Why My Kid Has an iPhone

Look, I’ll be the first to tell you I didn’t grow up in a life of extravagance. In Hendersonville, TN, there were plenty of other kids whose parents seemed to have the money for houses on the lake, motorboats, houseboats, swimming pools, brand-new late model cars on their sixteenth birthday and full rides to any college they chose. The folks living there seem to have learned something I never did; when you make a Los Angeles salary – don’t live in fucking Los Angeles. As a result, I rode shotgun in a lot of my friends’ cool cars and swam off their boat docks before driving my rusted out Datsun 310 home.

Fast forward to 2010, where I’m now the divorced dad of a beautiful, witty, gracefully athletic daughter. Her golden red hair heralds a wealth of creativity, calculation, moods and stubbornness that we’d only seen prior in Veruca Salt. Her mother (a Saint) and I both wince a little as this crimson tornado nears her teens. Daddy girds himself for what is surely to be heartbreaking, epic battles over curfews, boys and privileges.

It is on the subject of privileges, technology and parenting that brings us to the point of this blog entry. Should a (read: this) third-grader carry a mobile phone?

New technology always carries a certain stigma with it. Early VCRs were for porn. Cable TV was for late-night “Skinamax”. Digital pagers were for doctors and drug dealers, and you could be certain that the kid at the pay phone getting paged wasn’t a cardiologist. The early mobile phones were status symbols that only Gordon Gekko and rap stars could afford to flash around. Having worked in the mobile industry in some capacity for the past decade, I’ve seen an amazing evolution in power, capabilities and accessibility that have brought these devices into 91% of the population of the USA alone. Two thirds of the planet has a mobile connection. Just a few years ago, we were waiting for the PC to “bridge the digital divide”, when the mobile phone was doing it all along. As such, I had a drawer-full of old and not-so-old flip phones and smart phones from big names like Nokia, Sanyo, Samsung, Sharp and Motorola. When purchased, these devices were hundreds of dollars, now, the postage to ship them to a recycling facility is more than the phone itself. Sounds like a great starter phone for a kid, right?

I chose the iPhone 3G instead. For these three reasons:

1. Parental Controls. None of the phones in my drawer had any means of controlling applications, calling windows, email or media communications. iPhone lets me do all that, password protect it, and turn up or down these controls at will. If she misbehaves, a flip of the switch yanks all contact with the web, SMS, voice and email, save for calls from me. Another amazing feature – that would have busted me a zillion times as a kid – is Find My iPhone, which lets me, at any time from any device, locate her phone on a map. If she loses it, or is lost herself, I can pinpoint the location to a few yards. If the phone is stolen, I can message the phone, lock the phone, or wipe (brick) the phone with a click. If the worst happens, (and I pray it never does) the police will know where to mop up what’s left of whoever tried to abduct her. It’s like a Lo-Jack for your kid.

2. Functionality. There are two kinds of people with mobile phones; those with an iPhone, and those making excuses for why they don’t have one. Please, enough with this Blackberry and Google Android horseshit. They are inferior products with a fraction of the developer tools and community. Say what you will about Apple, but they have galvanized the mobile developer community and directed enormous amounts of innovation and creativity toward their platform, where RIM, Nokia, Microsoft and Google have NOT. That’s why there’s so many great applications on the iPhone which may “later” be ported to the other devices. I say “inferior” because they believe competition is done in specifications, not experience. You have a 2 megapixel camera – I have 5. You have a 16GB hard drive, I have 32. It isn’t specs, it is hardware and software. Not just the software on the phone, but also in the cloud and on other devices. Does Google’s “version” of iTunes even come close to the experience of that with Apple? No, it doesn’t. As a professional mobile developer and technologist, I figure this stuff out as business decisions for a living. As a parent, I don’t have time to figure shit like this out.

3. Upgrade path. The average lifespan of a mobile device is 12-14 months before it becomes “obsolete”. You better hope you have a good strategy for migrating the time and financial investment in contacts, web bookmarks, music, photos, video, and applications when the next device comes out. Using iTunes, it literally is one click. I have bought the new iPhone each year since its initial release. Each time, I just had the phone provisioned with my number, brought it home, plugged it into my laptop and clicked Sync. Never lost a thing. Ever. I dropped my new iPhone the other day and shattered the screen. Within ten minutes of plugging the replacement into my laptop, everything was back where it was. You just can’t do stuff like that with the old Motorola RAZR in your drawer.

So, yes, the kid has my old iPhone 3G in her book bag. It may seem extravagant, but this is one indulgence that I’m proud to be able to provide for her, and save my old Daddy-brain the hassle of dealing with the other devices out there.

This only applies to mobile phones. When she turns 16, there’s a rusted-out Datsun 310 somewhere with her name on it.

