My iPhone Experiment: Conclusion?

So, I caved an bought an iPhone 3Gs, 32GB. After about 3 weeks of use, I'll say that I'm used to it. I do not think I am as crazy for it as everyone else is. Apple has a history of limiting the options available to users, for me that's annoying. I love to play around in the advanced settings and customize things to fit the way I use them.

So now, here is a quick review, followed by some tips I discovered while playing around on how to make your iPhone more productive.

The Big Things that Everyone Else has Already Commented on:

1. The Keyboard. It's fine. It's not great. I miss having a real keyboard. It's not that typing on the keys is so bad, but not having a dedicated keyboard makes having keyboard shortcuts impossible. This is a minor knit, but I notice it constantly. Especially in the email program
2. The Keyboard again. Automatic correction is awful. Why is "Yo" not in there? Also, I constantly hit "b" instead of space and "m" instead of backspage and Shift instead of "a". Hassles, all of them. Landscape mode makes it easier, but it's still not as nice as a real keyboard.
3. Landscape Mode. Sometimes, I don't want to rotate. Sometimes, I want to rotate back. It is often unresponsive and requires closing and re-opening an app. (If you have a tip on how to solve this better, please let me know!)
4. The Email Program. It stinks. No push email is fine (suboptimal, but fine), I can survive because I only use my personal email and things are rarely urgent on that line. I don't like that I cannot sort by unread. Also, the search stinks. If, the gmail webapp weren't available and good, I would go crazy. It would be nicer if it used tags instead of folders, but, again the gmail webapp comes to the rescue.
5. Copy and Paste. It stinks. It's nice that it's there, but it's a pain to use. It makes composing emails harder because moving thing around is tricky. If I had this phone before copy and paste, I would have left it instantly. Huge feature missing at the original launch.
6. Multitasking. It's impossible. Other than playing your iPod, you cannot do two things at once. That is annoying. Again, it makes this device terrible for being productive. Or even just chatting and sharing links at the same time. Push notifications have proven to be pretty good for IM. Except that you have to reload the entire program every time.
7. Battery life. It lasts for a day, max. I think they should be required to include two chargers so you can always have one with you. Frankly, there is no reason they couldn't use the mini USB plugs adopted by Blackberry and roughly everyone else at this point to charge. That would be MUCH more convenient.

Little Things that Irritate (probably only) Me:

1. No sound profiles. This seems like a pretty major oversight. I don't need a million, but I would prefer 3 or more. Also, I'd like more options than just "ON/OFF". On my old Curve, I used at least 4 on a regular basis.
2. Home screen can't be customized enough. Sure, you can set a picture. But, I want a notice of how many missed calls, voicemails and emails I have. Seems like there should be an easy fix, but I haven't found it yet
3. Not a portable hard drive. If it exists, I haven't seen it. I want an app to let me use my iPhone as a hard drive. I want to be able to upload from it and download to it. Not even necessarily to view the files, but to be able to transfer them (via USB, bluetooth and wifi). I don't know why I thought I would have this option. Lame to leave it off (a DropBox app would be sick!). Even if it was not ideal, the Blackberry with a microSD card let me use it as a storage drive.

Good things that I like

1. The internet. It's good. I used Opera Mobile on my Curve, and it was good, but slow. I believe that is entirely due to the EDGE vs. 3G network that I was on. But, basically 3G is way better than EDGE. So, get a new smartphone, [almost] any new smartphone.
   
2. The apps. I have fallen in love with a few apps (listed below). Instapaper is by far my favorite. I have a full reading list to check out on the subway or anywhere else when I finally find time to catch up on the news / analysis I want to read. I actually paid $5 for this when I was still testing out the original iPhone because I love it so much.
3. One device. I only carry my iPhone now. No need for an iPod and Blackberry. Though, the battery life sometimes makes me limit how much I listen to the iPod.

Tips

1. Shake to undo. No one else I know managed to discover this, but if you shake your iPhone it undoes your recent typing. Try it, it works. You look stupid, but it can be helpful.
2. Double Click for iPod. When you're in the locked screen or any app, you can double click the home button to bring up the iPod controls and change the song. The only multitasking you can do on the phone, and it isn't even the default setting. Go into Settings > General > Home and flip the switch labeled iPod Controls to "ON"
3. Turn down the brightness on the screen to save battery. That's a no-brainer. The battery life is bad. Help switch it to not good by turning down the brightness as low as you can stand.

