Review: Oculus Quest

I got an Oculus Quest because I wanted to exercise more. Really.

For those not familiar, the Oculus Quest is a second-generation virtual reality headset from Oculus (owned by Facebook). Virtual reality headsets place a monitor in front of each eye (or one monitor with each eye only viewing half of it). This gives you a true 3D image, which you can look around in by turning your head. Most headsets, including the Quest, come with hand controllers as well. These create virtual hands which follow your real hands in the environment, allowing you to grip, point, and generally manipulate your environment. They usually come with buttons and joysticks which allow you to move around in your environment and interact with it in less intuitive ways.

I also own an Oculus Rift, the first-generation headset. The main difference between the headsets is one of mobility. The Oculus Rift (and the Rift S, its successor) must be tethered to a fairly powerful computer to work through a long cable. The Quest is untethered. All its components--battery, processor, memory, as well as the screen and speakers--are in the headset. This gives you a lot of freedom. You can take the Quest anywhere--even outside, though that's not recommended, or on trips.

It does make a difference. I can find a much larger area in my backyard than I could in my office with my computer, which gives you a significant area to move around in. You also don't get tangled in the cables as you turn around in the game.

But back to the exercise: I got the Oculus Quest because I had gotten into the VR game Beat Saber. This is a simple game that is also pretty effective exercise. You are given two lightsabers, one red and one blue, and you need to slice colored metal blocks as they fly toward you with the lightsaber the same color as the block, cutting in the direction indicated by arrows on the blocks. The blocks follow the rhythm of dance songs playing in the background (the beat in beat saber). There are also occasional obstacles you have to dodge as they fly toward you. At higher difficulty settings, it can be quite intense, and easily an aerobic workout.

Beat Saber. I'm not doing great here, mainly because I'm trying to capture a picture.

Unfortunately, I can't take the computer with me when I travel, so I thought the Oculus Quest would make a useful alternative. That way I can have an (entertaining) aerobic exercise even when I'm visiting my parents.

The Oculus Quest in the compact, hard travel case I bought for it. 

So, what do I think about it, especially compared to the original? Here are my thoughts:

Advantages

• Mobile
• Easy to set up
• Easier to use even when you aren't traveling--I find myself using it more than my original Rift, even though I have them both in my bedroom.

Disadvantages

• It feels slightly more sluggish. The sabers feel like they lag behind just a little.
• There are more glitches. The original Rift had its glitches as well, but this feels like it glitches more. This may be partly because of the games I'm playing, as most glitches seem to be more errors in the game than in the system. For example, every once in a while one of the sabers stop working, and goes spinning off into the void. At one point, for about a week, I was observing freezes and the screen going black in Beat Saber too, but that seems to have been a bug that they fixed.
• The system isn't as powerful, and so can't handle games that need a PC behind them.
• Since the tracking is internal, it's easier to move the controllers out of sight of the cameras built into the Rift.

So would I recommend it over the Rift S, the updated version of the original Oculus Rift? Yes, for one very important reason: Oculus is adding Link--a system that lets you use the Quest as if it were a Rift through a single USB C cable. If it works as well as promised, and you get the mobility and the power of a computer when you want it, I'm not sure what market the Rift S will fill.

Now what I'd really like to see is a wireless connection between the Quest and the computer, using WiFi. You'd think it would be possible, since the Quest does have WiFi and is battery powered. Maybe next year.

I want one

It seems that all I talk about recently is Mysterion. Well, let's get back to the other thing this blog does these days: geeking out about tech.

I've been thinking recently about getting a new tablet. Currently, the only tablet I have is a 7" Amazon Fire. Which is great for consuming content, but I was thinking it was time for something with a little more meat. I don't intend for this to be a primary productivity device for me. I have a laptop for that, which I'm quite fond of. So the tablet would still be a media consumption device. But I would like it to be at least a little bit more capable of productivity. I now have an official work laptop (a Mac Powerbook that I'm not crazy about--but that's because I have a bias against Macs), and I don't feel like I can take two laptops to the office. But I often miss having my personal laptop when I have to stay late or I'm traveling and want to do personal stuff, such as writing. You can get keyboards with plenty of tablet devices, so that seems like it could be the way to go. I also would like something I could get LTE access with, so I'm not always tethered to WiFi.

I was thinking of getting the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, but my cellular provider just stopped offering it, and I'm not sure I can get the cellular version anywhere else. And then I saw this:



That is the Lenovo Yoga Book. It's internals are nothing to write home about: Atom x5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage. The screen is 1920x1200 LCD (I really want an OLED screen, but that's not available). Fortunately, it does allow you to add microSD storage up to 128 GB, and it apparently does have  LTE. What's really interesting is that it has a keyboard--sort of. Its Halo keyboard is actually a touchpad with haptic feedback. I'm not sure how easy it would be for me to type on, so I wouldn't want to use this for my primary productivity device, but it could be good enough for those times when I want to spend a little time writing.

What's most interesting is that the touch keyboard transforms into a writing surface, like a Wacom tablet, that records what you write or draw. I'm not much of an artist myself, but I do like paper notes.

It also comes with the option of either Android or Windows 10. I like Windows 10, or at least prefer it over Windows 8, but Android is better for media consumption, in my opinion. At the very least, Amazon allows you to download videos onto Android, not Windows. For productivity, the one thing I'd really miss with Android is that Scrivener is not available for it--yet. Scrivener is my primary writing tool, and I'd really like to be able to use it when I'm on the go. But the iOS version of Scrivener just released, and I know they've been working on the Android version, so I'm hoping that the Android version will be available some time in the next year.

So I'm definitely considering this device. I'll probably wait for reviews before shelling out $499 for it, though.

New laptop

Not for me, this time, but for my wife.  Her old laptop was 6 years old, and it was horrendously slow, had a battery life of less than two hours, and would freeze up at inopportune times.  It was also a 15" screen monster to lug around. So she wanted something new, with a long battery life, and that was light and easy to carry around. My suggestions were either one of the Lenovo Yogas, or a Macbook Air. After going around to Best Buy, the Apple Store, and the Microsoft Store so she could try out the various models, she settled on the Lenovo Yoga 11S.  I think it was a good choice.

You can see a review of the Yoga 11S here, but it's a little outdated.  The main complaint of the reviewer is that it uses the old 3rd-generation Intel Core processor, instead of the new power efficient, 4th-generation Intel Core processor (Haswell), which has a significantly longer battery life. But the model Kristin bought has the Haswell processor. It was also cheaper, at $799, though it has half the RAM and SSD as the reviewed model, which is disappointing.  On the bright side, it has an SD card slot, and you can get SD cards up to 128 GB, doubling the non-volatile storage (though it will be slower than the drive).  She got it at Best Buy, which wouldn't be my normal choice, but as I didn't see any better specs or prices for it available online, there wasn't any reason not to walk out the store with it.

