The Third Place

So, for a week now, I’ve been using a new phone. It has a white side, a black side, and some pretty glassy-touchy-feely thing. It’s also from Apple Inc. and I didn’t bought it (obrigado Catarina!). iTunes is not compatible with my OS, so no sync with anything.

Impressions so far:

• good for playing games
• good for email
• shit for watching videos (unless you convert them to some strange format only a few people use)
• good enough for watching videos if you convert them to some strange format only a few people use
• it has copy/paste!
• Wifi is nice!
• as phone, it’s just “OK”.

Let’s see if I can get used to this…

With Android getting into cruise speed, it’s probably time to talk about an integration, or application, that does something I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s actually very simple: full contact list integration.

So, what do I mean by this?

Day by day, our world is getting even more connected in each and every way, but our personal availability to connect is still limited. More, the “mobile internet” is already here: iPhone, netbooks, cheap mobile data plans, etc. Of course, not everyone wants to be available 24/7, but remember there’s always the off switch.

To put it short, I want, and predict, that the next generation of contact lists, most probably the mobile phone books, will also be instant messengers, with redundant contacts to the same person/object. It isn’t anything new, just the merging of two concepts. Pidgin is a very good example, where a single client program connects to a variety of services, providing an almost seamless instant messaging experience to the user. Now just imagine that it works in your own mobile, and integrates with it’s phone book. Bingo! You are now able to talk (or communicate) with any person in your contacts list, either they have a mobile phone or not! Another example is Jaiku‘s S60 application, that integrates with Nokia‘s mobile phone books.

Again, I know there are lots of programs that to a part of this, but I’m still waiting to see the full integration. No messy apps, just one contact list, with everything you need to communicate with another person.

And Android could well be the best candidate platform to do this…

• the one you have still works well enough
• the iPhone doesn’t do more than your current phone
• you’re not usually lost, so you don’t need a GPS
• it doesn’t make coffee, and hardly any mobile phone will ever do
• this whole hysteria is… sad…
• you actually hate Apple and it’s fan boys
• you don’t have a problem with your dick’s size
• you’re not going through a mid-life crisis

I guess I should also make a list of reasons to buy it, but probably other people will do it better.

Oh, I forgot to say, this post might eventually offend someone.

I unlocked an iPhone with WinXP… And the funny part is that the guy next to me doing it in a Mac didn’t.