On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

I’ve spent way too much time considering an iPhone purchase since the release and appearance of the first reviews. Today I made a trip to the Apple store to bring in my son’s Macbook for repair (intermittant keyboard) and so had a chance to experience the gadget first hand.

I was surprised that in a store that was relatively busy for a summer Tuesday afternoon, the 6 or 8 iPhones on display were mostly untouched. I watched the sale of 3 iPhones while I was in the store, but somehow I had expected more curiosity about the phone from mall patrons. While I was playing with it, two people drifted over when they saw video playing on the big wide screen. As a display item, the iPhone is small and inert. It doesn’t invite interaction.

Of course, the phone was using the Apple store Wi-Fi which is reasonably fast. So the experience was one of optimal connectivity.

First, I made a call home. To show off and judge quality. It’s a relatively uncomfortable phone against the ear with it’s hard-edged glass surface. I agree with the general assessment of reviewers that the sound is middling. Maybe it was partly due to the load environment in the store, but it sounded like “a cell phone” to those I spoke with. The sound for me was fine. The controls for hold, conferencing, etc are truly ground breaking and with visual voice mail, the biggest draw for me as a phone.

Of course the second great draw is the browser experience. However great it looks though, functionality is not all that much better than I get on my Blackberry. Aesthetics aside, the browser pages as presented are generally impossible to read, so you need to zoom and pan to read. On my Blackberry, the page gets reformatted into a long scroll- so I move vertically rather than panning. On the websites I read frequently, the important information comes up quickly as presented by the Blackberry.

Everything else? Not really compelling one way or the other for me. I like the keyboard.I don’t think I’d be faster or slower than on my SureType Blackberry or on any other style of keyboard. The iPod function? I’d rather have my 80GB video ipod even with the small screen for it’s dedicated controls and high capacity. Mail and calendar are unimportant as I spend most of my time using Outlook in it’s various incarnations on the web, on a PC, or on the Blackberry.

It’s interesting, but I left with a greater appreciation for how useful browsing is on my Blackberry. Plus since it’s a 7130e on Verizon it’s provides high speed internet access for my work laptop in tethered mode.

If I gave up my Verizon Blackberry for the iPhone I’d lose the tethered modem capability, the corporate push email and calendar sync. And while the superior browsing capability might offset the loss of the tethered modem, I wouldn’t be able to download documents, edit them on a laptop and return them to the author- a big part of my mobile work during travel.

A big gain I’d have with an iPhone would be international roaming. With my CDMA-EDVO phone, when I arrive in Europe, I’m without a phone. I’ve filled in with an unlocked GSM phone and buying pay as you go SIMs in Europe, but it’s a pain. I’m reimbursed for the high cost of internatinal roaming, so I’d rather have a phone that works on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’ve considered a two phone solution, but I’d have to have two carriers until my contract expires early next year. Or pay to get out of the Verizon contract. But I’d use a Blackberry for corporate email and calendar and iPhone for phone and browsing- but it’s a complicated and profligate solution since the Blackberry has the phone and browsing capabilities.

So the iPhone actually has me considering upgrading my current Blackberry to the new 8830 which has dual CDMA/GSM capabilities, allowing international roaming. It’s cheaper than an iPhone and even lets me use it as a bluetooth modem with the macs- although a bit slower than the tethered mode.

I’ll agree with those who think that the iPhone will help sales of all kinds of web enabled phones. It’s best in breed, but not the only option.

Dante Stella on the Leica M8:

At the end of the day, photography is about life more than anything else. It’s about capturing things that cannot be later reproduced. A good camera is one that you never think about. It is in your pocket when you need it to be. And good photograph is one that you enjoy twenty years from now.

I’m on record as saying I’m going to wait on buying an M8. I have three systems I’m working with for now:

1. Nikon D80 with the 24mm f/2.8 (supplemented by the 50mm, 12-24mm)
2. Nikon P5000 Coolpix at high iso in black and white
3. Leica M6ttl with 50mm or 35mm Summicron with C-41 film scanned with National Photo’s (Reisterstown Rd, Baltimore, MD) Noritsu scanner.

I’ve run the economic numbers many times and so does Dante: Dante’s calculation for me is about right- the Leica costs me about $20 a roll all said with film and developing costs. His estimate of 60% depreciation of the M8 over 3 years is realistic looking at the prices of 3 year old high end Nikons. Buy a US$5000 camera today, resell at US$2000 in 3 years- cost $1000 a year. 50 rolls of film.
I think that if I didn’t have the convenient film workflow, I’d be more inclined to use digital capture. But I like the imposition of non-linear chemical sensitivity in the workflow for it’s transformative capabilities. The M8 is a very accurate painter of the scene. Film stretches and compresses by itself. The transformation to black and white, out of my control, is another step away from the scene as presented. Even the wait to develop and view provides more distance.

There’s a pleasure in the unexpected transformation of film photography that is different from the immediacy of digital. For learning how to expose and light, digital is far superior. It is immediate and predictable. For me there is then a journey to transform the image to create the personal vision. My experience with film is different, it is one of experience and discovery.

