iPhone 3G
Reports are coming in from all over the place that At&t have confirmed that the iPhone 3G will not be available online, and activation will have to happen in-store:
Also, no in-home activation for iPhone 3G—it does require a two-year contract, and it will have to be activated in store (at AT&T or Apple Store), which takes 10-12 minutes, meaning that first day line is going to SUCK. And you will have to camp out, since there won’t be any online ordering at launch.
This is interesting, as the repercussions of a system like this means that in Australia, the only way to get an iPhone will be by signing a contract with Vodafone or Optus. These contracts are bound to be expensive, very expensive. Personally, I don’t want to break my contract with 3, which has 18 months left on it and suits my price point for a phone plan very nicely.
The $199 and $299 price points are VERY attractive, and obviously a market-share grab. They’ll sell 20 million iPhones in the next 12 months, no doubt, as $200 for a phone EVERYONE will want is a little hard to refute.
However, another interesting thing being reported is that Apple and At&t no longer have their revenue sharing agreement in place:
The new agreement between Apple and AT&T eliminates the revenue-sharing model under which AT&T shared a portion of monthly service revenue with Apple. Under the revised agreement, which is consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements, there is no revenue sharing and both iPhone 3G models will be offered at attractive prices to broaden the market potential and accelerate subscriber volumes.
The whole thing seems a little fishy to me. It doesn’t feel quite “Apple” to have to sit in the store and activate your iPhone before you get to take it home. It was a groundbreaking move the first time around, and it feels a little strange that it’s not there now.
I get the feeling that Apple may release an unlocked, 16GB iPhone, for about double the price [$499ish] that can be used on any carrier. This gives customers a better option - if you have a great plan you are on now, just go to an Apple store and pick up an iPhone, but it will cost more. If you need a new plan, go to one of Apple’s approved carriers, and sign up - we’ll give you a discount on the phone to boot.
iphone in australia from mid-july
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference today, Steve Jobs announced the release of the new iPhone 3G.
The iPhone will be available in Australia from July 11, though no pricing information has been released. Jobs announced during the keynote that the new USD$199 price tag [8GB] will be standardised around the world, so I’d expect to see a price tag of around AUD$200-$250.
No word yet either on whether the phone will be locked to Optus or Vodafone, who both announced earlier in the year that they would be selling the iPhone in Australia. Ars Technica are reporting that AT&T, who have an exclusivity arrangement for the sale of the iPhone in America will be axing the revenue sharing model set up with the original iPhone’s release.
showing the internet to a burmese refugee
Michelle Greer showed a Burmese refugee the internet for the first time:
In seconds, I pulled up Google news and typed in “Burma cyclone”. I showed her pictures. Elaine and I explained headlines. She looked in amazement and a certain quiet sadness. I cannot imagine what was going on in her heart at that moment.
(via Darren Rowse on twitter)
childtrader
Child Trader is now the nations 4th largest child exchange network and as such, has brought happiness to more than 1623 American households who otherwise had very few options in creating a more loving family and home life when realizing their child wasn’t the right fit for them.
Also check out Medical Adoptions and Puppy Profits
Twitter Marketplace
A while ago I decided that it would be interesting to learn the Twitter API to build an app using Twitter as a medium. More out of curiosity than anything else, I didn’t intend much to come of it [maybe figure out how to use applescript or something to send/receive twitter updates].
Last week, I posted to twitter about selling my Macbook Pro [I’m thinking of upgrading to an iMac] and immediately thought that it would be great to have some sort of mechanism that would allow people to post items they want to sell, and see what items people are selling.
Figuring this would be a great way to both a) learn the twitter API and further my PHP skills and b) create something worthwhile, I decided to build it as best I could.