My main complaint is not with the laptop, but with the operating system. The Yoga comes with Windows 8.1.  I grabbed the Windows 8.1 Update as soon as I could, which is supposed to improve it greatly, but it's still one of the most annoying, least intuitive operating systems I've ever used.  That said, if you're going to deal with Windows 8, you absolutely need a touch screen. There are some things I've still only figured out how to do on the touchscreen in Windows 8 (and a couple I've only figured out how to do on the touchpad).

The Yoga also converts into the a tablet mode by folding the screen over 360 degrees. The keys and touchpad are still there, just deactivated, and it feels a little odd to be holding the tablet with your fingers pressing against the keys with nothing happening, but it's not as bad as I would have thought. (The Thinkpad Yoga, the significantly more expensive model that I'd probably get if I were getting a laptop today, fixes this problem by locking the keys in place and lifting the tray so its flush with them, but the cheaper 11S doesn't do that.)  I also think the Stand Mode, with the keyboard on the bottom and the screen at a 45 degree angle, works well.  I'm trying to convince Kristin that it might work for cooking with online recipes, but she's skeptical, mainly of online recipes.

Overall, I'd recommend the computer, but only if you think you can tolerate Windows 8.

And now for the tangential Windows 8 rant:

The one thing Microsoft needed to do with this operating system is leave the basic productivity functionality of Windows intact, to give us the most fundamental part of the Windows experience--the windows themselves. People started using that GUI in the first place for the ability to shuffle between programs, to use them side by side and have easy access between them. True, there's still the desktop on Windows 8, where you can do that for some applications, but many of the programs only appear to run in the full screen mode. And the desktop has been stripped of so much of its basic functionality that it's a shadow of what it once was--the most fundamental one being having easy access to every program on the computer.  That used to be in the Start Menu, but now there's nowhere on the desktop where you can do the basic task of finding your programs. You can only do that from the Modern interface, so you have to switch to the Modern interface from the Desktop, to start up programs that will then run on the desktop (if you're lucky). 

I honestly think that Microsoft just lost it the day they invented Windows 8. They saw that they were losing sales to tablets and their simplified OSes such as iOS and Android, and decided that that was what people wanted now.  They somehow missed the fact that Apple doesn't use the iOS interface on their notebooks, because that's not what people want on a notebook or desktop. For productivity, the window interface is still the best, and Microsoft was simply insane not to realize that people would still want a fully functional window interface on their productivity computers. While the iPads and tablets of the world may be number one for consumption, people still use laptops, with keyboards and touchpads, for productivity. If Microsoft really wanted to make an operating system that would work for both, then both sides of the operating system needed to be complete. People could have accepted the Modern interface as a application under the desktop, but making the desktop a Modern App was full-on crazy. 

But you've probably heard tons of people complain about Windows 8 on the Internet, so you probably don't want to hear my complaints. Besides, I've only had a day to play with it, and it's possible that it'll grow on me, somehow. Like a Lovecraftian horror, where the insanity caused by the Great Old Ones is contagious, and even the creations of those driven insane by it slowly cause insanity in the minds of those exposed to it.

Android Wear

Pretty, isn't it?

A while back, I talked a bit about what I wanted in a smartwatch. I was looking at a number of them, including the Pebble, the Sony Smartwatch 2, and the Samsung Gear. But after the dust had settled and I'd read all the reviews, none of them really worked for me.

Well, it's a new year, and smartwatches have another chance to win me over.  There's a new iteration from Samsung, with not one but three successors to the Samsung Gear.  There's the Pebble Steel. And I'm certain Sony will have a new iteration of its smartwatch. But what I'm really excited about are the Android Wear devices.  The picture above is the Moto 360, which is beautiful.  I currently have, and really like, the Moto X, and I'd be interested in seeing whether they can manage the same sort of innovation in a smartwatch.  We do know that it accepts voice commands, via Moto X, and that it uses Google Now type cards to push relevant information.  But these are more features of Android Wear rather than of the Moto X in particular.



The video above does a fairly good job of advertising Android Wear, but I should add a caveat. These are all things that Android Wear could do, with the right apps. It's not at all clear that Android Wear will do all those things, or that anyone's made any of those apps.

Aside from the Moto 360, LG has also announced an Android Wear watch, which they're calling the G Watch. HTC and Samsung are also expected to announce Android Wear watches.

So will this tempt me into getting a smartwatch this year? There are a few criteria that have to be met before I'm willing to buy a smartwatch:

• Price. I'd prefer not to spend more than $200, and I definitely don't see myself spending more than $300 on a watch.
• Size. It needs to be comfortable to wear.  Already, the Moto 360 looks rather large. Maybe I can accept that size with a round form factor, but I'd really like to see something smaller.
• Battery life. This is a big one. The Samsung Gear claims 24 hours of battery life, and that's not good enough, I'm afraid. 24 hours usually means that with heavy use, there's a good chance that the battery will run out before I go to bed, and while I can tolerate that in a phone, that's unacceptable in a watch. I'm looking for at least 48 hours claimed battery life, which I'll accept as lasting all the way through a day. And, of course, longer is better.
• Interface. Does Android Wear actually work like it's supposed to? I'll have to wait for some reviews to know how well it actually does.

Fortunately, there are a number of Android Wear smartwatches on the horizon, so there's a good chance that if the one that looks good now disappoints, one of the others will satisfy me.

Best remote control ever?

Recently I purchased a Logitech Harmony Smart Control, and I have to admit, now that I've got it set up, that it is probably the best universal remote I've ever used.  It consists of a remote and a hub.  The remote uses RF rather than infrared signals, so it doesn't require line of sight.  The hub produces both Bluetooth and infrared signals, to control my television, my soundbar, and my PS3.

What's really useful is the ability to define activities.  An activity is a macro for things such as listening to music and watching movies. By pressing a single button, you turn all the relevant devices on, and set them to the right settings.  For example, if I hit the movies button, it will turn on the PS3, the soundbar, and the television, and switch the soundbar and the television to receive input from the PS3.  The volume controls will control the soundbar, the play, fast-forward/rewind, and pause and stop buttons will control the PS3.  And all this is set up automatically, via a pretty simple online wizard at myharmony.com.  You can do more complex controls, including assigning individual buttons on the remote (which I had to do to manage the shape buttons for the PS3 remote), or building more complex macros to run, but the automatic set-up runs pretty well.  One thing that I find very nice is that while it takes some significant steps to turn off the PS3 (starting with pressing and holding the PS button, going to the turn off system option, and then confirming turning it off), the hub includes a macro which does all that.  So I can just push the Off button and not worry about turning my computer off.

