alexey prohorenko's blog

Nice, just saw an amazing feedback for my http://schooler.qwe3.com - feels great! #iphone

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:12:21 -0700

(Follow the link from http://schooler.qwe3.com/ to get to review!)

It's very niche, very small, simple and cheap. But its great people are loving it!!! Thanks @bazinia (http://twitter.com/bazinia) for design and help :-)

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Funny real estate market

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:45:04 -0700

I find it very funny, not sure about everybody else, but -- I see
condos (1 bedroom) for sale (in SF and LA) which:
1. Require to be 1st time buyer
2. Require income not to exceed 95k/yr for 2 people
3. Cost 350-400k
4. Want 10% minimum downpayment, but obviously prefer 20%
5. Are called affordable

Okay, so let's lay down some numbers for say, 375k 1 bedroom
"affordable" condo. That means that two people with limited income
have to cough (somehow) 75k for downpayment. Which is almost their
annual income. Nice. But it's not over. So they will have to finance
the rest which is 300k.
For 30 years on average interest rate, plus adding annual taxes and
insurance and modest $300/mnth HOA fees (and hoping they'll not grow)
and also hoping nothing major breaks -- so keeping this all in mind --
they are looking at good $2900-3100 PER MONTH. Over the course of 30
years the $$$ spent only on principal and interest will be about
680-700k (I am not even adding here HOA and taxes).
Does anybody think their condo will cost these money in 30 years? Nope.

So the question is -- is this really "affordable"?? Does it make sense
to buy? Not for me. California real estate market is just crazy. Dumb
crazy.

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Double green tea espresso at Urth Caffe

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:49:46 -0700

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Can't stand more shopping!..

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:54:43 -0700

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Camera on iPhone 4 #iphone

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:33:56 -0700

I am no expert, but so far, iphone's camera is THE best one I saw on
mobile devices. Very very nice.

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So, what's the real battery improvement for iPhone 4? #iphone

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:08:31 -0700

I am using http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/specs.html and http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html to compare tech specs. Here is what we are going to have (not including standby time, audio and video playback time, as they do not matter for me):

Talk time:

3GS: Up to 5 hours on 3G, Up to 12 hours on 2G

4: Up to 7 hours on 3G, Up to 14 hours on 2G

Okay, so we are getting 2 extra hours here. I don't talk that much, so I don't care particularly of this item.

Internet use:

3GS: Up to 5 hours on 3G, Up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi

4: Up to 6 hours on 3G, Up to 10 hours on Wi-Fi

Now, so here is the most important for me. I have couple mailboxes, I have IM, I do browse, Twitter and other stuff. What improvement are we getting here? 1 hour? That's not cool.

When you say it's 40% of improved battery life that sounds amazing. But 3GS barely gets me through the day. iPhone 4 will get me through the day probably easier, but not more. So that means nightly charges still.

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Is iPhone 4 for me? #iphone #apple #blackberry #rim

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:48:20 -0700

So, I was quite anxious to see iPhone 4 been announced this week http://www.apple.com/iphone/

After thoughts? Not so sure. So, definitely, love the build quality. I didn't touch the device, but I remember all previous iPhone's. And from what Steve Jobs described during his keynote, what is on the web site now.. this will be the most precisely done and pretty device. Art piece. I want to have it just because of it's design. But... what else?

Back camera with LED flash. That's helpful, and essentially nice. Quality of images is very nice, no doubt.

Unfortunately that's it for me. You know what I didn't see there? I didn't see communication device. That's my problem. There are certain improvements for Apple's Mail (like combined Inbox), but that's it. Still, you have to do multiple steps just to see if you have new email. Making calls? Yup, take few steps too.

That's really annoying me. I know that my other option is Blackberry Bold 9700. It has it's own certain flaws. Camera is not that nice, just decent. Build quality is poor. Browser is the last thing you want to use. But damn thing can make calls and very simple and nice with messaging and IMs.

So, I am not sure if I am getting new iPhone or am I back on Blackberry. Having options is a good thing, but I need to throw couple heavy stones into RIM's and Apple's face. Why can't you guys make one awesome device? :-)

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While moving out from Flickr account.. #atomkeep #flashback #startup

Wed, 05 May 2010 12:34:23 -0700

I found those nice scans of LAPTOP Magazine, where "Atomkeep" was nominated as one of Top 50 Best Web Apps... That was a pleasant warm feeling!

