With the exception of four anointed reviewers from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek, as far as I know no journalists were able to get their hands on the Apple iPhone until the day it was released to the public, Friday at 6:00 PM local time. I got my loaner phone at exactly 6:00 PM west coast time about two seconds after the doors were open at the Apple store in Palo Alto, California.

That didn’t give me any time to test it prior to my first TV shot at 6:02 and I had precious little time with the device for my subsequent radio and TV segments that aired at live at 6:20 and 6:30. But as I write this column, it’s already 11:00pm on Friday night and I’ve had the iPhone for five hours. That’s hardly enough time to do a full fledged review but certainly enough to report on my “out-of-box experience” and share my first impressions of this innovative device.

My overall thought is that the iPhone’s software represents a truly remarkable accomplishment. Sure, the device’s ultra thin case and large 3.5 inch display are nice touches, but what really stands out is the user interface that can best be described as inspired. Regardless of how well this device ultimately does, it will always be remembered as the phone that broke the mold from which all others were fabricated. (more…)

For the past several days I’ve been testing a very innovative new cell phone. It uses WiFi along with a regular GSM cellular network, it has a camera and you can use it to browse the web.

No. It’s not the Apple iPhone. It’s one of T-Mobile’s new “Hotspot at Home” phones that’s designed to make calls either through T-Mobile’s GSM cellular network or through the Internet from a wireless (WiFi) hotspot at your home, from work or at a public location such as a Starbucks coffee shop. (more…)

Plaxo has a somewhat controversial past, but based on my experience with its 3.0 version launched today, it deserves a terrific future.

The original service, which was launched in 2003, was designed to help people keep up with contact information by sending e-mail to friends asking them to update their profiles on Plaxo’s servers so that you would always know their up-to-date phone number, address, e-mail and other particulars.

But the service got a little too carried away by automatically sending out boiler plate invitations or request for contact update information to each member’s entire address book.

Last year Plaxo CEO Ben Golub publicly apologized for “generating acquaintance spam.” Now my mailbox is no longer besieged by Plaxo invitations from people I might not even know.

Enough about Plaxo’s checkered past. Today’s announcement makes Plaxo something that lots of people are going to want to use even if they have no interest in telling the world about their new cell phone number (unless of course it’s an iPhone, in which case they probably will want to brag). (more…)

June 21, 2007

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As anyone who’s ever raised a child can testify, parents sometimes need a bit of help and advice. After all, kids don’t come with a user manual.A new website launched Wednesday – with advertising and a big boost from venture capital - is designed to provide a bit of help and support. Education.com is an editorial site with over 4,000 reference articles about raising kids, along with online communities in which parents can interact with each other, and with education experts.

The goal of the site, according to founder and CEO Ron Fortune, is to build “a one stop online destination targeting parents to supplement education so that students can be more successful in school as well as in life.”

In a takeoff of the national policy of “no child left behind,” Fortune says he wants to make sure that “no parents are left behind.” He says “parents need to have information to help kids in direct ways.” (more…)

Here’s a link to my column in the New York Times

I THOUGHT I was pretty good about energy conservation, but it turns out that I’ve been a bit of a hypocrite. I drive a reasonably fuel-efficient car, I work at home so I don’t use fuel to commute and I am replacing incandescent bulbs in my home with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs.

But I am also a prodigious computer user, and it looks as if that makes me an energy hog.”

Read the rest on the New York Times site

Most adults I know use their cell phones primarily to make calls. But ask any teenager and you’ll soon find out that that’s only one of many things they’re doing with today’s cell phones.

One thing they’re doing is texting. That’s where they’re using their thumbs to type out messages to their friends. The technology, known as “SMS” or “short message service, has been around for years and it’s long been popular among both adults and teens in Europe and Asia.

Text messaging started catching on with teens in the U.S. a couple of years ago and today it’s pretty common to see kids thumbing their way through multiple messages wherever they are. Texting is also starting to catch on with American adults, though mostly young adults. It seems that the majority of mature Americans don’t feel like learning yet another way to type.
(more…)

Houtston Chronicle tech columnist columnist Dwight Silverman, who is my friend and co-author on Microsoft Windows Vista Peachpit Learning Series wrote a great blog post called “10 Things I love, 10 Things I hate about Windows Vista.” I highly recommend it.

Although it’s always a good idea to take security companies’ dire warnings with a bit of skepticism, it’s clear to me we must take PC and Internet security seriously. It’s not a time to “be afraid, very afraid,” but it does make sense for anyone using PCs to take reasonable precautions to protect their data, their privacy, their security and their PCs. And by “PC,” I mean all types of PCs, including Macs and Unix systems. Macs may be less of a target than PCs, but they’re not exempt, especially to “social engineering” scams that take more advantage of human error and misjudgment than technological vulnerability. (more…)