After finally acquiring a shiny new iPhone 3GS, I started playing around with the new camera and video features. Rather than talk about it, I thought showing the video on a number of different online services would better illustrate it. So this is handheld iPhone 3GS landscape video shot while driving over the newly opened Golden Ears Bridge at dusk (approximately 9:30pm):
YouTube:
This video is the full trip across the bridge…once home, I pressed the ‘Send to YouTube’ button on the iPhone and it compressed and sent it to YouTube as you see above.
Flickr:
I trimmed the video down to 1:30 on the iPhone using the new trim feature. Flickr seemed to handle the video just fine.
Vimeo:
Note there is no sound on Vimeo…this is probably a codec issue that I’m sure Vimeo will fix very soon.
Both Flickr and Vimeo were manual uploads of the same source file so in theory they should be higher quality than the YouTube version since it was compressed on the phone before upload. I also tried MobileMe but couldn’t get the video to playback properly from my account, as well, there is no embed option on the video there so I’ll keep trying to play with it.
So far, I’m very happy with the camera/video upgrades the 3GS has – I’d probably upgrade just for those alone, nevermind all the other new things I’m still exploring on the phone. I can’t wait to try more things with the new camera!
Looks like Rogers is about to repeat their PR nightmare from last year’s iPhone 3G launch by holding back the pricing of the iPhone 3GS for current 3G owners until the last possible minute.
There hasn’t been nearly the same level of outrage as last time around but the rumours and speculation are running rampant…being dodgy about tethering policies and pricing certainly isn’t helping.
I’m still expecting some surprises from Rogers/Fido for current customers….last year they relaxed the upgrade rules a few weeks after the initial launch…most likely to boost sales after the initial rush.
The thing most people aren’t realizing is that they got the iPhone 3G was a subsidized device….the initial iPhone cost $499US when it launched in 2007 from AT&T then dropped to $299 in 2008 under a subsidy. I would expect those with a high monthly iPhone bill to get a break on the ‘rumoured’ full, no-contract prices for the 3GS of $699/$799 for the 16gb and 32gb respectively since they’ve most likely paid a fair bit of their subsidy down. But since Rogers/Fido uses a fairly complex tier scheme to catagorize their customers, the prices will most likely vary by individual account…possibly another reason why they are keeping the prices quiet since they may not have a blanket price for all 3G owners that want to upgrade.
On the bright side, it looks like there will be a full unlock/jailbreak by the weekend for the 3GS….hello Ultrasn0w!
I guess we’ll have to see what transpires over the next couple of days leading up to the release on Friday of the 3GS.
UPDATE: As I predicted, Rogers came out with decent upgrade pricing for iPhone 3GS. You can read the specifics on the Rogers and Fido websites. Pricing varies by your account specifics but assuming you got an iPhone 3G last year before September and have a certain level of voice/data plan combination, you should be able to upgrade for the ‘new customer’ price of $199/$299.
As I said on Twitter to the Rogers PR person, “RogersKeith“, I hope that he relays to his superiors the frustration felt by many customers (not just me) by leaving the pricing details to the last minute. It’s not a good way to engage and endear customers to your brand, especially in the fast moving social media world we now live in.
While not quite the angry mob like last year, anger was certainly growing online because of the lack of information when other carriers around the world had made their plans known in advance. Hopefully they learn from this experience for next year when Apple will inevitably release another version of the iPhone and all the 3GS owners will want to upgrade. RogersKeith said on Twitter, “iPhone launches aren’t typical” to which I replied that iPhone users aren’t typical either….this isn’t your daddy’s Blackberry hardware refresh.
