First 24 hours with the Palm Pre
Let me just preface that I have owned Palm Treo devices in the past. I also love Apple and their products, I don’t have an iPhone because of the AT&T lock in and ridiculous pricing structure.
When Palm announced what seems like years ago they were developing a completely new phone web based OS I got excited. I live and breath the web and know the power of web devices. Finally they announced the Palm Pre and it was released yesterday, June 6 2009. Of course supplies were going to be limited so getting in line early was key. The Sprint store by my house opened at 8 am and I got in line at 6. I ended up being #19 and there were 3 people who actually camped overnight. The store ended up having about 80 of them so I easily got one. Here is a breakdown of my first 24 hours with the Palm Pre.
Feature Run Down.
Initially reading the reviews everyone said the plastic was flimsy and the phone was too light. I found none of these to be true, the phone is a great weight and doesn’t feel cheap at all. The only piece that does feel flimsy is the little cover for the micro USB port. You have to open it carefully the first few times to break it in, it feels like it is going to break if you are not careful. But after a few times opening and closing it it loosens up and I feel more comfortable about it now.
The Web OS is Amazing! very fast and fluid. Launching applications and switching between them takes almost no effort at all. It feels very similar to the iPhone except you can use gestures instead of always clicking the center button to move back a screen. Moving between apps and launching apps happens super fast, not sure how it compares to the iPhone but it blows the Backberry Storm out of the water.
The screen is very bright and the colors, transparencies and shadows are amazing. Its almost like when someone moves from a Windows PC to a Mac. The window placement, transitions and movement are just so fluid you don’t know how you ever worked on a PC. I was scared that the feel of the screen was going to be like the Blackberry Storm, (I hate the feel of the storm screen) but its not rubbery at all, its not glass but its super solid. Very reactive and sensitive. It reacts to your fingers without effort. Only thing I could not figure out at first was how to do is take a screen shot, one thing I like that the iPhone/Tough can do in just two keys. I finally figured it out with the Orange, Sym, and P keys (kind of a hassle).
The App Catalog is limited at the current moment, I really hope Palm releases the SDK soon because it looks super easy just from the apps I have downloaded. I downloaded 6 so far and they have all been pretty good. Tweed could use some more options but it works, I am sure someone will create a better Twitter client once the SDK comes out.
The audio quality is amazing, both in the ear piece and on speaker, I think better than my Blackberry. I love that there is a full headphone jack at the top, a great position for it and the iTunes integration is awesome. The Pandora app lets you stream music right over the air (no need to be on wifi, but if wifi is enabled it will use it) and can even keep playing in the background. Something the iPhone cannot compete with.
The notification system is really cool to say the least. It comes through at the bottom of the screen with tiny icons or one line text till you touch it and all notifications expand and moves your application up a little, no need to quit your app it just keeps running. Clicking on a notification launches the app and still keeps your old app running in the background.
The battery life is good so far. It came about 40% charged and playing with it the battery was going down quick. After charging it to 100% it only went down 10% in about 4 hours. Its hard to say how good the battery life is yet, I will post an update in the next few days.
The browser is solid and loads pretty much any web page, zoom happens with the normal two finger actions. One thing I was disappointed by was the lack of Flash. I really hope it comes in a update soon. Updates get pushed through in the background and looks like they are going to be updating the OS often. There already is an update for Web OS to 1.0.2 and it updated without issue. The Sprint network is amazing, I was getting 358 kbit/sec with 0.215s latency data transfer. Site Used: DSL Reports Mobile Speed Test
The keyboard I heard form reviews was hard to type on and the keys were too small. I did not find this to be the case. The only issue I found with the keyboard layout is how close the “back” and “enter” keys are to each other. Without looking I often went to click the back button but ended up clicking the enter key. Bummer but totally possible to get use to.
The network integration is awesome. No need for the Google Sync app its all built in. The only downside is that Google Sync allows you to pick your “My Contacts” instead of “All Contacts” by default in the Pre. So it pulled in 500+ contacts and a lot of them I didn’t even know I had in my book. Took me a little bit but I finally cleaned up my addresses and now all is good. Adding Facebook contacts only complicates things further, wow there is a lot of people in your phone now. I ended up removing Facebook contacts for now.
Wrapup
Overall the Palm Pre is a pleasure to use. It makes using a phone seem effortless and fun again. I really hope they release the SDK soon so they can get more Apps in the catalog, this will be the make or break feature for the phone. The features and positives definitely outweigh the negatives. If you are looking for something different the Pre is definitely for you, its not your run of the mill phone and hopefully will compete for some of the iPhone’s market share. Competition is good and this phone will definitely keep Apple and Google on their toes.