Shared page with BillShrink (awesome tool by @peterpham) - and we got there just in 5 or 6 months...

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iPhone vs. Android: nice article I came across #android #iphone #platform

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:15:00 -0700

Full article is here http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/five-reasons-iphone-v-android.html and I should say it does make interesting points, though, I am not 100% agree with everything there. But, like this block:

"...Apple is moving on to the 4.0 stage of its mobile platform, has consistently hit promised milestones, has done yeomen's work on evangelizing key technologies within the platform (and third-party developer creations - "There's an app for that"), and developed multiple ways for developers to monetize their products. No less, they have offered 100 percent distribution to 85 million iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, and one-click monetization via same. Nested in every one of these devices is a giant vending machine that is bottomless and never closes. By contrast, Google has taught consumers to expect free, the Android Market is hobbled by poor discovery and clunky, inconsistent monetization workflows. Most damning, despite touted high-volume third-party applications, there are (seemingly) no breakout third-party developer successes, despite Android being around two-thirds as long as the iPhone platform."

Well said. And very clear what is the difference between Android and iPhone users. My personal experience shows the same. Blackberry and Android users don't *buy* applications. Well, incorrect. They *rarely buy*. Blackberry users don't have many at the first place, Android users try to get everything free. iPhone users pay. And usually they don't even questioning the price (some still do), but they just buy if *any* value is in the app.

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Leaving S.F. to L.A. in an hour or so. #losangeles #sanfrancisco #la #sf #move

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:29:58 -0700

So, after almost 1.5 years in San Francisco I am leaving back to Los Angeles. Nothing bad to say about San Francisco, though, I am not sure I really enjoyed the weather - it was well crappy all the time I've been leaving here. Probably weather is not the thing I should be looking in the place (Los Angeles is extremely hot, yeah! ;-)

Together with that I should say I can think I am mentally moving forward, and looking for possibilities and everything around me what picks my interest. Really excited and itching to learn new, explore new, do new, build new,... well, you got it. I am evolving.

See you all in L.A.! ;-)

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My thoughts on iPhone's multitasking "issue" #iphone #apple #ipad

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:14:45 -0700

Couple last days I've been playing with SDK and find it really a nice tool. It restricts at many point, but well, it still gives you quite some stuff which you can sucessfully and reliably use and build your apps.

Frankly speaking, after and while using Blackberry I was pretty annoyed with the fact (exactly the *fact*) that there is no multitasking. It's just our brain, used to the fact that it should be there, complains and grumbles.

Reality check? Well, I do use background apps on Blackberry. IM (beejive). Twitter. Uh-oh. That should be it. You?
The fact that you have N number of applications running in the background does not give you anything. They are just there. Slow sleeping or just doing nothing, keep their chunk of memory and loading your tiny CPU to keep them alive.

So what really happens when you SWITCH to application? (Which is in background). It "wakes up", shows off itself, same data, same status, everything the same.
Hold on - but isn't that exactly what iPhone allow all applications to implement?! You've got an event before shutdown, even after launch, you can save and load all the info about application status you ever would want; restore it properly, restore the UI (views) - here we go - your app will look like it never left the stage, was just hiding in "virtual ;-) background".
I was able to implement basics of it easily, within an hour, being a complete newbie to Objective-C and iPhone SDK. And it works. So, now, I assume, all those developers of all those apps which didn't do that, but instead think that "multitasking saves everybody" - just ignorant of existing functionality. Actually, I think that multitasking is a much more complex and painful thing to properly develop and debug -- than just simple state saving/loading.

There are exclusions always, certainly, in this case, too. Sometimes you may want to run background music app and you want to browse Web at the same time. That's true. Apple putted their foot down and decided it's only their iPod app has this priveledge.
Also, you may want to open Web page and while it is loading, switch to email, and then may be twitter, and then to Web page - which you expect to be loaded already. True. Valid case. Reality check? Does not work that well on Blackberries, neither on Androids. With all the multitasking. You are on *mobile* device, with only EDGE or 3G connection (usually), you have small chunk of memory and CPU isn't big. All that leads to the fact that page probably is not loaded, or half-loaded by the time you switched back. True multitasking? Yeah... NO.

