electron zoo

For those of us who aren’t sitting in rain waiting outside the Apple store — or even those who are — here are five timekillers. (Also, here are my pics of the DC area Apple store.)

The iPhone is the business media’s Paris Hilton. Because combining the words “iPhone” with “Paris Hilton” into one headline is pure genius.

Steven Colbert’s iPhone Review. I actually have the same iPhone model as he does. The limited Imaginary Edition.

The iPhone plays voicemail in whatever order you want, which is a great feature to use while your world is crumbling around you.

iLines across USA. Soon, these will be just about the only people in the country who can personally attest to how much the iPhone actually sucks. But they won’t admit it — well, not for a week or two, anyway.

Build your own iPhone in 3 easy steps. As long as you don’t care whether it’s small, black, shiny, or even an iPhone.

I have an awesome new gadget. This time, it’s pretty mainstream — I didn’t have to fill out any customs forms, buy off the black market, or rob any Japanese tourists. Not that I would do such a thing (but don’t ask me where I got my itty bitty digital camera).

I got my latest gadget in the USA. Well, that already knocks it down a wee bit on the coolness scale, especially because it’s a mobile phone. Or as some of you American cavemen still like to say, it’s a cell phone.

To get totally off the topic for a moment, the term cell phone is so old-fashioned that I once said cell phone to a 19-year-old hipster in the UK and he didn’t know what I was talking about. (Technically, the term refers to phones that use frequencies that few of us are using these days.) The only "cell phone" you’ll find me buying will be an actual cybernetic extension onto the cellular walls of my ears that allows me to communicate with … um … the mothership?

But in spite of being on the North American market, my new mobile phone is really cool. It’s the Motorola RAZR V3, and it’s just a little flashier than the electronics I would normally buy. I only bought a new phone because I had to change mobile services carriers, so getting a rockin’ new phone was a part of the deal. (Actually, you can buy unlocked cell phones that are carrier-independent — but then you don’t have a great excuse to upgrade your mobile technology.)

And this phone does pretty much rock. It has a huge, colorful screen, which is great for using the web, instant messaging, and emailing. The camera is pretty decent, and takes photos as big as 640 x 480 pixels — less than one megapixel, but good enough the uninspired quickie shots I’d take on my mobile phone. (Check out these shots I posted to Blogger Mobile.)

But the vanity features of the phone are what sets it apart. Mainly, the form factor — this is geek talk for the size and shape — is very cool. It’s just a little longer than a credit card and around 1.4 cm thick. (That’s just over half an inch for you cavemen reading this.) The thinness makes up for the large height and width of the phone, allowing space for the most luxuriously huge keypad I’ve seen in a pocket-friendly phone.

If the size of the keypad didn’t make it easy enough for me to enter text, the excellent predictive text feature built in to the phone simplifies things further. Turning it off and on can be counter-intuitive, but I am willing to forgive that because it has a very clever interface for guessing what you are trying to type … once you get used to it, anyway.

Plus it actually remembers what you’ve typed in the past. For instance, the name of my pet is not a real word (”shrimpi”, who lives in an Eco-Sphere), so I had to manually enter the name the first time I typed it into my phone. After that, it guessed that I was trying to type “shrimpi” after I’d entered just a few letters. Not bad.
Later that day, it suggested my password as a potential solution to something I was trying to type. How convienient. For that reason, I suggest you carefully weigh the pros and cons of this feature if you’re living a secretive double life. That’s why I had to turn it off, anyway.

Just in case I haven’t given you enough reasons why this keypad is awesome, it also glows like the dashboard of a retro spaceship in the dark. The salesman at the mobile store pointed this out to me. "It’s very Star Trek," he said. "Just like my life," I responded, and he laughed.

Oh, what little he knows.

(Here’s an email I sent to AT&T Wireless’s online customer service today.)

Dear AT&T Online Customer Service,

I tried to login to my account and was prompted to enter a “secret question”. Fine, but these are TERRIBLE secret questions:

What is the name of a childhood pet?
What is the name of a childhood hero?
What is your favorite restaurant?
Who is the person you would most like to meet?
Who is/was your favorite school teacher?
Who is your favorite artist?
Who is your favorite author?
Who is your favorite actor?
What was your favorite toy as a child?
What movie did you enjoy the most?
What book did you enjoy the most?

I can’t answer ANY of them. Has it ever occurred to you that some people do NOT have favorite artists, authors, or actors? Or more to the point, may people DO have favorites, but they change every day.

Further, for some people, all of their childhood pets’ names had fewer than five characters, which is your minimum number of characters allowed in an answer. Also, what if my favorite artist were Cher?

How about something that DOES NOT change, like what elementary school did you go to? Or who was your first best friend? Or hospital were you born in? Or who was your first boyfriend/girlfriend?

Next time you are attempting to add a “secret question to your website”, please think a little harder about whether you yourself could even answer these questions accurately more than once. (Ones that don’t remind me of a newlyweds game show.)

Thank you.