UPDATE 2 (June 20th): The good news is that I finally have an iPhone 3GS. The bad news is that it took over 6 hours of wasted time to get it. I went down to Wireless Wave bright and early on launch day (19th). I was first in line of about 5-6 people. I expected the computer systems to be totally overwelmed and of course they were so the dealer wasn’t even able to log in and see my availability for a long time. I’m pretty sure Rogers computer systems are running on Vic-20′s. I waited about 4 hours at the store for them to be able to process my phone upgrade which they were unable to do. I don’t blame Wireless Wave, I blame Rogers unpreparedness for this portion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait at the store any longer as I had to leave for Whistler. Since I was leaving town, I basically had to give up the phone I had on hold – I was hoping to get one from a dealer en route to Whistler but alas all were sold out. I came back from Whistler on Saturday morning and called the same Wireless Wave to see if they still had stock. I was told they didn’t over the phone. A friend had called the Apple Store and was told they were doing upgrades as well as new activations so I stopped by there on the way back from Whistler and was told they weren’t doing upgrades in the store right now. I then had a friend check in with Wireless Wave if they had any stock left and they did so I was back in the line for one. I was told they would process the order and it should be ready by the time I got to the store. It wasn’t. They basically set it aside for me and were going to process the paperwork when I actually showed up. Then began the 45 minute wait on hold for the Rogers dealer person to confirm that I was in fact eligible for a hardware upgrade (at $299). Once the dealer finally got through, they confirmed I was eligible. There was a problem though – the Rogers computer system (Sales Central) didn’t show that I was eligible for any kind of upgrade. The manager at Wireless Wave wouldn’t process a manual transaction for the phone because it’s their policy to not do them as there is a chance the paperwork will fall through the cracks and they won’t get their commission. The manager did call his bosses who confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to sell me the phone despite being eligible. A visit to another store in the mall confirmed the same thing. It wasn’t until I got a tip from Gary that there was a store in another mall that had staff that should be able to help me as he had a similar issue with his upgrade. I drove over to that mall, and within ten minutes of dealing with Thomas and Kelsey, left the store with my 32gb iPhone 3GS. They appeared to have no issue doing a manual transaction with the approval of the dealer call centre.
So what are the issues here? Well, inconsistent policies for handling customer upgrades – even between stores of the same dealer. I really suspect that the reason Wireless Wave didn’t want to sell me the iPhone was that because I wasn’t a new activation, they weren’t going to make as much commission. The fact that they led me on for over 6 hours also pissed me off. I know the systems were busy but I didn’t get a sense they were really trying too hard to get the answers they needed to get. There seemed to be a lot of policies that threatened termination if not followed correctly that the staff kept bringing up. The fact that other customers were able to get iPhones also pissed me off as I know that some of those people had the same account setup as me. A couple of friends that came with me to the store on launch day all had different experiences with getting the upgrade but had similar account/upgrade configurations as me.
I even decided to reach out to the Rogers PR person on Twitter who ultimately wasn’t needed to help me get the phone but did result in my getting a call from an advisor from the (Rogers) President’s office who wanted to know the full story. We had a good discussion about the problems I encountered and had I not been successful the day before, I’m pretty sure he would have helped me get a phone today. I wanted to make sure they understood this iPhone thing isn’t a fad and there will be another update next year so hopefully they will fix some/all of these issues – which are really more communication issues between Rogers and their dealer network. Customers shouldn’t have to run all over town to get a phone upgrade if they’re eligible.
Overall, I feel that Rogers did everything they could *for me* given the situation. Twitter was instrumental in helping me get in contact with the right people to escalate my concerns. So we’ll see what happens in 2010…I sure hope I’m not writing another deja vu post.
Today Apple unveiled the latest iteration of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS. The ‘S’ stands for speed. It will be available in North America on Friday, June 19th.
This is a big deal for a number of reasons. I won’t get into all the new features of the device (and 3.0 firmware update), just a few that stand out to me since there is a lot to talk about.
First of all, for me personally, it means that I’ll have a new, faster, bigger iPhone in less than two weeks as my iPhone 3G was stolen last December so I’ve been getting by with my first gen iPhone for 6 months now. While it hasn’t been that bad, I really do miss the 3G speeds, the GPS and having double the storage space (16gb vs 8gb).
We also finally get an improved camera now at 3 megapixels with touch auto-focus and macro! While 3mp isn’t the most amazing thing ever, it’s still an improvement. I’ve been a big fan of the iPhone camera and all the fun apps that have taken advantage of it. I can’t wait to have a little more pixels to play with. With it also brings the ability to shoot video (too bad it’s only VGA quality and not HD). It also will be able to do some minor editing on the iPhone itself. It’s unclear if the video function, combined with new APIs will open up the app store to Qik and UStream type applications. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Apple approves.
The new Voice Control feature also comes with the 3GS. I’m going to reserve judgement on this one until I get to play with it myself…voice apps have always been disappointing and you ALWAYS feel stupid yelling at a device in public because it doesn’t understand your mumblings…although the voice activated bluetooth feature in my car is making think that voice recognition software may have improved a fair bit in recent years.
