First the good.

The phone is beautiful. It feels nice in the hand. The included case is attractive, easy to get the phone out of, and provides great protection. The keyboard, though a bit tight at first, is easy to get to. Outside of the case, the phone feels nice though it could do well to have a bit more grip. A silicone case should help. The screen is vibrant and has plenty of resolution. Buttons are well placed and mostly intuitive.

As far as the HARDWARE goes, this phone deserves top ratings. It’s the software that I have big issues with.

Getting the phone setup in the beginning is difficult. There are lots of settings and they are spread out in many non-intuitive locations.

The Active Today screen that provides updates on the status of your email, text messages, and mobile service is cumbersome at best. The directional pad did not operate as expected and I found myself guessing incorrectly regarding what various buttons and menu choices would do.

The way data connections work are plain silly. Ideally, the phone would understand that, in most cases, a WiFi connection is better than a GPRS/EDGE connection. It should at least give me the option of switching seamlessly between the two. Instead, most applications require you to set a connections and your choice is either a WiFi connection or a GPRS connection. Even switching to another WiFi connection requires work. An application called PsilocConnect (which costs extra) is supposed to help with this. You choose the PsilocConnect connection. It then either chooses any available WiFi connection or a GPRS connection when WiFi is unavailable. This makes sense and works pretty well except when you have an application that doesn’t allow you to choose the PsilocConnection. Then the fight with each other and the only real loser is the user.

Messaging is the killer app on Mobile and the Nokia E71 software fails in every possible way.

It supports PUSH email, which is great. But the implementation is limited. The phone will either poll at intervals and download the entire message when it does, or it will support PUSH but only download the headers and fail to reconnect if the data connection is interrupted. I could be wrong here. The settings screen for setting up this part of email was very difficult to understand and the manual shed no additional light. If I over looked something, then it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t try. Using 3rd party email applications didn’t help either. BlueWhaleMail was the closest, but still not quite right. Emoze was buggy. Nokia’s Email Service also didn’t function reliably and seems to have a one email account limitation.

The Nokia also didn’t seem to come with any IM applications. No gTalk, AIM, MSN,Yahoo, Jabber, nothing. There are some 3rd party options available here as well. I tried a few with limited success. None seemed to be really well designed, intuitive, or easy to use. Additionally, most of them required additional purchase.

Even the Nokia PC Suite was buggy. I couldn’t import my Yahoo Address book export no matter how hard I tried. In many cases the PC Suite had trouble realizing the phone was connected. It crashed fairly regularly. The built in messaging applications were very slow if they worked at all.

Even simple things like lighting up and sounding some kind of alert when a Bluetooth device attempts to connect were not implemented. I attempted to use a Bluetooth GPS device but the phone didn’t seem to accept that. It’s own built in GPS application never fully indicated location.

In conclusion, the phone hardware seems outstanding and well built. It’s the Symbian OS that needs to catch up with the iPhones and Blackberrys of the world. When you consider the fact that these phones are not really being subsidized by any US carrier, this means that customers are expected to pay full price as well. This just isn’t going to happen with so many other options available with software that actually works as expected.

So which service is better suited to me? The short version: Zenfolio. Read on for the full report.

(If you decide to use Zenfolio, drop in Referral Code CVY-6UZ-T5M and you’ll save $5 and I will too)

Out of the box look. Zenfolio. As mentioned above.

Ease of use for Customers. Zenfolio.

Ease of use for Photographers. Zenfolio.

Suitable as more than just a print gallery. Zenfolio. With all of it’s advanced features, Zenfolio can quite easily be the ONLY service you’ll need for hosting your portfolio, your fine art images, custom work, portrature, and event photography. It’s feature set puts it up there with Flickr yet it still remains professional and utterly customizable to suit the photographer.

Templating. ExposureManager. The above mentioned templating feature. This allows for the ultimate in customization. Zenfolio claims this is coming soon to their service offering.

Monthly Cost. ExposureManager – kinda. Exposure manager runs $99.95/yr for their unlimited account. This is a mere $0.05 cheaper than Zenfolio and is essentially equal. However, ExposureManager does offer a $64.95/yr account with a 1GB storage limit. While Zenfolio has other product offering too, they do not allow for profits to be made on print sales and are therefore outside of the scope of this review. So, if you’re willing to deal with a 1GB storage limit, ExposureManager is cheaper. Otherwise, the cost is the same.

