I've been wanting to talk about my experience with iPhone headphones and exercise for some time.

In my opinion iPhone headphones manufactured by Apple are consumables. I have never had a set last for more than 4 months. They get so much use from me that the rubber holding the earbuds together wears away.

I tried carrying the headphones in several different plastic containers, but each of the containers made constantly connecting and disconnecting the headphones too slow. This says nothing of the problems that occurred when I exposed them to large amounts of my perspiration.

The first set of headphones that I noticed experienced severe wear and tear was a set that I had been using during a period of heavy road biking in June and July. The action button on the in-line microphone on my headphones started to become unreliable. The button stopped working entirely shortly after that, and I suspected that sweat infiltration was the root cause.

In July I started working full-time in Manhattan. At that time I started working out at Newtown Athletic Club five days a week. My workout consisted of riding a stationary bike or running on an indoor track for 40 minutes, followed by sets of pushups and situps.

Because I was working out indoors, there seemed to be an increase in my perspiration level. The new headphones lasted less than a month.

Two major problems occurred:

• the action button on the in-line microphone stopped working,
• the rubber holding each of the earbuds together disintegrated at an accelerated rate.

I bought another new set of iPhone headphones from Apple, and a much less expensive set of headphones without an in-line microphone from a warehouse club. I used the inexpensive headphones during workouts at the gym. I used the iPhone headphones everywhere else.

The result is that the iPhone headphones have lasted a great deal longer. I think I've gotten about four months use out of this set of iPhone headphones. I'm only now beginning to consider replacing them, because the rubber gasket that holds each earbud together is wearing away.

In talking to a number of friends and acquaintances who have iPhones, the consensus is that no third-party headphones are much more durable than Apple's. For the most part, they are just more expensive.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was a happy user of AT&T GoPhone for the past three months. That ended today.

Up until November 12, AT&T provided unlimited monthly data service as a pay-as-you-go option for $19.99 per month. Once you bought this service, you could use either the 3G or EDGE wireless data networks.

I was gladly buying this service package each month because I was able to use the really fantastic JoikuSpot application to turn my Nokia E71 into a 3G-powered ad hoc WiFi access point that I carried in my pocket.

I guess enough bloggers talked about what a great deal the Go Phone monthly data service package was, because AT&T did away with this package on November 12. Some people in the blogosphere heard about this in early October, as evidenced by the article AT&T hangs up on unlimited data GoPhone option that appeared on jkOnTheRun.com. I missed it because, as you know, I've been really busy.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Operation Gadget went quiet at the end of August. This is by far the longest break in posts in the five year history of the site. If you are wondering why, consider:

• I lost my job in September.

  This happened a couple of weeks after my family came back from vacation at Stone Harbor. I was only at that job for seven weeks, so it's hard for me to see the job loss as anything but a function of the deteriorating economy.

• I started a new audio podcast.

  Losing my job was helpful in one way: I was able to get off the ground HockeyRefCast, my podcast about hockey officiating. Episode 1, including an interview with Ian Walsh of the National Hockey League, turned out really well.

• I found a new job in October.

  Freelance writing and blogging took a backseat to finding another job. I was surprised to find that there was as much demand for my services as there was. I actually received two job offers.

  A well-known web publishing software company called Six Apart hired me to work for their professional services division in mid-October. I started working with them on November 3. This was a God-send because....

• My wife was in a car accident a week ago this past Friday.

  Kathleen was in a car accident on Interstate 95 just south of Newtown on November 7. [ Photos of the car after the accident ] This was a harrowing experience for our family, because Kathleen is seven months pregnant.

  We spent 10 hours at the hospital while tests Kathleen underwent tests to make sure that neither she nor the baby were hurt and that she was not in premature labor.

  That was a scary time, and I felt that Twitter was somehow inappropriate.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My latest post on O'Reilly's Inside iPhone is A Glimpse of Our Tethering Future where I recount my experiences working with a Nokia E71 and an application called JoikuSpot that turns the E71 into a 3G-powered ad hoc WiFi access point that you can carry in your pocket.

My use of the Nokia E71 is courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations Program.

After a solid week of 3G phone use with laptop (and iPhone) tethering, I've convinced myself that my concerns about iPhone battery consumption while running an application like Netshare from Nullriver are overblown. This can work and any increased battery use can be managed.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't really talked about AirCell or its Gogo inflight Internet access service since it first became available on American Airlines. But Andy Abramson turned me on to a little experiment with the service that he and Laptop Magazine's Joanna Stern did yesterday that is absolutely worthy of mention.

Andy reports that he and Joanna were able to carry on a voice conversation via Aircell Gogo while Joanna was on an American Airlines flight to New York. The service was designed to make voice communication "impossible" at the airlines' requests, but Andy concluded that it would be possible if he used a Flash-based voice application like Phweet and he was right.

Joanna liveblogged the flight. Her post goes through all the different communication services she tried over her five-hour flight, and how they performed.

Kudos to Andy and Joanna for their persistence. They proved once again that "impossible" is a hard claim to make about any aspect of technology. This is proof of the old saying, where there's a will, there's a way.

Andy likes to tell people that he's not an engineer type of person, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the wireless services and applications that are available.

I reached out to Andy over this past weekend to ask what he thought the best way to access the Internet was from a moving train along The Northeast Corridor. Before speaking to him, I was lead to believe that I needed a wireless data card for my laptop, a $60 per month service plan, and a two-year contract.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was on the train home from NYC tonight reading tweets on the Twitterific iPhone app. I got a tweet from TUAW that said:

i.tuaw.com

This is (of course) the iPhone-optimized version of The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Is this new? If so, it's long overdue. It takes at least a minute to load most pages from the full TUAW site. The iPhone pages load as you would expect an iPhone-optimized page to load, in a few seconds.