I remember the day well.

I wanted to try out Zillow, but it would only run on IE or Firefox, not Safari. I downloaded Firefox, tried it out and never looked back.

Best was using the same browser on my Macs and the corporate laptop. With the Safari for Windows, I thought I’d try Safari again, since I could duplicate the browser experience across platforms once again.It seems the experiment is over and I’m back to Firefox.

The reasons?
1. The web editor for WordPress is flaky in Safari, rock solid in Firefox.
2. While both browsers auto detect feeds, only Firefox allows direct subscription in Google Reader, by current reader of choice (sorry Brett!)
3. OS X antialiased font rendering is great on the Mac. On Windows, it makes Safari look fuzzy. I saw it immediately.
4. Safari spawns new windows even when I tell it not to. Firefox obediently opens new tabs and rarely overwrites a page that I want to keep open
5. Both browsers are equally prone to memory leaks and have to be shut down prior to using memory intensive programs like Photoshop. Safari failed to provide any gain.
6. The bookmark sidebar in Firefox allows for rapid scanning of pages for new content within a window, especially on a large monitor. Safari only displays bookmarks in the main content window.
7. There are nice EXIF browser plugins for Firefox that let me see what camera David Allen Harvey is using today (D200, D70s or M8?). No such plugins for Safari.
8. Both browsers allow tabs to be reordered. Only Firefox allows dragging a tab into another window. It’s one of my organizing methods when I doing extensive research on the web.
9. Only Firefox has find as you type in the toolbar search box. It’s usefulness borders on the uncanny.

I couldn’t think of 10. Really.

I keep coming back to Safari for one reason. On the Mac, there is the new Inspector for webkit.  It allows you to browse styles while displaying the page. Select text and the synthesized CSS style is shown. Since I’m now engaged in understanding CSS for the first time, this is a very useful learning and troubleshooting tool.

tech ronin: To iPhone or Not?

The painful memories of looking forward to and being disappointed by the first Newton still affect my thinking on whether or not to get in line and buy an iPhone next week. I am an optimist and a technology enthusiast.

I know the feeling. I’ll never forget sitting in my car and staring at the Newton MessagePad screen that was almost unreadable in daylight. Some how I got used to it and perservered with my Newton for several years before switching over to the much more practical Palm Pilot.

Now I carry a Blackberry, required because of corporate mail. It’s a decent phone and a really good mobile email system. It has a tiny screen and can’t display attachments like my last Palm could, so I always need to travel with a laptop to read attached documents. It works as an EVDO modem with my corporate laptop (not my Powerbook). The calendar function works fine, syncing with the corporate Exchange calendar well enough. I’ve never been able to use it for note taking or mobile text database the way I did with the Palm. I blame this on it’s Outlook style Notes and Tasks which just don’t work for me. I use the Web browser for Weather Underground and Google Reader almost exclusively as they provide a pretty good mobile experience.

It’s on Verizon, so in Europe it needs to be synced from the laptop. I’d like to believe that I could switch to the iPhone, get global GSM, usable browsing, calendaring and note taking but I just don’t think the corporate integration will be their. I’d have to carry both the largish iPhone and the large Blackberry. I imagine that I could use the web access to corporate email, but I doubt I’ll get usable email and calendar integration. We use Blackberry. Otherwise you’re on your own. Like the iPod and Apple TV at their introductions, they will useful gadgets, but probably will take some time before they gain enough traction to force general integration.

If ever. I’m on the sidelines for this one. For now.

On Deciding . . . Better : Imagination as Simulation

Simple solutions to complex problems are usually wrong. Complex problems usually require complex solutions. In a complex situation it can be hard to know which variables are important. We tend to act from simple biases based on simple analogies once complexity becomes too great.

When decisions involve uncertainty, multiple goals and multiple effects technology can help amplify imagination. In my own life, I’ve been exploring how this technology can help me clarify my goals, understand my assumptions and help me act in a way that is most consistent with what I believe.

With my effort to set ODB 3.0 up on a new server, I was feeling a bit nostalgic. Via the Wayback machine, this was my first ever posting to ODB 1.0. My beard was black and there’s an energy in the writing that I now find admirable. I was learning about new domains of knowlege in Decision Theory. Having digested and incorporated them, I’m on to new challenges.

These days I find myself wondering about the border between awareness and . . . well whatever we’ll call the behaviors generated by the brain that we are not aware of as conscious experience.

If you believe it, the woman who posted this photograph on Flickr found, on Flickr, the photo that was taken simultaneously by the photographer depicted in the photograph. Two photographs taken independently posted and linked on Flickr.

Collusion? Conceptual art? Coincidence? You decide.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: The backseat driver principle

The driver overestimates his control over the situation (including his own car as well as others on the road). The backseat driver (“Whoa–you’re taking that curve too fast!”) underestimates the driver’s control. As a driver, I listen to the passengers because they provide a useful corrective. Even if the backseat driver is sometimes annoying, it makes sense to listen.

My principle: There is no learning without feedback. Be open to every bit of advice, criticism and praise you receive. Evaluate it, but don’t automatically believe it.