“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that must frighten us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It’s not in just some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Nelson Mandela
Brought to you as a collaboration effort from D. Schwartz and Beewirks (D-Wirks) is Foot On The Gas. If you’re a fan of real hip-hop, i.e. non-industrialized, commercial, auto-tune-ized garbage, this is a must download.
1. Intro
2. Foot On The Gas
3. Make It
4. Power Of Zeus
5. Training Day
6. Getaway (Interlude)
7. Victory Is Mine
8. Pegasus
9. Lucid Dreamer (Ambitions)
10. Goin Thru Hip Hop
11. Outro
Download: D-Wirks - Foot On The Gas
[video]
[video]
[video]
I’ve had these since August, they’re a part of the Winter ‘09 collection, I’ve never worn them. Retail is $590 plus tax, I just want $450.
I had the privelage of downloading the official BlackBerry Twitter application; I went into it with high hopes, maybe that’s why I feel disappointed. I was hoping that they would leverage their push technology, seeing no 3rd party developer had, I was wrong. The app has 5 update intervals that you’re able to choose from, okay, I can live with that. Where I was most disappointed is that it has made my phone freeze 5 times, if you update the timeline, and leave the application, your device is rendered useless in the time frame it takes to refresh. I have a Bold 9700, I’m operating on the latest hardware publicly available, this shouldn’t happen.
Aside from that, visually, the application is decent. I’d rather look at this than ubertwitter or open beak; although I would take tweetgenius or socialscope over it. I will continue using it to put it through it’s places, primarily because it’s a limited release; so I have something others don’t, lol.
[video]
I figure, I’d like to start utilizing my blawg, so why not review the nexus one. I try to be more active on this, I don’t know why I no longer use it. It’s not that I want to; it’s just that my ADD is too bad that I’m not capable of focusing long enough to write an extensive or articulate article.
I’ve had the Nexus One since Friday, with in that time period it has been thrown across my living room, in the garbage, and into the back of my car. I can’t stress how much I wanted to like this device, primarily due to the fact that I’m a T-Mobile user and enjoy having 3G service. Unfortunately, it’s been a match made in hell.
This article isn’t going to become a pissing contest between the Nexus One and the iPhone. I love my iPhone, I’ve loved every BlackBerry device that I have ever owned; I hate my Nexus One with a fucking passion. It’s not worth the space on the table that it takes up.
I believe Boy Genius summarized Google’s mentality toward the operating system in this article, which really portrays why I hate android as much as I do. There is nothing you can personally relate to, or be affectionate about. Everything is systematic, even the design of the interface is mundane.
Hardware
It’s 2010, why the fuck is there a trackball on the device? It takes away from the sex appeal; it is awkward, and unnecessary. I understand that some users may like to navigate with it, it also works as a ‘glowing orb’ for missed alerts; but why not use a track pad? The remainder of the hardware is fantastic and well built, as every HTC device typically is. The battery cover is a royal pain in my ass, I can never remove it, which is a good thing.
Sidebar: The 4 haptic buttons situated on the display are as accurate as a blind man playing darts. I don’t understand why the surface area is so far above the actual icons, I consistently press the menu or back keys when typing.
Display
The display is amazing, this is one of two attributes of the device that I am actually pleased with. It honestly makes me hate looking at my iPhone, seeing I carry both devices. I know there are a lot of reviews examining the colors reproduced inaccurately, reds will occasionally have an orange hue; unfortunately, in this case, I am colorblind so I can’t tell the difference. I was at an AT&T retail location earlier this morning and one of the associates couldn’t put the phone down because he was in awe over the display.
Keyboard
This is my primary gripe; I can’t, for the life of me, adapt to the android keyboard. The key spacing is horrendous and the accuracy is sub-par. I know it’s not my typing abilities that hinders character input, I’ve used this for days as my primary device and on day four I’m typing as inaccurately as I was on day one. It’s sad when a company tries so hard to not replicate iPhone characteristics that it cripples functionality. The iPhone keyboard is flawless; it’s as good as a virtual keyboard can possibly be. On my iPhone I type 120wpm+; on my Nexus One, it’s more like 120epm+ (errors per minute).
There are alternative keyboards that you can install such as Swype and the HTC IME keyboard which is found on the DROID ERIS and the Hero. Both are a great improvement over the standard android variant, although the DROID ERIS is pixilated and the predictive text is lacking. Swpe is fantastic, once you become accustomed to ‘swyping’ rather than typing, you increase speed rapidly. It has a learning curve because when you first use it it’s not as natural as typing, you’ve trained yourself to know where the letters of the keyboard are while typing, while ‘swyping’ you must think of where keys are because it’s not as fluent initially. The predictive text on the Swype keyboard is fantastic, which I can’t say for the standard Android keyboard.
Applications
Wow, I don’t even know where to begin with this. Are there even any worth using? They all retain similar design elements to the factory android counterparts; therefore utilize the same ‘computerized’ appearance. There is nothing that really draws you in to wanting to use third party applications. There is one half-decent twitter application, Seesmic. There is no AIM or multi-protocol instant messaging application that is actually worth using. They all consistently disconnect you without your knowledge, hell, Meebo wasn’t even actually delivering text; all instant messages received were black and just showed the username next to nothing. I rely on AIM daily to contact several people, this is one of the primary reasons I’d never be able to use this device. The only application that I actually like using is Pandora, as I’m using it while typing this.
Google Maps and the browser are the only two applications that I see are actually above and beyond what you would expect. The Google Maps experience is impressive, with all of the functionality they’ve included you really can’t beat it. It trumps any navigation application and is easily a replacement for the desktop variant. The browser, I feel, is better than the iPhone’s. It loads faster and the content is crisper due to the size and resolution of the display. Anything web related I use the Nexus One for as it’s one of the features I actually enjoy.
Google Voice is a highly hyped application for Android, primarily because it offers the greatest integration of any mobile platform; I honestly don’t see what all the commotion is about. Sure, you can use it to handle all outgoing calls; when you have 406 numbers stored for all of your frequent contacts, it’s redundant. I don’t like the Google Voice application itself primarily because it doesn’t apply the filters that you set on the website. It still delivers SMS that I receive from numbers that aren’t contained in the groups I have designated to be delivered to my phone. I can achieve the same results using the Google Voice web application for the iPhone or the Google Voice application on the BlackBerry.
Sidebar: I never give out my actual number; I don’t even know it, for that matter. I rely heavily on Google Voice for all of my communication needs, so it’s not as if I’m an occasional user, all of my mobile activity is routed through Google Voice.
Summary
As hard as I have tried to adapt to this device, and want to use it, I’ve failed. Me actually being capable of using this device on my primary line is the equivalent of a mute singing the national anthem at the Olympics, it’s never going to happen. Maybe it’s because I’ve become accustomed to devices working as I expect them to, or as they should. But the Nexus One does neither; it has fantastic hardware with a dog shit operating system that kills the entire experience.
Would I recommend it? Sure, it’s not for me, but some may enjoy it. If you like having an operating system that most half way decent developers won’t even consider supporting, that’s on you. I prefer having interactive applications that appeal to an end user rather than a server located in a cold, dark room at Google HQ.