 2009 and after 2 days of use I love my iPod Touch.  For both its touchscreen and fantastic applications available for it.  Is it perfect?  No–cut & paste is missing, no bluetooth support, and only one app can run at a time.

But damn–I hate having to carry two devices with me everywhere.  I’m still not 100% sold on the touchscreen keyboard yet.  Flipping back and forth between numbers, letters, and symbols is annoying plus I do like a ‘real’ physical keyboard.

Time for Verizon to step up to the plate and get themselves a deal with Apple (as the rumors say) because I’m not sure how much longer I can wait . . .