Commission. Zenfolio w/ Exceptions. ExposureManager charges 10% commission on the purchase price. Zenfolio charges 12% on profits only. For self-fulfillment orders, ExposureManager still charges 10% commission, however, ZenFolio drops the rate to 6% and still only charges commission on profit. If you do a lot of self-fulfillment, or if your profits are fairly low, ZenFolio will probably be significantly less expensive (but see the downside below on self-fulfillment). [Thanks to Phototouille for pointing out ExposureManager's change in policy and therefore tipping this item in Zenfolio's favor.]

Self-Fulfillment. ExposureManager. Both services operate in roughly the same fashion. While ZenFolio is a bit easier to use, the end result is the same. Custom Products and Custom Shipping methods are created and presented for purchase by the customer. ZenFolio gets an extra point for ease of use and for allowing product photos to accompany the items. Another extra point is awarded to ZenFolio for letting their cropping feature (see below) be used during self-fulfillment as well. But ExposureManager gets the gold star on this one for one reason alone. ZenFolio requires the Photographer to bill the customer outside of ZenFolio for Custom Products. ExposureManager handles these aspects as well.

Cropping. ZenFolio. Cropping is not an easy concept for a lot of print purchasers. They think “I want an 8×10″ so they buy an 8×10. They have no idea what that might do to the end result of the image being purchased didn’t happen to already be in 8×10 format. ExposureManager leaves you on your own to sort this out. I’ve opted for printing white borders on every image and requesting an email from the customer before placing an order if something else is needed. Not idea. ZenFolio has an interesting cropping module. It has a decent default and allows the customer to further specify exactly how they would like to see the image cropped. This feature is selectable on an image-to-image basis so the photographer can even turn it off on those images where he feels cropping should not be altered.

Image Quality. Zenfolio. ExposureManager used to use EZPrints. EZPrints isn’t bad, by any means, but, they also aren’t the first choice of photographers in the know who have a choice. ExposureManager doesn’t use EZPrints any longer, but I’m not sure who they are using now. But it isn’t MPix. MPix, is one of the leading online printing houses for photographers. Their quality and service is well known and quite dependable. This is a huge plus in the eyes of photographers still trying to get over the worry of NOT seeing the final product before it ships to their customers. You want someone you can trust. And lots of photographers trust MPix.

Zenfolio offers a free 14 day trial, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Use referral code CVY-6UZ-T5M and we’ll both save $5.

What are your thoughts? Do you use a hosted solution to sell your artwork online? If so, who do you recommend?

After all this, which system do I like best?

The short version: Discus. Read on for the longer version.

The product offerings are very similar and function in much the same way. For most uses, I feel that either is a vast improvement over standard comments. Intense Debate has a couple of features that best Disqus. However, it also has one flaw that Disqus gets absolutely perfect and that was the deciding factor.

First, what’s better about IntenseDebate? To start, it looks nicer. I prefer the clean interface of  Disqus admin interface, but, for the appearance on the weblog that it’s being used in, IntenseDebate wins my vote. Of course, this is a matter of taste, but I’d bet most people would agree with me.

Secondly, are the importing features. IntenseDebate has an import feature, Disqus currently does not. Of course this is really only half a point because the standard importer version doesn’t work all that great and actually failed to import my comments in full. I was offered a beta version to test, but, I don’t really feel like undoing everything just to turn around and redo it to get a feel for how the systems work so I didn’t bother. From what I was told about the beta version, it probably works better though, it does so in a fairly strange manner that may not be the greatest for everyone.

Finally, there’s OpenID support. IntenseDebate has it, Disqus does not.

So what’s so great about Disqus and so flawed with IntenseDebate that it would trump these two things? Ease of use in regard to comment responses.

If you have a weblog with a very active comment board, just scrolling through the comments to find what you’re looking for can be difficult. There are two ways to solve this. One is to provide a link in the notification that takes you back to that specific comment on the blog. Then finding the comment you are replying to is easy and replying is a snap. The second way is to allow the actual comment notification to be replied to directly. Disqus does BOTH of these things. IntenseDebate does neither.

Without a simple feature like this, it makes replying to a comment on an active comment board a real chore, and most certainly deters users from participating in discussion. It’s this small thing that makes all the difference to me.

For the future, IntenseDebate says they are adding reply-by-email features. Before then, adding a more proper comment link in the notification email would be drop-dead-simple. So it’s not like they have a long way to go to catch up. Of course Disqus says they are adding OpenID support and importing. What’s really going to seal the deal on these systems tomorrow is their ability to import as well as their ability to innovate additional features in this young market niche.