Wish I'd seen the tweet about i.tuaw.com before I read the story about the iPhone 2.0.2 Firmware Update from the main TUAW site.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago, I said I'd publish my daily schedule so you readers of Operation Gadget could see what life is like for me now that I'm working full time in Manhattan. Here it is:

• 4:40am: Wake up, dress in workout clothes, drive to the gym
• 5:00: Arrive at gym, do approximately 45 minutes of exercise, shower, dress for work
• 6:20: Leave for NJ Transit train station in Hamilton, NJ
• 6:45: Arrive in Hamilton Train Station parking garage
• 6:56: Board express train for Penn Station in Manhattan
• 8:00: Arrive Penn Station, change to New York Subway Number 1 train, head downtown
• 8:10: Exit the subway at 18th Street & 7th Avenue, walk east on 18th Street, south on 6th Avenue, east on 17th Street
• 8:20: Arrive at office in a non-descript office building on West 17th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues

• 5:30pm: Leave the office, head for the subway at 18th Street & 7th Avenue
• 6:03: Board the NJ Transit express train, bound for Trenton
• 7:10: Get off at the next to last stop, Hamilton
• 7:45: Pull into the driveway at home in Newtown, PA

If all goes according to plan, the total time in transit is about 4 1/4 hours.

I get a lot done on the train. I get extra programming done. I write my articles for Inside iPhone and Operation Gadget. I've been planning my hockey officiating podcast, which I'm still planning to launch in September.

It's hard to believe, but I'm probably in better shape, more organized, and more productive commuting over four hours a day than I was a month ago when I was working at my dining room table.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been working out at Newtown Athletic Club, a massive gym complex in Newtown, PA, every morning before work. In order to do this and still get to my desk in Manhattan reasonably early, I show up at the gym when the doors open at 5:00am.

There appears to be a huge correlation between New York commuters, triathlon participation, and daily 5 AM workouts. The conversations that take place in the locker room between 6:00 and 6:15 are a mixture of commodities trading small talk, and multi-sport training and race discussions. It's truly amazing.

Earlier this Summer, an article that appeared on the Bloomberg news service said that triathletes that work on Wall Street are known for their 5 and 6am workout routines. I now realize that the 5am crowd is working out in suburban gyms, while the 6am crowd is working out near work.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday I bought my wife Kathleen an iPhone 3G. I finally figured out the new iPhone line protocol at Apple Stores, swung by The West 14th Street Apple Store on my way to work, and found the line almost pleasingly short.

If AT&T Mobility hadn't had some meaningless flag on my account, and I had remembered to pay my bill on time, I would have been in and out of the line in less than 45 minutes. Instead it took me 90 minutes and two phone calls to the Small Business group at AT&T.

I went back to the Apple Store at 5:30pm and walked out about 6:45 with her new iPhone and a new 3G-compatible case. It was waiting in the indoor line and case selection that took the most time.

I got home from work about 9:00, and Kathleen was so happy. We spent the remainder of the evening iSyncing her Treo 650 one last time, and then syncing her iPhone 3G with iTunes. All of her smartphone data made it on to the new iPhone. Her iTunes content took some time to transfer, but it was done fairly quickly.

Some friends asked me what it's like to have the inferior phone in the house. I'm more than OK with it. With my new gig writing for Inside iPhone, it's helpful to have access to both iPhone models. I just won't be carrying the new one most of the time.

Looking at it from a different perspective, Kathleen has been holding the bag for a long time. I got an iPhone when money was tight. I got a MacBook Pro right after I got laid off from my full time job in February.

Kathleen soldiered on with the Treo 650, waiting for the iPhone 3G to come out so she could run ePocrates Rx on it. Epocrates has been the key app on her Treo 650 since she started using it in residency over five years ago.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My latest Inside iPhone post is called How an iPhone Can Help You Be More Productive When Commuting Via Mass Transit. One of the things I talk about in that post is the power of using location-based contexts within the OmniFocus for iPhone application.

I realized while writing the Inside iPhone piece that setting locations for contexts within OmniFocus for iPhone 1.0.1 is not straightforward. So I thought I would expand upon that issue here in this post.

The Fundimentals of Context Location

Each context within OmniFocus for iPhone can have a location associated with it. The location can be:

• the iPhone's current location,
• a street address,
• an address associated with a contact in the Address Book, or
• a business name retrieved from a search conducted using Google.

The location of contexts is set on a hierarchical basis, so I set the location of my home at the "Home" level of the context tree rather than at each sub-context.

Errands Context: Set locations of the contexts in the
Errands list by tapping "Edit" on this screen.

Establishing a Context Location

I set the location of a context by tapping on the "Contexts" choice on the OmniFocus home screen. OmniFocus presents the top level of my context hierarchy. I descend through the context hierarchy by tapping until I reach the list of contexts containing the context whose location I want to set.

I'm talking about my "Errands" contexts in this article. These are stores and service providers that I do business with often. Most of them have definite physical locations that I go to on a regular basis.

In this article, we're talking about my "Target" context. This is where I put my shopping list of products I buy at a Target Store.

If I want to set the location of the "Target" context, I need to stay on this screen and tap the "Edit" button. Once I tap "Edit", I can tap the "Target" element in the list and go to the screen where I set the location of the Target context.

Continue reading "Assigning Locations to OmniFocus iPhone Contexts" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)