Karl Rove on why liberals are more likely to be online than conservatives:
“…a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things,” Rove said. “The idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something [conservatives] really do.”
That’s not counting the hours spent deleting White House emails.
NYT Bits Blog reports the results from a January survey (of 10,000 adults) of media habits of iPhone users:
84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners – which include those with Blackberries and devices that run Windows.
74.1 percent of iPhone users listen to music on their iTunes-equipped device. Only 27.9 percent of smartphone users listen to music on their phone and 6.7 percent of the overall mobile-phone-toting public listens to music on their mobile device.
With the NCAA Basketball Championship upon us, the association has released its policy on blogging [Download PDF]:
“The following is the NCAA’s policy for the number of blog posts allowed during a men’s and women’s basketball championship competition or session (i.e., where more than one contest takes place under the same admission ticket): Five times per half, once at halftime and two times per overtime period.”
13 posts in a game that goes one OT. They’re clearly trying to prevent someone “live blogging” every bucket. And the policy is easily enforceable if you are a credentialed reporter. Violate the policy, lose your credentials. A very big deal. But if I’m sitting in the stands with my iPhone, posting to my Twitter page… how do you stop that? And why is that less of a threat to the NCAA?
If anyone comes across examples of the this, let me know.
DISCLOSURE: The company I work for, Learfield Communications, has the marketing rights for a bunch of teams playing in the NCAA championship series.
Doc Searls is on a panel (Public Media 2008) titled Technology and Trends: What’s Around the Bend? From his list of ten, here are three I found interesting:
I couldn’t begin to guess the number of hours I’ve spent archiving material (I think Doc hates the term “content”). MissouriDeathRow.com; Legislature.com; Missouri Supreme Court oral arguments; and –once upon a time– Missouri State Highway Patrol accident reports. We saved damn near everything but I can’t say that I noticed a huge appetite for that archived material and I was never smart enough to make any serious money with it. But we’ve got it.
My friend George and I get together most Saturday mornings for coffee and conversation. While chatting this morning, George gets a call and he unholsters his iPhone. He gets a funny look on his face and says, “It’s from Steve Mays.”
I’m thinking it’s from Barb. She couldn’t call me for some reason, so she rings up George.
“No,” he says, “It’s from your cell phone.”
I pull my Tracfone from my coat pocket and, sure enough, it’s calling George.
If you are unfamiliar with Tracfones, I should tell you it doesn’t have a “redial” feature. And while I have George’s number in my phone, it’s about six down in the list. So how could this have happened?
I would have had to bump (against my chair) the down arrow six times… and then bump the “dial” button. Now, I ask you… what are the chances of that happening and the recipient of the call be the person I’m talking to? Hmmm?
Doc Searls says the Net makes radio and TV transmitters obsolete the moment high-enough-bandwidth wireless connectivity becomes ubiquitous.
“We’re one good UI away from the cell phone becoming a radio. (Thanks to the iPhone, it already serves as a TV.) And we’re one smart cell company away from radio- and TV-as-we-know-it from being replaced entirely — or from moving up the next step of the evolutionary ladder. Public broadcasters know that. That’s one reason they now call themselves “public media”, a move that separates the category from its transport methods.
Will this someday be an issue for our networks? Radio Iowa. Wisconsin Radio Network. Nebraska Radio Network. Time will tell.
“You’re riding in the car and a great song comes on the radio. You’re dying to know what it is so you can go buy it ASAP but there’s no satellite radio receiver to tell you what’s playing. How can you find out what song it is? Whip out your iPhone, put it near the car speakers, and watch the screen. Poof! There’s the song, artist, and album.” — TUAW.COM
Okay. This could make me trade in my Tracfone. iPhoner Tom promises to try this out and let me know how it works.
I’ve known Marhall Wilson since he and Barb started working together at the same law firm (Marshall has recently moved on). If I had to guess, I’d say he’d be better at fixing a broken generator than partitioning a hard drive. I don’t think he’s goofy for gadgets like many of my acquaintances.
So when I heard he’d purchased and iPhone, I was curious about his experience to-date:
I carried a Treo for several years. The Treo was my introduction into
“smart phones.” I was instantly hooked on the mobile email and internet
access. Following the recent death of my Treo 650, I purchased a Blackberry Curve. I was unsatisfied with the screen size and quality. I missed the touch screen feature, and I never became comfortable with the “roller ball” navigation.I was hesitant about the iPhone because (a) I do not need or use an iPod, and (b) I had read that the iPhone wasn’t well suited for “business” use. The screen quality plus the way the different applications worked together was the big seller for me.
I purchased my iPhone on the 20th (I’m writing this on Thursday the 25th) so it is still new to me. I am thrilled with it. Our computer tech guy set it up so that the device will reach out and retrieve my emails every 15 minutes. This is more than satisfactory for me. The screen is just stunning. The following are some of the pros and cons
in my opinion and in my limited experience:
- Pro: did I mention that the screen quality is stunning? Viewing videos, photos, and websites is a pleasure.
- Pro: I love the built-in Google maps with the satellite photos. The
clarity of the screen, with the easy zooming in and scrolling around
make the map feature fun as well as useful.- Con: no GPS.
- Pro: safari, the web browser, is great. Being able to open 2 or 3 or
?? Web pages at a time is great. It is happy to show you the whole
page (too small to read) and then zoom in to whatever field you wish.- Pro: the way it will switch from vertical to horizontal mode while viewing photos or the internet is great.
- Con: If you take a photo vertically, you can get whiplash trying to
rotate the device to look at it sideways because it will automatically
adjust itself to the new orientation. Perhaps there is a way to lock
out the rotation, but I haven’t found it yet.- Con: the internet reception in my house is worse than with the Treo or
Blackberry, although phone reception in the same location seems fine.- Pro: Out in the real world, internet pages load plenty fast enough for me.
- Con: the virtual keyboard is as bad as you’ve read about, although I’m
learning. I wouldn’t want to “have” to be typing lengthy emails all
day.- Con: no zoom or video on the camera, although I never used the Treo’s video camera all that much.
Overall, I love it, and I haven’t even utilized the music piece of it. The phone, internet, email and text messaging features are as good as or better than the Treo or Blackberry. Having YouTube, Google Maps, and a simple weather site resident on the device is great fun. Having only 1 button is plenty. I should also mention that the screen is really impressive.
I like paper plates (the good ones, not the cheap ones) and have the decency to feel guilty about using them. I’ve worn a plastic Casio wrist watch for years (less than $20). And tonight bought a year’s worth of minutes for my little Nokia Tracfone.
I paid $19.95 for the unit at Wal-Mart and have been buying additional minutes for the last 18 months. The Tracfone was made for people like me (and Avon Barksdale). No synching with Outlook. No texting. No camera. No nothing.
Yes, I do keep the Casio Exilim and the MacBook by my side, but the Tracfone and the camera fit nicely in the MacBook case. Weight is not an issue, given my limited travel.
I’ll bet I saw 50 iPhones at Gnomedex and everyone else had state-of-the-art hardware. When I pulled out the Tracfone at lunch, the guy across the table asked, "What’s that?"
"North Korean. I’m not supposed to have this out in public. Sorry." …as I jammed it back in my pocket.
So I’ve got all the minutes I need for the next year, for about $11 a month. What is that, 35 cents a day?
In a day or two it will have been 30 days since the iPhone went on sale (CNN reports sales have been disappointing). I popped off an email to Tom Piper, George Kopp and Dave Morris to see if they were still as pleased with their iPhones as they (Tom, George, Dave) were when they first got them. I haven’t heard back from Dave yet, but Tom and George filed reports… after the jump.