I got to work, and after about 8-10 hours work over the last 5 or 6 days, I’ve created the Twitter Marketplace. It’s a PHP script that parses tweets sent to @market_place, looks for one of the trigger words (SELL, WANT, SOLD, HELP) and then performs one of the following:
• If it finds SELL, it reformats as “user is selling item for price”
• If it finds WANT, it reformats as “user wants to buy item for price”
• If it finds SOLD, it reformats as “user sold item for price”
and then posts the reformatted version to twitter, so anyone following @market_place will see it.
• If it finds HELP, it sends a direct message to the user listing what the various trigger words are.
• If it doesn’t find a dollar sign, or doesn’t find a trigger word, it sends a direct message to the user telling them there was a problem.
It’s currently running from my computer, refreshing in Opera every 2 minutes, but I will eventually host it and set up a cron job to do it automagically.
I also plan to develop a web interface for it [watch http://andrew.harrison.org/marketplace] to keep track of what is currently for sale, and what people want to buy, as well as setting up some system to remove items that were for sale etc.
Suggestions for improvement/feature requests should be sent to me by email.
optus to sell iphone
SingTel, the parent company of Optus announced in a press release that they will be selling the iPhone in the Australian market:
SingTel, Bharti Airtel, Globe and Optus today announced that they have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Singapore, India, the Philippines and Australia later this year.
This confirms the rumors from earlier this month, and, more importantly, confirms that there is no exclusivity arrangement (in Australia at least) like that with AT&T in America.
two terabytes but no astro boots
Greg Storey over at Airbag rants on (and rightly so) about the lack of all that stuff we were promised in the Jetsons.
How is it that a two-terrabyte drive is just another commonly available product available at a low, low price, because the last time I checked I still can’t visit Mars. I can’t “beam” to the East Coast and have dinner with Ryan and Ethan and then “beam” back home. My car still has tires and requires 1/4th of a dinosaur to commute for a week.
a lesson from spirograph
Over at Design Observer, John Bowers has written a guest piece on Spirograph:
The design procedure is both methodical and repeatable, with the patterns yielding virtually exact copies by all users. The most fun for us came not by following the patterns or the rules but randomly mixing colors, moving the circles and rings at will, and placing lots of pinholes in our designs.
powerpoint is not a design app… but keynote is
Khoi Vinh used Keynote to design AIGA New York’s treasurer’s report.
Keynote’s completely logical and intuitive approach to design is completely engaging and unexpectedly powerful, given how bare bones it is. Which, compared to the complexity of Adobe’s products, made the process of designing this document fun. That counts for a lot.
Bonus: In the comments, Laurence Frabotta links to a great set of Keynote templates [Powerpoint available as well] from Apple’s 2006 Student Scientific Computing competition.
baby car logos
Dentsu, an advertising agency in Brazil created baby car logos(translated) as part of a print ad campaign for Minichamps, a miniature car replica maker. Gorgeous. (via Brand New)
nes redesigned
Javier Segovia, a Spanish designer, gave the original Nintendo Entertainment System a makeover. (via kotaku)
sprint and samsung take on the iphone
Sprint, a US mobile phone carrier, is targeting the iPhone with a new $100 Million advertising campaign for Samsung’s Instinct smartphone.
The first two commercials show an Instinct and an iPhone side by side, the first comparing the iPhone’s EDGE to the Instinct’s EVDO internet speeds.
The spot clearly shows that EVDO is faster than EDGE. Whilst the Instinct has loaded whatever website it is within about 20-25 seconds, the iPhone is still struggling to have it completely loaded by the end of the 45 second spot [though it appears the iPhone goes through some sort of redirect before loading the page, while the Instinct just loads the page. Also, the navigation buttons cover what appears to be a good 15mm on each side of the Instinct’s already smaller screen, hamming up the interface.]
The second compares iPhone’s “triangulation” from cell towers to an actual GPS chip inside the Instinct. The iPhone shows what is about 2 blocks worth of streets, whilst the Instinct gives you a street corner location. The iPhone also loads its Maps app much faster than the Instinct, so they have to wait for a couple of seconds for it to catch up before they start trying to find your position.
