I got over that year one – but SXSW Interactive is a great time, good to hang out with all those you talk to online from around the world and build better relationships, meet other entrepreneurs and gather insight on their positives and failures in the startup world and more.

Austin itself is a really cool town, great downtown area and awesome music scene.  The conference is beyond huge and offers a lot of information packed into a week.

So with that I’ll link you to my SXSW schedule if you’d like to see the panels I’m hitting or you can track me down via the normal methods: twitter, foursquare, gowalla & brightkite.

Cheers

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

SXSWi bound in 2010

I keep getting asked to elaborate a bit and now that I’ve had the iPhone 3GS for a couple days I have some more details and insight that may interest those who have pondered a similar switch.

• I had an issue with with apps on the G1 as they don’t store on the SD card and the actual handset has only like 256mb of on-board memory so I had to keep uninstalling apps to add new ones.  iPhone has a 16gb hard-drive – nothing to worry about (and a 32gb model is available also).
• The keyboard typing logic is much smarter on the iPhone; less mistyped words and I seem to be faster typing on the iPhone than the G1 (while using the software keyboard).  I think the keys are better placed as the screen seems wider, but they’re not as tight together and I can type pretty quick and even better on landscape mode.
• GPS on the iPhone locates me much faster than android and it seems much more responsive to movements and rotation.  The original G1 demo videos had Google maps rotating the little street view guy to the direction you were looking but for one, I never used that specific functionality (no need), and two, it was so far buried in the map menu’s it wasn’t fast enough to be useful in my opinion.
• Apps wise…  and this partially ties into GPS but BrightKite and Foursquare actually work for finding where I’m currently located (despite their own individual software flaws).  The BrightKite app on Android would always keep me stuck at my last check-in point even if I hit “dismiss guess” 10 times.  Searching worked for finding and checking in but that’s not the point.  Only once out of about 30+ check-ins so far did I have to search for the place I was at on the iPhone’s BrightKite app.
  There wasn’t a Foursquare app (there was FourDroid but it was beyond horrible and FourSquared is in limited alpha at this point) on the G1 Android platform so I can’t compare apps, but the mobile version of their site didn’t have nearly the features the iPhone app has (but the iphone app doesn’t have venue search yet either so).
• Battery life… perhaps too early to tell because I’ve been hammering my iPhone with new apps and download tons of apps/games to test and also beta testing for a new GPS-based game called 5thDimension so that has been sucking the battery down.  But with that said – I’m not getting any less battery life than the G1.  Batteries in gadgets in general suck so I know there will be no dramatic change either way.

iPhone quirks at the moment

• Having some duplicate entries and split records with contacts that have synced from my Google Apps account.  I’ve heard from a couple iPhone users they have the same issue and I’m hoping that’s one of the issues addressed in the 3.1 update coming in a few weeks.
• The lack of settings options for the system and individual apps.  For one I’m used to going into the app and then doing its settings, but iPhone has all settings for everything in one spot. Again something to get used to but I can’t have different sound volumes for sms versus ringer tones… can’t set ringer to a sound but then have sms/emails vibrate… it’s all things make noises or all things vibrate – nothing in between.  And certain alerts seem much louder than others.
• Ringtones have to be hacked to work but there’s a great way to create free iPhone ringtones (thx to @amysellers and @leaky_tiki for the find)
• Alert sounds… how do I get new ones? fail
• The protective Incase case I bought was $37 bucks after tax… holy crap!

Anything I currently miss from Android?

• the simultaneous background processes was pretty slick on Android, not gonna lie, but in all practicality I don’t really miss it and I have yet to run into, or foresee running into, any position I’d be in to where that would be a vital feature I absolutely needed.
• I kind of miss Android’s ability to “tab” into other apps while they’re running, but I think that’s just a work flow issue that I’m not completely used to yet as the iPhone you have an app open or closed – nothing else.  Again nothing big that I foresee a problem with once I get more used to the flow on the iPhone.

I’m sure there will be more things I forgot (always is) but you can follow me on twitter for the smaller bits of info and all my other random stuff I post about.

Jan 2010 UPDATE: I waned to mention a great post on TechCrunch titled “An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One” that’s worth a read.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Android to Iphone Part 2

Watch the video for details.

I don’t want to explain exactly what the video covers but in general the Android and HTC G1 combo are growing too slowly and I think have some road blocks coming along the road. This isn’t to say the iPhone OS is perfect – far from it but it’s had much more time to grow up and I realized I can’t wait for Android to grow up. Regardless of my switch I’ll watch the maturing Android OS and see how it goes and you never know what will happen – but for now I’ve taken the contract break from T-Mobile and moved over to AT&T.

Comments are where you should ask your questions and I’ll reply to them here so everybody can contribute. This isn’t something that should turn into a flame war but if you must. There are good things about both platforms and there are a couple things I’m leaving behind to make the switch so neither is perfect. Talk to you soon, cheers!

Full Sized HD on YouTube.
Also on Vimeo & Viddler for further commenting.