I’m signing on Disqus’ dotted line for now and hoping that, in the end, they prove to be the most innovative.  But I’ll be watching IntenseDebate very closely as well.

I’ve got a lot of ideas that would make either one of these services really stand out and I certainly understand the value of being the first as well as the most popular. After all, I’ve got years of experience doing those very things. Based on this, depending on who does what first, it’s still anyone’s game. And, I’m sure there’s enough room in the market for a close second.

First, let’s start with the big guns — the Full Frame Sensor Digital camera. The EOS 5D, Canon’s Full Frame Sensor camera was announced August 22nd, 2005. Two years later, on August 23th, 2007, Nikon announces the Nikon D3, its first full frame sensor. They are both 12MP cameras with the same sensor size. The Nikon has a few new features (like Live Preview, and a newer image processor) but, for the most part, the cameras are functionally the same with roughly the same quality of output. Yet Canon’s version was available two years earlier. And, get this, Canon’s version debuted at $2500, half the price of the Nikon D3.

The new Nikon D3 as well as the new Nikon D300 announced at the same time, both boast a new “Live Preview” feature that has never been seen before on a digital SLR. Whether it’s useful to you or not isn’t important, it’s innovation and lots of people are looking for it. The new Canon EOS 40D announced just a few days prior to the Nikon also has this Live Preview feature. So much for innovation being Nikon’s strong point. And, while the D300 is 12MP to the 40D’s 10MP, the 40D is almost $500 less expensive. I’d gladly give up 2 of my 12MP for $500.

Or, perhaps you’re looking for a Point and Shoot to complement your dSLR. You want something that will give you manual control, high quality output, and a decent focal range in a much smaller package. And, if possible, you’d still like to be able to use the wireless flash system you bought to go with your dSLR in case you need a little more light. In the Canon world, you’ve got two choices in their current line: The 12MP Powershot G9 with a 35-210mm f/2.8-4.8 lens for $500 or the 8MP Powershot S5 IS with a 36-432mm f/2.7-3.5 for $420. In the Nikon world, however, you only have the Nikon P5100 with a 35-123mm f/2.7-5.3 lens for $400. Prior to the current camera line, both companies had cameras available with similar qualities to the above at similar price points. While both of the Canon offerings are a bit more expensive than the Nikon, the lenses in both cases are far superior. And, then sensor size on the Nikon is the same size as the Powershot S5s. The G9, for $100 more, has a huge (therefore, less noisy) sensor.

The best selling cameras in the US are Canons. Canons are almost always less expensive than their Nikon equivalents or, if priced more, offer a lot of features for that extra cash. Canon almost always releases the next level of features before Nikon does. Most Canon cameras have equal or greater image quality when compared to Nikons. Canon glass is used by professionals worldwide and is considered by many to be some of the best in the world.
Obviously, Nikon’s Research and Development team and Marketing team are asleep. They’re about to lose a customer and I seriously doubt I’m the only one.

So far, I like the Pearl. It’s fast, and, after a brief introduction in the way of the Berry, quite easy to use.

My only problem with it, oddly enough, is in the way it handles email, which is, of course, it’s most highly regarded feature. Here is my gripe:

In the corporate world, supposedly, this works as I want it to. So, if I was willing to pay an extra $10/mo in service charges, pay for a Blackberry Enterprise Service license, find a server to host it on, and pay for and maintain one of the expensive mail solutions that works with this, I’d have exactly what I want. But, even in the best of circumstance, that works out to an extra $40/mo on top of the existing Blackberry fees just to get features that seem like no-brainers to me.

Basically, if you aren’t a corporate user, your new email is pushed to you and if you delete a message on the handheld, that action is pushed back. But that’s it. It doesn’t synchronize two ways. This may not seem like too big of a deal until you imagine a typical scenario for me (and lots of other people):

I check my email from the blackberry before work. I delete the unimportant messages from the handheld and, when I get to the office and check my email on my computer, those messages are deleted there as well, which is great. Then I start my day. I get a whole bunch of email all day long. I answer them. I delete them. I get new ones. This goes on for 8 (or 10 or 15) hours until I’m ready to go home. I leave the day having saved two of those messages from the day that I need to reference tomorrow. On the way to my car I check my blackberry and what do I see? 532 unread messages. In actuality all of them are read and all but two of them are deleted. I could just delete them all, but then I wouldn’t have the two that I saved and the handheld would also delete them out of my actual Inbox as well causing me to not have them at all any more. Or, I can go through them one by one and figure out which ones I need to save. Or, I can just leave them there, therefore, limiting the usefulness of the Blackberry.

