Eight Days And No Looking Back

I have had my iPhone now for eight days. I love it. You could give me any Windows Mobile phone and I'll turn you down.

Why do I like it so much?
1. The call and audio quality is phenomenal! I've never owned a clearer, louder phone.
2. S*!t just WORKS. When you tap an icon, something happens - right then.

I've spent almost every day since I got it downloading free apps. Some are lame, some are pretty good and some are limited versions of paid apps. One of those limited apps I'm actually going to buy (gotta wait until payday). It's called grocery gadget and it's a shopping list app. Why am I willing to pay for it? It lets you scan barcodes to enter items. How easy is that!?

I updated the operating system today. iOS4 was released about noon local time. The biggest thing I was looking forward to was the folders. Being able to group apps instead of them having to just hang out wherever they land is something they should have done since day one. The multitasking is nice but it's never really been a major factor to me except for background apps that Apple doesn't allow.

The iPhone, however, is not without its limitations. In my 8 days of ownership, I have compiled the following wish list:

1. Adjustable default appointment alarm. The default appointment alarm is none. It's going to mess me up one of these days when I set an appointment on the phone and forget to set the alarm and miss an appointment. I'm in enough dutch at work without that.
2. Email priority indicators and the ability to flag Exchange mail. If I get a high priority message and I'm away from my desk, I want to know that it's high priority. The message could get easily lost amongst other messages on the phone without it. The flag ability is a luxury but I use the flags as a reminder that I need to do something with the email (shutup, Ron).
3. Customizeable alerts for mail, voice mail, and calendar. You can customize the ringtone (including on a per-contact basis) and the text message tone but the others are either on or off. And the ringtone is the only tone you can add your own. At least give me more than one choice. Who are you, Henry "you can have any color as long as it's black" Ford? I can add the ability to change these tones but from what I've read I'd have to jailbreak it and I'm not gonna do that.
4. A method of closing the app. This is even more important with the multitasking. I suppose it just stacks 'em up and closes the one at the bottom when it needs memory but I'd rather have a little bit of control over that.

Item number one is critical to me. Steve Jobs, if you read this, please add the ability to set a default appointment alarm time to iOS 4.1. The high priority indicators are important but not absolutely critical. The other items would just be nice. It is, after all, a wish list.

BlueAnt Is Now On My Top 10 Companies List

The last time I went to the First Saturday sale I lost the best Bluetooth headset I've ever had. It was a Blueant Z9. I initially didn't like it because it wasn't comfortable (I only got the large earpiece with it) but I ended up with a compatible earpiece that allowed me to wear it for up to a couple of hours if necessary.

Based on the quality of the Z9 (it sounded great on both ends), I started searching for a replacement and on December 14, purchased a Blueant Q1 off eBay. Nine days later, I almost lost it, too. Luckily I realized it was gone while we were still out and about and was able to backtrack and find it. After that point, I started carrying it in my pocket... bad idea. The following day, the earpiece snapped and part of it came off.

I figured the circumstances wouldn't be covered under warranty so I attempted to fix it myself using super glue. I managed to stick it back on very nicely but after that, it sounded like s#!t. It was bad enough that I simply couldn't understand what people were saying to me.

I figured I had nothing to lose so I contacted BeluAnt customer service. I told them exactly what happened (broke while carrying in my pocket and I tried to fix it) and asked if a replacement was possible. To my surprise, I received a request for a copy of my receipt a couple of days later. I sent it to them and this afternoon I received the RMA and instructions for the return.

They didn't have to do that. Many companies these days would say I mishandled the product by carrying it in my pocket then by attempting to fix it myself and tell me it just wasn't covered. BlueAnt is now on my top ten list of companies I will go out of my way to do business with (GoDaddy is another) and I will recommend their products to anyone.

The Best Web Hosting Company EVER!

I have been fiddling around the web for several years now. I started with free services like Geocities and others who's names are lost to obscurity. In order to spread my wings and have more space, I finally moved to paid services.

The first service I used, MidPhase, was $7.95 per month, which was about the going rate for budget web hosting. They were okay but I signed up for an extended contract (buy 12 months, get 3 free) which, in the end, they didn't honor.

My next host was Siteflip. This was bargain-basement shared web hosting. $4.00 a month and, according to the reviews, you got what you paid for. They gave you space but the support was almost non-existent. I didn't much care since I hadn't had much interaction with MidPhase and I was getting a serious upgrade on disk space. Of course, it didn't help that I had to go through a special link to get that price.

When renewal time came around, I was heavily into listening to the Geek News Central Podcast, which is sponsored by GoDaddy.com. Not being entirely comfortable with the lack of support and shady side-deal style of SiteFlip, I checked out GoDaddy. For $4.99/month I could get 5GB of space (which turned into 10GB by the time I signed up) and have up to 10 MySQL databases and unlimited subdomains (subdomain.domain.com). Why some sites charge extra for subdomains, I'll never know. It's simply a pointer that exists in a single file on the server that tells Apache (the web server software) that when someone gets to the site using subdomain.domain.com, direct them to a particular folder. Anyway, I signed up and used the special savings code from Geek News Central (todd20) and saved 20% on my order which brought it down to... $4.00/month.

When I first logged in, I didn't know what to do. As far as control of my account I was at least a level higher than any other service had let me operate. Once I figured out that I had control over any and all domains I may set up through GoDaddy instead of having individual accounts for each, I was impressed.

GoDaddy has an excellent knowledge base to begin with but I have had a couple of occasions where I've needed to contact support. They have been prompt with their responses and, more importantly, they actually answered the questions that I asked.

One of the nice features of GoDaddy is the one-click install of applications such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Coppermine Photo Gallery, SilverStripe and a host of other, mostly free, applications. You click the install link, answer a few simple questions (i.e. where do you want to install, password for the database, etc.), then sit back and let the servers handle it automagically. If an update is available, you can click an update link and the server will let you know when it is complete. You literally don't even have to think about it.

Now here's why GoDaddy will forevermore have my web hosting business.

One of the applications I have installed, SilverStripe, that runs my wav archive had an update available about a month ago. I clicked the update link and the update failed. With another click, I rolled it back and tried again. It failed again with some sort of internal server error so I rolled it back and left it for another day.

Yesterday, I tried the update one more time and one more time it failed. I decided to contact support and see if they had any idea why this was (not) occurring. I didn't expect a response until sometime Monday.

Later yesterday afternoon, I received an email stating that my issue would require additional review and was being escalated to the Advanced Support Team. I figured a front-line soldier looked at it and, not having access to the proper resources, bumped it up the chain. No biggie. The site was up and running and I could be patient until I got another email on Monday either asking for more detail or telling me what was happening.

About 30 minutes ago, my phone rang. It was a support representative from GoDaddy. He wanted permission to have them try the upgrade on their side so they could see if they could get it to work or trace it and find out where the hiccup was.

I never expected to have my issue about installation of a third-party product update even examined over a weekend much less have someone call me personally on a Sunday evening.

Friends, if you are in need of web hosting, I can unequivocolly and without a moments hesitation strongly recommend GoDaddy. Plus, I know some codes (like the todd20 one I used for hosting) that can save you money and let you help keep the lights on at my favorite podcast. Just send me an email and I'll share them with you.