I was must say I was pretty bummed at the thought of using my 4 year old nano just to exercise at the local track, knowing my 3 month old iPhone 3G would  be in my pocket. That’s tough for a techie like me. And, my wife wasn’t too happy with my displeasure either. So I did what any carefree gadget junky would do, I used this as an excuse to buy an iPhone 3GS.

So a 4 hour wait inline at the Lenox Apple store, turned wife shopping spree at the mall, produced the wholey grail of phones iPhones, the 3GS. I’m not going to review the new iPhone 3GS in this post, but I will say there’s huge difference from 3G to 3GS just in performance. I’m truly loving the purchase. I was also able to get the subsidized pricing by upgrading my teenager’s line, which in turn meant he was getting my old 3G (lucky kid).

After leaving the Lenox Apple store, taking a left in the mall will put you right in front of the Nike store. How convenient, I needed to grab a pair of Nike + compatible shoes. BTW, the Apple/Nike relationship is obvious as the Nike store was loaded with iMacs, very hip. So I grabbed a pair of Nike Air Pegasus+ thinking I was just about ready to hit the track.

The following day included a stop at my local Best Buy to find a wireless headphone solution. With the iPhone OS 3.0 even my now old 3G supported A2DP (bluetooth) wireless audio, and what better way to workout then to do it wirelessly, right? So I found the MOTOROKR S9 HD which also included a built-in microphone so it could answer calls too. Who wants to miss that important call while working out? A short 2 hour charge and simple pairing of the devices and the my ears were full of wireless HD goodness. Or, so I thought…

Day 1 on the track:

With my Nike + shoes on, my wireless headphones roaring and my iPhone 3GS  ready to hub my digital workout, I hit the track. I set up my workout on the Nike + software and hit start. Well, it wasn’t more than 100 feet and my headphones started dropping audio, which was surprising after they worked so well at home. After repositioning my iPhone (to my hand) I thought all was well. But then I noticed my Nike + was saying I was walking a 9 min mile pace, then a 30 min pace, something was wrong. I turned my attention to calibrating the Nike+ as I could deal with the occasional audio drops. This turned into my quest for the remainder of my walk, I spent at least 3 miles trying to get the Nike+ to register something close to what I was actually walking. At the end of my walk it dawned on me, that the Nike + is probably using some form of bluetooth technology and that could explain the problems with the MOTOROKR S9-HD (interference). So back to Best Buy went the MOTOs for a refund. They may work fine without the Nike + but I bought them specifically to use with it.

Day 2 on the track:

With my handy Apple earbuds in place, I set out for a fresh start to remedy my miserable first impression of the Nike +. I was certain my problems were with the MOTO. After walking my first half mile, I checked in with my Nike + only to be shocked, it said I had walked an entire mile. This can’t be. So I decided to once again attempt to calibrate the system. One half mile, no luck. Another half mile, with no luck. I was beginning to doubt myself thinking the new track I was walking on was mysteriously supersized. So I switched over to a great iPhone app called MotionX GPS Lite (iTunes Link). This app uses the GPS in the phone to do many things, including measuring the distance you are traveling. So after another half mile, I started thinking the plus in Nike + name is meant for mystery distance they add to your workout for you. Now I’m getting frustrated.

Day 3 on the track:

So I’m beginning to think I just needed to calibrate my Nike + in the workout mode. The system will let you calibrate your device after you have worked out. So I figured I would start with a full mile, maybe the longer distance would help. As I completed one mile, naturally my Nike + tells me it was 2.08 miles I scroll the calibration to the lowest amount it would allow, 1.37 miles. I’m not sure why they limit it, but apparently Apple/Nike must think their device can’t be that far off. Ha! So with a new calibration set, I set off for another mile in workout mode, certainly this will be closer to the actual distance, wrong. Once again the Nike + is completely nuts, even Lance Armstrong chimed in on my headphones and congratulated me on new “best mile” 9’05″. Anyone who knows me and my size knows I can’t run a 9 min mile, never mind the fact that I’m walking.