So, this is just my personal take on this problem. Again, I was kind of dissapointed myself with the fact that "no multitasking" on those pretty iPhones and iPads, but by given a look from the different angle, and from the perspective of real use - I do not care that much, really. I have no doubt that once mobile devices catch up a little bit more with CPU speeds and energy use - magically Apple will bring multitasking on board. Till then.. I am fine without it. ;-)

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this is how we make UIActivityIndicatorView work #iphone #sdk #objective-c (tiny tutorial)

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:28:00 -0700

To begin with - I think it's necessary to mention that I am not an expert in Objective-C, neither in iPhone SDK. I had some experience developing for mobile devices (Siemens, to be precise) like 8 years ago, and that was fun, but obviously it was nothing comparing to what apps nowadays can do.

This was an intro and disclaimer.

But this post is about UIActivityIndicatorView and how we can make it work in our app. If you Google for this information you will find tons of questions and problems with this thing. It's simple, just not that straightforward. I had to spend quite some time gathering all pieces from different resources to make it work, and later, to tweak to work in different situation. So, information described here will help you to get over those complications faster than I did.

So, let's start. UIActivityIndicatorView is just a view (right, this rollin gear is just a view), so general idea is that we want to show it whenever our application is doing some time consuming operations. Good habit to let user know that he is not left alone, just on "hold". :-)

Let's do it this way -- starting from our controller's .h file (same example on http://pastie.org/869669):

...

@interface RootViewController : UIViewController {

UIActivityIndicatorView *cLoadingView;

}

@property (nonatomic, retain) UIActivityIndicatorView *cLoadingView;

- (void)initSpinner;

- (void)spinBegin;

- (void)spinEnd;

@end

...

Simplest case possible. We have three methods defined here. One is for initialization, and we will call it when controller will just load; other two to start and stop spinning. Easy, so our controller's .m file will look like this (again, on http://pastie.org/869680):

...

@implementation RootViewController

...

@synthesize cLoadingView;

...

- (IBAction)doSomethingComplexAndTimeConsuming {

// this is how we start spinning

[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector: @selector(spinBegin) toTarget:self withObject:nil];

...

// TODO: something very complex and time consuming

// you can also add extra wait for the test (just uncomment line below)

//[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:3];

...

// stop waiting...

[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector: @selector(spinEnd) toTarget:self withObject:nil];

...

// TODO: continue with our application

}

...

- (void)initSpinner {

cLoadingView = [[[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhiteLarge] autorelease];

// we put our spinning "thing" right in the center of the current view

CGPoint newCenter = (CGPoint) [self.view center];

cLoadingView.center = newCenter;

[self.view addSubview:cLoadingView];

}

...

- (void)spinBegin {

[cLoadingView startAnimating];

}

...

- (void)spinEnd {

[cLoadingView stopAnimating];

}

...

- (void)viewDidLoad {

[self initSpinner];

[super viewDidLoad];

}

...

@end

...

Simple, isn't it? That really is trivial, and I thought most of the cases can be handled the same way. Unfortunately, when I wanted it to works fancier (I wanted the spinning gear to be in the navigation bar of my app) -- it brought me confusion on how this can be done. Just positioning up there? That's a pain, and I never was able to make it work (frankly speaking :-). However, then, I realized other thing. Navigation bar has buttons! So, why wouldn't we make our spinning gear a button? and this is what I did. It was really easy to do -- just tweaking our initSpinner method a little bit (on http://pastie.org/869703):

...

- (void)initSpinner {

cLoadingView = [[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhite];

UIBarButtonItem *activityButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView: cLoadingView];

self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = activityButton;

}

...

Simple. It's all looks pretty simple when there is a working example, isn't it? :-)

To crown it all, I would love to mention that Apple actually worked hard on making deep documentation available. And while they certainly limit developer with UI requirements and restrictions, they allow to build beautifully helpful and looking application very fast.

