I’ve been exploring Google Maps a lot lately, since it is so integrated with my G1 phone, and I created a few map sets, just to record different places (like the fishing spot my cousin took us to last weekend). I was adding some other locations to the map, and decided to share a little personal history of landmark places that have been part of my life. I doubt anyone will find it super-interesting, but it’s pretty fun to put stuff on the map, and a lot of good memories have resurfaced. It’s still a work in progress, but go ahead and take a look, why don’t you?

Barron’s Personal History Landmark Locations

I can’t be the only guy who puts wallpapers of beautiful women on their phone, can I? I actually have a program called Locale on my G1 that will switch out my wallpaper automatically at different time intervals. So I have a bunch of various wallpapers ranging from landscapes to CG abstractions, to sports logos, and yes, women! Izumi Sakai (singer), Yoshino Kimura (actress), and Toda Erika (actress) to be exact. I guess it’s a little unusual to have them on there, but whatever!

I’m so excited to become friends with a beautiful French woman! I don’t know what attracted her to me. Perhaps it was my awesome “Condi Wearing Beer-hat” avatar that did it.

One thing that a lot of people don’t like about the T-Mobile G1’s design is the “chin”. It’s the bottom of the phone, which is at a slight angle. I think the comment most given is that it messes with the simple design. But, functionally, it’s great. That little curve helps a bunch with one-handed control of the phone. It’s sort of like the kicktail on a skateboard. It makes holding the G1 more stable and comfortable. That and the trackball make using the G1 with one hand a breeze. Speaking of the trackball, it’s really a great way to navigate around web pages, form fields, and scrolling screens. And since you can press the trackball down to click, it makes for easy precision selections on small items in a web page. Really helpful!

But back to the chin. Like I mentioned earlier, it messes with the clean lines of the device, but this is really a good design because you can lay the phone down on its face, and the screen and buttons will not touch the surface of a flat table. When listening to music or streaming audio through the speaker, this is perfect. No need to worry about scratches to the screen or an errant button press. Also, the width of the G1 comes in handy because you can put the phone on its side if you wanted to. On the other hand, HTC really blew it when they failed to include a simple 3.5mm headphone jack. My brother bought me a little adapter that fits into the mini-USB port that will allow me to plug in my standard headphones, plus a mini-USB cable at the same time. I can’t wait to try that out.

I’ve really been enjoying my new phone’s multimedia features, especially the video player. It really is easy to watch Japanese dorama on it. I just need to prepare the episodes using the excellent xvid4psp converter beforehand. That converter has a batch feature which makes converting an entire series a breeze. I have found that the iPhone/iPodTouch preset works well for the G1, and the beautiful screen in the phone makes reading the subtitles super easy.

Right now I am catching up with “Mop Girl”, which isn’t so great after two episodes, but I’ll stick with it for at least a couple more to see if it picks up. At least the main character is a cutie!

I was just playing with Google Maps on my G1, and I asked for directions from my present location (Austin, TX) to my brother’s house in Honolulu. Google Maps came back with a route which has a distance of 5185.1 miles and an estimated drive of 376 hours and 54 minutes. I scrolled through the directions to see how it figured to span the ocean, and it recommends kayaking across the Pacific from Seattle:

• Turn left to stay on NE Northlake Way. 1.0 mi
• Kayak across the Pacific Ocean Entering Hawaii 2765.4 mi
• Slight right at Turtle Bay Hilton .1 mi

I better start now if I want to make it by Xmas!

I’ve been excited about Google’s Android mobile platform since it was announced last year? but was really surprised when T-Mobile (the carrier I use) said they were bringing out the first phone to use the OS. The G1 is a phone by HTC, and was supposed to be introduced in black, brown, and white. I had my heart set on the white version, but they were delayed because of a paint chipping issue. I thought the black was too plain, and the brown, now known as bronze, wouldn’t be to my liking, but I’d see them in-person before making a decision.

Well, on Oct 22nd, the day the phone was in stores, I went to check them out and decided that the black one was the one that I liked better. The bronze phone was a little cheap looking. The metallic paint on the outside and the keyboard didn’t look so great to me. Plus, the letters on the keyboard were difficult to read when the backlight was on. The black one, on the other hand, was really cool looking. It’s kind of geeky in that it seems like an old walkie-talkie. It’s kind of heavy and substantial, and feels good up at my ear. The back of the phone is a little rubbery, kind of like a camera grip. They qwerty keyboard is comfortable to use and I can type pretty quickly on it. I don’t think I can go back to typing on a little numeric keypad.

Some other things I really like are the instant messaging, the wallpapers, the desktop shortcut customization, integration with google contacts, gmail, and calendar, and the access to my IMAP email accounts. The things that the G1 and Android is lacking right now are:

• Music player shows ringtones in the list
• Playlists are not coming over from Windows Media Player
• IMAP email doesn’t always sync correctly (if I delete a message on the phone, it doesn’t actually delete from the server)
• Email need a “Show only unread” option
• Apps for Google Reader and Google Docs
• No 3.5mm headphone jack. You have to use the mini-USB port.

