Inventor Of The Cellphone

Inventor Of The Cellphone

This man is a genius. And at 81 he is still as sharp as ever!
Oh btw.. He is using a Motorola Droid - A Google Android Phone.

NANO BREATH cell phone checks breath for diseases

Bad gases such as CO2, NOx and ammonia (NH3) will come out of your mouth, if you’re one who carries some diseases. If you’re a health-conscious geek, you may like the idea of having a cellphone to check your breath for diseases as well as checking others’ breath before the diseases transmitted to you.

Applied Nanodetectors Ltd. (AND) is currently working on a prototype of a cell phone that can detect bad gases and from that on it can tell whether you’re a carrier of any diseases.

This cell phone simply checks the breath of the users to detect those gases. The phone has a chip that is integrated with various sensors that are sensitive enough to detect bad gases in the bad breath. It just takes minutes for the cell phone to trace the mentioned gases.

Once those gases detected, the chip will start analyzing the composition of the user’s breath, working out the density of each gas. The results will be compared against characteristics of various diseases to check out the possibility of one suffering from certain type of disease.

The cell phone is currently still in its prototype stage, AND is currently preparing it for the International Nanotechnology Exhibition & Conference. This breath-checking cell phone is likely to take more years to come into the market. It shall be a handy one to keep you away from those diseases, and you can always check people around while you’re on the go.

Nokia launches N79 Active, a fitness phone with heart rate belt

Nokia has launched their new cellphone, N79 Active, which is specially designed to target fitness-aware geeks. The Nokia N97 N79 Active comes with a Polar Bluetooth WearLink heart rate belt, which is worn by the user to record heard rate, while he or she is on a treadmill or out for a run. The belt sends the heart rate to the Nokia phone wirelessly which you can then have a nice visual analysis for your heart rate.

The Nokia N79 Active also features aGPS and software which allows you to upload your favorite running paths to the Internet to share with other fitness fans. Besides, the aGPS, the phone also comes with couple of sport-friendly features such as share-proof, noise reduction headphones and 4GB microSD card that lets you carry large amount of music to enjoy during your sport sessions.

Other goodies found on this phone including a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. According to Nokia, this phone is the smallest Nseries device launched so far which comes with headphones and an armband. It’s expected to retail at EUR 375.

Weightbot – a weight tracking tool for the iPhone and iPod Touch

If the iPhone or iPod Touch is always with you, it’ll be the most handy gadget to help you track your weight if you’re on a slimming plan. Here comes the Weightbot, which is an application that is specially designed for both the iPhone and iPod Touch to track the weight of the users.

The Weightbot comes with beautiful graphs to track you weight over time, it displays those graphs which show the weekly, monthly, and yearly progress of your weight, so you can make use of it whether you’re still on track or deviated from your original weight loss plan.

The Weightbot allows the weight information collected to be backed up online over a secure connection, and you can set your own goal weight and watch your weight slope towards the finish line. And of course, the app treats your weight information as the highly confidential one, which allows you to set passcode, so others will not be able to take a peek or spy on your weight.

With all the fancy graphs and high usability, it definitely costs some, but it’s highly affordable. For only $1.00, you can get it from Apple App Store, but it’ll be on the store for a limited time only.

iPhone DSLR Remote app wirelessly controls Canon DSLR

onOne has released their DSLR Remote application for the iPhone, which allows iPhone users to control their DSLR cameras (Canon only) wirelessly using the iPhone from afar.

The Canon DSLR camera needs to be hooked up to a computer (via USB) such as a netbook, and the DSLR Remote app on the iPhone is able to communicate with the computer wirelessly. The user can then use the DSLR remote app to control the camera such as controlling the shutter speed, aperture and white balance.

Furthermore, the application can be used to live stream the camera’s Live View Feed onto the iPhone, so the user can have a real-time look at what is in the frame. This iPhone DSLR app will be available on Apple store with an introductory price of $10 and will jump to $20 once the introductory period is over. It also has a lite version which is restricted to the capability to snap photos only. Again, this DSLR app is only meant for controlling Canons. Visit onOne for the compatibility list.