App Recommendations

1. Instapaper PRO. It's amazing. Start with the free one, and then upgrade. It's great because all the links and articles you see at work are there for you to read when you commute home. This is the only app I've paid for. (I've been writing about it for a while)
   
2. Evernote. It's a note taking application that also syncs with your home computers and a web interface. Also, if you take a picture of something with text, it converts that text and makes it searchable. Amazing!
3. Palringo Lite. Free IM application that has push notification. I like it. I wish it had landscape mode, but it works fine.
4. Facebook. Seriously, v3.0 is amazing.
5. WSJ and NYTimes. Free apps that give you all the articles on these papers. They also download for you for reading later, so definitely practical if you don't know what you want to read later.
6. KICK Lite. Free NYC subway map.
7. OpenTable, UrbanSpoon, Yelp. If you don't know what these are, google it.
8. Fandango. Let's you order tickets from the phone, which makes it better than Flixster in my opinion.
9. Remote, Boxee, VLCRemFree, MochaVNC Lite. These are all remote control apps for full programs your computer. They are great if you use the associated programs, which I recommend (and have in the past)
   
10. Shazam, Pandora, Imeem. Music apps. If you don't know what these are, google it.
11. Google and Vlingo. Both enable voice search of your phone. Vlingo let's you search your phone too, though, and make phone calls. Though, I'm not sure it's voice recognition is as fast or accurate.
12. I have a bunch of others that I don't use as much. But a sudoku game is great. As is the Chipotle app, Epicurious, AllRecipes, TripIt, TweetDeck among others. If you have favorite apps, that you can't live without. I would love to hear about them.

Overall, my impression of the phone is that it's really great at everything not related to actually communicating. On the communication front, it's passable, which is why those other things finally swung me in favor of the iPhone. But, I think I would have been equally happy with a new BlackBerry Tour, HTC myTouch, or even Palm Pre (oh, and I've been on AT&T for my entire cellphone life, so I don't really notice network issues).

Microsoft Excel Add-in

I was recently thinking a lot about tiered pricing of items. I spend a lot of time in the Excel help files and googling about my issue.

My specific problem: I wanted to evaluate many different pricing schedules. I had a lot of clients and I wanted to evaluate the impact of each pricing schedule on each client.

I could have done it with a lot of if statements in a lot of columns. The problem is that is not dynamic enough. I didn't know how many tiers I would need. Plus, it isn't just finding the right tier and applying that price. I also needed to price incremental units on the next tiers. For example, you buy 1000 units. The first 100 cost $2, the next $100 cost $1 and anything about cost $0.50. So, each additional unit lowers your average unit cost.

Anyways, I did it by writing a function in excel and have created an add-in that you can use. Download it here. Code follows:

Function TieredPrice(volume As Double, tiers As Variant, prices As Variant) As Double
    TieredPrice = 0
    If IsObject(prices) = True Then
    If TypeOf prices Is Excel.Range Then
       If prices.Rows.Count > 1 And prices.Columns.Count > 1 Then
            TieredPrice = CVErr(xlErrRef)
            Exit Function
        End If
        If prices.Rows.Count > 1 Then
            NumCells = prices.Rows.Count
        Else
            NumCells = prices.Columns.Count
        End If
        pricesUB = NumCells
    Else
        TieredPrice = CVErr(xlErrRef)
        Exit Function
    End If
    End If
   
    If IsObject(tiers) = True Then
    If TypeOf tiers Is Excel.Range Then
       If tiers.Rows.Count > 1 And tiers.Columns.Count > 1 Then
            TieredPrice = CVErr(xlErrRef)
            Exit Function
        End If
        If tiers.Rows.Count > 1 Then
            NumCells = tiers.Rows.Count
        Else
            NumCells = tiers.Columns.Count
        End If
        tiersUB = NumCells
    Else
        TieredPrice = CVErr(xlErrRef)
        Exit Function
    End If
    End If
  
    If tiersUB = pricesUB Then
        If volume < tiers(1) Then
            fee = volume * prices(1)
        Else
            fee = tiers(1) * prices(1)
        End If
   
        For i = 2 To pricesUB
            If (volume - tiers(i - 1) < tiers(i) - tiers(i - 1)) Then
                If (volume - tiers(i - 1)) < 0 Then
                    fee = fee
                Else
                    fee = fee + (volume - tiers(i - 1)) * prices(i)
                End If
            Else
                If (tiers(i) - tiers(i - 1)) < 0 Then
                    fee = fee
                Else
                    fee = fee + (tiers(i) - tiers(i - 1)) * prices(i)
                End If
            End If
        Next i
   
        TieredPrice = fee / volume
      
    Else
        TieredPrice = CVErr(xlErrRef)
        Exit Function
    End If
   
End Function

Google Reader gets a fan! People read FF@6

you are absolutely right. google reader is awesome and i'm now a convert. - Jeff Miller

This is great for two reasons:
1. Another person is around for the shared items feature of Google Reader
2. It means that I have at least one person reading and taking what I say to heart!

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Keyboard to a Man's Heart Part 3

Image via Wikipedia You should know by now how much I love the keyboard. I try very hard to convince people to shun the mouse (and especially their laptop touchpad) and start using the keyboard.

I constantly rack my brain trying to understand what are the sticking points preventing keyboard adoption and how I can overcome them. Productivity gains are not enough for most people (for some crazy reason). Despite the fact that you obviously don't care, I will continue to plead my case.

I think there are a few factors at work here. People are generally frightened of computers. They don't understand the design of the technology. They are scared to look through the advanced features and make changes. (I worked in technical support, so I have seen just how ignorant people can be when it comes to computers. Even remembering two different passwords can be a herculean feat.) On top of that, it takes some effort to learn a new trick. I've heard this a few times, 'For me, the mouse will always be faster'. No way. Not possible. Especially not if you're starting with your hands on the keyboard. Sure, it might take a minute to learn the shortcuts, but trust me they make your life a whole lot easier.

