Verizon Sucks, I'll go with the iPhone

When I worked at Bloomberg about 10 years ago, I used to routinely work with staff from Verizon as part of my job, and always found the employees that I worked with there to be pretty rude, and not particularly focused on satisfying their customers...
10 years later, I visited Verizon to check out what I thought could be my next device, the Blackberry Storm, and found that not a whole lot has changed in the last 10 years.

My primary concern with the iPhone is the touch screen keyboard and how it might affect my ability to type emails. So when I went to try out the Storm, top of mind for me was the use of the keyboard for email. But Verizon would not allow the removal of the black piece of plastic that was attached to the Storm for security measures to be removed from the device so I could test out typing email. Instead, the 5 Verizon employees who were standing around chatting with each other, each provided their own ridiculous excuse as to why I wouldn't be able to fully demo the typing feature. The main sales guy from Verizon actually didn't even put down his own Blackberry throught this process - instead - he was texting or emailing while trying to answer my questions about the demo.

So I left Verizon, not having even gotten the chance to try out the Storm, but based on my interactions with Verizon, I'll go with the iPhone.

AppleTV vs. Tivo

I've owned Apple TV for about a year, and while it doesn't seem to have caught on in a big way, I am totally hooked. I recently finished the 1st two seasons of Mad Med, purchasing episodes directly from Itunes via Apple TV...(Someone asked me what time Mad Men is actually on, and I had no clue - guess that's what the term time-shifting means). While there are some options for opening up Apple TV to online content outside of Itunes (You can apparently view Hulu content with software from Boxee), you're pretty much reliant on Apple to determine what you can and can't see.

Next month, Tivo's integration with Netflix will go live presenting another promising solution for bringing a massive content library into your living room...From the Tivo newsletter

"Starting next month, all TiVo® HD customers* are going to fall in love with Netflix® all over again (it's even better the second time around!) when you can send more than 12,000 movie and TV episodes straight to your living room using just your TiVo remote ..."

While I'm looking forward to testing it out, I am not all that optimistic. I've been using both the Apple TV and Tivo interfaces to Youtube - and if Tivo's Netflix integration is as clumsy as their Youtube integration, I anticipate that I'll continue to be a loyal Apple TV fan. The Apple TV UI is so slick - making it easy to search for and find Youtube content, and navigate menus - and Tivo's is sluggish and slow, making it a real chore to use.

Advantage iPhone?

With the reviews coming in, looks like the iPhone will be the way i go...I'll probably try one out at Verizon, but the feedback on sluggish performance of touchscreen/menu navigation and email has me concerned about the storm...

Storm vs iPhone

Trying to decide on my next device, and think i've narrowed it down to iphone vs storm...interesting article here

Luke's Haircut

Took Luke to get a haircut...I think he cried more than he did during his circumcision....

XTC Skylarking

Listened to XTC Skylarking on Lala today for the first time in a while....its been about 22 years since it came out and probably 10 years since i've listened to it, but it remains one of my favorite albums of all time....definitely worth a listen

Lala