Tokarski

So, it’s been a week since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld. I wanted to take some time to let the hype wear off and the reality distortion field to dissipate before making the decision to start saving up my pennies for a possible purchase in June.

It certainly still looks as interesting and drool-worthy as the day Jobs made his compelling sales pitch in his demos. But, what would it feel like in regular use - how would it feel in my pocket?

Since I had a hard time visualizing 61mm W x 115mm H x 11.6mm D - even with all of the pics circulating - I cobbled together a quick physical prototype from a scrap of wood to see how it ‘felt’ (sure….I know I’m missing all of the nice rounded and smooth edges).

Compared to my trusty Sony-Ericsson T610, it’s wider and taller, but considerably thinner. Popping it in my pocket, it just fits between the end of my pocket and the crease in my pants while sitting.

I’ve always been a fan of candy-bar style phones as opposed to clamshells, but I’m not too sure the iPhone will hold up to the wear and tear of normal use. It may look like a piece of art suspended in a Lucite cylinder, but it probably won’t hold up over the long haul unless they’ve done something special with the screen. Also, I’m not all that concerned about the lack of tactile feedback from the interface since I’ll be looking at the screen whenever I’m interacting with the phone bits - iPod feature interactions may be another story (a physical next button would be nice for quickly skipping a track).

From an overall features and functionality standpoint (based on the Apple pages and all of the Web discussions in the last week), it’s probably a bit more than I need. I really don’t need a ’smart phone’ - I’m wondering what a nano tier of the phone would look like….

Still, it’s an iWant but definitely not an iNeed.

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It’s that time of the year and my two girl scouts, Allison (L) and Emily (R), are selling those tasty girl scout treats. The selections are shown below.

If you’re at all interested, pop me a message at tom at tokarski dot com and let me know which ones and how many boxes of each you’d like (they’re $3.50 per box).

More info on the cookies (like “nutritional information” ;->) can be found here:

http://girlscoutcookiesabc.com/atc/default.asp

Thanks!!

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More and more I’m relying on the radio data system (*RDS in the pic above) in the wagon to clue me in to some great music when I’m listening to the radio (since the human DJs don’t reliably provide song info during the breaks).

I’d always wondered what the alphabet soup on that end of the radio was (”PTY,” “RDS,” “SC,” “MODE”????…….I guess I could have read the manual).

A while back when I finally did press the RDS button to try it out, I was surprised to see some info on the song currently on the radio flash across the top text line of the radio (where “93XRT” is displayed in the pic).

Luckily, WXRT sends “small amounts of digital information using conventional FM radio broadcasts” and the RDS in my radio displays artist and title info - not all stations do.

Very cool.

Today, I heard another cool song - one that I’ve heard before but never identified - it sounded like Michael Stipe of R.E.M. singing, but it didn’t sound like an REM song. (Read the article)

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All the best from our family to you and yours.

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