There are a couple of caveats.  Set up is not as straight-forward as I made it sound just a moment ago.  The online wizard works pretty well, but the instructions that come in the box with it don't make it at all obvious what you have to do to get to that point--they make it sound like you plug the hub in, download the app to your phone, and then you're at the wizard.  They leave out the part where you have to plug the hub into the USB port of your computer, so you can set it up to use your WiFi, and then you can start the wizard.  That's a very important piece of information that's not on the Getting started documentation at all, as far as I can tell.

Second, if you want to do anything more complex than just the standard wizard, it's a bit of work.  Like I said, you can control individual buttons in the remote, or even macros, but macros are a whole other level of effort that I still haven't tried yet.

It also doesn't always behave as expected. By default the Smart Control turns off any equipment you're not using when you switch activities--but there are times I want to pause a show I'm watching, switch to the computer I have attached to my television, and then come back to the show without having to restart the PS3 and find my last point.  You can turn that off under the devices menu, but it took me several times before it finally started working, and I'm still not sure why.

Finally, if your television or soundbar automatically turns itself off when not in use, then there's no way for the Harmony remote to know that fact, and it may think it's turning the device on when in fact it's turning it off, because the remote control is out of sync with the device.  It's probably a good idea to turn the power-saving mode off.

Overall, though, I really like the remote.  It's made things much simpler than juggling three remotes, which is easier for me and easier for my wife, who rarely uses the set-up and thus isn't as familiar with how it works, to figure out.  It also lets me control things with my smartphone, but I haven't found that as useful as the remote that comes with the Harmony Smart Control hub.

LED bulbs

I've recently been buying LED lightbulbs to replace the various bulbs we usually use around here. For a while, my wife was buying CFL bulbs, but she got tired of them, not so much for the quality of the light, but for the fact that their odd shapes and sizes kept them from fitting where she wanted them. So she's been buying the energy-efficient incandescents instead. These use a small amount of halogen (usually flourine or bromine) inside the bulbs, resulting in a chemical reaction which redeposits the tungsten evaporated by the bulb onto the filament, which allows the bulb to be operated at a higher temperature, where it has better efficiency. Most of which I learned from the Wikipedia entry.

The halogen incandescents are only very slightly more efficient than regular incandescents, though, and the GE ones, at least, are also dimmer than the bulbs they're supposed to replace. The 60 W replacements consume 43 W to produce 750 lumens rather than the standard 800 lumens, while the 100 W replacements consume 72 W to produce 1490 lumens rather than the standard 1600 lumens. Meanwhile, I can buy LED light bulbs that consume 9.5 W and produce 850 lumens, or 19 W and produce 1680 lumens. In math terms, they consume a quarter of the power and produce about 15% more light than the energy efficient incandescents.

I've long believed that LEDs were probably the light bulb of the future. They're more efficient than incandescents or CFLs, and last longer--twenty years, by standard measurements (which, unfortunately, don't actually involve waiting twenty years and seeing if they still work).

The problem is that LEDs cost commensurately more. I can buy decent quality 60 W equivalent LED bulbs for $10-20 apiece, or spend $2.50 for an energy efficient incandescent. And as for 100 W bulbs--not that long ago, you couldn't buy 100 W equivalent LED bulbs at any price. That's changed, but they're still expensive: $50 or more usually, though I have found a few available for $30 apiece. 100 W energy efficient incandescents? About $2.50 each for those too. Sure, the LEDs also have a 20 year lifespan, compared to the one year of the incandescents, but then again, LED prices are coming down pretty quickly, so buying incandescents this year and buying LEDs a year from now would probably save money in hardware costs. Not, though, when combined with electricity costs. So my compromise is to replace the bulbs we use the most--kitchen, living room, bedroom, with LEDs, and leave the rest for a little while.

LEDs in the living room's candelabra

One of the problems I've run into doing that is that a lot of pre-existing light fixtures in our apartment use the candelabra bulbs, and finding LEDs for those is more difficult--escpecially since it takes a lot more of them to fill the light fixture (6, in the case of the two we have in the living room and dining room), and they're about the same price as 60 W bulbs. Fortunately, I have found a fairly cheap option from Feit--a three bulb pack for $21. These actually work pretty well. They have a slightly higher color temperature at 3000 K (which means they're slightly more white than the yellowish incandescents), but they are close enough for us. We get 300 lumen for 4.8 Watts out of them. I have noticed that they turn on a bit slower--most of them seem to take half-a-second to come to life after flicking on the switch, which is usually something you see in CFLs, not LEDs. And one of the sockets won't work for any of the Feit LEDs for some reason--I had to use a LED from another company (one of the ones costing $10-20). But it works. And it seems to be just as bright as the fixture in the dining room, where I'm still using all (non high efficiency) incandescents.

The incandescents in the dining room.

In the kitchen, we have a five light fixture which takes normal sized 60 W bulbs. Two of them have CFLs which my wife put in a while ago, and since they seem to be working well, I haven't bothered replacing them. The rest I've replaced with LEDs, all from the Cree 60 W replacements. These have the right size, even if they're a bit oddly shaped.

The one on the left is the old style Cree 60 W, while the one on the right is the Cree TW 60 W.

I've tried both the older Cree bulb, and the Cree TW, which is supposed to have better color. I think the color of the TW bulb is a bit better, but as it's also more expensive ($18.50 vs. $12.50), and it also consumes more power (13.5 W vs 9.5 W). I think that the older bulb is a better purchase. It can be found at Home Depot, in packs of 6 (or less, for a slightly higher price), though it looks like that may not last for much longer.

I have yet to buy any 100 W bulbs. I bought a 75 W bulb from Sylvania at Amazon, but at $38 it was pretty expensive. Still, it works pretty well, and it appears to be brighter than the 100 W equivalent CFL which it replaced. That may simply be because the light is less omnidirectional, and while it produces only 1100 lumen, more of it is in the direction I want, while the 1600 lumen CFL sends more light up and to the sides.  Or it could just be that I didn't wait long enough for the CFL to reach full brightness--but if it takes more than a couple of seconds, that's an advantage for the LEDs.

100 W equivalent LEDs are mostly above $50, but at $30 apiece, this set of two seems more reasonable. I'm a little bit reluctant to buy them before I see some more reviews. They seem different from the usual orange Philips LEDs, and I'd like to know why. I've also spent a good bit on LEDs recently, and these, while cheaper, are still expensive. They're also larger bulbs, matching the large size A21 bulb, rather than the usual A19. There are places where they can fit, but they're too big for a lot of our fixtures.

I think I'll wait a month or so before buying any more LEDs, and then I'll probably buy more of the Feit candelabra bulbs, the Cree 60 W bulb, and the Philips 100 W bulbs.

Update (10/13/2013): I was clearing out my pictures on Google+, and accidentally deleted the pictures I had here.  I've replaced most of them, but I've changed the text so it's not as dependent.

