Shane Life

• A non-AT&T iPhone
• A network-based iTunes TV subscription model
• Steve Jobs presenting as an Avatar
• Jobs not using the word “magical” a dozen times
• A new MacBook
• Improvements to Mail and iCal in OS X.
• Something a little more than what looked like an iPhone XL

I’m not trying to be a hater here. The Apple iPad is a gorgeous device. It really is. The New York Times application looks phenomenal…it will make reading on-screen a great experience, but that’s nothing new…the Kindle already did that.

I guess I just expected a little more out of this announcement. Honestly, it’s not even Apple’s fault. Outside of the invitation, Apple had not released a single piece of information about the iPad…that was all through speculation and the rumor mill on the internet. Even speculation on the name was enough to get Gruber and the other Mac-olytes in a tizzy. The hype was out of control for this device and I shouldn’t have bought into it so much, but I did. I held out hope that I’d be able to purchase an iPhone for Sprint. Yeah…not so much.

Don’t get me wrong…if someone gave me one of these, I’d take it. But I was just hoping for something a little more. Especially that first one.

That would have been AWESOME.

I learned about Silicon Prairie News last year when I attended Big Omaha, a one-day conference devoted to “forward-thinking creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators” (more on my trip to Big Omaha). You may remember me mentioning Silicon Prairie News earlier in the year they featured me and this blog in their 5 in 5 series.

Dusty Davidson and Jeff Slobotski have cultivated a phenomenal startup culture in Omaha and with the help of writer Danny Schreiber, they’re showing the nation that Omaha and the rest the Midwest is capable of some really great stuff.

Today, they launched the new version of their site and it’s really great. Congratulations to SPN and everyone involved in the new site for the great work. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

…more on the launch of SPN 2.0 from the site itself

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using an iPhone.

Anyone who knows me understands what a big deal this has been. I had access to an iPhone through work for my social initiatives that I was driving during the Cerner Health Conference (which were featured on KCTV5). I was controlling 4 Twitter accounts, a blog, a Flickr account and organizing a group of great volunteers.

My iPhone experience was predictably awesome. I spent about an hour getting used to it, downloading the apps I needed and then spending the money to download the apps I wanted.

There’s a ton to love about it.

The App Store

The user interface is slick and intuitive, but the biggest win for the iPhone is the iTunes store, which now boasts over 75,000 applications ranging from games to task managers to weather to about 500 applications for Twitter (not exaggerating). I downloaded several free apps and then with some Paypal money I had laying around (is that what cyber-money does?), I purchased a few other apps that I had either heard recommended or thought were interesting. Apple approves (or rejects) every application that is submitted and that is helpful in separating horribly designed apps (I’m looking at you, BlackBerry developers) from the pack.

One device for everything

I can’t tell you how much I hate filling my pockets with extra crap. I carry an iPod and my BlackBerry. While my Curve has the ability to handle music, the user experience of playing any sort of media takes far too many clicks and trackball movements. Imagine the difference between using a mouse with a scroll wheel to navigate web pages vs. navigating with arrows and keystrokes. It works, it’s just not very efficient.

It just…works

Everything about the iPhone is intuitive. From the gestures to the navigation…it takes about 10 seconds to get used to it and then you are multi-touching with relative ease.

Mobile browsing has no equal

Mobile Safari, the iPhone’s built in browser is so far past every other mobile browser on the market that it is almost unfair. And don’t even bring up your Opera Mini garbage. That doesn’t play here. I’ve used both. The iPhone browser is better in every possible way. It’s fast and awesome. It’s easy to switch from landscape to portrait browsing (just turn the phone). And you can make any of your favorite pages launchable like an app (which I did for Google Reader and Google Talk, since they don’t have apps).

BUT. There’s also stuff that kinda sucks.

Push Gmail is NOT Exchange

I don’t know if this is really Apple’s problem, but I really don’t like how Google decided to use the Microsoft Exchange settings to enable push Gmail. For people like me who want to have both Exchange email for work and Gmail email for home, I would need multiple Exchange accounts, which is not allowed. I ended up leaving Gmail as an IMAP account and using the Exchange account for my work. It made the most sense to me.

The network…UGGGHHHH

Much has been said about the complete suckage that is AT&T’s network. Not only are their costs ridonkulous, but they have completely under-delivered with nearly everything that they promised. MMS rollout took forever. People still can’t tether their iPhones to their computers. All these things are technologies that have been around FOREVER on other networks. Additionally, the 3G network doesn’t feel any faster than the Edge network and there are so many dead spots that you can never count on a consistent connection if you’re driving around.

