I am a believer that basic social needs change very slowly, if at all, over time.  What does change is the way individuals, groups, families and society in general fulfill their needs and the options that technology presents.  Given this thesis, it is interesting to take some social networking learnings from an earlier mass explosion in social networking: the citizen band radio.  

During the late '70s through the '80s, it was cool to have a CB radio in your car.  These radios used to be the exclusive domain of the truck driver social network.  They were used to find the best food, gas, and probably companionship on the road.  They were also used to avoid speed traps.   The public awareness of this social network took a giant leap with the popular movie “Smokey and the Bandit.” 

The CB social network crossed the chasm from truck drivers to millions of personal automobiles. Semingly overnight, people all over the country were imitating the twang of southern trucker accents --  “That’s a 10-4, Good Buddy?” 

The CB channel was similar to the chat room of our Internet era.  Your participation in that channel with that particular set of people lasted as long as everyone was within about 5 miles of each other.  Users made up anonymous handles – similar to the IM and chat names.   My handle was “The Referee,” a reference to my hockey playing and amateur referee profession of the time.

The problem was finding someone a second time.  Unless you shared some personal information (which carried the same perils as today), your interaction on CB were quick and fanciful.   

“Hey, good buddy, what’s the 10-20 on Smokey?”  

Truck drivers must have been both annoyed and humored at Wall Street brokers imitating them in their BMWs.

So why did it die out and is there a lesson for today’s social networks?  That discussion will be in my next blog entry.

Jeff Pulver gives a clue to my next entry in his blog:

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/006721.html

During the cruise we experienced three hurricanes, which caused many deviations from our itinerary and extended our stay at sea by 4 days.  Our only reliable connection to change our flights home (from Florida to New York ) were half a dozen low-speed Internet terminals that used a satellite link.  With over 1000 passengers, the waiting time to use the Internet was long and tempers were short.  I remember when we were off the coast of Florida we went to the side of the ship that was closer to land and tried to get a cellular signal to call our travel agent.  It was a comical sight.  I was with about 200 other passengers, most extending their arms an extra two feet towards land, as though that would make the signal just strong enough! 

 Picture taken with AT&T BlackJack and transmitted via MMS from the ship

Another blog with a shout out to Carnival Cruise Lines and their wireless service:

http://solokay.blogspot.com/2006/07/carnival-cruise-fun-ships-offer.html

iPhone -- First Days, First Reactions: The Good, Bad and Ugly!

I have been using my iPhone as my main mobile device for the last 5 days.  I did this by having my main mobile number forwarded to my iPhone.  During this time, I used the phone at "work," at “play” and while traveling to Florida.  Here are my initial findings:

  First, the Sexy non-phone aspects: 

+++++++++++++The Pluses+++++++++++++ 

If you want to attract a crowd – just whip out your iPhone.  I have gotten lots of  “oohs, aahs, wows and omgs.”  It enhances your sense of self-worth and may even make you more sexy. (Although you have to read my wife’s blog to find that out!) 

I downloaded the movie “Miracle” to watch on a plane.  I chose this movie because I can watch it a hundred times and not got bored.  It is a classic – almost as good as “lap Shot”.  (But that’s the subject of another blog)

Watching movies on the iPhone is spectacular.  It is a very good (not great) personal movie player.  The movie player would be better with a few more DVD-like controls such as slow-forward and back, frame-by-frame, etc.  You can slide the time forward and back, but not with much precision. 

The Safari Web browser works well once you get the hang of it.  The Edge network is okay, not great.  3G would be much better, probably at the cost of battery life.

The photo viewer with position sensing is a real “showy” feature.  The ability to flip through an album on the iPhone, as you would a real album, is nice.

The music player is a latest-generation iPod.  I really like the carousel album selector.

The So-So features:

 The e-mail function is cool.  It would be cooler with a Blackberry client or activesync for corporate e-mail.

The camera is okay, but not the best feature.

   Google Maps gets a so-so from me because it lacks the killer feature: GPS. 

 It does however make for a great game to kill time.  Try this: Without typing in the address, try to tap into each Major League stadium and check out if there is a game!  You get an extra point if you can tell who is playing, and 10 points for the score!

Keyboard:

I have to admit that it is better than I expected, but nowhere near that of a real keyboard.  I am able to type using one finger (my pinky).  My letter accuracy is about 70%.  If I try the normal two-thumb method that I have used on Blackberrys and Blackjacks, my accuracy falls to near 0%.  So, I would say that the keyboard is slightly better than triple-tapping phone keys, and far less than a real keyboard.

 --------Some Negatives:------------

 The headset plug:

I was eager to watch a movie on my recent plane trip using my noise-cancelling headset.  I plug them into the iPhone and they canceled out ... everything.  After a moment, I figured out that the plug on the supplied iPhone headset is not standard.  I am sure there will be many adapters available.  This served as an annoyance on my first movie experience. 

 The phone features:

The phone features, surprisingly (or perhaps not), are the least-impressive features of the iPhone.  The voice quality seems very suspect.  People I called really noticed a reduction in voice quality.  Several relatives were not able to recognize my voice!  To verify that this was not the network, I called them back with my AT&T Blackjack, and there was no problem.

I still have not figured out how to download ringtones. 

Where is the MMS?