The gesture keyboard

This is more of a comment on Android than on my phone in particular, but I'm starting to get the hang of the gesture keyboard that Android uses. It's much faster than the hunt-and-peck method I'm used to. Still, I've seen people much more practiced than I use it, so I know I have a ways to go. That said, I am getting better at it. And it's surprisingly forgiving if you make a mistake, and need to change your direction in the middle of a stroke. Or even if you're not quite on target with your strokes. Give me a little more practice, and maybe I'll try writing a novel with it. I've already used it for a couple of flash fiction stories.

It's also gotten me to start holding the phone in portrait mode when I type. With my iPhone, I always used my phone held in landscape whenever I needed to type something, so that I could use both thumbs without needing to reach across the keyboard. With the gesture keyboard, it's actually easier to hold in portrait, since that makes the keyboard, and thus my gestures, smaller. My new phone also has a bigger screen than my iPhone, so the keys are big enough when held in portrait, and the gesture keyboard is forgiving enough, that I don't need to make the keyboard larger by holding it in landscape.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of doing the gestures one-handed with just my thumb, though. I can type that way, though it's more of a stretch with the larger screen, but it's hard to do the gestures.

Now all I need is Scrivener for Android, and I'll be set.

Moto X First Impressions

I mentioned about two weeks ago that I was considering buying a new smartphone.  Well, I went ahead and bought one the Friday a week ago.  I got the Moto X, which I mentioned as being the one I was most interested in.  The process was not entirely painless.  While the MotoMaker website was online, at that point, you couldn't just buy a phone from the website.  You first had to go to an AT&T store and purchase one of the scratch cards that gave you access to the website.  That took over an hour, since the AT&T employees didn't know how to do the order. It's not really the employees' fault, since they simply hadn't been trained on how to do it, but it was still frustrating for all involved.

But I finally got the card, and was able to get online and order the phone.  I really didn't want the customization option because I wanted a special color combination.  All I was really after was an extra 16 GB of storage, which is what I got.  As for colors, I just got a basic woven black, with metallic red trim. Then I placed my order and waited.  The website said that it would take 12 days to arrive rather than the four that Motorola has been promising in their press releases, but I guess they really meant four days, because the phone arrived on Wednesday, and I've been playing with it ever since.

What surprised me at first was how small the phone was.  I had seen the specs, so I knew its dimensions, but that's different from actually holding it in your hand.  I expected it to at least be bigger than my iPhone 4S, which is two years old, and has the dimensions of a three year old phone.  And it is bigger, but I've been carrying my iPhone in a Mophie Juice Pack Case, which makes it bigger. Big enough that the Moto X and the iPhone in its case were the exact same length and width, except that the Moto X was much thinner. In fact, it feels small and light compared to what I've been carrying around.  But it also has a 4.7" screen, as opposed to the 3.5" on the 4S.  So it's smaller in size, but has a bigger screen at the same time.

It doesn't have a longer battery life, but that's mainly because my 4S had the extra battery in its case.  I'm fairly certain that the 4S by itself doesn't last as long as the Moto X, which seems capable of running all day without recharging, from 7 am to 11 pm, although by 11 pm it's below 15% battery and on battery saver mode.   I use my phone pretty extensively during the day, though it's mostly for web browsing and checking e-mail and reading e-books, not for the real battery hogs, like video or games.

The screen's a large and beautiful AMOLED.  The difference in size is very noticeable.  I'm not so sure about the color and contrast, which are supposed to be really good on an AMOLED, but that may just be because I'm not enough of a screen connoisseur to be able to tell the difference without looking at them side by side.  Though certainly, Apple's been no slouch when it comes to high-resolution screens for their phones.  I do like that the Moto X takes advantage of the AMOLED screen to do low power, on screen notifications.  I'm getting used to just glancing at my phone and being able to tell whether there's anything I need to deal with, without having to press any buttons or unlock it.

Since this is my first Android phone, a lot of the differences I'm noticing are the differences between Android and iOS, and not specific for the Moto X.  For example, I miss having a number on the icons to tell me how many email messages or voicemail messages I've received, and having a list of all my e-mails in my notifications.  But I'm definitely enjoying the ability to control where my icons go, choosing which ones I want to be my favorites, and putting widgets on my home screens to keep me up to date without having to fire up a program.  Right now I have a widget for weather and time (which is huge, as shown in the screenshot, but I wanted to show the hourly prediction as well as the current weather), one which shows my Google Now cards (at least the first couple), and a work one to keep track of the time I spend on projects (this one is more limited than I would like, as it can stop, start, pause, and select projects, but it fires up the app whenever I stop a task to try to make me enter comments, even when I don't have any I want to record).

The Moto X comes with touchless control, which is voice control without the need to press any buttons.  I've found it pretty effective at activating when it's supposed to, but it chokes at my lock screen, and doesn't always recover after I've entered the lock--it sometimes keeps asking me to retry the voice entry, but if I press the retry button, it fails to give me enough time to do so. This would probably work better with no lock at all, or with a trusted Bluetooth device, which would cause it to unlock whenever it was paired with the trusted device.  I'd sort of like a smartwatch, but it may be another generation before they're actually useful.  $150 is kind of expensive for something that just keeps my Moto X unlocked when I'm nearby.

The phone came with a Skip, which is an NFC device that unlocks the phone.  I haven't really tried doing the voice thing with the Skip--I'm not sure whether it would work better or not, but I probably ought to give it a try.  I don't really find voice control that useful--I almost never used it on the iPhone, even though it Siri was a major selling point of the 4S.  However, I've found Google's voice recognition pretty good, especially when using it to dictate by pressing the microphone icon on the keyboard.  I'm just not sure how to use the voice control to do the things I'd really like to do with it.  Like get it to text my wife using Google Hangouts rather than Messenger, or play an audio book in Audibles.  I'm not sure whether that functionality will be built into it any time soon.

I am really enjoying the Swype keyboard (actually, I'm not sure whether it's officially Swype, the settings just call it gesture entry). If you're not familiar with it, this is an interface that lets you enter words with a gesture, sliding (or swiping) your finger along the touchscreen from letter to letter in order to complete words. This is much quicker than the hunt-and-peck typing I usually use on a cellphone screen.  I can type on a keyboard, but I really don't think about where the actual letters are located.  It's more a matter of knowing how to move my fingers for certain letter combinations (in fact, I'm not entirely certain that I type letter-by-letter so much as word-by-word, so that  I know how to move my fingers in order to get them to produce certain words). In any case, there's still a good bit of hunting to do on phone keyboard, and I have to actually seek out the letters.  The Swype interface is a lot faster though, and I occasionally find myself not recalling where a letter is in the middle of a word, since I simply don't have the same muscle memory as I do while typing.  I may develop it with practice, though, so I'm trying to do that.  The problem is that it hurts my wrist when I do it for any length of time, but hopefully that, too, will improve with practice.