In order to simplify the world of keyboard shortcuts here are some ways to think about navigating Microsoft programs from the keyboard (some apply to Apple, generally by switching ALT for the Apple key)

• ALT + TAB - cycles through open programs
  
• SHIFT + ALT + TAB - cycles backwards through open programs
  
• CTRL + TAB - cycles through open windows within a program (this works in most programs, but not all, and is especially great when using tabbed internet browsing)
  
• SHIFT + CTRL + TAB - cycles backwards through open windows within a program
  
• ALT + F4 - closes a program
  
• CTRL + F4 - closes a window within a program
  

You may have noticed a pattern. ALT works at the global level and CTRL works within the programs. SHIFT will shift the direction of your actions for some commands.

Another key tip to keep in mind is that windows keyboards have the menu key. I call this the right-click key because it brings up the right-click menu that you would get from the mouse. Sometimes faster than knowing the actual keyboard shortcut to perform a specific action.

The other windows specific key that you should know about the Windows Key. There are a few keyboard shortcuts associated with this, but for me, the best one is just that it brings up the start menu and with that, access to all your programs with just a few keystrokes. For example, you hit Windows Key + P to open the programs list and then pressing the first letter of your program name will take you there. In Windows Vista, the start menu has been improved by providing you a search bar that you can just type in what you're looking to open and it brings it right up.

Lastly, you should definitely be aware of the generic ARROW KEYS and PAGE UP/PAGE DOWN keys. These bad boys will let you easily scroll down a webpage or document you are using and are a million times faster than going to that stupid scroll bar at the right side of the screen.

So, those are all good tips. I use them constantly. Frankly, if this is the first you've heard about ALT+TAB, welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.

I'll leave you with this bit of wisdom to help you implement this in your daily life: (it's not even just for the keyboard)
If you use Microsoft Powerpoint, I have a couple of really good tips. First, always use snap to grid and snap to shape. Then, you can select items (using TAB to cycle through the objects on the slide rather than the mouse). Move those objects into place using the ARROW KEYS. By keeping snap to grid on and using the arrow keys, you can be sure that your objects are nicely aligned. If for some reason, you need more granular control, you can use CTRL+ARROW KEYS to move as though snap to grid was off (though I'm not sure why you would want to do that). You could also use ALT+the mouse to do the same thing (occasionally useful for resizing objects). This tip is especially useful for consultants working on laptops while on the road (with that awful touchpad).

I'll be back with more tips on making the keyboard the focus of your computer input devices. If you'd like special one-on-one sessions, I am available for private tutoring. I already have one McKinsey consultant 'raving about the keyboard shortcuts' I introduced into his life.

Now, get out there and try using those shortcuts!

Relevant Sources of Information

• Windows XP Shortcuts
• Office Keyboard Shortcuts 
• Apple Keyboard Shortcuts
• Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts
• Lifehacker Tips on using the Keyboard
  

Firefox 3

Image via WikipediaI downloaded Firefox 3 today. They were trying to set a record. Anyways, I'm actually shocked at how noticeably faster than Firefox 2 it is. So, I highly recommend making the upgrade. It worked like a charm for me. Even looked for updates to my plug-ins for me (and installed them).

I never thought that my web browser was the choke point in my browsing experience. Just goes to show you how much potential there is in just improving the technologies we have, rather than going out and re-inventing the wheel.

I give it a 'far exceeds expectations'.

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Getting Calendarized

I almost always write about using the new tools of technology to improve your life. I also have written several times about smartphones. I think they are fantastic. Even regular phones have tons of features that are overlooked on a daily basis.

One of the most useful functions that I have recently embraced is my calendar. For as long as I've been getting homework, I've needed to remember it. I generally did OK without writing most of it down because I had daily reminders from teachers and classmates to prevent me from forgetting to do the work. In college, all assignments were posted to the class website and given out on the syllabus well beforehand. Now, in real life, I have real events to keep organized and no one to remind me about them. There are all kinds of events: meetings, dinners, drinks, gallery openings, plays and, my favorite, birthday parties.

To keep track of all of this, I use Google Calendar (of course). I use it because it is integrated into my email and it is pretty easily integrated and synced with my Blackberry. Google Calendar is also integrated with Jott (which I wrote about recently) and Remember the Milk, which I use sporadically to organize my todos (mostly grocery lists, though). I also really like this fbCal facebook app that imports all my events and friend's birthdays to Google Calendar (I read about it here).

With all of this, I'm still not fully organized in my personal life. But, I think I've discovered some powerful, free tools that should help me make more progress and achieve more in my lifetime.

Do you use a calendar program? How do you keep in sync? I'd love to hear what my friends are doing. Reading what people who are professionally organized for a living do is more beneficial to someone who rates higher than a 3 out of 10 on the organized scale. So, let me know in the comments. And get more information about the wonders of Google Calendar here.