Most of these issues I think will be fixed by Google (except the headphone jack, of course) via their “over the air” updates. The app store is starting to get some interesting applications as well. I am really looking forward to a robust ebook reader, because I used to love reading ebooks on my pocket pc, and the G1 will be even better.

All-in-all, I am really loving the G1. I am so glad that T-mobile users can finally have a cool phone! By the way, my IM of choice now is Google Talk, since it doesn’t incur any text messaging charges when I use it. So, if you are using Gtalk, add me to your list! barronfujimoto*at*gmail*dot*com.

I can’t wait to get this!

A few of my friends have an iPhone, and they all really like it. I think it’s a really cool phone. If the iPhone were available on T-Mobile (the carrier we use) I would have probably gotten it. But, switching to AT&T is a hassle since we’d have to get out of our contract. Plus, we are on a family plan with four phones. Well, when I heard about Google’s Android initiative last year, I was really excited. It’s an open-source platform for mobile devices. I don’t know much about the technical details, but I am thinking (hoping) that it is highly customizable. I guess it would have to be, since Android will be used on many different kinds of phones with differing hardware and design. I want Android to be so versatile that you, as a user, can easily install (and uninstall) small hacks and fun apps. I was intrigued by the OpenMoko project as well, which seems to be a similar idea, but that appears to not have as much backing behind it. What’s neat about OpenMoko is that the entire platform is open. That includes hardware. I guess that means you can add hardware modules as well as software.

Some critics of the Android platform have said that the market is lukewarm towards it, and while this may be true, I doubt it will stay like that for long. Google is of course a powerhouse, so I’d expect developers to start churning out apps and utilities quickly after more devices are available. I think a lot of developers are attracted to the open aspect of it, sort of like how the Linux community (I’m assuming) has become strong and active. I’d love to see a vid player with DivX support so I can watch dorama over our home WiFi network. That would be awesome!

I watched a couple Android demos on YouTube, and it looks very cool. I’m not sure if it is better than the iPhone interface, but it’s definitely not far behind. The interface style looks pretty slick and attractive. The icons are well-designed and colorful. I guess a lot has to do with the quality of the screen on the device, but that is part of the attraction of Android. There will be many choices of phones that will be using it, so you can take your pick on what looks good to you. I like the customizable desktop(s), where you can drag things like browser shortcuts, individual contacts, a photo, etc. I can see myself making a “My Desktop” which has a couple phone numbers I call regularly, a notes shortcut, and some Internet shortcuts. The Google maps look really nice, and the integrated “street-view” is really sweet. The touchscreen on the demo unit didn’t seem to be multi-touch, like the iPhone, so it’s not as neat, but the way they handle zooming into webpages looks easy to use. I can see Android having multi-touch support for phones that have the hardware.

As far as release date, it looks like the first Android-based phone will be out either this month or next, and the first carrier will be T-Mobile! The model that will be running Android is the HTC “Dream”, and it has a nice, wide touchscreen. It’s rumored to have an intro price of $150 for the first week. From the photos that I’ve seen I think it looks pretty cool. It can’t match the iPhone in its elegance or simplicity, but it seems like it might be easier to use because the screen can slide up to reveal a real keyboard. The specs look pretty impressive too. In addition to the features you’d expect, it’s also got WiFi, GPS, a micro-sd memory card slot (I’d love to add a big card for music!) and can play back video in H.264. I think the camera is 3MP, which is not bad.

Like I mentioned before, I am hoping a lot of extra functionality and add-ons will be available for it, like Divx support, local network browsing support, cool apps to post to Twitter/Plurk, and nice interfaces for the built-in IM protocols (Adium for Android, please!). There’s been talk that the new Chrome browser will be integrated into Android, which would seem natural. I am hoping that accessing Google Docs will be easy to do.

There isn’t any news yet about any special pricing for an Android-specific data plan. The normal T-Mobile unlimited Internet plan is something like $20 extra tacked onto whatever voice plan you have. Also, the phone is supposed to run at 3G speeds, but I read that T-Mobile’s 3G network coverage is not so extensive. I guess we will find out!

I am a little apprehensive about buying a phone that is the first model, since I am sure there are going to be tons of bugs and quirks. But I am hoping that the open nature of the OS will make it easy to apply updates, sort of like how my Linux (Ubuntu) laptop gets updated a few times a week. That brings up the question of updates. I am hoping that I won’t have to go through T-mobile to do this. Some kind of basic syncing software would be preferred. Will this be provided by HTC? Will apps be added from the computer or directly over the network? It’s going to be interesting to see how this works.

The HTC “Dream” that has been shown in some photos looks ok. It’s white and is very simple, but I think I’d rather have a black version. Hopefully they will intro with a few different colors. I know Mariko want’s a pink phone! The Dream is a little longer than the iPhone, and thicker too. That’s a little lame because I am so used to a small phone that can fit in the coin pocket of my jeans. I’m not sure how I will carry this phone around, but I guess just put it in my front pocket while out and about, and then keep it on the desk while at work.

Pic above from AndroidCommunity.com