So, overall, I'm enjoying both the Moto X and Android, though it's a bit difficult sometimes to tell which I'm actually enjoying.  But as long as the complete package is good, I suppose that's what I'm after.

Time for a Technology Upgrade

I've reached the point where all of my electronic devices are reaching their expiration date.  My Dell Inspiron 1120 laptop's three years old, and my iPhone 4S smartphone is two years old.  Even my watch, a Timex Expedition, is beginning to show its age, and the analog watch hands keep losing time. So it's time to start upgrading my technology, which I've begun to do.

The first thing I bought was a new laptop.  My old laptop was tiny, with an 11 inch screen, and I wanted something a little bit bigger.  The problem, though, was that a "little" bigger was hard to find, as everyone seems to prefer tablets and convertibles in the 11-12" range.  I was trying not to spend too much on the laptop--less than a $1,000 if I could manage it.  One option was the Lenovo Thinkpad X230, which at 12.5" was about the right size, and the price was only around $773.  The problem was that the nearly $800 bought a highly stripped down version, without a lot of the options I would need ( camera, faster processor, more memory, Microsoft Office), not to mention a lot of the options I would want (Adobe Acrobat, Bluetooth, Solid State Drive).  By the time I had a configuration I was happy with, I was up around $1,200.  So I went to Dell, where I could get a cheaper, inexpensive laptop.  Which is what I found, for only $800.  I had to pay a little extra to get Windows 7 instead of Windows 8, which I'm avoiding like a plague, but I was able to get all the need options, and most of the want options, for two-thirds the price.  Except . . . it was much bigger.  The mid-size ones, in the 12"-14" range, either weren't available with Windows 7, didn't have all the options I wanted, or only offered those options at a considerable premium.  So I ended up buying the Inspiron 15R.  It's not a bad computer, by any means, but it's bigger than I anticipated.  I had known that it was a 15.5" screen, but it's one thing to know that, it's another to carry it around. That said, it's really not much heavier than my last computer, and while it's probably too large to use comfortably on a plane, it's fine for what I use it for--mainly work and writing.  So I'm getting used to it, though I'm thinking that I should be more willing to pay a premium for a smaller computer next time.

Now that I have a laptop, the question is what phone should I upgrade to.  I'm on AT&T, so that limits the available phones some.  As I complained the last time I blogged about phones, smartphone manufacturers seem to think that bigger is better, and all the top-tier phones seem to have 4.7-5" screens. Fortunately, this year is the year of the Mini.  HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and maybe even Apple are introducing stripped down versions of their flagship phones, with smaller screens and lower specs and a lower price.  So there's the HTC One Mini, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, the Motorola Droid Mini, and the rumored Apple iPhone 5C.  Of these, the HTC One Mini is beating the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini in reviews, while the Droid Mini and iPhone 5C aren't out yet.  And, as of now, AT&T doesn't seem to have plans to carry any of them (except perhaps the iPhone).  That's not necessarily a deal-breaker, but I would prefer to stick with the same carrier, not least because my wife doesn't like the idea of changing.

So that leaves the following possibilities:

• Samsung Galaxy S4 - The current king-of-the-hill, with the largest screen (5" AMOLED 1920x1080), expandable memory, a great camera, and a fast quad-core Snapdragon S600 processor. But I consider the first to be a turn-off.  One of my co-workers has the phone, and though he has slightly larger hands than I do, he still finds it difficult to use it one-handed. He also finds the battery life too short.
• HTC One - The camera's not quite as good, and the memory isn't expandable (though it comes with twice as much to start), and the 1.7 GHz quad-core processor is slightly slower than the S4's 1.9 GHz, but the HTC One's pretty much a match for the Samsung Galaxy S4.  The screen is slightly smaller at 4.7" and has the same resolution, which I consider a plus, but it's an LCD, where I prefer an AMOLED.  Besides, HTC provides the Android Home and Back buttons external to the screen, so the touch interface really isn't any smaller.  [Update (8/25/2013): I realized later that the S4 also has external capacitive buttons, so it's still the king of the oversized touch interface.] And the reviews indicate that the battery life isn't any longer.
• Apple iPhone 5S - The most likely name for the new Apple phone, but nothing has been announced or shown yet, so all we have are rumors and leaks.  The phone's probably about the same dimensions as the iPhone 5, which means that the screen's the same 4", with an external Home button.  It should be much more manageable one handed than the others.  Not much is known about whether the resolution is improved (it was 1136x640), or whether the technology is improved.  The processor's probably better than last year's A6 (which was a 1.3 GHz dual core), and the battery life is supposed to be better (the original iPhone 5's was pretty bad).
• Motorola Moto X - At first glance, the specs for this phone are not impressive when compared to the S4 or One.  It has a dual-core, rather than quad-core, processor, and it has non-expandable 16 GB of memory, and a 1280x720 4.7" AMOLED screen.  Yet, this is still my top choice, for a number of reasons. I don't expect the lower resolution to make much difference--I really don't need the same resolution at 5" that my 40" television has.  And I'm not sure how effectively Android uses two processors, much less four, so I don't expect the pure horsepower to make that much difference day-to-day. Plus, there are a couple of things that really stand out about the Moto X. First, it's smaller. The handset's height and width are significantly smaller than the S4 and the One, and much more comfortable to use one-handed. It's width is smaller than the two of them by about .1-.2", and it's shorter by about .3". (The overall touch interface is smaller too, since it doesn't have external buttons like the HTC One, and it has a smaller screen than the S4.)  It's still bigger than the iPhone 5, about a quarter inch in height and width, but it has a much larger screen.  It also has less bloatware than HTC One or the Galaxy S4, not having the skin that they do, so it's almost a pure Android experience. There are just a few extras, and they sound pretty good--context awareness, always-on speech activation, and taking advantage of the AMOLED to do low power notifications whenever you want them.  And, perhaps most importantly, the Moto X has better battery life than the HTC One or Galaxy S4.  It's possible that Apple will come out with something great this year, or that the HTC One Mini will become available on AT&T, but barring either of those, I'll most likely get a Moto X for both my wife and myself.

So now that I've decided on what smartphone I'll probably get, the next question is what watch to get.  I think I'd like to get a smart watch this year.  What's a smart watch?  Well, it's a watch that interfaces with your phone, sending notifications to your wrist, and depending on the watch, allowing you to view them, read your e-mail, and possibly control your phone to some extent.  I thought it sounded silly at first, until I started looking into it.  I'm not sure whether any of the current and upcoming crop of smart watches really appeals to me, but I am seriously considering them.