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My blackberry is sick of AT&T :-( #att #fail #bis #nointernet #wtf

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:41:22 -0800

So, whenever I am trying to access Internet on my Blackberry Bold -- I fail. Today. Usually it works somehow, but not today. Today, the only time I am getting emails, tweets, IMs on my Blackberry is when I am on WiFi. WTF? Only those three simple words. And question mark. Literally. AT&T claims nothing is wrong, but of course I can reboot/restart/pull out my battery dozen times, because they think this is what cures their network. I fucking doubt so. Now I understand why iPhone is such a success. It allows you to do more. Offline. Because AT&T doesn't care that much if their network works. By the way -- AT&T -- You still owe me $150 which was a "mail-in" fucking "rebate" since I connected new landline and DSL more than a year ago. You know what your customer service is saying when I bother to call? Or yeah, our system is still processing it. You are fuckers, from bottom to the top. If you stealing money, please, at least close my eyes with some kind of service. I know I am swearing more than I should (it's not me, really!), but I am just tired of paying big bucks for the company which pretend to provide service.

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todos, gtd, tasks - yeah: @rememberthemilk #gtd #productivity #todo #rtm

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:48:41 -0800

I am jumping off the ToodleDo vagon and all into Remember The Milk + MilkSync for Blackberry (and for the Remember The Milk App for the iPhone ;-) Why did I make this choice? Well, after few active days with ToodleDo + TaskJot I just see it's not making it for me. Blackberry sync is really bad, goes out of sync very often; using non-native Tasks app gets on my nerves, etc. The whole UI of ToodleDo unfortunatelly lacks the glare, and using it for managing more than one task drives me nuts. It certainly outperforms Remember The Milk in terms of features/stuff; but I find myself *not* using those features at all. It's just the way I use it, so I believe your own experience will be different;

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Starting self-improvement with your time management #selfimprovement #plusrated

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:06:23 -0800

My strong belief is that everything is in your own hands. But you certainly can get lazy, and flow by the stream (like dead fish, and I promise you'll stink badly soon after that); the other option is to figure out missing pieces in your life or career and go reach for them. Frankly speaking, it's much easier to say than to do, but it's more than doable, so stop looking for excuses.

To begin with, I should say that first step takes forever. Because it's hard. I've been in "self improving mode" like forever now. Since high school, I saw this as the only possible option to get up from where I was. It did work fine so far, but every step "up" was as hard as previous - and it still does not get any easier. But results are more rewarding, so it's well worth the "torture" ;-)

There is one big problem. Always at least one, and always this one is the biggest. Time. You will always have tons to do at work, in personal life, family stuff, you'll feel lazy or/and exhausted, tired, under pressure, feeling lack of sleep, sick or many other "important" things. It's okay, as they are part of your life. Squeeze them and find part of the day you are wasting. There is always long or short part of the day been wasted. May be even few parts, minutes long, spreaded all over your day. "Self"-improvement? Let yourself improve your TIME first.

So figure out how much you reasonably have. You certainly will see million things you might be doing in those "spare" parts, but truth is - you are NOT doing anything there now, that's why you see them as spare time, and you know that. It might be just few minutes, or even hours, but there are such parts of your life you are skipping. Realizing that you *have* this time is important. Now you just have to use it. If it's spreaded across the day - figure out what tools do you need to make good use of it. Is it iPhone/iPod touch/Kindle to read books or listen for podcasts, or go through visual tutorials? Go for it. Those devices are not cheap, but they help you. They can help you to fit your self improvement while you are in gym, or in the car, train, etc. But please, no toys on them. Don't even keep them there ;-) Or you'll get closer to be "dead fish" (see the paragraph right above).
If you can figure out the bigger block of time - then you are in much better position - just mark this time in your calendar or in your todo list, desktop, or put sticky paper on your screen. Same way like you have time for your school, job, food, sleep - mark THIS time for your self improvement. Read, try, experiment - because you have this special time. Don't let it loose. It's not free time. It's not "tomorrow" time, or "other", or "weekend" time. Fuck tomorrow. Do it today for an hour. Every other day for half an hour. But it should be consistent. Don't allow yourself to lose attention, don't interrupt yourself. This time has it's own rules. You cannot skip it. It's like second (or third, fourth, ...) job. But it will be much more rewarding in all possible ways, my promise.

