Poll: Digital Music, How do you Roll?

In light of a post I caught on PPCT today, I figure this would make for a good conversation. Before I ask the question, the article on PPCT is about Yahoo Music shutting their doors. I won’t speculate, but could it have something to do with Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo and having it’s own all you can eat music store? Any, Ed Hansberry reports that Yahoo Music users got an email stating that they were shutting down and their DRM licenses would expire September 30, 2008.

I love the concept of renting music. Sure there are albums you want to have forever and ever, but really, how many times can you listen to Shania Twain’s Up CD? Really. So I opt for the all you can eat plans that cost ~ $15.00/mo, that way I can download all I want, keep what I like and try some new stuff next month. I used Yahoo Music for 2 years before jumping into the Zune Pass all you an eat plan. In fact, Just yesterday there was a little Twitter buzz about how cool the Zune Pass is.

Don’t worry, If you steal music, I won’t tell. Your votes are counted but they don’t register against a user name, so you can be honest.

Poll: Are you sick of the iPhone News?

Many of you know where we came from, the roots of this site. If you don’t this site was a spawn off of Aximsite, which was called iPaqHQ and evolved into Mobilitysite. Our Windows Mobile/Pocket PC roots are deep. With changes in the times, comes changes in focus. While we are not abandoning Windows Mobile at all, we are covering Hot Mobility News. It would be unfair to ignore the exsistance of the iPhone. If you are tired of us posting news about the iPhone, I apologize, but it’s out there and it’s pretty nice. I caught a post over at Gizmodo asking the question, “iPhone 3G: How Do You Feel?” and thought it would be a good poll for this community as well.

I fully expect the results of this poll to be a different percentage wise from the Gizmodo poll. Just how different is the question. I personally feel that we’ve been lenient on the iPhone posts. Short of my own experience, there have only been a handful. This was by design. I really didn’t want to cram iPhone down your throats.

Going Back to Forum Commenting Only?

I have waffling back and forth on this. I have had a bunch of requests to allow for forum commenting again. The problem is, I really want to have one or the other. Having two conversations on the same story is tough to follow. I am considering finding the guy that helped me bridge the comment before and hiring him back again. What do you think? One thing to note, if I do go back to forum commenting, I will have it set up where there can be "unregistered user" comments too. The will be moderated, but it will keep people form having to register in the forums if they don’t want to.

What do you think?

Poll : Will you be buying the 3G iPhone?

I don’t think I am going to pull the trigger personally. Besides, I have 4 phones that I am evaluating right now already. I will upgrade my current iPhone to the new software and give it another spin though. I am really interested in seeing how well they implemented Exchange Server support. That is very important to me.

If you have any thoughts either way, by all means, share them!

Do All mp3 Players Sound Alike?

 

Recently I read a review of an mp3 player where the author purposely chose not to discuss sound quality because, in the author’s words, “The chosen player has a great deal to do with how you access your music, but very little to do with how it sounds…”  That got me thinking.  Do all mp3 players sound alike?  They are all digital, so it’s the same 1’s and 0’s playing the music, so how can there be a difference in sound quality?  

I have tested some mp3 players myself and have noticed drastic differences.  I have trouble believing that mp3 players don’t influence sound quality that much.  They have different components, circuitry, software and build tolerances, so how can there not be a difference?  I agree that other factors have an influence on sound quality, namely the quality of the music and headphones.  But if you test mp3 players using the same playlist and headphones, I believe you will hear differences.  This logic works with surround sound receivers, cell phones and recording equipment as well.  But that’s just my opinion.  Let’s explore a little further.

The Big Question

Do all mp3 players sound alike, or are there true, measurable differences that even the average user can appreciate? If a reviewer made a mix tape of high quality music and tested it with the same good headphones on several players, would they not notice a difference?  Read on to see what I have discovered.

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Poll: Do You Hear Sound Quality Differences Between mp3 Players?

Please take a second to vote in my poll. I am researching an article and appreciate your input. And let us know what your opinion, and what player you’re rockin’.

TGIF Poll - Friday the 13th - Do you shutdown?

Since it’s Friday and I want to shut down already, I was thinking about what other do. Do you shutdown for the weekend?

Today, you can be reached anywhere if you don’t shutdown. With my push email, I can be reached at the lake, at my son’s karate class, and even the mall. Do you want work to contact you in those places? Only my hobby (these sites) and personal email gets pushed to my exchange server, so I stay connected throughout the weekend, but I do leave my work pager behind for sure. What do you do?

How did you find the site?

I am very happy, and thankful to have so many people reading the site. To help us understand who is reading, we had a nice survey with the help of Netshelter recently. We got some great info about our demographics. One thing that I want to know more about is where you guys came from. How did you become a reader?

Thanks for reading and thanks for taking time out to interact. Also, feel free to post comments to this and all posts. Comments are wonderful, good or bad. Check out the forums as well for some hearty conversation and help with your Mobile Devices.

Poll : What New Phone are you most excited about?

There are some really hot new, hyped up phones coming down the line this year. Which one are you most excited about? Me, I am really hyped about the Xperia X1 as well as the Velocity Mobile offerings.

Who is your 2nd favorite Windows Mobile Phone Maker?

So, we all know that most people love HTC devices. Some of the best current Pocket PC and Smartphones are made by HTC. Heck, even some phones you didn’t know were made by HTC are made by HTC.

I was just thinking how much of an impact Samsung has had in the Windows Mobile Arena in the past 2 years and thought it would be good to know what you thought, so here is a poll.

