Merry Xmas to Me (from work)

Today at work all 60+ employees got custom engraved iPads. I have to say this is the nicest xmas gift I've received from any place I've worked.

At first when I unwrapped it, I was like "Holy crap, this is sweet!", then I thought "Hey I could sell this for big bucks", then I pondered if I really need another gadget to add to our collection, I mean, I just got the Windows Phone 7 and two months before that, the iPhone, we have two desktops and a laptop... how many ways to surf the web and watch movies do we need?... and then I went back to my original thought "Holy crap, this is sweet!"

So in the holiday spirit of over consumption and materialism, I decided to open it up and keep it (at least for now). A week ago I was celebrating the unistall of iTunes from my computer, but now I had to load it back on :( And now I sit here on the couch w/ Kathleen, she on her laptop and me on my iPad, taking 30 minutes to tap out this blog post... and I have to admit that I'm not totally sure what the benefit of this device is.

It's sort of like a huge iPhone, except that there's no camera and you can't call anyone. It doesn't even have a mic. It could be a major influence in the way I relate to technology, or it could be a big waste of silicon. I'll have to figure that out. Either way, tho, it is one VERY generous gift :) Thanks Work!

WP7 Love

A couple weeks ago I bought the new Windows Phone 7 and I have to say I am loving it. The WP7 operaring system (OS) comes on many different phones. The one I picked up is the Samsung Focus. It's very thin and light weight with a super-AMOLED screen, which is very high contrast. When the phone show true black, the pixels are actually turned off, so the blacks are totally black. It saves battery life and looks amazing.

Now, this new Phone 7 OS was just released in November, so there are some features that are missing (like copy & paste and a few other things), and not all of my favorite apps have been released for WP7 either (like Pandora and Angry Birds), but there is a HUGE OS update coming in Janurary and it's just a matter of time til there's more apps.

In the mean time, the things that I really like are

1) the interface is way sexy - the fonts, graphics, and subtle movements and just the whole experience of navigating around

2) the voice control is really good - you just say what you're looking for and the phone figures it out

3) it has "live tile" on the start page, which are constantly updated with new info (like weather conditions, photos of the band i'm listening to, new craigslist items i'm looking for)

4) you can also pin your own tiles to the start screen and you can pin pretty much anything - a map location, a contact, a song, a web page

5) this model has a 5 Megapixel camera w/ flash and shoots 720p HD video

6) last but not least, cuz this might be the coolest feature of them all.... the apps are built in Silverlight and I, ladies and gentlemen, am a Silverlight designer at a Silverlight agency. So I can build my own apps and load them on my own phone! right now I'm working on 2 apps w/ a couple guys from work. I'll share a demo when they're done.

7) whoops, i spoke too soon... the coolest thing is NO MORE ITUNES!!!

Watch the phone demo in fullscreen on HD