Solid gold iPhone

iPhone is a super popular gadget. But to make it to appeal to those who’re rich or the celebrities, the best is to get it diamond-studded or gold-plated. Here comes the solid gold iPhone, which is not only gold-plated but actually it’s solid gold.

The price is definitely super expensive, made from 22ct solid gold, and it’s adorned with diamonds. It costs you a massive $34,168 and can be purchased from Stuart Huges. We’ve ever featured another Huges’ product before – an iPhone with its rear logo and front bezel struck with 24-carat gold, carries a much cheaper price tag of $1120 only, and apparently carries less gold than this solid gold iPhone

BlackBerry Curve 8520 aka Gemini leaked, features an optical trackpad

BlackBerry Curve 8520 has some photos leaked, it’s found that it’s actually the early reported BlackBerry Gemini, which had now evolved and become the Curve 8520.

The Curve 8520 has dropped the usual trackball seen on BlackBerry smart phones and the trackball is now replaced by an optical trackpad on the BlackBerry Curve 8520.

A trackpad has a at least one advantage over the trackball which is it needs only touch to use. The Curve 8520 also includes a rubberized grip on the edges, including the buttons, and there are dedicated media controls at the top.

The BlackBerry Curve 8250 aka Gemini, shall have more or less the same features found on the BlackBerry 8900 Curve, such as a 2-megapixel camera, EDGE support (without 3G), but a lower-resolution (320×240) screen and the WiFi should be more advanced supporting 802.11n (wireless N). There is no info about its availability.

Monitoring Policy for SMS & Email..

In the past week some very disturbing developments have taken place, in regards to the new sms and email monitoring policy of the establishments. According to the sketchy details available until now, a monitoring cell has been established to keep a track of all the information flowing around, in an attempt to halt anti government campaign.

The logic behind this new episode is yet to understand. Practically, in the past all around the world we have seen governments taking these steps only to ensure “National Security”, but this step seems to be rather “regime security” oriented. A society or a government, what ever it is can not prevail without accountability. A country like Pakistan, where a dire security threat is looming, can be expected to put a restriction on hate propagating literature, but a step of this nature is beyond my imagination. The policy is censorship has never delivered, nor will it this time around. If you receive an email or an sms giving you a statistic of how much extra taxation is leveled on the price of 1 liter petrol, neither the receiver nor the sender can be termed a criminal. In fact, freedom of expression is a basic right of any individual, and there is no second opinion to this.

Regime security seems logical in Moammar Gadaffi’s Libya or Kim Jong II North Korea, but in a democratic setup this is a brutality, a torture and a complete injustice. Just take the case of Americans. During the peak of War on Terror and 9/11 saga, there own citizen came up with “Fahrenheit 9/11”to prove that 9/11 was an inside job, not some Iranian journalist who made it. I never heard President Bush or his team went after any campaign like this, and this is a reality that the greatest suspicion came to surface through the documentaries produced in the West.

To those responsible in taking an initiative like this, we have a simple suggestion that care is better than cure. Instead of silencing all the voices, its better to pay a heed to them. Every Pakistani cares, that’s why they want their voices not only to be heard, but also dealt with. Lets see if the establishment will review its decision, or sooner we will hear the breaking news that blogging has also been declared a crime!

Simple steps to find out where your phone is made from

I received a very useful tip from an email on how to check where a mobile phone (any brand) is assembled or manufactured in. This is based on looking at the international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) number that tells you where the phone came from. Whether you choose to believe this, it’s entirely your call. But for fun’s sake, maybe you can do a quick check to see where your phone came from!

Here’s how you do it. Punch in these buttons on your phone:

*#06#

Immediately, a series of number will appear on the screen. This is the international mobile equipment identity number referred to above. Now, locate the 7th and 8th numbers. The combination of these two numbers will tell you where your phone is manufactured or assembled in.

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 02 or 20 this means your cell phone was assembled in China which is low quality

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 08 or 80 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Germany which is fair quality

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 01 or 10 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Finland which is very Good

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 00 this means your cell phone was manufactured in original factory which is the best Mobile Quality

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 13 this means your cell phone was assembled in Azerbaijan which is very Bad quality and also dangerous for your health

Is a Swine Flu Outbreak Coming? Ask Your iPhone

Outbreaks Near Me is a new iPhone app that warns of disease outbreaks in your vicinity. Yep, it'll let you know if swine flu is lurking. It was created by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and relies on the same reports that health officials use to track disease.