Pricing has been set at $199/$299 for the 16gb or the 32gb iPhones respectively and that appears to be the price in Canadian dollars according to the ‘Social Media guy’ for Rogers which is hopefully a welcome sign that Rogers might be catching on. Unfortunately as I write this, specifics about the upgrade path for those that got the iPhone 3G last July (11th) haven’t been released yet. Considering it’ll be about 3 weeks shy of a year between those dates, hopefully Rogers allows those that waited in line on launch day to simply extend their contracts from the July date forward and pay the new customer price. Rogers and Fido have also stated they will be reintroducing (for a limited time), the 6gb for $30 promotion. With tethering now a fairly straightforward affair for those with the 3.0 firmware, having that much bandwidth may finally start paying off.
It’s also interesting that the ‘older’ iPhone 3G will still be available at the very attractive price of $99 at Rogers and Fido on June 19th.
And finally, something that I’ve been eagerly awaiting is TomTom’s iPhone application which was finally announced today. Until the 3.0 firmware, iPhone developers were restricted from creating applications that used the iPhone GPS for turn by turn directions. TomTom even created a nice iPhone windshield mount which extends the GPS antenna and charges the iPhone. It can also rotate to hold the iPhone in portrait or landscape…which is also a nice touch for watching video in your car (while parked of course). I’ve used TomTom GPS units for years…I even had the software installed on my Treo 650 and used it with a bluetooth GPS module on my dash which worked perfectly since you could search for a location and even get and dial phone numbers for stores and restaurants.
Here’s their video demoing the application and windshield mount:
It will be interesting to see how they price both the app and the windshield attachment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take advantage of the new subscription model (for the map data) the app store now allows under 3.0 not to mention the fact that the dedicated in-car units have seen quite a price drop over the last few years thanks to competition.
So if you or someone you know wants to know more about iTunes and using it with your iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, this might be for you (or them).
It should now be available in London Drugs (I believe in store only) and for purchase online directly from MacVideoTraining.com with more retail stores coming soon. Apparently a few clips from my course are playing in a loop in London Drugs so if you hear me talking about iTunes while you’re checking out the computer department, don’t be alarmed.
I’ve got a few copies to give away so drop a comment below and tell me why you want a copy and I’ll pick the best ones and send it to you.
As some of you know, I recently bought a Kia Soul after the lease on my Toyota Matrix ended:
and I thought I’d describe a few of the interesting bits of technology that Kia has included in this vehicle. I won’t get into the car side of things as there are plenty of reviews/comparisons of this car (with others in it’s emerging class) on the internet. I realize that this type of car seems to be a love it/hate it thing when it comes to it’s looks. Obviously I like it or I wouldn’t have bought it so no need to go there.
What may surprise you is the amount of tech that gets packed into this ‘urban crossover’ when you consider the relatively inexpensive cost of the car. The model I bought (called the 4U in Canada) has an upgraded stereo package which features an 8 speaker (including a center speaker above the dash controls and a trunk mounted subwoofer), 315 watt sound system. For a factory installed system, it’s pretty impressive.
1. Voice activated handsfree with Bluetooth
The model I bought comes with steering wheel controls for using your cell phone in the car. This type of functionality is becoming more common in cars today but is usually found on much higher priced models.
The first thing you need to do is pair your cellphone with the car. You can pair up to 5 different phones and the car actually talks you through the process of setting up your phone simply by initiating the pairing process via the setup menu option above.
The first thing it does once it’s paired is downloads your cell phone’s contact list to the car’s memory:
Every time you turn the car on (and your phone is in range with bluetooth turned on) it will take about 10 seconds to transfer the contacts and display the above message (along with the computer’s voice saying it). At first I thought this was annoying but then realized it needs to sync your contacts with the car and really only takes 10 seconds to do so at the beginning of your drive. What really surprised me was that it works perfectly with my iPhone (a 1st gen model). I didn’t have to do anything other than pair it with the car and all my iPhone contacts are available to me via voice activation.
If you press the listen button on the steering wheel, the car will switch off your music and be in listen mode. Here you would tell it who you want to call in this format: “Call Lastname Firstname Location” so to call my work number I’d have to say “Call Biehler John Work” which the car will reply with a confirmation statement which you can say “yes” to in order to make sure it heard you correctly.
You also have the ability to set voice contacts in the phonebook locally. For example, I setup my wife’s contact info in the car to simply shorten it from what I have on my phone. I wish there was a setting in the phone options to change the order of the names or at least honor the settings from the source phone (mine are set Firstname Lastname on the iPhone). But I guess it’s simply an easier way for the car to process the voice request.