What’s funny is that it’s OBVIOUS that the Blackberry knows how to do this right, because it does so in the corporate world. In fact, if you use a Yahoo! email account, it’ll handle all of this just fine too. But with GMail or any other email account, you basically get one way push and the other way delete and that’s it. I can understand it being this way with POP3 because of the inherent nature of the protocol. But an IMAP message store could certainly be more well behaved.

Because Yahoo! does work as intended, using some trickery, it is possible to sort of make this work. First, buy a Yahoo! Plus account so that you don’t have to deal with ad puke all over the mail pages and ad puke at the bottom of every message you send. Then, set up all your email accounts to forward to your Yahoo! account and add all of your addresses into the Yahoo! interface. Now, when you get new mail it forwards to Yahoo! which in turns pushes immediately to your handheld. When you read or delete messages in either place (handheld or online) every is synchronized in perfect two-way bliss. Except! As desired, if you reply to any of these emails from your Yahoo! account online they appear to be coming from your real email address. However, when you reply from your Yahoo! account on the Blackberry, the message will appear to be from your Yahoo! address and not from your real email address. As best as I can tell there’s no way to fix this.

Dear RIM (Research In Motion — creator of the Blackberry)–

This is just plain silly. With all of your programmers and supposed expertise in this field, there has to be a way to offer two-way synchronization with IMAP servers. There are hundreds of examples of software out there that do just this that you can use as inspiration. Your own software is doing it for corporate users already. Yahoo! has it implemented and working perfectly with you. Given all that, why can’t you get it working with something like IMAP? What exactly does my $20/mo go toward if not features like this?

Yours,
Jim Reverend

I got to work as late as I could, still very tired from the long day before. I gave a status update when I arrived. Then another on a call to my boss and her director. Then another, to a team full of directors from across the nation. Then another to a team of my peers. Apparently, our crisis made the evening news in Texas. I had no idea.

I was also officially presented yesterday to my team back home. I announced myself and my project and made a plea for cooperatioin amongst my peers. In addition, thanks to my action on the crisis calls on Monday, most of the Directors and VPs involved in this line of business are at least somewhat aware of who I am and what I do. In fact, on Monday I got an internal Instant Message from one of our VPs. That was pretty strange, actually.

I’ve also been offically announced in Syracuse. Now that people expect to find a new guy running around the building, when they see me they put two and two together and stop me with a barrage of questions. This is good. This is what we want. But, with this position being an equal mix of technical know-how, strong analytical skills, and a mind for diplomacy and politics, these first few days of exposure are critical. So, my list of “to do” itms that I’ve been building and working toward for greater than two weeks nearly doubled in a single day. Each of these things, no matter how trivial the may seem in the grand scheme of things, is incredibly important to the person posing the question. It would be a turn in the wrong direction to let any of these go unanswered in a timely fashion. So, this means my work load just got a lot heavier until the newness wears off.

Amidst all of that madness, I did manage to have two fantastic meals yesterday.

For lunch I went to “Munjed’s Middle Eastern Cafe”. It’s located in a really cute part of Syracuse that I’d like to explore a bit more the next time I’m here. The food was incredibly good. Really, really, really good. The price was about average.

The service, however, was incredibly slow. Well, kind of. When I asked for something, it was brought out almost immediately. However, I wasn’t checked up on very often. I waited almost 10 minutes to get my check. When I finally went to look for someone, I could only find the cook who called my waitress. It still took her 5 minutes to make it out. Then, I waited almost another 10 minutes for her to come pick up my card before I finally walked up to the cook again and convinced him to run it through. I think the problem was that she was preoccupied with something else and I was her only customer at the time. When she was around, she was very friendly and attentive. I’ll give the service another shot here.

For dinner, I ended up at an Italian place called Joey’s that was also quite good. The place is situated in the hotel district, North East of downtown. It appears as though they tend to cater to a business crowd so the whole place has the polish and shine you’d expect from a nice restaurant or a popular chain. Regardless of that, the food was great, moderately prices, and the service was fantastic. It’s certainly worth another visit.

