Verizon Wireless Is NOT Getting The iPhone... Yet

I am the Rochester Smartphone Reporter for Examiner.com. Below is my first article. In case it doesn't get published in time - it being my first article, I don't get to do it willy-nilly - I wanted to put it here as well.

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Last week, Verizon Wireless sent invitations to an event in New York City. This announcement has been interpreted my many sources, including the Wall Street Journal, as the long-awaited announcement of the Verizon iPhone. Why else, the speculation continues, would Verizon Wireless be so flashy, and not announce this at the Consumer Electronics Show last week? It cannot possibly be anything less important than the iPhone.

However, this doesn't look to be a typical Apple announcement. There are several reasons to draw this conclusion.

• Apple has announced all their new technology over the last decade either on their own campus, in Cupertino, CA, or at their annual Developer's Conference. Lincoln Center in New York City is neither location.

• Apple makes their own product announcements. They didn't allow AT&T to announce the iPhone. They didn't allow Zynga to announce FarmVille for the iPhone. Sure, AT&T and Zynga were on stage and in attendance at their respective events, but it was Apple's show. This isn't.

• At CES, Verizon Wireless had a huge presence. Throughout the show, they introduced phone after phone after phone. Almost every phone they introduced was based on Google's Android Operating System. For Verizon to so quickly announce a product seen in the marketplace as a huge rival to the product line they spent the last week trumpeting seems counterintuitive.

• Verizon Wireless already has an Apple product in their stable - the iPad. However, their version of the iPad is the WiFi-only version. Currently, Verizon's network runs on a technology that does not require or utilize a SIM card. Apple's 3G products in the US all require SIM cards, which is great for the AT&T network. The next version of the Verizon Network, their 4G/LTE offering, does utilize SIM cards. It stands to reason that the first iPhone on Verizon will be an LTE phone. Those were all announced last week.

• More on the LTE front: Verizon Wireless is building their LTE network, but the coverage is still spotty, focused in some of the largest markets. If the iPhone is an LTE version of the device, its audience would be severly limited by this factor. On the other hand, if it were only a 3G device, the limitation would be the use of old technology that will be left behind by year's end. Either way, Apple loses here.

It's important to note that there is significant evidence and wide reporting that tomorrow's announcement is about Verizon's introduction of Windows Phone 7 to their offerings, and is not an Apple announcement. This reporting, right or wrong, has no bearing on the opinions expressed above. However, that phone, the HTC Trophy, is a 3G phone, and not reliant on LTE, which is why it was not announced at CES.

And it is possible that the speculation by the Wall Street Journal is right, and this speculation is incorrect. However, while the iPhone is imminent on the Verizon Wireless network, all signs point to that particular announcement coming well after tomorrow.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments on this subject!

Etch-a-Sketch

This is Etch-A-Sketch Guy doing my daughter's name. Enjoy.

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Blue Box

I just downloaded a Blue Box/Red Box app to my phone (an original Droid). For those too young to know, real Blue Boxes were used by phone phreaks such as Steve Wozniak (who made and sold them) to audibly trick pay phones into making free calls.

I doubt this app will still work. Technology has come a long way since the 70's. However, if I find a pay phone tomorrow, I will try it and report the results here.

Why I Have an Orkut Account

As many of you know (because that's how you were directed to this post), I have a Facebook account. You can search for me over there. I actively update my status. I play the games. (That's right. I have a farm AND a Mafia!) I also have a Twitter account, and I tweet a lot. Sure, a lot of my tweets are retweets (and I will discuss ReTweet, the Android app, at a later date), but it's fun.

What many of you don't know is that I also have an account on Orkut. Wait.... do you even know what Orkut is? Well, let's go to the "official" Google description of their social network:

"orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating"

(source, http://www.orkut.com/Main#about.aspx)

Nice theory. But I only have four friends, so I am just not getting far there. Incidentally, all four of those friends are also my friends on Facebook. So that's not the reason.

A look at the demographics (http://www.orkut.com/Main#MembersAll) shows something different about Orkut. The largest populations of members are from Brazil and India. The United States rates a distant 3rd. So, perhaps a way to find a new audience for my ramblings (even though I only have four friends!)?

No, that's not it, either - although it is kind of interesting to see so many posts in Portuguese.