I realize I added a couple new players and left off a few too. Don’t forget Velocity Mobile, they are coming soon as well, but shouldn’t be a player in this poll. My guess is that Palm or Samsung should win hands down, that is if you consider HTC #1 already.

Does Microsoft Need to Flex it’s Muscle?

Something that I feel strongly that Apple did right with the iPhone is that they demanded the carrier adhere to their rules. I mean, Apple is getting paid for services that AT&T usually pockets 100% of. That is insane. I think that MIcrosoft has a tad to learn from this.

So, what I think is that Microsoft needs to release their Windows Mobile OS with a strict set of guidelines on what can be done by the OEMs and Carriers to the core OS. What happens when carriers get in there and start adding and removing stuff? Sometimes good things, sometimes disaster that ultimately falls back on Microsoft and not the carrier even though it was done by the carrier. I am not saying Windows Mobile is perfect by any means, I just think that bad hardware and/or bad updates are making it look worse.

I personally think that the carriers have gotten too powerful and it will never fly if Microsoft was to bow up to the them, but it’s wishful thinking. The iPhone works great because it’s basicly unaltered. There is not much you can currently do to the iPhone to alter the operation that Apple intended. The exact opposite can be said about Windows Mobile. This is both good and bad for consumers. Good in that we can customize the hell out of our devices and bad that the carriers can strip out needed apps to line their pockets.

What do you think?

Where do we go from here? What’s next in Mobile Tech?

Something I have been throwing around in my mind for a couple months is the future of Converged Devices and PDAs. We already know that most of the world considers the stand alone PDA dead, but what about Mobile Phones? We need a phone. We like having tools on our phones to manage our lives, yet there has been no real progress on the hardware side.

Let’s look 1st at the standalone PDA. The Dell Axim X51v was released well over 2 years ago right? The HP iPAQ 4700 series was released just before it. They are both quite similar too. Since their release, what has there been that really exceeds the specs? Nothing really. I was just talking on the phone this weekend with someone that returned an HP iPAQ 100 series Pocket PC. It wasn’t really an upgrade to a 2 year old Dell Axim X51v. Although the HP iPAQ 200 series on paper is an upgrade, it’s not head and shoulders better. That leaves us with the question, “What has to be done to upgrade the PDA and Converged device experience?” Memory, Processor, battery life? What hardware changes need to be made?

It really seems to me that we have peaked on hardware in the Mobile Phone business too. Sure, we are seeing new models pop up every day, but how limited are they by what is available for them to build on? When are we going to see 1ghz or better processors with plenty of ram and no real battery life loss? Is that the hold up? Battery technology to allow for the same or better battery life with faster processors? Are we going to just move on past a standard phone form factor and go for the big MID or UMPC route and just use Bluetooth to get our calls taken care of?

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What do you think of Windows Mobile 6.1 So Far?

Right, I know that not many have devices in their hands with 6.1, but you’ve seen the screenies and videos. What do you think from what you’ve seen so far?

Taking up for Microsoft a bit here… Those that expected a dot release to be a full blown OS revamp to  “compete” with new operating systems out there, understand that WM 6.1 for the most part was developed before some of these new operating systems were publicly available. I am pretty sure about this at least. I don’t see how Microsoft could scrap a pending update such as 6.1 and start over just because someone came out with something different. If I sound like an apologist with this, I am. Some of the reports I’ve seen out of CTIA seem to show disappointment in this offering. Maybe Microsoft should speed up their process of development? Maybe.

Across the board in Windows Mobile 6.1, I don’t see much change that will affect the way I do business. So I am going with a C here.

Do you Twitter? Do you RSS? What do you do?

In today’s fast pace information world, you have more than one option to follow the news and info that websites provide. You already know you can just visit the sites, many of you already use RSS, and some use email subscriptions too. Did you know that there are even more ways that we, the website admins, can get content out to you? One of those new methods that I have ignored for so long is Twitter.

Julie Delong, Microsoft MVP and a member of our moderation team, set up a Twitter feed not too long ago. I wasn’t too sold on the whole Twitter thing, but lately, I have been giving it a serious look. I have been using it a lot lately on the personal side. (my link) I have also been looking at how the content is present in Twitter and I really like what Julie has set up. When a post is made here, it sends a message to Twitter and it is published on the Mobilitysite Twitter feed. You can subscribe to it and read it online, in your Twitter application on your device, or even have the alerts text messaged to you. (Mobilitysite’s Twitter Feed)

Another method we use here is using our Odiogo feed. This is really cool if you have a high speed connection and want to listen to our news stories on the way to work, etc.

Here are some ways to get Mobilitysite’s content:

• Standard RSS (Try our Branded Viigo Windows Mobile Reader)
• Twitter Feed
• Email Blast (visit Mobilitysite and look in the right column for a blog to enter address)
• Odiogo feed
• Facebook

What RSS Reader do you use?
I use Google Reader on my desktop and laptop and Viigo on my mobile devices.

Poll : What is the "Perfect" Phone Form Factor?

I am always in search of the perfect phone. My preference changes from front facing keyboard to slider as often as my wife buys shoes. When the i-mate Kjam came out a few years ago, I was all over it and fell in love with the slide out full qwerty keyboard. Then came the BlackJack, the Moto Q, and the Palm Treo 750. I loved those too. Very good for email replies and such. I carried the BlackJack and the Palm Treo for quite a while before going back to another slider, the AT&T Tilt. Right now I am in love with the Tilt still and I am eagerly awaiting the Xperia. I didn’t much like the iPhones text entry nor the HTC Touch. The T9 input on the HTC Star Trek was hell on wheels for me as well. So, my vote goes to a slider!

Tell us about what you like in a phones form factor.