Living In Between

My apologies to anyone who has tried to have a coherent conversation with me this past week. On July 4th, I called 911 on myself and was rushed to the emergency room where they diagnosed me with kidney stones. What followed was a mish-mosh of oxycodone, Gatorade, unrelenting sleep and somehow I repurposed my kitchen sifter into a gold panner. (If I ever fix you French Toast, don’t worry – I’ll have a new sifter for the powdered sugar by then…)

Along the way, I lost track of time, people, places in conversations and the day/night cycle. Did I ask that or not, did you already answer? God forbid you scheduled something with me verbally, because it’s gone now. It is like I am living in a cross between 12 Monkeys and Memento. Like I am living in the spaces between the panels of a comic book, those areas between bits of coherent action. Last night at 1:45 AM, I passed one of my stones and was happy, thinking this was finally over. Dropped off the rock at the doctor’s office and showed up at work in a haze, eventually having to leave at about 4PM, being unable to stop slurring and keep my eyes open. I remember falling asleep multiple times on my drive home, to be awakened at green lights by horn blasts. I particularly remember the accidental tap I gave the ambulance in front of me at the red light. The rest is a blur.

Waking up is an exercise in forensics. I tiptoe around and try to piece together the clues that brought me to this situation. An empty bottle of Gatorade here, a lone shoe there. Apparently, I got to bed, or at least that’s what I discerned from the trail of clothes and electronics leading their way to my bedroom. My latest oasis of “wake time” started at 10PM. The phone has a list of missed calls, texts and frustrated pleas from people who think I’m being a dick and ignoring them. My daughter’s tried once again to catch me, but she’s now asleep, so I’m going to have to figure out how to leave a message in the ether for her, but I don’t want to buzz phones at 11:30 just to let people know I’m alive.

This week, my daughter called and woke me at 8:00, I asked her what she was going to do that day in camp. Turns out it was 8PM. After that call, I passed out again, to be woken by another one at 9:00. It only took me three minutes to determine it was AM. And people wonder why I don’t rush to call them back. I have no idea where we are in the conversation, let alone how much time has passed between the last one we had.

Having passed this stone, I am glad to be off the pain killers, but I have more brewing in my kidney. I’m glad I have a weekend to try to get sleep and wake time back into sync. If you’re one of the people cursing my name for not answering my phone, please chill and relax. If you finally reach me and take that opportunity to blast your pent-up vitriol, you’re just going to see me glaze back over and go back to the in-between space. If I don’t happen to fall asleep in the middle of what you feel is the perfectly executed “this’ll show him, the arrogant prick” rant. I’m sorry; I know you worked hard coming up with just the right things to call me. The right combos that would be sure to sear into my consciousness and leave me smoldering on your observations for days to come. Maybe you could print them and have one of those online services make a coffee table book for me. Just don’t get bummed if you see rings on it when you come to visit; I might use it for a coaster for my drink.

So give me a few days of peace to get all these whacky meds out of my system. Love ya, mean it, air kisses and let’s do that lunch thing. Now please stop blowing up my phone, there’s no value in jumping the gun. The next call will be from me, mm-kay?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to chug some more Gatorade, pee and crash for fifteen more hours. The phone’s on vibrate.

My Modest Proposal to Address the Gulf Oil Spill

It’s been months now, and we’ve seen laymen, scientists, executives and politicians talk about what is going on to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the damage caused. When BP’s CEO was testifying in front of Congress, the news channels put the live feed of the underwater leak up next to his face during his testimony. As of this writing, the thing’s still leaking and the water, ecosystem, shoreline and economy of the area is a complete mess and getting worse.

Here’s what I propose. No one will have the stones to do it, but it is what will solve the problem.

1. Stop (don’t contain) the leak. Let’s remember one key fact here – this is an oil well, and if you own a producing oil well…history has shown us you can load up Granny and Jethro in the truck and move to Beverly Hills. BP owns this oil well. They are in charge. There’s obviously a TON of oil in this location where they had this rig. Their efforts have all been about “containing”, not “sealing” the leak. The reason for this is they don’t want to kill their goose that lays the golden eggs. The problem is – when that goose has become feral and rabid, endangering the neighborhood, and refuses to behave, it’s time to put the goose down. I’ve been advocating a strategy of sealing the leak since it started. The Navy could do it in a matter of hours. Don’t believe me – former President Clinton reiterated my assertion in an interview the other day. Explosives may be a bit disruptive, but it is a contained disruption. It doesn’t screw up the entire Gulf of Mexico, the coastline and millions of lives and businesses. Give BP another 24 hours to try whatever the hell they’re doing to stop this leak, after which, tell ‘em to kiss the golden goose goodbye. Its not like they don’t have other wells.

