Brindle Media

Posts Tagged ‘Boston’

OK, I admit it. I’m living in prehistoric times with my old Blackberry Curve.

But my wife bought me an Apple Store gift card for my birthday and she’s been bugging me to get an iPhone. It’s obvious that technology is changing rapidly. Both our daughters have iPhones. But I’ve got a couple of dilemmas.

First, our AT&T contract. Now, of course, all the Apple people sneer at AT&T and we don’t get good reception at our home because we live near an airport where new construction for cell towers is prohibited.
But Verizon doesn’t work very well at our house either.

Our oldest daughter switched back to AT&T from Verizon because she wasn’t happy with the Verizon’s coverage. So, that complicates matters. Which carrier to choose?

Then, there’s the matter of which iPhone. The 5G is coming out in August but I’ll leave that one to the early adopters. The real question for me is whether to go for the 4G or the 3G.

In Shelly Palmer’s review of 3G vs. 4G devices, he points out that AT&T 4G is only available at full speed in Northern CA, Greater LA, Greater Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Charlotte, Baltimore, Buffalo, Boston, Providence & Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, Verizon’s 4G is only available to 1/3rd of the US right now and won’t cover most of the country for almost 3 years!

Plus, if you own a 4G phone but a 4G network isn’t available, your phone is actually running at 3G anyway. But, if you don’t turn off the 4G radio, the phone keeps searching for a network and eats up your battery.

You can read Shelly’s complete review here:
http://www.shellypalmer.com/2011/04/3g-or-4g-battery-life-vs-bandwidth/

So, it sounds like I’ll be going with an iPhone 3G. But which carrier:
Verizon or AT&T?

This is too much work for a phone!

My First Video Podcast

Last weekend, I was one of more than 300 people who attended Podcamp Boston 4 at the University of Massachusetts campus near the John F. Kennedy Library along Dorchester Bay.

The original Podcamps were specifically focused on the creation of audio and video podcasts but these events have evolved to encompass a wider range of new media tools. For a Baby Boomer
like me, all this youthful energy, intelligence and enthusiasm can be daunting but I also find this collection of people sharing their insights and knowledge to be inspiring and invigorating.

Of course,like any even of this type, Podcamp Boston had it’s share of interesting characters…

And there was some nice scenery, too…

One of the challenges I heard presented over the weekend was to describe your purpose in two “tweets” or less. If you’re new to Twitter, a “tweet” consists of 140 characters including the spaces between words. Here’s what I came up with:

Buzz4Boomers’ goal is to help Baby Boomer adults adapt to today’s rapid changes in information flow and media options by sharing the knowledge and insights I learn from people I meet in new media and experiences I encounter.

By my count, that’s 230 characters, 50 under the maximum allotted 280 tweets.

One piece of advice which I heard frequently at Podcamp Boston was that the most important thing a person can do when they’re planning to create a podcast is to just do it. So I decided to take their advice and create my first video podcast using my Flip Ultra camcorder. You can tell that my camera work needs a lot more practice but in the New Media spirit of “authenticity”, here’s the first Buzz4Boomers video podcast:

http://buzz4boomers.blip.tv/

Well, the way I see it things can only improve.