I finished “The Chrysalids”. It was quite good. I think most book stores would probably place it in the teen reading section but, like many “teen” novels, it has an appeal for adults as well and provokes thoughts worthy of consideration from anyone, adult and teen alike. So now I’m back to reading “The Lazarus Vendetta”. It really is a terrible book. I need to find a bookstore. Maybe I’ll hit the mall tonight if I don’t end up at a basketball game with a guy from the office.

The only downside of yesterday is that I seem to have lost my glasses. I don’t know where they are or where I might have left them. I only wear them just before bed. Over night, they sit on the night stand, and in the morning I stuff them back in my laptop bag. I’ve searched everywhere. Jess even called the restaurant to see if they fell out of my bag there with no luck. I just got a new pair last year, so insurance wont cover another set until next year. Shelling out cash for new glasses isn’t exactly what I’d like to do with my money. For what it’ll cost, I could almost get that new camera lens I’ve been pining for. Oh well.

I had a Late Brunch — okay fine, it was Lunch — at Barbieri’s: very diner feeling; nice wait staff; well priced; clean; tasty; filled with a good mix of people and conversation. It’s not really the kind of place you write home about, though. Instead, it’s the kind of place you realize after the fact that you must really like something about or you wouldn’t keep going back. I think the best description is “comfortable”. I’ll definitely go back.

After my meal I wandered about Armory Square, a historical part of Syracuse now filled with restaurants, bars, and a few boutiques. I had coffee at “Freedom of Espresso”, read a bit, walked around a lot, and took some photographs. One of the best parts about this was the parking. While the lot I used was a bit beat up and lacked entrances and exits where there should be some, once a space was found I was able to pay $4 by credit card to park for the entire day. I think you can almost see the smile on my face now from where you are when I think about how pleased I was that I didn’t have to run to some random establishment trying to make change so I could run back to my car and feed the meter.

After that I tried to find another camera store but, after striking out trying to find anything open on Sunday, I once again opted for… (GASP)… the Mall. This time I went to the Carousel Mall, located much closer to the city. As far as malls go — and mind you, I hate malls — this one seemed pretty decent. It had nicer stores, and was laid out pretty well. The real purpose of my visit, however, was to catch a movie.

I decided to see Zodiac which I do not recommend at all to anyone, ever, under any circumstances. However, the first hour was actually pretty good. The next two hours — yes, three hours total — moved mind-numbingly slow with only a few interesting bits. By that time I had to pee so bad I thought I would explode. It seemed like the movie was going to pick up at the end so I decided to sneak away and use the rest room before it did. When I came back, there was about two minutes more of dialog and then time for the action. Only, instead of the action the movie displayed synopsizes about all of the characters lives and where they are now and just ended right there. What a waste of three hours. I guess if you’re really into serial killers you might find it interesting. Just read the story before hand, come for the first hour, and then sneak out after that.

Once the movie was over I had intended to do a little shopping. However, since the movie lasted an hour longer than I expected, and the mall closed sooner than I expected, everything was closed when I left. So, for dinner I went to a Thai place called Lemongrass in Armory Square. I felt a bit odd eating alone in such a nice place, and my primary waiter didn’t make me feel at all welcome. However, the food — Panaeng Curry — was really good, despite being over priced. I’d never had hearts of palm before, but this certainly wont be the last time.

After dinner I went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Now for Monday.

I got up. I got dressed. I had coffee and an orange. I went into the office. I held a call with my boss and my director to discuss what I learned on Friday.

Then around 9:30am I started a call for a systems crisis. That call pushed me into another crisis call, addressing the cause of the first one. Around 5pm that call spawned off another call regarding another issue being caused by the primary problem. At almost 9pm, I got tired of juggling calls and people so I decided that they were in a good spot and left to grab dinner at Dominicks. The place was nice and well priced, but the food was terrible. Then I returned to my hotel room to get a status update and went to bed.

The worst part was that none of that work was really my job. The people that should have been doing it weren’t, and it needed to be done so I did it. Then those people got upset with me for doing it my way instead of their way. Whatever. All I can do at this point is bend over and take it. What? What? In my butt. Oooh kaaaaaaaay.

And that leads me to today.

I’m going to go get a cup of coffee and an orange. Then I’ll go into the office. Then I’ll have a call with my boss and my director about the catastrophe that was yesterday. Then I’ll try to get some work done while maintaining light contact with the crisis calls and trying not to go crazy.

Oh yeah, somewhere along the line I decided that “The Lazarus Vendetta” is damn near the worst book I’ve ever read so I stopped. I’m now reading “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham which, so far, is quite good.