At this point I’m about to give up on the Nike + iPod. I have another sensor that I’m going to try next time. Maybe that will be the winner. As for now, I have spent 3 days trying to log over 9 miles of walking with nothing to show for it. Well I’m sure my waste line will show improvement but my Nikeplus.com account sits dormant waiting for me to log some real data. I did however link my Nikeplus.com account my Twitter and Facebook, so when/if I get this working, my social network isbound to know.

UPDATE: Day 4 –  I reached Nike + nirvana, seems my new sensor works great. I put up a nice 2 mile walk this morning. Now if only there were some compatible wireless headphones. Here’s my chart:

Ideas, solutions, questions? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.

Anyway, I was part of the project and as you can tell, I’m really thrilled with the outcome. My role included launching a CMS, creating/packaging the video content and a handful of HTML. I’m also a participant in the company blog. Feel free to drop by and participate in our social media marketing conversations. And, congratulations to the rest of the team who had their hands in this project. Great Job!

Palringo for the iPhone supports AOL’s AIM, iChat, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Gadu Gadu, ICQ, Jabber and Windows Live Messenger. Setup requires registration and I’m guessing that is in order to support photo messaging. Oh, I didn’t mention that yet? You can send photos from our albums or directly from the camera. Palringo saves the photo on their servers and send a link to your recipient. 

Palringo is FREE and available via this iTunes Link.

The Facebook application is missing Wall posts. You will have to use the web interface for that. Also the photo integration won’t allow you to select an existing photo from your album. You are limited to  a realtime photo which is seldom the case for me. Twice now Facebook has rebooted my iPhone. Not nice!

Twitterrific has some photo orientation problems. I send a note to Iconfactory and this was their response: 

Some images uploaded to TwitPic are not rotated correctly. Again, this is a bug with the EXIF data that Apple is putting into the JPEG image. We are working on a workaround now, but didn’t have it ready in time for the launch. We’ve also heard from TwitPic that they are working on some AJAX code that will rotate the images directly in the browser, so that may help in the short term.

A totally useless useful application is PhoneSaber. I can see this coming in handy during boring meetings. Basically your phone becomes a Light Saber from Star Wars making the all familiar sound with each flip of your hand. Just don’t let go of your iPhone. I’m reminded of the Wii remote warnings and safety straps. I wonder when the first iPhone accident will be chalked up to PhoneSaber. –>iTunes Link

I still can’t stop raving over Shazam (audible song identification, see prior post). Here’s a few screen shots to follow up with. 

I finally got MobileMe working. Now my Work and Personal calendars are displayed nicely on my iPhone while maintaining their independence on respective systems. Contacts are also manage much the same way. Here’s a couple of shots:

Screenshots on the iPhone? How you might ask? Well, it’s easy, just press the Home button and the Power button at the same time. Your screen will blink and the shot will be added to your Camera Roll.

Registration Servers - Much like launch day last year, I’m hearing that AT&T is having problems again with their registration servers. This can put a crimp in anyone trying to upgrade to 2.0 or activating a new 3G phone. Be patient, it’s worth the wait. Guess I’m lucky to have completed my upgrade before the rush…

Did you get a 3G, have you upgraded to 2.0? Leave a comment with you thoughts!

First off, I have never been found of Microsoft, aside from Xbox 360, but I will say Exchange on the iPhone is incredible. Within minutes of setting up my account, I already had a meeting request pop-up and accepted. 

Passwords across the board, now show you the last character typed. This is handy for me as I’m a fan of long pass phrases. 

Shazam is one of the most impressive free apps. Have you ever wonder what song was playing on the radio? With Shazam you just let your iPhone listen and within moments it will return Album, Artist, Song Title and more. In my test it identified 10 for 10 songs. 3 on the home stereo, 3 in the car, 1 from another iPhone and 3 from MacBook speakers. –>iTunes link

Super Monkey Ball, Texas Hold’em and Ms. Pacman are all great. 