Pressing the hangup button on the steering wheel will end the call and your previously playing music will return. Incoming calls behave the same way – your music will fade out and you’ll see “incoming call from XXXXXXX” on the dash display. Pressing the pickup button on the steering wheel will answer it. You can also dial any number not in your contacts by simply saying the number: “Call 5-5-5-1-2-3-4″ and the system will display your spoken numbers on the dash display and ask for confirmation before dialing. Apparently this ‘manual’ dialing feature isn’t that common on other vehicles.
2. USB/iPod support
Like most car manufacturers today, Kia has support for the iPod built in as well as a USB port that can accept a thumbdrive (or even a portable hard drive).
iPod support is via a separate accessory cable that plugs into the AUXIN and USB ports which gives you the ability to navigate your playlists on the iPod or iPhone. My cable is on order so I haven’t played with it yet but it’s supposed to charge your device as well. Why KIA doesn’t just throw this cable in the glove box is beyond me. It’s probably about $0.25 worth of materials. You can’t just use your iPod/iPhone cable in the USB port as it’s expecting a mass storage device – it won’t even charge your device strangely. The iPod cable is almost unecessary though since the USB port can accept a thumb drive. It’s arguably easier to just buy a cheap, huge thumbdrive and put all your MP3′s on it and leave it in the car fulltime.
When you plug a USB device into the port, it will scan your files very quickly and start playing the first track on the device. It’s folder aware so you can setup playlists that way fairly easily. You get the full song details, ID3 tags, etc although the default display is the filename (whatever.mp3) in the larger font (which scrolls to show you the full length name if larger than the screen size):
Being able to navigate through a pile of music (from a number of different sources since the stereo also comes with Sirius Satellite Radio, MP3 CD support as well as AM/FM), easily from my steering wheel is new to me and pretty cool.
3. LED speaker lighting
While this gimmicky item won’t appeal to everyone, it’s kind of interesting that they included it. Kia’s target market is probably about 10-15 years younger than I am but I still like the lighting and don’t find it distracting at night.
Basically there is a bunch of LED lights inside the front speakers that can be controlled via the dash as to how they behave:
The OFF setting makes the speaker like any other one – no lights. MOOD makes the lights pulsate slowly. MUSIC has them lighting up to the beat of your music and ON has them at whichever brightness level you’ve set via the +/- buttons.
Here’s a shaky cam video of it in action (MUSIC mode enabled):
The only thing really missing is GPS. It’s not even an option in North America and in Europe is an expensive addon that is simply a Garmin unit built into the space that I currently store my sunglasses at the top of the center console. I’ve always been extremely underwhelmed by factory GPS units since they are fairly limited, usually not nearly as functional as store bought units (I love my Tom Tom) and usually cost thousands of dollars as a part of a technology upgrade to the car.
So far, the only thing I’ve done to the car, other than moving the TomTom over is put an Apple sticker on the rear window. I’m not sure what else I’d want to do to the car to geekify it more so if you’ve got any suggestions, leave a comment.
UPDATE: meant to include a couple of photos of the console controls and steering wheel layout since I hard time finding them online before I got to test drive one:
Update (June 21, 2010): With the release of iOS 4.0 firmware for the iPhone, I’ve noticed two interesting new things with the handsfree bluetooth setup and my iPhone 3GS: I no longer get the ‘Transfer Complete’ voice prompt (but the bluetooth icon still lights up on the dash and my phonebook has transfered) and now when I get an incoming call, the ringtone (including my homemade mp3 tones) for the caller plays through the stereo instead of the default Kia ringtone. Both nice touches that must have something to do with a change in the bluetooth stack used in iOS 4.
Update (July 2010):I still love my Kia Soul but unfortunately, one of the selling points I had is now gone. When I bought the car in May 2009, my dealership, Bay City Kia, included ‘free oil/lube/filter changes for life’. It was in the contract I signed. Unfortunately, this past spring, Bay City Kia closed down and months later I got a letter from Kia Canada explaining this and suggesting a few other dealerships for me to use for service. Too bad neither are anywhere near me and aren’t even close to being convenient to get to. I emailed Kia Canada’s customer service (provided on the letter I received) inquiring if Kia would continue to honour the free oil changes offer that was part of my contract and after waiting a week for a response, I was sent a form email basically saying no. I can’t blame Bay City for this…after all, they are out of business but I was hoping Kia Canada would at least do something for me as this works out to be a significant amount of money over the balance of my car payments that I now have to cough up (roughly $600-700/year or about 2 car payments). So if you’re looking to get a deal on your Kia, make sure it’s not a dealer specific deal, but rather a Kia deal so you can hold them to it, regardless if the dealership goes under.