If you're wondering whether the H1N1 flu epidemic has infiltrated your town yet, there's an iPhone app for that. Created by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, the new app, called Outbreaks Near Me, gives users real-time information about the type and scope of any new disease outbreaks in their area.

The app is based on the same network of media and on-the-ground reporting that global health officials use to detect and track emerging diseases like H1N1 and 2003's SARS. Indeed, the first details of the strange respiratory disease, which surfaced in southern China six years ago, weren't published in a medical journal, nor were they issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). Rather, the earliest hints came in the media, in stories published in Chinese newspapers about people in Guangzhou and Shenzhen being struck down by a mysterious illness. Because Chinese officials forbade official reporting of the new disease, the WHO and the rest of the international health community didn't become fully aware of the situation until the infection — which would later be called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS — crossed the border to Hong Kong and then to the rest of the world.

If epidemiologists had been able to pick up those early media reports about SARS, the disease might not have gone on to kill nearly 800 people. That's one of the reasons researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, developed HealthMap, a website that mines more than 30,000 data sources — including news media and government alerts — and puts them on a Google Map to show where outbreaks are occurring, in real time. Whether it's measles in Sussex, foot-and-mouth disease in Taiwan or avian flu in Indonesia, as reports of diseases bubble up, HealthMap researchers scan them and post them online. The result is about as close as you can get to a real-time picture of the state of the world's health, and it's become a useful tool for both professional epidemiologists and curious amateurs. "We wanted to bring all this information to life in a way that's accessible to everyone," says John Brownstein, an assistant professor at Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP), who co-founded HealthMap and Outbreaks Near Me.

The iPhone app makes HealthMap information even more accessible to the average person, by marrying the map's network of global data with the smartphone's GPS function, which tracks an individual user's location. So the program enables you to find out instantly whether there are any new outbreaks close to home. "The system can deliver reports that are relevant to your location," says Clark Freifield, a Ph.D. student at MIT's Media Lab and a co-founder of HealthMap.

The Outbreaks app also allows users to do their own surveillance and reporting — you can send messages and images to HealthMap about disease flare-ups in your area. The idea is to further broaden the net of health information beyond official sources. Think how useful a few iPhone-armed people in Mexico might have been during the initial waves of the H1N1 outbreak last spring — or how they might affect the upcoming flu season in the U.S. this autumn. "We're not sure what kind of response we'll see, but the idea is to develop a two-way flow of information," says Freifield.

Certainly, opening HealthMap to user-based reports could introduce an element of chaos, and even outright panic, into disease surveillance — ordinary people aren't trained epidemiologists. Global health officials already struggle to separate the noise from the truth; for every actual outbreak of a new disease, there are countless false or overstated reports. But in an interconnected age, when both information and disease can spread in an instant, having an imperfect network is better than none at all. "This is an alert tool that is not trying to raise fear but awareness instead," says Brownstein. "We want to encourage good public-health information, and at the end of the day that's what this app is about." Knowing too much may be scary, but knowing nothing is far more dangerous.

Cell phones more distractive than music listening, while driving

Simply listening to someone over a mobile phone, without dialing and holding it, while driving may distract the brain enough to cause an accident.

Previous studies have suggested that drivers who use cell phones run a greater risk of accidents, and that hands-free phones do not appreciably lower the odds, report.

The new findings cast further doubt on the idea that hands- free cell phones are safe for drivers. Just the act of listening appears to divert much of the brain resources that would normally go toward navigating the road.

American researchers studied 29 volunteers who used a driving simulator while inside an MRI brain scanner. Participants steered along a winding virtual road, once with no distractions and once while listening to various sentences and trying to decide whether they were true or false.

It was found that in the second scenario, the drivers' brain activity changed including a 37 percent drop in activity in the parietal lobe, a brain area involved in spatial sense and navigation.