2. All hands on deck. One of the more vocal complaints coming out of the Gulf is from people who report and photograph large swaths of beachfront that are completely deserted and covered with oil. There’s not enough human resources on the ground to combat a problem this big. BP has 80,300 employees around the world, according to Wikipedia. They are all now officially on cleanup duty. Literally close down every refinery, every gas station. Every truck driver, accountant, lawyer, executive, secretary, cashier, scientist and parking attendant on their payroll should be on their way (on the company’s expense) to the Gulf with sunscreen, hats, gloves and gallons of Dawn in hand, ready to start scrubbing. Sure some will quit – expect churn when people have to do stuff they didn’t sign up for. That’s the cost of doing business when your company screws up. But the last thing I want to see is the corner BP gas station and their refineries going full swing while wildlife and terrain is dying and destroyed. The public is demanding a serious response. Nothing’s more serious than thousands of BP employees on their hands and knees, “assholes and elbows” scrubbing up the mess their company caused.

3. Remove the liability cap. This $75M liability cap for oil companies was a dumb idea to begin with. Think about it: oil is a high-risk, high-reward business. There’s no cap on how much they can be rewarded, why should the amount of risk be limited? C’mon out and drill, baby drill. Maybe you’ll strike oil, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll blow up a rig and cause $100B in damages. Them’s the breaks. Win big, or lose big, baby. Don’t like it? Get another line of work.

Bottom line – BP is on strike fifteen to “save” their well. At some point, we have to call this. That point was over a month ago.

That’s What She Said

The remake of “Clash of the Titans” makes me feel like I’m twelve years old again. Not because of nostalgia for the original, but rather the endless fount of innuendo that can be derived from the phrase, “Release the kraken!”

Archiving Your Life

Was reading David Pogue’s post on “Why We Make Home Videos“, and it brings up thoughts of my own, some of which I have shared in earlier blog posts – which ironically, I have no idea if they are archived.

Growing up, we had film cameras, we’d have to take the film canisters to the little Fotomat booth and come back when the film was developed and get our prints and negatives back. Those little envelopes fit neatly into shoeboxes, which filled up and stacked in the closets of America. If you ever wanted to relive some moments, you’d pull down the shoebox and rifle through the prints. This means of archiving memories had worked for nearly 100 years, and new generations didn’t have a learning curve to view the images. If someone died, their relatives would inherit the shoe boxes for their own closets. If a fire or flood hit your home, it was a great tragedy that those memories might be forever lost.

Here we are in 2010. I know no one who owns a film camera any more. Digital cameras are cheap and ubiquitous. In a pinch, your mobile phone likely has a decent quality still and/or video camera built right in. The hard drive has taken the place of the shoebox. When the hard drives fill, we’re offloading media (no longer “pictures”, but “media” or “content”) on to compact discs or DVD’s. Now, with broadband becoming faster and more reliable, physical recordable media is becoming unnecessary.

Which leads me to a problem. I have physical photographs, negatives, slides, 8MM video, MiniDV video, digital photos, digital video (in a variety of formats/codecs), stacks and stacks of CD-based media and terabytes of hard drive storage. I see a huge market need for easy, reliable, disaster and future-proof archiving, search and delivery. This is going to require an unprecedented focus on simplicity and harmony between hardware, software, mini and macro network services.

This is why I think Apple is uniquely positioned to own this market. I see a need for a home media “appliance” that literally sits in the garage or water heater closet. This device is easy to upgrade from a hardware and software standpoint. It has copious local storage, supplies secure home networking services, and is constantly backed up using cloud computing services. Every device in your life that connects to the internet syncs with this home server. Your PC, TV tuner, music library, car, mobile phone, digital camera, iPod – and those of your immediate family – are managed through a central device. You can access that server from anywhere. Watch your favorite TV shows on an international flight. Share family photos without having to fill up local storage on your phone. If your house burns down, the offsite, automated backups give you peace of mind to ensure uninterrupted access to your stuff. Oft overlooked but equally important is the need for this media to be available to devices that haven’t been invented yet. And for future devices to plug and play on this home server.

The really fun thing is the additional information about our lives that is being saved for future generations. This is why I’m going to just laugh when my daughter digs up my old Twitter feed. “What’s Twitter?”

In the meantime, until all this gee-whiz technology comes out, I’m doing all this manually. I have a couple terabytes in a RAID array holding my music, videos and photos. I’m looking into a service like Mozy for offsite backups, but because I have so many devices, I want it to all be in one place, not several. Finally, one day I’m going to have to teach my daughter how to digitize all the physical media. Even household chores have changed in the digital age.

