The Alpine Blog

It takes just a little longer to shop these days but the results are so much more rewarding. I rarely purchase anything over $50 anymore without using my phone to check Amazon or Cnet reviews and using Redlaser to compare pricing. I’m not sure what the store personnel think at Best Buy while I enter product codes or scan the barcode. I imagine I’m not the first and definitely not the last shopper who’s using this technology to their advantage. And with the speed increases with 3G, it’s a quick and easy operation. A recent shopping excursion to Costco with the Son:

Son: “Dad! I want this video game for our Wii. Will you buy it for me? It’s on sale for $1599.95!”

Dad: “Hold on, let me check the star rating on Amazon real quick… See? Look, Marshmallow Freak Out only gets two stars! It’s a totally lame game, little Dude”

Son: “Oh, OK. Hey Dad! I want this personal flight jet pack. Will you buy it for me? It’s on sale for $1599.95!”

Dad: (Repeat above line replacing “Marshmallow Freak Out” with “Augermatic”)

This repeats until we get through checkout, get our polish sausage and Coke and exit the store. Money saved!

I’ll also be the first to admit I’ve saved myself from some painful impulse purchases by checking out reviews before plunking down the cold cash on some obscure techno gadget. Again, it takes a little longer but the purchases are much more quality.

The most recent announcement at today’s Google I/O in San Francisco is that Google Wave is available to anyone who wants to use it. http://wave.google.com will take anyone to the sign-in page and voila, wave away.

From personal experience, Wave has some hurdles to overcome in order to go mainstream. The same organizational mindsets one has to adopt when using gmail are the same when using Wave: threads can get crazy out of hand quickly. The knowledge needed to make both Gmail and Wave usable isn’t necessarily an intuitive thing – there’s some digging to be done.

That said, the recent improvements to Wave have made it much easier to manage and a lot easier to use. Let’s see if “Generally Available” makes a difference with regards to usage.

Adobe has issued a public letter apologizing for the company’s lackluster customer service. From our dealings with Adobe customer service, we can say that this comes none too soon. Typical wait times are in the hour+ category and problems are routinely left unsolved even for simple issues like registering product. Let’s hope they create as good a customer service experience as they are able to create great product.

Adobe says in the letter that the problems stem from transitioning to a “new global service provider”. Hopefully this transition has been occuring for the past year+ since customer service has been poor for years now.

Here’s hoping they will rethink their product suites and sales-ability during their soul-searching. Specifically their ability to sell individual products to suite owners somewhere under retail pricing. A recent conversation with Adobe retail sales at their 800 number resulted in the salesperson admitting it was a bit fantastic that, even though we own Adobe Web Premium – a $1600 product – we are not eligible for any discounts on the InDesign product and have to pay the $699(!) for the product. Design Premium includes InDesign for only $100 more. While it doesn’t include Contribut and Soundbooth, everyone on the phone call agreed that Adobe had there head screwed on wrong with respects to additional suite sales.

Anywho, here’s the first paragraph from the apology, the rest can be seen here or halfway down their customer support page.

“Adobe is committed to providing the most advanced, innovative products and services in the world. Recently, however, our customers have experienced a level of service that is inconsistent with what they expect and deserve. This is unacceptable to us and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused some of our customers. We are working diligently – in fact, teams are working around the clock – to resolve these issues. I’d like to thank all our customers who are sharing feedback and giving us the opportunity to respond. We appreciate your loyalty, support, and willingness to make your concerns heard.”

I’ve had my iPhone for about a year now and often comment to people that I should work for Apple as an evangelist. On second thought, I wouldn’t be very good at it since I get overly excited when talking about new iPhone apps and what they can do – I’d probably start scaring the Blackberry users that I’m trying to convert.

We took a trip to San Francisco this weekend and used the iPhone a LOT to find our way around, find things we needed and keep the kids entertained while driving. Below, in particular order, are the top 5 most useful apps we used:

1. Yelp – Really, we’ve reached a pinnacle with this app. Type in what you’re looking for (dim sum) and Yelp Mobile will pinpoint your location using the iPhone’s respective location device and provide you with a list of item options either in list form or via a Google map. Sweet. The only downside, especially when looking for DimSum in SF on Mother’s Day is the ability for positive Yelp reviews to cram a restaurant. Dim Sum is popular on Sundays…

2. Google Mobile – Voice search – and accurate at that. Just like everything else Google, the interface is spartan, straightforward and works. Say what you want and Google will show you what, where and how much it is. Easy to move to maps for directions from the current location.

3. Pandora – Type in an artist or a song and Pandora will use their “Music Genome Project” to identify similar artists/songs and play them for you. An easy way to find new (to you) artist’s in similar genres. Hmm, Genome / Genre, same root word? Type in Miles Davis if you have a few days to kill.

4. Flight Control – You wouldn’t think landing airplanes would be fun but this addictive little game can help you kill 5-10 minutes with some very low-consequence air traffic control fun. The kids can last for a little while on it which means it gets back to Dad’s hands that much quicker.

5. Topple 2 – A block-stacking game with great graphics and a nice touch in that you can use the tilt sensor to keep the stack balanced. Kids love it also. At 99 cents, it’s hard to not try it.

Honorable Mention:

• Amazon Mobile – I use this all the time to compare pricing and get reviews on items I’m thinking about purchasing. Very handy.
• eBay Mobile – Keep up on your watched items, bids etc with a faster interface.
• Facebook – Keep connected when you’re away from your PC. Too bad Scrabble for Facebook isn’t included.