I got up early intending to have breakfast at the B’Ville Diner in Baldwinsville. Half way there I realized I forgot my book and after many failed attempts to find a bookstore on the way there I ended up browsing the shelves of an Eckerd Drug Store. I found “The Lazarus Vendetta”, part of a Robert Ludlum series, but written by Patrik Larkin. Not exactly the deepest or most meaningful novel I’ve ever read, but it beats gazing out the restaurant window staring at the same car lined street for an hour.

The B’Ville Diner was good. I had breakfast: eggs, sausage, home fries, toast, coffee. That’s pretty hard to mess up. The place was *packed* and the service was slow, probably due to the aforementioned number of patrons. At 3 in the morning I’m sure it’d hit the spot. But, there’s no reason to drive that far and wait in that line just for eggs and coffee.

It wasn’t that far of a drive, really. Not by a Dallasite’s standards. About 15 miles. Maybe 20. And the view getting was pretty nice, even despite the rain. I think anyone living in “The ‘Cuse” however, would find that a bit far.

After breakfast I headed to MQ Camera in Syracuse. It was run by a very nice man who talked tripods with me for 30-40 minutes. Unfortunately, he didn’t have what I wanted in stock. Tripods aren’t commonly purchased and it’s hard to keep a full range of stock.

Next I headed to RA-Lins. This place is crazy. It’s like going to Sears, only smaller, and all the sales people sell everything as though they were seilling cars. The customer service was outstanding. I was shown the ins and outs of almost every bag that even remotely fit my requirements. Unfortunately, being as picky as I am, I never found what I wanted. I heard another salesman going over the benefits of having a point and shoot digital camera that takes “AA” batteries with an 11 year old.

Since those stops didn’t take nearly as much time as I’d hoped, I found myself back at the hotel at 1pm fighting off house keeping as I tried to find a few more places to visit. Knowing that even driving by any state parks or industrial areas worth photographing would only leave me cold, wet, and bitter, I made the ultimate sacrifice and opted to kill some time at… (GASP)… the mall.

I opted for the super trendy mega mall about 15 miles north. Worse than I expected, it was packed with people and filled with boring stores and a massive food court where every turn met someone else cramming a pretzel or cookie into their faces. After running a quick lap around the mall, I started to feel bored and a little hungry, so I decided to find a late lunch.

I started heading back to the hotel looking for something to eat along the way. Right across from the mall I found a place called “Smokey Bones” that smelled decent from the road, so I decided to go for it. The parking lot was full, however, and I should have taken that as a sign. It was 3pm on a Saturday and there was a 45 minute wait. The restaurant was packed with the same people I’d seen cramming pretzels in their faces only 15 minutes prior.

This part of the Syracuse area represents just about everything that I hate about Dallas culture, especially suburban Dallas. I think I’ll be much happier if I just never wander through there again.

Afterwards, I headed to Fayetteville to try a Italian restaurant, “Amore”, that was recommended. Unfortunately, the are only open for dinner and it was only 4:30pm. From the parking lot it also seemed to be a bit less casual than the way I was dressed. Maybe Jess and I will check it out together when she’s here in a few weeks.

At this point I gave up and decided to just sit at the hotel and read. I stopped in a area of town specializing in chain restaurants, found a Ruby Tuesday, had a burger and drove back to the hotel and read for a few hours.

At 8pm I brought a 6-pack of Labatts and headed to my poker invitation. At least one person from seemingly every personnel rank at the office was there — excepting the one big boss. It’s quite unusual for me to see coworkers — managers and employees alike — drinking, playing cards, and cutting up in this fashion. In the end, I’d lost $50, had a few Jager bombs, a couple of beers, heard a guy puke twice, met 4 new people, geeked out about mobile phones with a girl, cleaned up 3 spilled beers and 1 spilled bottle of Jameson, and all and all had one of the best damn times I’ve ever had with people I don’t really know and officially the best time I’ve ever had with a group of coworkers.

I feel into bed around 1:30am. I tried to read a bit but just couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I’m not sure what I’m doing today. Maybe I’ll try to find some more shopping. Maybe I’ll break down and try to photograph in the snow. Maybe I’ll go see a movie by myself. Maybe I’ll just drive around the city looking for something interesting. Maybe I’ll sit in the hotel and rot all day. Suggestions?