Moreover, this shift in brain activity was accompanied by an increase in driving errors; drivers tended to drift more in their simulated lanes and were more likely to hit the virtual guardrail. Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road.

According to the researchers conversing on a cell phone may well be more distracting than listening to music or to someone in the passenger seat.

Listening to music does not require the cognitive processing necessary for having a conversation and can be more readily tuned out.

Because driving and listening rely on different brain networks, some scientists had speculated that the brain could handle both tasks at the same time.

But the above findings suggest that there is only so much the brain can accomplish simultaneously.

HOW TO: Cover Your Text Message Tracks?

It's Friday, so the mass of stupid and regrettable (and maybe criminal) text messages you wished you never sent is about explode exponentially, as it does every weekend. Google, as you know, keeps your embarrassing search history for "AZN Squirrels Pooping on Bananas" or "Iron Man upskirt" for 18 months. But how long do Verizon and AT&T hang on to your shameful SMSes? Thankfully, not long at all. Sprint hangs on to your textual diarrhea the longest, for about two weeks, while AT&T dumps them after 48 hours, according to Slate's Explainer. We hit up Verizon, who said a "couple days, tops." There are a couple catches, though.

While with the major carriers, for the most part, no one (not even the cops) can dredge up stuff from years ago since it's been long deleted, watch out if you're on an employer's carrier, like Skytel, which touts its messaging archival features. The other major catch is that even deleted messages can be recovered directly from your phone, just like deleted data from any other storage device, because of the way deletion works—it just marks the data as okay to be overwritten, so if it hasn't been replaced by new data, it's still recoverable. It's a bit easier to snag from SIM cards (which can hold up to 30 messages) than from the phone's internal memory 'cause there are dedicated gadgets for doing so.

Bottom line though, text messages are still probably the safest way to go about your business (dirty or otherwise) without worrying about getting snooped (much safer than IM or email, which are notoriously logged)—as long as you wipe them off your actual phone and make it past the two-day mark carrier-side. An anonymous prepaid phone works even better, obviously.

Now SPY on your cheating spouse's deleted text messages

USB devices that can be used to access SIM card data on a computer are nothing new. But this particular one is apparently the first SIM reader that can be used to access deleted text messages still on the card. Just like deleted files on a PC hard drive, as long as the deleted data on the SIM card hasn’t been written over by a new file, it can still be retrieved.

Obviously such a device raises a whole mess of privacy and legal concerns, but the company is targeting it at parents who want to check up on their kids or bosses wanting to check up on employees, which are apparently both legal uses for it. And while using the device to check up on a suspected cheating spouse is kind of a legal gray area, using it to see what secrets a complete stranger has on their SIM card is of course completely illegal.

The SIM card spy can also be used to backup or edit phonebook data on a PC, which is a considerably easier task with a full keyboard. But at $149 from BrickHouseSecurity.com there are far cheaper USB SIM readers on the market if that’s all you want to do

Cell phone is mom-avoidance device for teens

Tweens and teens are pushing parents to adopt text messaging so they don't have to talk "live" over the cell phone, according to mobile phone executives.

A typical teenager carrying a cell phone might let mom's call roll over to voicemail and then immediately text her back, "What going on?," according to Stephen Saiz, manager of consumer insight and strategy of the Walt Disney Internet Group's North American mobile division.

"Teens are pushing their parents to go on mobile because they don't really want to communicate with them directly," Saiz said here on a panel of mobile executives at the YPulse 2008 National Mashup, a two-day conference on teens and technology.

He said later in an interview that his Disney division researches teens' and parents' behavior on the cell phone and with its mobile applications. The majority of older audiences using Disney mobile applications skew to mothers who are goaded there by their kids, he said. And most tweens and teens prefer to text message and instant chat with parents and friends rather than talk directly so that they can continue doing other things like play video games with friends, he said.

More broadly, nearly one out of every two U.S. tweens (or kids between 10 and 13 years old) and 83 percent of teens own a cell phone, according to new research from Chicago-based C&R Research. And with that many kids using mobile devices, the text messages are flying.

The average teen, according to C&R, generates between 50 and 70 text messages a day, or as many as 18,000 a year.