UPDATE: I’ve added some more insight in a second post after using the iPhone for a couple days: Android to iPhone Part 2
Jan 2010 UPDATE: I waned to mention a great post on TechCrunch titled “An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One” that’s worth a read.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Android G1 to iPhone 3GS

I’ve created my card that I’ll be handing out so look for that and feel free to leave feedback on the card as well in the comments.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Attending SXSW Interactive 2009

• Friend requests… fake accounts… hot stock-photo girls adding me to spam their site or pics… Poker groups… ugh leave me alone.
• Site Errors when trying to use the site are out of control. They’ve fixed a lot of them but still with the errors. Even though the messages say “This error has been forwarded to MySpace’s technical group” I can’t deal with it. If they could they’d have to rebuild the site from the ground up – it’s a wreck.
• It’s become too band/music oriented, for me at least. Sites like last.fm work better for me discovering music.
• Every “new feature” they implement is already on Facebook, or other social sites – they don’t innovate, they copy and not well mind you.
• It’s run by a bunch of suits who couldn’t explain the meaning of “social media” if it was on a cue card.
• The blogging feature is a joke. No RSS feeds? Nuff said. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is yet… you fail – watch “RSS in Plain English“
• Photos.. IF the uploader even works it’s not a good photo management system. They recently added the URL for the photo and the embed code but again… way late and there’s no tagging, searching, grouping with other people’s images, multiple sizes, etc… Flickr.com is the way to go and works so much better and can work with any other site.
• MySpace mobile… fail – is it that hard to make a semi-feature packed mobile version of your site? that works…? I mean I can log into my frickin bank and do mobile banking but I can’t read or see a comment or messages… ugh
• The bulletin lists… Do I really care about the last person you kissed or thought about? Really? It’s the reincarnation of the dreaded “Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Best Joke Ever” email chains… just stop already!
• Advertisements… granted I block ads with AdBlock Plus for Firefox but how much frickin adspace does one site need? Christ!, they sell out all the usable interface.
• If you actually use your myspace page for your business – you fail – it just proves you don’t know what the hell you’re doing and there’s a 98% chance you’re not hitting your target demographic by doing it – you just heard it was the right thing to do by somebody who also didn’t know what the hell they were doing. (unless you’re a band / DJ, or stripper / escort, or a car model / go-go dancer – notice the groupings lol)
• Even some of my most non-internet savvy friends who don’t even have a MySpace profile have recently created Facebook profiles and have found me on there all on their own, and more are coming online every day. Facebook is finally digging in deeper and hitting those scattered and lost souls and helping to connect them with the rest of the world.
• And finally, the scene is tired and dead. MySpace used to be the hot startup and place to be (years ago), until all the problems became clearly evident to everybody and the spammers and phishers abused the system. By the time MySpace did anything about it, the damage was done. The people in the know have moved on.

Thing is, I set it up so I’m private, dumped all the people I didn’t want, blocked bands and most friend requests, and it has become silent for a while now. So silent that I very rarely even log in anymore. The only real reason I’ve kept my profile for so long is that there’s some people that just haven’t gotten with the times and are hanging on to MySpace. It’s time though that I move on and if they’d like to use real social media and friend me on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or any of them they can, but I’m not hanging around anymore for them.

See my about page for where else to find me.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Why I Left MySpace

I can’t say enough about how important personal branding is these days, and I do blabber about it all the time, so secure your name and your kid’s names because the internet isn’t going anywhere and managing your reputation online starts with owning your personal brand.

Most registrars should have active registration for .ME today.  I personally always use NameCheap for all my domains but if you are like the rest of the sheep you can use the other guys.

So what domain.ME did you buy today?  I got ChuckReynolds.me (which for now I’m just forwarding to my .us name) – couldn’t get Geno.me though… doh

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

.ME Domains for Personal Branding

Points to note: I used the same address of 140 S. Ash Ave, Tempe Az 85281 for all. Each image was screenshot with windows print screen and cropped to the same size and saved out as a quality 75 JPG from photoshop. (FYI – I only added white covers to hide the advertising on Mapquest and they also had no data on the furthest zoom level so I had to back it off one notch. Also mapblast (MSN) doesn’t even offer satellite views and is sooo horrible of a User Interface I excluded them from this experiment.  As a late addition (30 April @ 1900) I added Live maps because I forgot about that one initially – thanks to @paulsutton and Ben Atkin for pointing that out).

Google Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

Live Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

Yahoo Maps:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

MapQuest:

[Map Link] – [Flickr Photo Link]

As you can see the resolution and zoom level in Google Maps is of much higher quality and with the ability to edit the marker in Google My Maps, I was able to better show where our actual office is instead of being in the middle of the street down the road.  After reviewing Live maps I’m somewhat of a fan of that as it offers a satellite view and also a “birds eye view” which is like an isometric view.  Both Google and Live have very clear high resolution images but again because of the overall functionality, and editablity of Google… I still will use that

Conclusion?  I’ll keep using Google Maps – maps.google.com – keep an eye on Live maps.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Online Satellite Mapping – which is better?