I understand the thinking behind this kind of campaign, but marketing two features in May - for a phone that’s available in June - that are almost certainly going to be included in the next generation of iPhone due to be released in the next 6 weeks is just plain stupid.
Aside from the inane marketing of supposed advantages that are likely to become mooted, the other mistake Sprint/Samsung make here is showing their phone right next to the iPhone in the ads! All I was looking at the entire time was how much nicer the iPhone software looks, how much larger and brighter the iPhone screen is, and how much better, overall, the iPhone looks in comparison to the Instinct.
The Instinct may very well be a great phone, and a worthy competitor to the current iPhone, or maybe even the next generation iPhone as well, but based on these commercials, I would never know it.
$100 Million is a VERY expensive marketing campaign that - at least in its earliest stages - looks like it’s going to fail miserably. I’d rather they spend $100 Million making a better phone than a poorly executed marketing campaign.
ten years of imac
In celebration of the iMac’s 10th birthday, The Sydney Morning Herald republished their article from May 16, 1998 on the release of the original Bondi Blue iMac.
It’s called iMac. The “i”, so the pony-tailed marketing types tell us, stands for “Internet, Individual, Instruct, Inform and Inspire”.
The article compared the iMac to bleeding-edge PCs of the time:
The G3 can out-gallop even a 400MHz Pentium II, according to the boffins. With a 4Gb hard drive, 32Mb of main memory and 2Mb of graphics RAM (both upgradable), 15-inch colour screen, 24 speed CD-ROM and built-in stereo speakers, the iMac is certainly no slouch.
And, like many of the initial reviews at the time, it made mention of the seemingly crazy decision not to include a floppy drive:
Finally, for the oddest of reasons, the iMac has no floppy drive. In eschewing what is a $5 component, Apple has robbed users of any way to back up their work and swap documents with friends, unless all your mates are on e-mail.
The benefit of hindsight makes the paragraph about the inclusion of USB, but no serial or printer ports quite hilarious:
To print from your iMac you’ll need to find a USB printer (don’t bother looking, right now there are none), buy a printer with infra-red capabilities (limiting your choice to a handful of models), be connected to a network (at home? yeah, right) or e-mail your work to someone who’s got a printer.
teacher fired for wizardry
Yeah. Wizardry. Like Merlin or Harry Potter:
Jim Piculas said he made a toothpick disappear and reappear in front of students at the Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Fla., Local6.com reported. He said he later got a call from the supervisor of teachers, saying he had been accused of wizardry.
vodafone to sell iphone in australia too
Following CNet Australia’s report last week that Optus will begin sellling the iPhone in Australia come the end of June, an interesting press release on the Vodafone website mentions that they too will be selling the iPhone in Australia, as well as 9 other key markets.
Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.
Both Optus and Vodafone have recently begun upgrading their 3G network in Australia in an effort to rival Telstra’s NextG offering. The two companies share their 3G network infrastructure by way of a network sharing agreement established in 2004.
starting with css
Veerle has posted a great introduction to css and web standards, with a comprehensive list of articles, videos and books to help along the way.
So the first tip here is, learn about Web Standards and learn about coding with CSS for layout… This is the basis of good web design.
Stuff section removed, replaced
I’ve decided for the moment to remove the “Stuff” section of the site. Actually, I’ve decided to remove the link to it from the header. The section still exists as a category page, listing entries in that category.
In its place, I’ve added a “contact” link, which has all my contact info.
ochshtuppler
Yiddish word for someone who talks big of themselves, talks themselves up.
twitter is broken
From twitter_status:
We lost a database server, which is causing lots of errors. Reloading the page may work. It’s in the process of recovery.
The twitter feed on the sidebar of my site is all out of whack, loading intermittently.
andrew.harrison.org is live
After about 2 weeks in a self-imposed beta stage, I have now made andrew.harrison.org live, available to anyone who stumbles upon it.
Not much is going on here yet, and my folio and forhire sections are still offline. There are probably still a few small bugs that I will try and iron out as quickly as I can find them, but otherwise I think things are stable at the moment.