• Pebble - This was one of the most successful Kickstarters ever.  The watch it produced looks pretty nice, but I don't think it's quite right for me.  It's monochrome, it has buttons rather than a touchscreen, and it's pretty limited in the type of notifications it can receive and how you can interact with them.  That said, $150 isn't that different from the price of a nice watch.
• Sony Smartwatch 2 - Sony's on its third generation of Smartwatch.  Unfortunately, the first two generations were dismal failures, both technologically and commercially.  The new one sounds pretty good, and maybe it will be a success.  It uses a transflective LCD, like old-style digital watches, so it should be clearly readable without backlighting (even in sunlight)  which should help with battery life, and allow it to display a watchface at all times (something the last Smartwatch couldn't do).  It also has a color display (for which it probably does need backlighting), for interacting with the phone.  Overall, this probably has the best combination of features and style for me, but it remains to be seen whether the implementation will be better than Sony's last couple of tries.
• Samsung Galaxy Gear - Right now there are only rumors about this one, but it sure looks like overkill to me.  The early rumors described a screen that wraps around your wrist, and when unwound, is basically a narrow and tall smartphone, but it looks like Samsung's not ready for that yet. It does sound like it is supposed to operate without the smartphone, on WiFi or cellphone networks. This looks more like a replacement for a phone, than a companion for one.
• Apple iWatch - Right now, there's only rumors that this even exists.  Much less when it will come out.  But we'll see if Apple announces something new when the new iPhones and iPads come out.

So, from what I know so far, the Smartwatch 2 looks like it will probably be the best, but I'll have to wait and see what comes of it and the other possible announcements.

Update (8/19/2013): It looks like I spoke too soon. Apparently, AT&T will be carrying the HTC One Mini. With that on the table, I think I'll need to get into a store and see how each phone feels in my hand.

Annoying browser tricks

From Instapundit:

THE BROWSER UPGRADE I’D LIKE TO SEE: One where the tab that’s the source of the autoplay audio flashes or something so I know which one to shut down.

To  which I'd like to add a hearty Amen.  When I open a whole list of bookmarks in tabs, and one of them starts playing an annoying advertisement, I have no alternative but to hit the mute button as fast as humanly possible.  I'd like to avoid that.  Some alternatives:

1. Mute all tabs except the one in the foreground. While simple and direct, there are situations where you might want to listen to sound in a background tab.  While listening to music from a browser-enabled cloud player.
2. Mute a tab until a user interacts with it. This would allow a tab to start playing music, but only after you click on it.  Of course, this would be annoying with YouTube's autoplay videos, but I find those annoying anyway.

Where's my Android? (or Why can't they make a normal sized phone?)

I've been looking at Android smartphones recently. I still have a year left on my contract for my iPhone 4S, but once that's done, I'd like to get an Android.  However, I'm having trouble finding one that meets my stringent specifications. So, I'm putting you on notice, Android phone manufacturers. If you want my business, you're going to need to make the phone I want, with at least the following specifications:

• A 4"+ AMOLED display
• A top of the line processor
• Plenty of memory, and an SDcard slot
• 4G LTE
• Decent front and back facing cameras
• Preferably, an HDMI port
• Small enough to fit comfortably in my hand

The last point is the trickiest. Android manufacturers have concluded that bigger is better, and all of the top-of-the-line phones have a 4.7" screen, if not bigger. And they're talking 5" screens for next year.

I've had a chance to play with the HTC Trophy and Titan (Windows phones, I know). While the Trophy fits in my hand well enough, the Titan is too big. Now let's compare sizes:

• HTC Trophy (3.8" screen)-  118.5 x 61.5 x 12 mm (4.67 x 2.42 x 0.47 in)
• HTC Titan (4.7" screen) - 131.5 x 70.9 x 9.9 mm (5.17 x 2.79 x 0.39 in) 

And here are all the top-of-the-line Android phones:

• RAZR MAXX HD (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 67.9 x 9.3 mm (5.19 x 2.67 x 0.37 in)
• LG Optimus G (4.7" screen) - 131.9 x 68.9 x 8.5 mm (5.19 x 2.71 x 0.33 in
• HTC One X+ (4.7" screen) - 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm (5.29 x 2.75 x 0.35 in
• Samsung Galaxy S III (4.7" screen) - 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm (5.38 x 2.78 x 0.34 in)

Notice a trend? They're all about the same size as the Titan--a little bit taller, and, at best, an eight of an inch narrower. The width is what matters the most for comfortably holding the phone upright in one hand.  Apple, meanwhile, offers the iPhone 5:

•  iPhone 5 (4" screen) - 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in)

It's the exact same width as the iPhone 4 and even narrower than the HTC Trophy. In order to get an Android phone I can comfortably hold, I'd have to get a midlist phone, such as the DROID RAZR M:

•  RAZR M (4.3" screen) - 122.5 x 60.9 x 8.3 mm (4.82 x 2.40 x 0.33 in)

To be honest, it looks like a pretty nice phone, though I hear the camera leaves something to be desired, and I'd really like an HDMI port. But it's the best I can find right now.

The problem is, I want a top-of-the-line Android phone. I'm willing to pay a premium for one. But if Android manufacturers can't figure out how to make a top flight phone that I can comfortably hold, my next phone may be an iPhone 5S, or whatever Apple calls next year's model.

New Kindles

Amazon has announced its new Kindles, including three new Kindle Fires, and two new e-ink Kindles.  I'm not going to review them here, just talk about their announced features.

New Kindle Fires

The two highest end Kindles have an 8.9" screen, and are priced to compete with tablets like the iPad.  They're cheaper, but have a smaller screen and a dual-core, rather than quad-core, processor.  Amazon must be betting that the budget conscious will compare the two options and decide that the Fire better fits their needs.  I suspect folks are more likely to pick an older iPad, but we'll see.

The new Fire at the low end, the Kindle Fire HD, is a less ambitious follow-on to the original Kindle Fire, having approximately the same size and price as the original.  But it still fulfills my wishlist of improvements.  Aside from the standard next generation upgrades, such as improved processor (marginal upgrade from OMAP 4430 to OMAP 4460, both dual-core), memory (doubled to quadrupled), and screen resolution (upgraded from 1024x600 to 1280x800, enough to support 720 HD), it also has almost all the things I've been missing in the original Kindle Fire.

First and foremost, they've fixed the sound.  This was a significant issue in the first Kindle Fire, which only had two tinny speakers located at the top of the tablet.  Which really made no sense, since when you're watching video (which is the only time when I really need the sound), you hold the Kindle sideways. So the stereo speakers Amazon advertises are both on the left side of the Kindle while watching a movie.  Not to mention that even at full volume, I couldn't hear them over the air conditioning in the bedroom.  I usually just wore headphones when watching video, but it'd have been nice to have the option of using the speakers.  This time, Amazon went out of the way to fix the sound, so the new Kindle Fire has dual-driver stereo speakers on both sides of the Fire when you're holding it sideways to watch a movie, and they make a big deal about how loud and clear it is.  If it's as good as advertised, that fixes a major problem of the original Fire.