Multiple calendars

I really like that the Palm Pre offers multiple calendars. With the iPhone, you only get one. If you want to check your Google calendar, you’ve got to go to the Google calendar mobile site (which is a nice experience in Mobile Safari, but still). I don’t get much use out of a calendar that doesn’t show me everything that is going on on all my calendars. I have multiple points of entry. This is one major reason why my next phone will likely be a Pre. (Well, that and I’m a loyal Sprint customer…)

What’s next

I’ve got a couple weeks before I can replace my BlackBerry. I’ve got my eye on the Pre, but the HTC Hero is on my radar as well. Unfortunately, I’ve likely ruined any semblance of a chance that they had at being happy with any non-iPhone device, but we’ll give someone a shot. It has to be a Sprint device for the time being.

Because I’m loyal to my local telecom like that…

But man…do I ever wish that Sprint had taken the opportunity to get the iPhone back when it had the chance.

This week, Facebook launched a new feature of status updates that allowed you to tag your friends in your posts.

This is a completely sweet and awesome development from the Facebook team in their efforts to move into the more Twitter-esque world of real-time. Twitter has a mentions feature that was pretty much built by the community (an @ symbol followed by the person’s username). Facebook has taken this idea and made it about a hundred times better.

Now, granted, this type of feature would not work on a lightweight, character-limited platform like Twitter, but for Facebook, it makes tons of sense. Their platform is pretty heavy and has the AJAX-ian search list built in already for standard search…it makes sense for them to implement it here.

As a marketer, I aspire to see lots of mentions for my corporation in status updates, although as a traditional B2B enterprise, it may take a while. Even so, I’m excited to see the development at Facebook and am looking forward to further enhancements to their platform.

Next time you log into Facebook, give the feature a try. I’ll even get you started:

I’m currently reading all about Facebook’s new mentions feature on @Shane Adams’ blog.

I’ve always said, the value of Facebook and Twitter is dependent upon the people you follow (or are friends with). If you follow or are friends with people that suck- your experience with either of these websites will suck.

- Ramsey Mohsen, “Facebook sucks if your friends suck.” [emphasis mine]

This is such a true statement about these new mediums where people are making connections (and re-connections) like Facebook and Twitter. Ramsey’s post was written as a  response to a column on MSN titled “Is Facebook past its prime?” He covers the uniqueness of each person’s individual experience and how each place really is what you make of it (or your friends make of it).

Ramsey’s response to the article is thoughtful and insightful and I recommend you go and read it. (follow Ramsey on Twitter)

Also, you can follow me on Twitter.

Today, I was really fortunate to go to the Big Omaha conference that was put on by Silicon Prairie News. As soon as I heard about it, I started lobbying my manager to send me, so I could listen to the likes of Jason Fried from 37signals, Matt Mullenweg from Automattic (the creators of WordPress), Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless and the king of internet wine shows, Gary Vaynerchuk.

It was a terrific day as Jason Fried kicked us off and talked about what became a common theme for the day, failure. While there were others who thought that failure was a good thing, Fried felt similarly to the way I did:

When did “fail early and often” become cool? - Jason Fried

What followed after Fried was a Yahoo guy a presentation about Girls in Tech and Micah Baldwin, who talked at length about failure. We headed over to lunch across the street where Ramsey, Whitney and I spent time talking with the very visionary web team at the University of Nebraska, who are really doing some interesting things with their web initiatives.

After lunch is when Big Omaha really came alive. Unfortunately, Matt Mullenweg was not able to make it because of a conflict, but we were very fortunate to have a lively panel with Fried, Vaynerchuk, Baldwin and Kalmikoff. It was all Q&A based and was a lot of fun to see these thought-leaders and visionaries on the web talking and bantering back and forth. Of particular note was their rant on the higher education system, which is a little too colorful for this blog.

That was followed up with one of the most insightful and thoughtful talks of the day by Kalmikoff, where he talked about transparency and accessibility and what they mean to Threadless as a company and as a community. His slides included a great large/medium/small fanged Pac-Man illustration as well as great insight like:

“Spend time with your community.” and “Listen. Review. Respond. Act.“

I got the opportunity to spend some time talking to Kalmikoff after the talk and I really found him to be approachable and friendly as I asked him such lame questions as “How do you apply your community models to a B2B environment?”

Kalmikoff was followed by Ben Rattray of Change.org who gave a well-polished (albeit a little forgettable) presentation. I couldn’t help but think that Rattray was actually Chris Pine from the new Star Trek movie (mixed with a little Jake Gyllenhaal). You decide:

There was a local entrepreneurial panel that highlighted some of the really cool projects that are going on in Omaha, including the concert hall/non-profit 2-screen theater that they’ve got, which is very cool.