Not expecting much to come of this site, it’s more for me than anything else, but if you’re reading this, please drop me a line and let me know.
optus wins iphone contract
Cnet.com.au is reporting on a rumor from “an industry insider that wishes to remain anonymous” that Optus will begin selling the iPhone in the last week of June, about 7 weeks from now.
Optus plans to make the announcement mid-May ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference on June 9 in San Francisco where Apple CEO Steve Jobs is tipped to launch the next generation of iPhone.
The article also mentions that Apple themselves may sell unlocked iPhones, which would set an interesting precedent considering the 5-year exclusivity arrangement Apple have with AT&T in America.
It has also been rumoured that Apple may intend to sell the iPhone directly through Apple stores and resellers, and that these phones would be unlocked.
komodo vs. cobra
If there was ever an island you wanted to be voted off of, this is it.
time to buy a wii
Mario Kart for Wii has just been released in Australia. As if there wasn’t enough reason to do so already, I guess it’s time to buy a Wii.
(image from IconFactory)
About, Away, Stuff online
In my seemingly never-ending quest to get my site back up and running, I have finally uploaded and sorted three of the five sections of the site.
About: Information about me, and information about the site. I think I’ll jazz it up a little eventually, but what’s there now is basically what would be on my Wikipedia page were I famous.
Away: Whilst overseas in 2006, I kept a video diary called Harrison’s Away. You can watch all 15 episodes from here. The plan is to eventually re-upload the episodes in a much higher quality [the quality at the moment is fairly poor due to the bandwidth I had available to me whilst travelling]
Stuff: This is my depository for bits and pieces I’ve made or find interesting or what have you. Essentially, it’s the online equivalent of the cupboard in your house where you’ll find Trouble, Sorry! and Scattergories.
I’ve decided the original way I was going to present my folio online was not good enough, and have gone back to the drawing board to rejigger until I’m happy with it. The forhire section will be updated when the folio comes online.
on smurf height
Jeff Rubin ponders Smurf height:
I was researching the average height of a Smurf for an article and learned that Smurfs are often described as, “three apples tall.”…
That means Smurfs are about a foot tall. That’s up to your knees! I’ve always imagined Smurfs as, at most, one apple tall. Plus, then how do they live inside mushrooms?
(via Kottke)
iTunes track info on your desktop
An applescript to show what’s playing in iTunes on your desktop using GeekTool
dinner in the sky
“Dinner in the Sky is hosted at a table suspended at a height of 50 metres, by a team of professionals.” (via SimpleBits)
talk to the newsroom
Khoi Vin, Design Director of nytimes.com and author of the excellent Subtraction.com is answering readers’ questions this week as part of the New York Times “Talk to the Newsroom” series.
anatomy of an ikea product
Daniel Terdiman on CNet’s Crave blog speaks to Ikea about their design process.
melbourne design market
The Melbourne Design Market is taking place in Fed Square on Sunday 20th July, and they are looking for stallholders.
New Design, New Server, New Software
It’s been a long time coming, but andrew.harrison.org is back online!
Since the old site was taken down in October 2006, there’s been a complete overhaul of the site design. You can view the old site design, as well as the 14 (fourteen!) concept designs that I made over an 18 month period in the folio section of the site.
I’ve also moved to a new server, hosted by the good people at Lynxas and set up a brand new installation of Wordpress (version 2.5, which I’m pleased to say installed perfectly on the server without one iota of hiccup) complete with MarkDown and a few other bits and bobs to run the whole show.
I’m not quite done tinkering, so things might change. Have a look around in the mean time, and drop me a line by email if you have suggestions or questions.
Update: Because the site is hosted on Windows IIS, the mod_rewrite feature of Wordpress [the thinger that gives you pretty URLs like /category/postname instead of ?p=123] doesn’t work properly. I’ve used the hack-ish technique described at Einar Egilsson’s Site to get it working for the moment, I’m going to try and futz around with it a bit more to get it better.