In my current life I have interests besides of job, family and leisure. It's my self improvement. I am hold a stack of books with label "to read" and video podcasts "to watch". And I know when I'll be doing that. Almost every my day will have time for that. It's scheduled already.

And one more important thing. Say, you are preparing for the exam, or studying to get better job, to ask for job promotion - anything like that. Anything when you are doing something but still waiting for something. Don't lie to yourself. This wait will last forever. And then some more. Stop it from the very beginning - just give yourself timeframe, limit yourself, set the final date. If you are not done - sorry - you may suck, you may fail, not get what you want. But you WILL know what you are missing, what you didn't do right, what exactly is not enough... That will help you to catch up with missing stuff in days, if not hours.
Instead of waiting and just waiting for "the sign that you are ready". You ARE ready for something already. You don't know if you are NOT ready, because you didn't try.

Not trying, not doing, not improving -- those are all synonims to WASTING YOUR LIFE. Is your life worth wasting? Is any even single minute of it NOT valuable? Try. Always try and do.

I have bunch of other my tricks on spotting "lost" time in your day, etc., so I am thinking to do those posts on self improvement more often. Sometimes I feel like I am losing my track, too, so putting them "in writing", even if it is just for myself on my blog helps to gather my shit together.

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Keeping it simple and getting things done #gtd #simple #todo #daily #productivity

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:49:00 -0800

In attempt to increase my productivity I am jumping away from Google Calendar to something more simple and actually more *productive*. Don't get me wrong, I *do* use Google Apps for personal email now and contacts, and was using Google Calendar as well, but it just doesn't keep me up-to-date very well. Why? Simple enough, it's more a tool for "bookmarks" of events. Instead, my life is full of simple TODOs. Do this, do that, here and there. Daily todos. I need to be able to take a look of my todo list and see what's there for today, and may be tomorrow, or if something is undone - how bad I delayed with it. Google Calendar (and any other calendar) -- they show me today. If it's tomorrow already, my yesterday's events are in the past. Even if they are left undone. This doesn't work well for me -- as I have to re-organize the calendar then. Which is time consuming. Means I am less productive. That's why I decided to explore todo solutions which follow GTD principle. So, my choice is ToodleDo now in combination with TaskJot Pro, which is a Blackberry application (ToodleDo has also iPhone app, by the way). I do not expect too much from it, but it helps to accomplish my initial goal. I know there is also Remember The Milk, but it's giving less and pushes about upgrading to Pro version much more actively than I would like to be pushed, so why bother?

So far so good, I actually feel an improvement of my daily process of following todos, so it's the good thing.

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Blackberry comments for @alexmak Nexus One/iPhone review (russian) #blackberry #nexus #iphone

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:04:00 -0800

Давно я не писал в блог ничего на русском, и так же давно не писал никаких сравнительно-отмечающих моментов по поводу телефонов; Читателем моего ремарок давно известно что я не могу определиться с телефоном который я использую (между iPhone и Blackberry), посему прыгаю туда-сюда. Платформу Android я обходил, ибо выбор Google -- HTC я не особо люблю, после опыта с нескольими Win-базироваными телефонами HTC. Оно съело мне "мозок", точнее откровенно меня вынудило их возненавидеть. Не уверен что именно это было, но то что я HTC не люблю ни качеством железа, ни софта -- это точно, хотя возможно многое изменилось.

К чем это все -- я недавно наткнулся на "Обзор Nexus One" (в трех частях - №1, №2 и №3) который сделал @alexmak (Alex Patsay), и если честно нашел его достаточно позновательным, и решил опять же прокомментировать его исклюительно для сравнения с Blackberry. Хотя я отлично понимаю что многие не рассматривают этот телефон как альтерантиву iPhone/Android. На то есть причины, и совершенно объективные, хотя, телефон - это не лаптоп, поэтому я его рассматриваю как телефон в первую очередь.

Теперь по моим комментариям и сравнениям с Blackberry. Сразу отмечу, что использовал я несколько моделей, Blackberry Bold 9000 (который и использую сейчас повседневно), Curve 8900 и Bold 9700. Так что более менее могу сравнивать за достаточно большой спектр моделей. И iPhone я использовал с самого их выпуска -- то есть с аллюминено-iPhone 2G, до iPhone 3GS.