As I alluded to earlier in this post, Orkut is owned by that #2 site on the Internet, Google. Love them or hate that, you are foolish to ignore them. I don't know if Orkut is going to become the basis for the long-rumored GoogleMe "Facebook-killer" social network - in fact, I kind of doubt that it will - but I do suspect that Google will test some of their concepts there.

At least one Google Chrome extension that I use a lot - Social Translate (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/giljlmclogpacbccpelmggfcjnickhhf) - was built so fools like me, who don't really speak Portuguese all that well, could read those Brazilian posts on Orkut. That extension works with Facebook and Twitter as well; it works with languages other than Portuguese, too (which is good for someone who has a LOT of Norwegian friends).

Google is also all about integration and single sign-in. Orkut was one of the first social networks to have a native app available in Android Market. Anyone who has ever gotten an Android-based phone know that, in order to activate the phone, a GMail account is required. Now, I already had a GMail account, so no worries. Many people signed up for GMail solely because they chose an Android phone. But now, you have a Google account. And that same Google account.... works with Orkut. And, I suspect it will also work with GoogleMe if and when it comes.

Incidentally, that same Google account also works with several other Google services, that I will write about in future postings.

My final reason for wanting Orkut - besides wanting to be ahead of the curve on GoogleMe, loving the single sign-on, not being able to ignore anything Google does - is that I am a social network junkie. I joined because I wanted to see why it had more than 100 million members - sure, that's 20% of Facebook, but itis more than Twitter, it's more than Friendster, it's more than LinkedIn - that is a huge critical mass. And I just couldn't ignore that.

Now, I will be adding a link to my Orkut profile to Blogger profile (another service that uses the Google account, by the way) soon after I post this article. Please, feel free to be my friend there, too!

Getting back to my roots

I originally started this blog not as a music-posting, aging-hipster, useless-knowledge wet dream, but rather, as a way to yammer on about ALL the stuff I love - yes, music, but also technology, social networking, curling, LoudMouth Golf pants...

Unfortunately for me, it became the former. And I went back and reread a lot of my posts, and they were terrible.

Tonight, I decided to fix that. Most of the old posts are gone. I kept some - not because they were good, but because they show us where we came from.

Starting tomorrow, I forge ahead with my original concept. Most of these little blogs will be done from my phone - it is a Motorola Milestone that Verizon Wireless insisted on calling a "Droid" - but not all of them.

Oh. And I will still be running the Facebook pages - John Daly's Pants, the other little one about the Norwegian Olympic Curling Team's Pants - and I'll be on Twitter - @redargyle - and I will be on all the other crudely-constructed social networks so you don't have to.

Which is to say I am also on Orkut.

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The Tuesday Special - Songs You Didn't Know Were Covers

You know, a lot of songs that are or were very very popular are actually covers of somewhat obscure songs. Here, we will feature a few....

Elvis Presley was a great artist. And this song was very passionately performed by Jumpsuit Elvis.



But it wasn't his song. It was a song by an singer/songwriter named Mac Davis, who made the song a hit in his own right. And it's the first version I learned.



The Bangles hit it big with "Manic Monday" (which itself was a Prince cover - we will discuss Prince covers in a future post) (and we'll be coming back to the Bangles, too - most underrated band in history) They followed it with this very original song.....



....originally performed by Jules Shear, that is.



Linda Ronstadt made this song a huge hit in the 70s. And her signature growl in this song made it great....



....just like Buddy Holly had 20 years prior. Granted, Linda gave it more of a growl, but it was a cover, too!



OK, those of us that grew up in the 80s and hung out at the mall know this tune. And OK, I can admit it now. I LOVED this song. Still do.



And frankly, I think Tiffany did a more credible job on the song than Tommy James did. Which might be why few people realized at the time that it was a cover.



Tiffany was actually quite adept at covers. This one, however, was a bit of a sacrilege...



... given that it was the Beatles. Never mind that it was a relatively faithful cover. It was the Beatles, and you DON'T just cover the Beatles.



Isn't that right, Joe Cocker?

Cover of the Day - Katy Perry - Electric Feel

Technically, I know, this isn't a video. It's a picture of Katy Perry with audio. Doesn't change the fact that this is a completely AWESOME cover of an interesting-at-best song by MGMT. And it proves the woman is talented.