Despite the flurry of activity, it's not all about mobile communication for teens anymore. More U.S. teens are looking for social networking and entertainment via the cell phone. Saiz, for example, said that young people are looking for full-length video on the mobile phone, despite the perception that kids just want to "info-snack," or consume small bits of information. "Young people are looking for long-form content," he said.

Its confirmed: Laptops, smartphones destroy sex lives

In a recent survey, 37 percent of laptop owners said they “frequently” use the computer in the bedroom.

We have been struck by a small spate of recent news items and research reports that, if taken together, could indicate that we are spending big money to kill off our sex lives.

I am referring to our pricey technology, the kind of thing you are using right now to read these words. (If you are going to panic over this, kindly do so after finishing the column, please.)

This month, Solutions Research Group, an organization that provides data to high-tech companies and also conducts surveys of our technology habits, published a report called “Age of Disconnect Anxiety.”

It found that 25 million Americans now use a so-called smartphone like a BlackBerry or Treo, and that 63 percent of you smartphoniacs have used the thing while you are in the bathroom.

But as disturbing as the previous image may be, here’s the one that ought to make you worry: Thirty-seven percent of laptop owners say they “frequently” use the computer in the bedroom. In all, 68 percent of Americans say they feel a sense of anxiety when they are not jacked into the global mind grid of the Net. This anxiety was defined as “feelings of disorientation and nervousness experienced when a person is deprived of Internet or wireless access for a period of time.”

It’s tough to look forward to, or enjoy, sex if you are anxious, but here’s something to make cell phone addicts even more anxious. In the January issue of the journal Fertility and Sterility, a group of researchers from the Cleveland Clinic reported that “use of cell phones decrease the semen quality in men.” Men using a fertility clinic were divided into four groups, ranging from no cell phone use to using the things more than four hours per day. The longer the men used the cell phones, the less he-man their semen. Sperm count, motility (how well our boys swim), viability (how alive they are) and normal morphology (how handsome they are) were all compromised.

A year ago, a team at the Medical College of Wisconsin exposed rats to six hours of cell phone emissions for 18 weeks and found that the rats’ own emissions went haywire. Specifically, their sperm “exhibited a significantly higher incidence of sperm cell death than control group rats.” Alarmingly, “abnormal clumping of sperm cells was present in rats exposed to cellular phone emissions and was not present in control group rats.”

Abnormal clumping? The authors offered sage advice: “These results suggest that carrying cell phones near reproductive organs could negatively affect male fertility.” While it may be good advice to avoid carrying your cell phone in the pouch of your jock strap, it is also good advice not to use the thing for six hours a day, especially if you’re a rat.

The whole issue of electromagnetic fields and their effects on health is controversial, to say the least. Web sites can be found blaming them for everything from leukemia to autism, yet there is very little scientific evidence for most of the claims of harm. Still, abnormal clumping?

There are signs, though, that even if cell phone use were proven to cause some harm, we wouldn’t give them up. We like our technology too much. Some of us like our technology more than sex.

You've got mail — in bed

Also this month, a British study sponsored by the Sleep Council, the United Kingdom’s bed industry group, declared “Brits Swap Sex Drives for Hard Drives.” Eight of 10 people, it said, boot up a variety of high-tech gadgets before bedtime. Almost one-quarter of respondents said they left their cell phones or smartphones on — using them as alarm clocks. One in three sends or receives text messages or e-mails while in bed. Not surprisingly, the Sleep Council’s spokeswoman, Jessica Alexander (no relation that I know of) managed to connect tech addiction — and all that extra time in the sack e-mailing — to the need to buy expensive beds that are “regularly replaced.”

So why not replace it with the Starry Night bed? Starting in 2009, Leggett and Platt, a manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., will sell you the Starry Night equipped with 1.5 terabytes of hard drive storage (in case you really want to listen to 400,000 songs or watch 2,000 hours of video), a headboard with a 1080p projector, Internet connectivity and an RF remote linked to a Microsoft Media Center for the low, low price of $20,000 to $50,000. If the thought having sex in a Space Shuttle cockpit turns you on, you ought to be good to go.