There was no snow on my car yesterday morning, so that was nice. However, it was at least 20 degrees colder than it was the day before. My thin dress slacks didn’t really offer much protection. I think I have cold burn on my legs now. Is that even possible?

I spent most of the morning in conference calls and lining people up to take care of a few issues for me. Quite boring, actually. I was invited to a poker game tonight with some of the guys. I think it’ll be fun so I’m going to go. I’ve never been big on making real friends at work, but, in this case, I have few other options and they seem like guys I could get along with anyway.

I went to lunch by myself. Decided to try Mai Lan on State Street. The food was great. Very friendly service too. A bit on the slow side, but, I don’t generally expect speedy service from such a small place. I highly recommend it.

After lunch, work picked up quite a bit. In fact, I ended up coordinating eight different organizations in a repair effort that didn’t get me home until some time after 7:30pm.

Then I headed out near Syracuse University for some Gyros and a cup of coffee. I ended up at Acropolis Pizza House (which also happens to sell Gyros and some other Greek food). While the food was quite good, I don’t know that I’d recommend it. It was one of those places where I was almost afraid to eat the food, not because I didn’t think it would taste good, but because I wasn’t sure how good I’d feel in the morning if I did. The tables were greasy, the service was slow and the food was a bit over priced. After that I walked over to Starbucks and finished off “Andromeda Strain”.

By the time I left, around 9:30pm, there were no other cars left parked on the street but mine. I don’t know if that means if the area dies down by 9:30 on a Friday night, or if I picked a really bad parking spot, or if I was breaking some law or in some danger by being there (i.e. snow plow coming, illegal to park at night, high possibility of car breakin, etc). But, I left without issue.

I got back to the hotel (room 404, baby), watched some TV, and then went to bed.

Today I hope to find a small diner in Bartonville for breakfast. Then on to a camera shop to feed my addiction and then a store to to continue my eternal quest for the perfect bag. I might drive by some of the apple orchards south of the city to see if they might lend themselves to a few photographs. Or, perhaps, just drive around in the city and see how lost I can get. Then, tonight, poker. All in all, it should be an interesting day.

Keep me company! Text message me! Email danielphone@inklog.net! :)

And now, less than 24 hours later I can say that I hate my iPod Nano. There’s nothing wrong with the device, exactly. In fact, it stores and plays music just like it promised it would. But I’m still left feeling cheated.

First let me point out that I am not qualified to review personal audio players. I have used very few of them and do not really know what to expect. However, I do know what to expect from software and electronic devices in general, and I base my opinions on that knowledge.

Before I start sobbing uncontrollably, I’d like to remember why I bought the iPod brand in the first place: iTunes and recommendations.

Let’s start with iTunes. From what I’ve been told, if you want to use iTunes to its full capacity you have to have an iPod brand player. And, from what I’ve been told, you want to use iTunes to its full capacity. But, in practice, it doesn’t seem to offer anything that other media managers don’t offer and, in many cases, falls behind. Maybe I don’t know how to use it and maybe I’m just an idiot, but I couldn’t even get it to sync up. iTunes locked up every time I tried to uncheck all of my media so that I could select only a subset of it to send to the iPod. I’ll admit that I didn’t read any kind of manual, but I didn’t read a manual for Media Monkey either. “Media Monkey”:http://www.mediamonkey.com/, however, worked flawlessly and it is what I ended up using to load music on my iPod. Furthermore, even when it was working, iTunes was slower, more difficult to navigate, and less feature-full than Media Monkey.

Now about those recommendations. While I read millions of recommendations for the iPod, I think part of the problem is that technology is no longer reviewed only by technologically inclined people. Everyone uses this new technology and, therefore, their statements cannot be assumed to be educated or experienced. Further more, an iPod is a fashion statement. This makes many of these recommendations merely a review of what’s cool and not what actually works well.

I remember back in the early 90s when people used to swear that Doc Martens were the best boots ever and that there was no comparison and that they were totally worth the extra cost compared to other brands. The truth was, many of the people making such claims had never owned any boot other than Doc Martens and only purchased that brand because it was the “in” thing. Now, I’m not saying Docs weren’t the best. I don’t know, I never owned a pair.

As far as the iPod Nano is concerned, yeah it works. It plays music. I can press some buttons and get the device to play a song and I can recognize the song being played as music that I intended to be played. So it certainly meets the base criteria required for a personal audio player. But that doesn’t make it stand out. Almost every player on the market meets this criteria.