Качество сборки и железа -- достаточно высокое у Bold 9700, очень и очень близкое к iPhone 3GS, который можно сказать эталон для меня. Curve 8900 более бюджетная модель, так что качество сборки ок. Не супер, но и не откровенная дешевка. Bold 9000 мне нравится по многим фактором, но "целостность" телефона чувствуется меньше всего -- скорее из за его таковой конструкции. Слишком много слотов воокруг по телефону создают ощущение "lego" :-) Nexus One я бы поставил на уровень с 9700. Те же болезни - хочешь поменять SIM'карту -- будь добр, телефон отключай. Но не могу сказать что это big deal для меня - я их не меняю вообще :-)

Трекбол в Nexus One меня убивает. Его делать было ужасно неразумно, при условии что Bold 9000 имеет такой же, и RIM за несколько лет "наевшись" с ним проблем -- перешло на trackpad'ы. Не понял смысла вообще, а если учитывая несуществующий customer service от Google для Nexus One -- это может быть огромный frustration пользователей через полгода, когда трекболы будут поголовно "портиться".

Опять же не подлежит сравнению клавиатура и кнопки "активации" -- в Blackberry это любая (почти) кнопка :-) -- в Nexus One и iPhone их не так уж и много. Так что сравнивать тут нечего.

По поводу "мигания трекбола" - это отличная вещь, аналог у которой в Blackberry "миллион лет" уже существует отдельный индикатор, наличия почты, сообщений, SMS, и тд -- это то что iPhone из за дизайна выбрасывают, но это безумно помогает. Когда привыкаешь - лишиться этого очень сложно.

Батарея -- не сравнивал на long run Nexus One, но точно скажу что Bold 9000 и особенно Bold 9700 просто супер батареи. Лучше не встречал - и это с моим использованием. Не думаю что на рынке много телефонов способных их "побить".

Программно -- мой Bold 9000 еще "ездит" на OS 4.6, а Bold 9700 на OS 5 -- которая несомненно более улучшенная, и в плане удобства, так и быстродействия. Мне трудно сравнить ее с iPhone, где интерфейс опять же эталон простоты, но Nexus One как и все остальные Android телефоны у меня вызывают неприязнь - ибо их UI весьма непродуман до конца. Ощущение что делать начали хорошо и тщательно, а закончить забыли, поэтому просто добавили все лишь бы где. В девайсах Blackberry по крайней мере как говорится в армии -- "хоть и безобразно, но однообразно". Я конечно преувеличиваю с безобразием, но там ты точно знаешь что сделает какая кнопка. Можно делать на ощупь. И быть увереным в результате. Проверенно УЙМУ раз.

Менеджер задач - в Blackberry есть переключатель, но не менеджер. Обычно все приложения можно закрыть через меню самого приложения, убивать кого-то возможно и есть нужда, но я еще не встречал таких ситуаций хотя слышал что такое было на ранних телефонах RIM'а с слабыми процессорами. Лично я не встречал. Возможно потому что использую по больше части дефолтовые приложения, либо достаточно устоявшиеся (штук 5-6 разных). Опять же отмечу -- мои сравнения очень субъективны, потому что телефон для меня это в первую очередь телефон, которые должен хорошо делать коммуникации, почту, контакты, календарь. Броузинг - это бонус, красота которого меня волнует иногда, но редко, скорее информативность более важна. Игры вообще не волнуют. Так же как и fancy stupid things, как дурацкие приложения и прочее.

Русский язык. Однако это головная боль Blackberry тоже. На Bold 9000 и Curve 8900 оно ставится достаточно просто из Desktop Manager, но для этого понятно надо USB'шкой прицепить к компьютеру, ибо по умолчанию телефоны в Штатах имеют Spanish, и тройку других языков, но не русский. Из плюсов их все можно прибить, и оставить только English и Russian (2 вида input, о них позже) -- и радоваться. Есть два вида ввода - первый это транслит -- смотришь на английские буквы, вводятся русские (пример "qwerty" это "яшерт", или "sdfghjkl" это "cдфгчьк") -- либо когда вводишь и используется их раскладка такая же как на клавиатуре. К сожалению второй метод трудный если не помнишь "на память" что "q" это "й", что "fgh" это "апр" и тд. Правда огромный минус Bold 9700 -- он будучи самым новым не имеет русского. По моей теории это потому что телефон еще не продается в страны где нужен русский и использует новую OS 5, но я могу ошибаться (хотя вряд ли). Поставить его туда можно, но это уже сложнее процесс, поэтому я его даже не рассматриваю.