The day was closed out with a great keynote (so to speak) with Gary Vaynerchuk. Now, say what you will about Gary, you can’t ever say he’s not genuine. The guy knows who he is, knows what he loves, and isn’t afraid to tell you what’s what. Instead of doing his typical talk, he realized that much of the crowd had heard him speak before, so after a short 7-minutes, he went into an open Q&A session.

I decided that I should take a crack at asking a question. Much of what I found to be challenging about ideas presented at Big Omaha was that much of it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to apply to the corporate B2B world. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but I have a hard time taking Gary’s advice of “you can’t change them, just quit”, very lightly because I was unemployed for 3 months.

But getting to interact with Gary during the Q&A session (as well as briefly after it was over) was a lot of fun. Plus, I even got a Thunder Show wrist band!

Big Omaha was an extremely well-organized conference for its initial outing. Even down to the smallest of details. The folks at BrightMix put together a heckuva day that made the 3-hour northward trek completely worth the price of admission (a steal at $200). Many thanks to Jeff and Dusty (and all their great volunteers) for working so hard to hold such a great event. You can find my pics (and others, tagged with ‘BigOmaha’) on Flickr.

There were these pictures circulating on Flickr a couple years back and I always intended to take a picture of the contents of my laptop bag, but it just wasn’t that interesting. It’s still not that interesting, but I at least have enough stuff to photograph these days. So here’s what’s in my bag (if you can’t tell from the picture, from top left):

• iPod nano (nanomack) and headphones
• Cerner-issue Mead notebook and Moleskine (plain)
• Business cards (mine and people I’ve met with recently)
• Keys
• Pens and pencils (Uniball signo 207 in black, blue, red, Pentel 0.7mm lead mechanical pencil)
• Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 (no dongle required, carrying case not shown)
• BlackBerry 8330 Curve (for now)
• Eyeglass cleaner
• USB mini-to-USB cable
• Wallet

So that’s that. I carry all of it in a Case Logic Canvas Messenger Bag, which I really like. It’s comfortable and stylish and holds just the right amount of crap. I have a place for everything…not a perfect place, but good enough for my company-issued Dell D630.

People often aske me why I chose to get a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone. The reason is simple: I have many close friends who work for my local wireless company and through an excellent employee plan, I pay very little for the service. Plus, I would feel like I was betraying them and indirectly putting them out of a job if I were to jump ship. Sprint doesn’t need yet another person defection to another wireless carrier.

Frankly, I’d love to have an iPhone, but for the time being, I rock a Red BlackBerry Curve. Up until about a week ago, it worked pretty well. Then the delays started. I began to realize that e-mails were not being delivered to my phone in a timely manner if at all. Since the e-mail functionality is one of the key reasons to own a BlackBerry, I found this to be a bag full of FAIL.

I had heard that RIM rolled out a change to the BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) and that if you deleted your e-mail account from your phone, then set it up again.

EXCEPT…

See, my e-mail that is delivered to my BlackBerry (not my work e-mail, but my main personal/freelance account) is hosted by Google using their Apps for Domains. This is a common things these days. Even my mother-in-law’s school district is using it.

RIM doesn’t deal with this well.

Set up is supposed to be easy for e-mail addresses and I imagine that it is for most accounts. Unfortunately, even though my device indicated that my e-mail setup was successful, I still had issues. E-mail wasn’t delivered or was severely delayed. After trying for hours to figure it out, I finally stumbled upon a forum post that gave me the solution.

You have to access the advanced settings in e-mail setup, but there’s no documented way to do that and the settings are unavailable once an e-mail address has been set up.

Where do I access the advanced settings?

The problem here is that the IMAP settings are non-standard for Google for Domains. You still use imap.gmail.com as you usually do for Gmail accounts, but because your username is different, it doesn’t work.

The fix

In order to access the advanced settings when you set up your e-mail account, you have to leave your password blank. This is nowhere in the setup documentation. This is a huge FAIL. What kind of usability is that? It’s no wonder that people are defecting left and right from RIM devices to iPhones and other smart phones (can’t wait for the Palm Pre, by the way). Not only does their documentation suck big time but their devices could be a lot better.

Now that it’s working again, I can get back to tweeting about something else. But RIM should know…it’s on THIN ICE with me.

For a long time I’ve been using Feedburner to track my RSS readers. It gives a little more information than is built into WordPress and has worked great up to this point. Unfortunately, when Google purchased the property a while back, they decided that it needed to change. They didn’t say when the change would come, just that it would.

Well, that change is now.

It would be freaking super if I understood the rhyme or reason behind it or how to fix it, but I don’t. All I know is that my feed is jacked up right now and I’m trying to fix it. I hope this doesn’t cause too many problems. I may end up abandoning Feedburner altogether and just returning to the standard WordPress feed.

We will see. I’m just giving you a heads up.