From what I can see, the iPod Nano offers few extra features, is constructed in a way that begs it to be scratched, scuffed, and destroyed, is guaranteed to need to be replaced eventually, and serves to lock me into its technology and buying more ipods. Furthermore, in my opinion, it isn’t all that nice looking.

First and foremost, is the battery. The iPod Nano’s battery is locked in place. It’s not “user replaceable”. Yes, it can be replaced, but it hasn’t been designed to be. One day the battery will die and I will be in a situation where I have to decide between having it replaced and buying a new one. Can you guess what Apple is hoping I’ll do?

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the iPod doesn’t even include a wall charger. Without a USB port on a computer that is turned on and powered up, you can’t charge the iPod without buying more equipment. Want to charge your iPod in your hotel room? You’d better have your laptop with you or you’ll need to buy some extra equipment. How silly would it be if laptop vendors only provided a means to charge your laptop from your desktop?

Regardless of these things, the iPod Nano supposedly has a vast array of superior features when compared to other players. Now,We’ve already discussed iTunes and its failings in comparison with Media Monkey. So any feature that is only available due to that software is moot considering that Media Monkey is free and works with many compliant media players, unlike iTunes which will only fully lock and load with an iPod. So how about the features of the device itself. Well, check this out! It offers a calendar! And notes! And you can look at photos! And it has a clock!! Of course, all of these things do nothing for me. Oh, and yeah, it plays music too.

As far as music playing features goes it has all the normal things you’d come to expect from any music player: it plays music, you can skip tracks, you can pause the music, and you can turn it off. In addition, it has the following features that you’d expect from most advanced players: you can select a specific song to be played, you can seek in a track, and you can play an entire Album, Artist, or Playlist. The only special features is has is that it will display album art and you can rate the track you are listening to. That’s it.

To me, those two features alone are not worth the increased price. On top of that, to me, a Nano feels too breakable, seems easily scratchable, and isn’t all that nice looking. When I consider that there are other players with *more* features, wall chargers, a user replaceable battery, and a nicer look and feel for *less* money, buying a Nano seems downright stupid.

Take, for instance, the Creative Zen V. It plays music and has the same basic and advanced features that we’ve come to expect from a full-featured music player. This is basically where the Nano stops. But not the Zen V. In addition, it has a line level input, built in microphone, and FM radio. The battery is user replaceable and, for those who need more battery life, several can be purchased, pre-charged, and replaced when needed.

In addition to these things the Zen V offers some extra features in the music playing department, the most important of which is on-the-fly playlist building (known as DJ mode). To me, building a playlist on the fly is a crucial feature that all audio players should have and the fact that the Nano does not is just silly. I found myself listening to one song and wanting to hear another song next. But, having no way to “queue” it up, I’d have to wait for the song I was listening to to finish, stop the music, browse to the next song, and then start it up again. Some time back I was playing with someone else’s audio player I remember that I used on-the-fly playlist building more than anything else, queueing up song after song and arranging my newly built playlist to my heart’s content. I found this feature to be so crucial that I figured the Nano must include it and actually broke out the manual which is as short and simple as the Nano is featureless. Nope. It doesn’t do it.

So, the price tag on the iPod isn’t for its features, construction, reliability, or interoperability. It’s for the brand name. It’s a fashion statement.

Will I be buying a Creative Zen V? Maybe. Will I be taking my iPod Nano back? Most likely.

If anyone would like to recommend a product OTHER than an iPod, I’d love to hear it. Please state which other audio players you’ve used and when you use words to relate your product to others (like easy, best, better, awesome, and sucks) please indicate what experience or education in this arena you have to allow you to make these qualifications.

Needing three frames for my “exhibit this weekend”:http://revjim.net/2006/09/05/exposure-dallas-presents-ambiance/, I placed my second order with them on September 5th. Yesterday, 6 days later, my order had still not shipped. I grew weary and queried their support department which claimed a same day response. No response was received until this morning.

In lieu of an apology or even an explanation, I received an automated email with a FedEx tracking number indicating that my package had been shipped yesterday and would be received tomorrow. I didn’t pay for 2-day shipping, so they must have filled my order, and upgraded my shipping for free.

While I’m grateful that I’ll be getting my frames on time without having to resort to a local, more expensive source with a smaller selection, I’m a bit upset that they couldn’t even be bothered with a quick response to indicated that they had messed up, that they were correcting the situation and that they appreciated my business.

So much for Customer Service.