Blackberry быстрее для обычных задач, Быстрее набрать номер, пролистать или найти человека в телефонной книге, набрать номер броузя страницы или твиты, или же щелкнуть на ссылку или опять же набрать номер или кинуть SMS по номеру в календаре, и тд. В чем прогадывают и теряют клиента (меня конкретно) Apple и Google -- это в том что будучи воодушевлены борьбой они забыли что RIM "выехал" и выезжает построив сначала некрасивый девайс, но сделав почту абсолютным и самым важным компонентом on-the-go. Я отвечаю, forward, копирую и делаю много вещей с почтой на бегу, что iPhone мне не дает. Моя почта может быть объединена в один список писем, я могу настроить звонок для почты (нет смысла в push email если я ее не слышу). Я могу видеть сколько писем новых с момента последней проверки писем. И еще кучу "я могу", которые скорее видимо рассматриваются как "необязательные" фичи у Android и iPhone. Как результат - для меня почта лучше SMS, она может быть коротка в одно-два слово, может быть предложением, описанем, абзацем, картинками, цитататми - короче наиболее используемый (кроме звонков) компонент МОЕГО телефона это почта.

Сервисы Google были более сложны в настройке на iPhone, на Blackberry это же Google Sync, Google Voice. Все, они интегрируются просто и спокойно, вися в background, и вообще не напоминая о себе (если не надо). Контакты, календарь, google voice кстати еще позволяет из меню телефона звонить на номер с помощью него, а так же бросить SMS с его помощью. Тут вообще не знаю что лучше - они прозрачны и ненавязчивы,

Скриншоты в Blackberry делают нетривиально -- но это даже не 10% от нетривиальности у Nexus One. Просто ставится бесплатно апликейшн (OTA конечно, http://m.thetechmogul.com/) Capture It! и спокойно щелкается.

Настройка звуков и рингтонов у Blackberry самая удобная. Во первых делается во одном месте, во вторых использовать можно какие хочешь файлы, хочешь mp3, хочешь еще что. И настраивать можно почти для всего. (Пишу "почти" потому что наверняка для чего-то нельзя, хотя я на это еще не наталкивался :-)

О приложениях для Blackberry мне нечего написать по двум причинам. Во первых их мало, во вторых мне много и не надо, и все что мне надо есть. Разработка приложенияй для Blackberry это совсем отдельная тема, которая скорее негативная, в плане incentives для разработчиков, а вернее -- их отсутствия.

Вопрос - взял бы Я себе Nexus One ответ простой и даже без сомнения - НЕТ. Если бы я не пользовался Blackberry я бы пользовался iPhone 3GS, это даже без колебания.

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Free QuickTime video/audio for #mac #bookmark

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:36:10 -0800

Just as bookmark for myself (I tend not to like browser bookmarks, as they are pain to maintain on the long run, and I just want to be able to search-and-fine, instead of browse-and-select :-) -- the best open source free QuickTime component for Mac OS X which I found is Perian (http://perian.org). FTW! :-) real "swiss-army knife for QuickTime"

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Happiness :-)

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:04:09 -0800

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Back on Blackberry (again 10x) #bb #blackberry #iphone

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:52:00 -0800

I had to retire iPhone 3GS and return it back to my love @bazinia. I think she'll take good care of it. In my turn I am enjoying Blackberry again. (And I know @rwaldin knew this would happen :-) Frankly speaking, I just decided it's not worth it for me to keep it. I will wait until Apple will bring new iPhone which would be less of a game device but at least a little bit more of productivity booster. This time my tipping point was not keyboard (can really get used to touch-typing) or battery life (I have a bunch of wall/car chargers for this), but terribly slow email client and very inefficient access and operation with it and the calendar.
So I either have to wait for Apple to fix it or do it myself the way I want :-) none of those options really seems to be happening in the nearest future so I'd stick to Blackberry for now.

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