On the other hand, if you think the Starry Night could be an example of misplaced priorities, you won’t get an argument from Marta Meana, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She studies sexual desire and also sees patients with low or no desire, including couples in “sexless” marriages.

“There are reasons to believe there is a link” to omnipresent technology, Meana says. “If we are feeling like we are multi-tasking a lot, and our attention is divided many ways, that is getting in the way of making quiet time to have sex and really focus on another human being … Unfortunately, we do not privilege sensuous activity and sexuality the way we should in our marriages.”

Plasma TVs more desirable than sex

Another survey was released recently by a UK electronics retailer that showed nearly half of British men would happily give up sex for six months in exchange for a free 50-inch plasma TV. Only about one-quarter of all respondents — men and women — said they would be willing to give up chocolate.

Let me repeat: About 25 percent said they would give up chocolate, meaning, presumably, that 75 percent would rather not miss out on a beloved Cadbury for six months than be given a 50-inch TV. But half of men said they’d willingly give up sex to get the TV.

It turns out, say some therapists, that TV watching itself dampens our sex lives. A couple of years ago, an Italian sexologist named Serenella Salomoni issued a report, based on the habits of 523 couples, stating that having a TV in the bedroom cut the rate of intercourse in half.

In another report, a year ago, Salomoni and other Italian experts studying 250 couples were alarmed to find that many Italians were watching nearly as much TV as Americans, the world’s TV-watching champions, and that all this viewing was driving a wedge between couples.

Last year, Japanese sleep scientists studied the influence of electronic media, including TV, computers and PDAs on more than 5,800 Japanese people. About half said they thought they were not getting enough sleep because they were up using the Internet or watching TV. As it turned out, the actual amount of sleep between users and non-users did not vary much, but users perceived a lack of sleep quality and sleep amount. This perception was aggravated on nights before work days.

If you think you’re tired and stressed, sex is not going to be a must-do item.

All this news may lead you to think that we are too busy, too tired, too distracted and too desirous of flat-screen TVs to have sex, and that even if we are having sex there’s an outside chance our gonads are so fried by our constant connectedness they’re making sperm look more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame than sleek cruise missiles.

iPod, iPhone gadget accessory that can sync, store and charge

Normally my eyes tend to glaze over when it comes to the hundreds of accessories available for the iPod or the iPhone, but this relatively compact USB dongle from Macally seems to be pretty useful. On one end you’ll find a standard USB connection but on the other there’s the 30 pin connector used by the iPhone and the various iPod’s for charging and syncing. I guess the primary use of the PowerLink is as an emergency backup battery to extend the life of your device if you happen to be away from a power source.

Unfortunately there’s no details on the Macally site as to how much longer you can expect a device to run with the PowerLink attached, but given its size I don’t think we’re talking hours and hours.

The PowerLink can also be used as a substitute sync cable between your PC and iPod/iPhone if you’ve forgotten or chose not to carry the standard cable. Given the fact that it’s not flexible like the cable though, it might be a bit awkward to use if you don’t have a table or flat surface to put the devices on. But as an added bonus Macally has also crammed 2GB of flash memory in there so it’s even useful as just a USB flash drive. While it’s still listed as ‘Coming Soon’ on the Macally website, when it is available the PowerLink will sell for $49.99.

Now mobile phones to repel mosquitoes

A mobile phone operator in South Korea is offering users a new service that claims to repel mosquitoes. Subscribers to SK Telecom Company will be able to download a sound wave that humans cannot hear, but that annoys mosquitoes within a range of one metre (one yard).

For the fee of $2.5, customers can then play the sound by pressing a few keys on their phones.

The mobile phone emits a noise similar to the buzz of a male mosquito, which the blood-sucking females tend to avoid.

Although it uses handset battery power faster, the service is expected to be very popular during Korea's hot, humid summers.

The firm, the country's largest, has 17 million subscribers and controls just over half of the South Korean domestic market.

iPhone: Five reasons I didn’t use the original one

When I explain the two factors that are revolutionary about the iPhone, I’m often asked why I don’t use one. With the first generation iPhone, there were five factors that kept me from using it, but that list is now down to one.