Don’t waste your money on Crazy Eye. It might be worth $0.25 akin to a prize in a gumball machine. Who knows maybe it will get some play in a meeting or two at work. 

Pandora on the iPhone is another godsend. Not usable on Edge but for you soon to be 3G’ers I think you could augment your playlist and FM tuning durring rush hour. –>iTunes Link

MobileMe has been a PITA for me today. But, on my iPhone it worked as expected. My mail account started pushing automatically, and turning on Calendar and Contacts with the flip of a switch was as simple as Steve Jobs wardrobe. The calendar app does a great job keeping my personal and business schedule separately-together. 

For guitar players like me, GuitarToolkit is a must have. Tones, Tuner, Metronome and a Chord chart round it out. I spent much more on my Sabine digital tuner. –>iTunes Link

Facebook and Twitterrific take the cake in the social networking arena. Twitterrific has a great UI, a built-in browser and Camera to TwitPic integration. –>iTunes Link – Facebook’s application also brings photos and the recently popular Facebook chat to the iphone. As expected they too have an excellent UX. –>iTunes Link

NetNewsWire is one of my favorite OS X apps and I was excited to see it in the AppStore. After a quick test drive though, I must say their iPhone web app (NewsGator) seems better and faster. I plan to give it more time but I very well might stick with NewsGator/Safari. 

BUGS? As expected with a product introduction there’s bound to be glitches and bugs (MobileMe?). I have had a handful of crashes and unexpected data errors in the “free” apps. I haven’t had a single problem with a premium app (not counting MobileMe). I expect these bugs to be worked out in due time. 

Honestly I feel like I have only scratched the surface here. So sound off in the comments and share your thoughts on the new apps for iPhone 2.0!

Details include:

Please take a moment and answer the following questions related to your Twitter preferences.

As I mentioned before, I will post the results here on http://michaelstrutton.com

 

Oh, and I apologize for anyone coming to my blog in the last 24 hours and getting redirected to login at my companies Google Apps account… Whoops ;-) 

{UPDATE}

Oops 101. I should have known better. This post was embedding an iframe from a google forms spreadsheet. I thought it was publicly available. I even tested it on other browsers, thinking I wasn’t logged into to GDocs.

My plan was to ask the following fill in the blank survey questions.
Brightkite location “check in” in Twitter are ______ .
Photos posted to Twitter are _______.
New blog entries posted to Twitter are _____.

I’ll get back to you with my next attempt.

When I caught wind that Dan would be stopping by to interview Reggie, I grabbed my video camera in hopes to archive the event for Vitrue. More on that later… Dan covers many topics with Reggie including his background, Vitrue’s platform and the importance of brand safety.

Dan also recently interviewed Paul Stamatiou whom I worked with at Skribit.com, the creation of Atlanta’s first Startup Weekend.

Nice work. Keep it up Dan!

Brightkite is location based social networking tool. It allows you to “check in” to a location/address, post a comment or photo (tied to that location), and connect with others nearby. If you enable Twitter integration each event is automatically posted to Twitter. Example:

Brightkite: check in @ work
Twitter: I’m at 101 Marietta St NW, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA (101 Marietta St Nw, Atlanta, GA, 30303, US) – http://bkite.com/001vF

Ok, I gotta admit the Google maps is kinda cool. But what’s with listing the address twice? Honestly is the address relevant to anyone who may be reading my Twitter? In my example above I used a “Placemark” (bookmark) called “work”. My Twitter post should simply be “I’m at work <map link>.” If I check in to another address without a placemark, it should just show “I’m at city/state + map link.” I’ve heard a few grumbles from my twittpeeps about the uselessness of the check in data in Twitter, and formated the way it is, I tend to agree. 

In addition to improving the check in details, Brightkite should allow you to combine a message with a location. Such as “@work looking for lunch.” This can help cut down on the Twittlitter.

For the record you can achieve an abbreviated post (city/state) if you raise your privacy preferences. But then you lose the ability to show everyone your specific location and this doesn’t address the lack of placemark integration with Twitter.  