Having issues upgrading to Magento 1.3.1
Magento 1.3.1 was just released with a few new features and bug fixes. I decided to upgrade my test environment for a client site that is launching soon.
Going through Magento Connect
I get the following errors:
magento-core/mage_core_adminhtml requires package “magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules” (version >= 1.3.0, version <= 1.3.0), downloaded version is 1.3.1 ... Install Errors No valid packages found PEAR ERROR: upgrade failed
It was giving me this error for all packages, requiring an odd version and not letting me go any further.
Searching around
Looking around I couldn’t find any fixes for this issue. There were a few people who had the same issue but no replies to their forum threads.
The Solution
Upgrade the installation via command line. For some reason going through the web interface just did not work. But if you have SSH access (which you should) to your server just navigate to your Magento install directory and run the following commands. I believe this works on both Linux and Windows servers.
./pear upgrade-all rm -rf downloader/pearlib/cache/* rm -rf var/cache/*
And then tada! “Magento ver. 1.3.1″ should show up in the footer of your admin area.
IUE 2009 Social Media Panel Discussion
After the January Refresh Detroit meeting where I was on a panel talking about social media, I was asked to be on a similar panel for the then upcoming Internet User Experience 2009 conference. This week I attended IUE 2009 and the panel was a great success!
The panel consisted of
- Christopher Barger, Director, GM Global Communications Technology.
- Nick DeNardis, Associate Director, Web Communications, Wayne State University.
- Kelly LaVaute, Social Media Director, Quicken Loans.
- Shauna Nicholson, Marketing Manager/Ingenuity Engine, Biznet Internet Solutions.
- Steve Schwartz, CEO Guy, RateMyStudentRental.com, and Co-Founder, Alfa Jango, LLC Software & Marketing.
- Moderator: Tim Kiernan, Co-Host for the wildly popular Design Critique podcast.
There was no live stream or recording of the panel but Zachary Spencer rocked out an almost word by word transcript of the whole discussion.
In preparing for the panel they asked for a position statement from each of us. I decided to post mine below to get your thoughts.
Position Statement
Higher education institutions are working to understand the best way to leverage social networks to get the attention of prospective students. High school and even middle school age students are spending more time on social networks interacting with peers and companies they trust.
The more time prospective students spend online the more they ignore traditional media and commercials. DVR’s and MP3 players are letting these users bypass traditional advertisements. Companies and universities now need to start evaluating where they spend their ad dollars and resources.
Social media exposes the truths about a company or university regardless if it is good or bad. In the social space users are in control and are not afraid to speak their mind. University administration may not be open to exposing these truths. Because of the traditional nature of universities getting buy in is tough. Spending the already limited resources on an untested and unknown ROI of social media can be a difficult task.
The universities that do embrace this media and can navigate it appropriately, have the ability to tap into a wealth of motivated advocates that can essentially promote the university for them. On the other hand universities that go into the social space without a game plan or by thinking too traditional, have the potential to be pushed out and their advocates could turn into protesters.
The simplest thing for a universities to do is search and discover what is already being said and posted about them. Some administrators would be amazed at the content that is already out there.
Without being present in the social space, any negative comments or posts will go unanswered and all the user’s followers will see them as truth. Being in the social space allows universities to control their brand and respond to any misconceptions or answer any questions users may pose.
The best recommendations for a product or service are ones by friends or family. When a user has 800+ friends online and they post a message, it goes out to those 800+ friends as a recommendation. It is scary to think but news that use to take weeks to tell all their friends now only takes seconds online.
With the high spam detector that middle school and high school students have, universities have started creating positions for community managers and social media experts. Ensuring they are using the most appropriate tactics to interact with prospective students. The social space is essential for universities to be apart of, but strategy and experimentation are key to their success.
Currently: Watching, Listening and Reading
Currently Watching: A Lecture about HTML5
Currently Listening: SXSW 2009 Torrent
Currently Reading: Desire to Inspire
What do your initials say about you? NJD Edition
Nickolas James DeNardis (NJD)
When You Are Comfortable:
You are philosophical and opinionated. You have quite a few pet causes, and you’re always adopting a new one. People see you as clever and smart. You now a lot, and you love to talk about a variety of subjects.
When You Are At Your Best:
You are ambitious, and hard-working. Adversity allows you to shine. You resourceful and able to make due. People see you as honest to the point of bluntness. But they always know that you’ll be fair. You have the good intentions.
When You Are in a Social Setting:
You are a determined and responsible. You strive for success, and you know what it takes to get things done. People find you to be trustworthy and a good leader. You treat people well, and they benefit from your wisdom.