1) Speed – The bad thing about loading up full-size Web pages is that most of them are quite large. Many sites assume users have fast broadband connections. The iPhone’s Web browser is abysmally slow when connected over the cellular network (and still not super-fast when connected via Wi-Fi). Many sites never even load at all. The iPhone 3G is better, but there are still times when a non-3G BlackBerry or Treo will load a mobile Web page far faster than the iPhone 3G will load the full Web page from the site. The iPhone Web browser simple renders pages slowly, since it’s using Safari like a Mac OS X computer but the iPhone has far less processing power than even the slowest Mac.

2) Price – At $499 (4 GB) and $599 (8 GB), the original iPhone was way too pricey for me to justify, and I’m sure many IT departments felt the same way. Apple eventually dropped the price of the 8 GB iPhone to $399, but that wasn’t low enough for me, since the iPhone still had other limitations. Apple has dropped the price of the iPhone 3G to a more palatable $199 (8 GB) and $299 (16 GB).

3) E-mail – The primary reason that I use my smartphone is for checking e-mail. Since the first iPhone did not include support for push e-mail and could not connect to Microsoft Exchange it simply was not a viable replacement for a Treo, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile device. Apple has rectified that by building Exchange ActiveSync support into the iPhone 3G.

4) Headphone jack – Although it’s nitpicky, one of the most maddening features of the original iPhone was its recessed headphone jack. This meant that you could only use Apple’s proprietary headphones, which don’t fit my ears and hurt whenever I try. The only other option was to buy an adapter to make the jack compatible with normal headphones. Thankfully, Apple has replaced this with a standard jack in the iPhone 3G.

5) Keyboard – For me, the worst feature of the original iPhone was its on-screen keyboard. While it’s better and more intuitive than the on-screen keyboard in Windows Mobile and other devices, it is still not very useful when you need to do any kind of serious typing. It’s just too slow and error-prone. It really forces you to hunt-and-peck with one finger. I have much better luck using my thumbs on the qwerty keyboards that come on most smartphones.

Will I use the iPhone 3G?

Apple rectified the first four items on my list with the iPhone 3G, but unfortunately the on-screen keyboard remains. If the iPhone 3G had a slide-down qwerty keyboard in landscape mode, I would have seriously considered adopting it. However, without a usable keyboard the device is still just an innovative, ground-breaking piece of technology that doesn’t quite have a place in my day-to-day life yet. And, I also wouldn’t recommend it to any IT leaders or business users who need to do a significant amount of typing from a smartphone.

HOW TO Track Calories on an iPhone?

Ever been curious about how many calories are in that dish you're about to order? Or, how much fat is in that tuna melt at the diner down the street? The free LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker can help you find that information and keep a digital diary of your daily calories.

Instructions

Step 1 - Your health conscientious website, LIVESTRONG.COM, has come up with a brand new calorie tracker, which you can utilize on the go. No more writing down the calories you've consumed through out the day-- all you need is your iPhone/iPod Touch and the "LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker" application and you're ready to maintain the weight you've been striving for. First off, make sure you have iTunes installed on your computer. In order to download the application to your iPhone/iPod Touch, you must have the iTunes program (you can download the program from www.iTunes.com).

Step 2 - If you have iTunes already on your computer, you will be all set to download the application. In order to download the application, go to http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/ .

Step 3 - The "Calorie Tracker on iPhone" will be the featured special. Just click on the "download" button-- this will automatically open up your iTunes (if it hasn't been opened yet).

Step 4 - Your iTunes will direct you to the "LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker" splash page. Click on the "Get App" button and you're all set.

Step 5 - Finally, just sync up your iPhone/iPod Touch to iTunes and now you officially have a "LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker" on the go. This application will offer you a comprehensive nutrition database of more than 450,000 food and restaurant items. In addition, you can find and track the amount of calories you can burn in their database of exercises and activities.

Tips & Warnings

- You can also do a search for "LIVESTRONG.COM" on your iTunes to get access to the LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker application

- If you don't have access to a computer to do the aforementioned steps, you can simply purchase the "LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker" straight from your iPhone.

- It's free for a limited time only, so get it while it doesn't cost a thing!