Second, they've added a micro-HDMI port.  This was one of my gripes about the Fire, as I'd like to display its content on my television but I was unable to.  I'm glad that they've fixed this.

Third, they've improved battery life, now claiming 11 hours of continuous use, as opposed to 8.5 hours.  This is significantly closer to my assertion that the Fire needs a full day of use in order to fit in with Amazon's other e-readers, which is closer to where the Fire's positioned than the tablet market.  I'd never really had a problem with battery life, but that's mainly because I've never spent a whole day reading from my Kindle.

Finally, they've added an inward-facing camera. They advertise that this is for use with Skype, but it should be usable for other situations where you need to take a picture of yourself.  The iPad also has an outward facing camera, but for the most part, you aren't going to be using the camera on a tablet to take pictures or video, so it's not really a necessity.  It is nice when you want to show the other person in a video chat something, but I've discovered that most people don't really know how to use that feature.

Unfortunately, they haven't added a microSD card slot, which would have allowed the user to expand the memory.  I would have liked that option.  I'd also have liked seeing an AMOLED screen, as opposed to an LCD, but that's still a new, high-end technology, and Fire's definitely positioned at the budget end.

Anyway, the new Fire HD has enough improvements that I'd seriously consider getting it if my wife would let me.  But she points out that she got me the Kindle Fire for Christmas last year, and she'd be a little insulted if I replaced it after less than a year.  So I'll at least have to wait until January.

New Kindle e-inks

The new kindle e-inks are very different creatures from the Kindle Fire.  They clearly are not tablets, and are not designed to be.  They're e-readers, with e-ink displays that are low energy (giving battery life in the weeks range), easier to read in sunlight, and slow. Going to the next page on an e-ink display can be slower than turning a page in a book, and they often invert when doing so in order to refresh the electronic ink, which I find annoying.  Newer Kindles allow you to turn the refresh off, so the page only refreshes every six turns or so, which is good.

The new Kindle Paperwhite e-readers offer some significant improvements over the old Kindle e-readers.  First, they're touch screens, which is something Amazon introduced in the last generation, but is now making standard.  Second, the contrast is much greater.  Earlier Kindles had a gray background, with black ink, but the Paperwhites have a white background, which make them more attractive and easier to read.  Additionally, they're lit.  I've seen people call them backlit, but that's not really the case.  They use a waveguide over the screen to direct light down to the screen, where it will reflect back up.  This should cause less eye-strain than backlit screen, while providing nice, even lighting over the whole page.  One of my main reasons for getting a Kindle Fire rather than a regular Kindle was so I could read in the dark, so this is a great feature.

So what is it still missing?  Well, I didn't see any indication that the page refresh has been improved, so it doesn't need to invert as often and leaves fewer artifacts, but such a marginal improvement might not be important enough to be advertised.  I'm also still waiting for someone to come out with a color e-ink reader.  It can be done, but I don't think the technology's ready for a commercial device yet.

Comparison

The difference between the e-ink Kindle and the Kindle Fire is not the price, since they're pretty close on the low end.  They're very different systems.  The Kindle Fire is not just a reader, but a full media player and a capable, if low end, tablet, with a large number of Android apps available.  The e-ink Kindle is an e-reader, and is probably a more comfortable platform for reading--even in the dark, now that it's lit.  You get longer battery life, and free 3G data on the high end models (4G is only available on the most expensive Kindle Fire, and while cheap, is not free).  The e-ink Kindle is just pretty limited on what you can use that 3G for, as it's too slow for much web browsing, and incapable of doing video at all.  But you can download Kindle books to your heart's content.

Overall, though, I think I'd prefer the Kindle Fire HD.

Update (9/9/2012): Here's a hands-on look at the new Kindle Fire HD. (hat tip Instapundit)

Why the iPhone needs a hard reboot button

My iPhone died the other day. When I took it out of my pocket I noticed that it was hot, but when I tried pressing the home button, nothing happened. I tried the power button, I tried holding down the power button, but still nothing. Then I tried plugging it in, in case the battery had run down. Still nothing. No sound, no screen, no indication besides its heat to let me know it was anything but plastic and glass.

Finally, I plugged it into my computer and started up iTunes, which recognized that the phone was there, but wasn't able to do anything with it. It hung backing it up, and it hung canceling the backup. There's an Apple store near where I work, and I considered taking it to them, but I didn't want to ask for help until I had at least rebooted the darn thing. The problem was that there was no way to reboot it. I suspected it had simply hung, and was now unresponsive. You could use the power button to turn it off, but first you had to hold it down, then it would prompt you to swipe the screen to shut it down, and as I mentioned, there was no response when I hit the power button. I couldn't even take the battery out, since the iPhone doesn't give you access to it.

Ultimately, I had to let the battery run down. When I charged it back up, it was fine. But this has convinced me that the iPhone really needs a hard reset.

Kindle Fire Battery Life

I've read some of the information available on the Kindle Fire, and I've come to the conclusion that the Kindle will live or die by its battery life.  This is because the Fire is placed directly at the high end of the Kindle line.  Since the Kindles are e-ink screens, with little in the way of interaction, they have a battery life of days and weeks.  With an LCD screen and a touch sensor, as well as a browser and video playback, the Kindle Fire will not be able to compete with them.  However, if it does not have at least the battery life for a full day of reading, then it will fail to successfully live up to its market niche.

From what I'm hearing right now, the Kindle will have enough juice for 8 hours of continuous reading (slightly less for watching video).  That is what I consider the absolute minimum.  If it fails to live up to that duration, then it will soon find itself going the way of other fancy, but less than useful, gadgets.

This has not stopped me from adding the Kindle Fire to my wish list, of course.  If anyone's interested in giving me one for Christmas, I'd be happy to test out the battery life for you and report it here.

Nuclear Power--all stop or full steam?

Given the events at Japan's Fukushima reactor, many folks, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have said that we need to take a step back and reconsider the entire question of nuclear power.  I intend to offer a contrary view--rather than slowing things down, we need to speed things up. 

The problems at Fukushima occurred because the earthquake and tsunami knocked out the backup electrical generators needed to cool the reactors (when they can't provide their own electricity for cooling), which led to the partial meltdown.  This is because the reactors used need electricity to cool the reactor, even after it has been shut down.  Because the generators were down, the reactors could not be cooled, and hence the partial meltdown.  The reactors at Fukushima use an older design of the Boiling Water Reactor.  Newer designs use a passive cooling system, which can cool the reactor even without electric energy.  However, most plants, both in Japan and the US, use the older design.