What’s your digital archiving strategy? What are your grandkids going to root through when they come to visit?

Surviving the Apocalypse

Seeing as the iPhone mows down battery power like a kid powers through French fries, you have to wonder what would happen in the event of an emergency like the folks in Haiti are experiencing. This article depicts one entrepreneur making a power strip out of a board and a few wall outlets nailed together. Then, he rents a connection by the hour for people to recharge their phones. I am assuming he’s got it plugged into a generator, as much of their electrical grid is kaput.

Makes you think about the electronics gear you can’t do without, or consider essential to a survival situation. I have an Eton emergency radio with crank power and cell-phone recharger. Might also be worth investing in a solar cell recharger as well.

New site: The Gentleman’s Kitchen

Set up a new website and twitter account for a project I’ve been contemplating for a while now. The Gentleman’s Kitchen is a collection of stories, tips, product recommendations, recipes and information for bachelors wanting to step up their game in the kitchen. Based on personal experience, experiments gone wrong (and right), and a necessity to cook for one and sometimes two – I am hoping the site finds an audience of people with similar interests.

Go check it out. I’ll be posting and tweeting new stuff a few times a week. Follow @GentsKitchen for updates.

Return of the Podcast

Well, maybe. For those that remember the PJK Podcast, I started it in (geez) December 2004, and it ran for a few years before I finally faded out. The topic was applying technology and digital media to everyday life. If I read my stats right, at its height, I had around 150 subscribers, which is amazing considering I only put up a show when I felt like it.

I think the original concept is still good, and there’s plenty of things to cover. However, I think the execution needs to be cleaned up a bit.

1. The name needs to change. Needs to be simple and describe what the show is.
2. Weekly, monthly, daily, random? What should my publishing schedule look like?
3. Show format. It’s kind of lonely just doing my rants. Should I fold in Skype calls? Do the show live on Ustream? Take questions via Twitter? Get a co-host? Have a different guest each show? Audio-only? Video? Enhanced AAC?
4. How would you want to get the show? Off this site? A dedicated site? RSS subscription? Would you listen on your mobile or portable music player? At home, work, the car, on the toilet?
5. Or, did you hate the show anyway, and think I should just STFU?

I would appreciate any and all comments you have. Feel free to leave them here, or hit me up on Twitter @pjk, or Facebook. Thanks for your support!

The Thought That Counts

Never mind that my laundry pile is higher than the light switch in the closet, or my little 110V stack washer/dryer unit can only do one of those things at a time, or that its capacity is about six shirts. Never mind that I’ve been slowly chipping away at Mt. Laundry for the past month with no visible dent. Never mind that I’ve been battling digestive issues and now am in the throes of a full-on fever and flu. Never mind that my clean sock and underwear supply is completely depleted and I’m forced to wear the “gift” ones with hearts and Homer Simpsons on them.

My housekeepers, in addition to their expected bi-weekly chores of changing out bedsheets, vacuuming, etc. felt it upon themselves to descend deep into the depths of Mt. Laundry, mine out every single one of my socks and underwear, and run them all through the wash. In my moment of despair and sickness, I open the dryer and discover a mother lode of exactly what I need. Chicken soup and Zicam are ok for a flu, but nothing serves a core basic human need like a warm fresh pair of drawers.

Oh, did I mention they cleaned my BBQ grill as well? When’s the last time someone did you a solid as awesome as that?

Dear AT&T,

I really think you should lay off the self-congratulatory marketing campaigns until you can do what a cellular phone network should be able to do on day one: make calls. Seriously. Feature number one should be making and maintaining a voice connection long enough to (call me crazy) have a conversation. I live in Los Angeles, California. Go look at a map – you’ll notice it is one of the major cities in California. Arguably the world. How is it that your investment in building a “3G network” could overlook simple voice connectivity in a major market like this? It is quite pathetic that I can’t have a one minute conversation with my daughter across town without having to redial her three times.

I have a thing that I do now, whenever a call is dropped mid-sentence. I call the person back and before continuing the conversation, I say the following:

The preceding awkward moment of silence has been brought to you by AT&T, the network with the fewest dropped calls.

You may remember that line from one of your previous marketing campaigns. That was the one you ran when I first bought my iPhone. I love my iPhone. I think it’s an amazing device, and millions of others do, too. Have you noticed that literally EVERY negative point made about the device has to do with the network it runs on? I have. AT&T is the single largest detriment to the iPhone ownership experience. I know Apple is getting paid billions of dollars for a window of iPhone exclusivity, but that window is going to close sometime. At which time, the only barrier to switch – once the US carrier networks get to compete on service, features and coverage, not exclusivity – will be your cancellation fee. Money well spent. Enjoy the forthcoming spike in churn. You earned it.