OK, enough of the shortcomings, let’s talk about a useful Brightkite/Twitter feature, Photo uploads.  With my registration came a private email address to send photos. Emailed pictures are placed in my Brightkite profile, as well as post to my Twitter stream. The subject line of the email becomes the Twitter message. The message text and link are separated with a hyphen. The other day I attempted to photo stream my commute home and subsequent trip to the store. You can see the log in my Brightkite profile. In addition this made for mildly entertaining Twitter story that looked like this:

• Driving home – CNN – - Photo: http://bkite.com/001nO
• I’m at Douglasville, GA 30134, USA (Douglasville, GA, 30134, US) – http://bkite.com/001oa
• Driving – Mall – Photo: http://bkite.com/001on
• Truck almost ran me off rd. – Photo: http://bkite.com/001ou
• I’m at Villa Rica, GA 30180, USA (Villa Rica, GA, 30180, US) – http://bkite.com/001ox
• Getting off highway. Sunset. – Photo: http://bkite.com/001oB
• My ‘hood – Photo: http://bkite.com/001oD
• Home now. Hope u enjoyed my ride. – Photo: http://bkite.com/001oH
• Back on the rd. again need dinner & groceries.
• Guess what took this pic? – Photo: http://bkite.com/001oU
• Here now – Photo: http://bkite.com/001oY
• My sub under construction – Photo: http://bkite.com/001p5
• Publix makes the best subs in my town – Photo: http://bkite.com/001pa
• My BP is a little high. Stress. – Photo: http://bkite.com/001pr

I also love the Find Your Friends feature. Simply input your Twitter account and it searches the account for friends. 

Other notes about Brightkite:

Obvioulsy the Google maps integration is key for location based social networking. See: My past locations on Google Maps, My friends on Google Maps, they should do the same for the photos.

For you iPhone users and anyone who may prefer email over SMS… It’s not obviously documented but you can update Brightkite via email. Just use the same private address assigned for photo uploads. Put your SMS commands into the subject line. This is handy for me, as I do not have unlimited SMS but do have unlimited internet/email.

I think the future looks bright for Brightkite, and I’m looking forward to seeing integration with triangulation and GPS.  I also understand they are developing a native iPhone application too. 

Right now Brightkite is an invitation only Beta. If you would like an invite, leave a comment on this page. I have a few available. 

I’m not a new comer to the blogosphere or social media. My past includes authoring to the now vanished EarthLink Protection blog (2005), and I recently helped cofound Skribit, Inc., a community engagement tool for blogger. In recent months, I helped setup my Wife’s company blog. Actually 10+ years ago (1998 to be exact) I started my first “web log”. Yeah, I’m no Dave Winer, but I did maintain a webpage that logged the pregnancy and arrival of my first child Cameron.

Today I work for a video-centric social media company called Vitrue, (for the record: the views and opinions on this site are my own and not those of my employer). I have 12+ years working with software, web, and internet technologies and there’s bound to be some overlap between my blog and career. But if you are interested in Vitrue’s position check our their blog.

What to expect from me? Well that’s going to evolve over time. My passions include technology, gadgets, anything Apple, UGC video (YouTube & .Mac Gallery), and music (guitar). I’m not an avid gamer, but own the major consoles, RockBand is hot right now. I wired my home with gigabit ether to stream video to 5+ set-top boxes, audio too. I setup a homegrown NAS with 3+TB of storage. I use Macs, and love my iPhone. Given my recent employment, I imagine I will be spending more time in the social side of the net, videos in particular. In the end, I hope this blog will engage a readership, promote healthy conversations and impress some friends and family.

In addition to the personal interest above… I have two boys Cameron and Ryan, a beautiful wife Michelle, and her two kids Nick and Kara. We’re a modern day Brady Bunch minus Alice, although Michelle really wants to hire Alice. This summer we will celebrate our 2nd anniversary. My wife created this family web site with iWeb and a .Mac account (I think it’s a little outdated).

So if you made it this far, drop me a comment and say so. If nothing else say hello. Until next time…