If we decide that the current design is unsafe, we have several options.  One is to mothball the current plants and replace them with something new.  The problem is that the only thing we can replace them with, that has the same energy output and baseload capacity, is coal.  For all the hype, energy sources such as wind and solar don't have the ability to match current needs.  Much more likely what will happen is that the current plants will continue to operate, but will not be allowed to expand, and new plants will be put on hold.  The problem is that these plants will continue to use the older reactors, which are just as vulnerable as the Fukushima plant.  And as they age without being replaced, they will just become more vulnerable.

I think the smartest move, if we believe that the vulnerability to earthquakes is a problem that must be solved, is to streamline the process for getting the new designs approved, and to push plants towards upgrading to the new reactor designs while making it easier for them to do so.  This would allow the older reactors to be phased out while maintaining capacity.

E-book Book Help Desk

I thought it couldn't be done. I didn't think anyone could combine two of my favorite things: computer humor and the Middle Ages. I was wrong.

Misleading headlines

Headlines often don't match the story. It may be my imagination, but I think scientific stories are some of the most egregious offenders. I don't know if it's because the editor doesn't really understand the content, or what. For example, consider this one, "Virtual reality used to transfer men's minds into a woman's body." (h/t Instapundit) It's certainly eyecatching. So what does the actual story say:

In a study at Barcelona University, men donned a virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed them to see and hear the world as a female character. When they looked down they could even see their new body and clothes.

The "body-swapping" effect was so convincing that the men's sense of self was transferred into the virtual woman, causing them to react reflexively to events in the virtual world in which they were immersed.

That sounds promising. What's the data they base their conclusion on?

Men who took part in the experiment reported feeling as though they occupied the woman's body and even gasped and flinched when she was slapped by another character in the virtual world.
...
Later in the study, the second character lashed out and slapped the face of the character the men were playing. "Their reaction was immediate," said Slater. "They would take in a quick breath and maybe move their head to one side. Some moved their whole bodies. The more people reported being in the girl's body, the stronger physical reaction they had."

Wait. What?

The first is subjective. It's hard to make any definite conclusions about what it means, since it's hard to say what they meant when they said they "felt they were in the woman's body." That was definitely their perspective, and to that degree they were.

As for the second, that may be more scientific, but it's less interesting. It's the simple realization that the first person perspective makes things appear to happen to you. Any player of a first person shooter could have told you that. When I first played Doom, I'd flinch from incoming attacks, crane my neck to peer over windows in my very two-dimensional computer screen, shift my weight to reflect my movement. It has very little to do with whether the avatar is male or female, but rather with the fact that I identify with first-person events as if they're happening to me. In doing so, I more projected myself in the avatar's place, than projected the avatar on to me.

So the experiment was hardly revolutionary in its discoveries, and I'm afraid that it's a long way from justifying the headline.

Multi-tools

I carry two multitools with me, as well as a couple of items on my keychain.

One multi-tool is the SOG S60-N PowerLock. It's a bit bulky, but it's capable of pretty much anything I might need--knife, pliers, wire cutter and stripper, Phillips and flat head screwdrivers, can opener--and then a few things I don't need much at all. The pliers are sturdy and comfortable to use, and all the blades lock, which is important. It also has a good feel as a screwdriver, with the head just slightly off-center. The one thing that does feel a bit off is the knife, since the blade faces towards the inside, rather than the edge, when it's open. Still, it's long enough that the handle rarely gets in the way. This tool is very useful when you need it (just in case you have to defuse a bomb or something), and not a pain to carry around when you don't.

The other multi-tool is my iPhone 3G. Don't laugh! Aside from the standard phone and iPod functionality, and the other things which you expect from a modern phone (e-mail, camera, alarm clock, calendar with reminders), it also has a GPS integrated with Google maps, which I use a lot more than I would have expected before I got it. The GPS isn't always very accurate (it can be off by a couple of blocks sometimes), but it does land you in the general vicinity well enough that you can find your way. You can even browse the web better than with most cell phones, though in this aspect you'll likely find yourself wishing you had a laptop instead, as the small display and lack of plug-ins makes the experience rather limited.

With the right apps, you can do a lot more with the iPhone. There are four I find particularly useful:

The first is a Dictionary.com's free dictionary and thesaurus. Sure, you can get that functionality using the web browser, but as a writer, I sometimes need them when the browser's unavailable, such as when riding the subway or visiting another country. And since the whole dictionary app's less than 40 MB, it easily fits on my 8 GB iPhone.

The second is Amazon's Kindle app. The app's free, and more importantly, there are lots of books available for free as well. I've been reading a collection of Robert E. Howard's stories (which doesn't appear to be available anymore) and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas.

The third one is the only one I've paid money for, Documents To Go by DataViz. This program lets me edit Word and Excel documents, and synchronize them with my desktop. I can't touch type with it, and it can be difficult selecting for cutting and pasting, but it's the only app I've found that lets me write on my iPhone.

And finally is my most recent, and simplest, free application, John Haney's Flashlight. All this does is turn the iPhone's screen on a solid color, and leave it on. You decide the color (white's best for pure illumination), and how long you have it stay on (I have it set to 10 minutes). This provides enough illumination to see, and it stays on long enough for me to use it (unlike the standard setting for the iPhone, which keeps the screen bright for less than a minute). You can adjust the brightness as well. I don't find that it's as good as a real flashlight when it comes to focused illumination, but it provides a good diffuse light when you need to find your way. You can also set the app to strobe, which I can see being useful in an emergency situation.

Finally, there's what I keep on my keychain. Aside from keys, I like having three items: a flash drive, a knife, and a flashlight. SanDisk's Cruzer Titanium is a nice one for the flash drive, since its metal casing is solid and the USB plug retracts rather than relying on an easily losable cap. I keep the flash drive mainly so I have a backup of my stories (I did mention that I was a writer, didn't I?) and other important data with me at all times. The one problem is that the key ring is kind of flimsy, and I've had to replace it. The knife and the flashlight may seem redundant considering my other tools, but they're the two things I consider most necessary, so redundancy is a feature, not a bug. I like having them both to-hand in case I lose or have to leave behind my other tools--or just want easier access to a more effective flashlight or a smaller knife. Of course, if I can combine the two, that's even better, as long as I don't need the flashlight on a plane, so I just got this combo from Amazon. It's a bit large for a keychain attachment, but not excessively so. The LED is bright, and has an auto-shutoff after three minutes, which is useful since I've often had LED flashlights come on in my pocket and quickly run down their batteries. The knife is small, but sharp and sturdy. It opens easily with one hand, and locks in the open position. It doesn't lock in the closed position, so it could conceivably catch on something and come open unintentionally, which I'll admit is my biggest concern. So far, though, it's a useful addition to my collection.