I sent an MMS message from a VZW phone.  The message arrived as an SMS that instructs me to go to a website (www.viewmymessage.com) with a specific login and password to view the multimedia message.  This is a great solution for 1997, not 2007, and certainly not on the most advanced piece of mobile gear ever produced!!

 Interestingly, MMS messages I sent  from AT&T phones never arrived on the device.

 It appears to me that the phone features were given low priorty,

 Battery Life: 

The battery life – as I predicted – seems to be an issue.  I used the iPhone to watch my movie for about 105 minutes, made 34 minutes of calls, browsed the Internet for 57 minutes, listened to music for 25 minutes,  viewed photos for about 30 minutes and had about 5 hours of standby time.  This started around 7 am. By 6 pm, my iPhone was dead.

I am confident that if all you did on the iPhone was make calls, the battery life would not be an issue.  But if that is all you are going to, why buy an iPhone?

 We will have to see if this a big issue in the market.

 Lastly:  The Nana Test  

As the true test of these features, I gave my iPhone to my 70-something mother.  She was able to use many of these features without issue.  This is the real miracle.  She is not the most technically oriented person.  She has a Web TV from 1997.  The UI was intuitive enough for someone who has trouble mastering her simple Nokia phone.  This is a thumbs-up for the Apple UI engineers.

More on my iPhone trial in a couple of days.

Activation success!  Finally – I got my iPhone activated.  It took a new SIM card, opening an AT&T account for a non-iPhone, then using iTunes to upgrade the account.  To really test out the iPhone, I’ve decided to forward my regular business mobile phone to the iPhone for a week.  I will let you know what I think of the phone next week. 

Speaking of iTunes:  I have to give two big thumbs up to the developers of this amazing application.  I know there have been compatibility issues in the past, but this new version seems totally awesome.  The integration with the iPhone and iStore appears seamless.  The graphical interface is compelling, the navigation is engaging and easy.  The application is fast, the Web integration is great.  Wow, Wow, Wow!  Nice job from the Jobs boys!

Caught in IPhone activation maze! 

So- I got my long awaited Iphone – Nice and shiny, futuristic, almost alien-like

Now all I have to do is activate it, easy ? Well here is the long story (It does not end well)

I want to activate my Iphone on the pay as you go plan, not a monthly subscription.  I take my iphone, plug it into my PC and volia – Itunes starts an activation process. 

 I think, “This is promising, so far so good” 

I had been  told by a “reliable” source that if you enter a bogus SSN (999-99-9999) you will be kicked into a pay as you go plan and then you enter your credit card and all is good to go. 

  I follow that path and after 5 minutes of thinking , Itunes gives me a message that I will receive an email with further instructions.

I check my email, and I have an email from Apple that says …. You guessed it… that I will receive an email with further instructions.

Ten minutes later I get a another email with a 800 number and a 14 digit code.  I call the number and give the guy the code and the fun really begins.

It seems my web account is somehow locked to postpay and he does not have authority to change it.  He is from the Iphone activation company and is the hero in the comedy that is about to insue.

He first assures me that AT&T customer care can make the necessary adjustments and makes a three-way call with a representative.  After explaining my dilemma, the rep asks for my phone number, which , of course I do not have.

  Before I know it , the activation rep and I are on the line with AT&T porting.

As you probably already guessed, Porting is for people transferring their number to AT&T, not for people who do not have an AT&T number and want one.  This flaw in our solution path is quickly realized by all parties .  We are then told that the Pre-Paid department is what we want.

My activation rep and I then call the AT&T pre-paid department.  Heather was very nice in explaining that they have nothing to do with Iphones and that we must call the special Iphone department.

 So- off we go on another call to the Iphone department.  My dilemma is explained to the rather stern representative at the Iphone department and when she learned that I had good credit and thus was post-pay eligible I was told that a pay as you go account was not an option for me.  I asked "Why?"

 I was told that you have to have bad credit to get a pay as you go account. 

 Uh? 

 I asked her if there was anyway they would be willing to accept my good credit money (which I think is worth the same or more than bad credit money) for Iphone usage?  I was told – no!  I asked – would you rather not have me as a customer?  Don’t you want the revenue?  And of course I was told – “Is there anything else I can help you with today, Sir?.....no……thank you for calling AT&T……click”

But- the story does not end there.    The activation rep who has been my guide in this adventure of hitchhiking through the Iphone customer service maze, decided that all of this just did not make sense.  He decided to contact his supervision and explain the situation.  Maybe that would enable me to give AT&T my money.

Another 10 minutes passes and the patient, but now defeated rep told me that the best advice he could get is to go to an  AT&T store and maybe they can help you. 

 I will try that tomorrow.   Do you think it will help?

Mobile Campus –

During my recent lecture at my alma mater I had the opportunity to talk to several of the students about their use of mobile technologies.  Of course – they all have mobile phones with large text messaging plans.   I asked them to rate the importance of various forms of messaging -  IM, email, texting,  voice.

My semi-scientific pool placed text messaging just below email and ahead of voice and IM.  It was not clear where actually talking to someone face to face ranked – but I decided not to ask that question.

Maybe I should text it!

The next big thing they are waiting for -  WIFI campus VOIP phones.   Providing unlimited calling and texting for half (or less…) of what they ( or Mom and Dad) are paying on their mobile phones.

Other college wireless blog info: 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/dartmouth.html