When I visited Berlin for the first time, it was shocking just how much graffiti was all around the city. On buildings, on trains, everywhere – reminded me of the 1980s on the NYC subway. While I can’t say I am a fan, some of my friends have searched out graffiti installations in cities as they travel. Today a new mobile app is launching that will help make those searches easier.

Art.mapped is a mobile app for the Apple iPhone (coming soon to Android) that maps out street art, graffiti, public art and architecture. Founder Michael Stearne notes regarding Art.mapped, “(we) catalog(s) the locations of great graffiti, street art, public art, architecture and design. Great graffiti and street art goes away and art.mapped would like to help keep a record of these works and their locations over time.”

It’s a pretty neat idea to help you find art outside a typical museum – especially as you visit new cities. And you can help the app grow by sharing art that you find in your travels. I wonder how you report where you find subway graffiti since it’s a moving target.

The app is free and you can download Art.mapped in the Apple iTunes App Store.

For those of you who lived in NYC in the 70′s and 80′s, here’s a bit of classic graffiti:

Find more stories about: iphone, iPhone 4, mobile, new york, NYC

Back in December, Walmart offered the Apple iPhone 4 for $147 which included a $50 gift card.  Today Walmart has announced they are bringing back the Apple iPhone 4 special for $147 with no gift card required. The sale model is a 16GB version available for both AT&T and Verizon as your carrier choice. And you can select from the black version or the new OMG OMG OMG white version. The deal is available in Walmart stores that have a mobile department.

This is a $50 savings over the Apple store price — you still need to sign a two-year contract. There are still refurb deals on the iPhone 3GS direct from AT&T for $49 and $99 however now I would steer you towards spending the extra $100 for the latest Apple iPhone model. Of course there is talk of a new iPhone arriving later this summer.

Find more stories about: Apple, iphone, iPhone 4, mobile, walmart

Even though AT&T is working on acquiring T-Mobile, if you live in Seattle you will want to continue reading this post. This weekend, T-Mobile stores in the Seattle area are going to hold a speed contest. If you own an Apple iPhone on either Verizon or AT&T, you can win a quick $1,000. It’s a brilliant marketing strategy because it gets customers of competing carriers to open the door to T-Mobile and to have a look at the latest Android 4G phones. It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile can convert anyone who owns an iPhone over to an Android device since we know that speed isn’t the only reason consumers select one device over another.

To win the cash, your Apple iPhone needs to beat the T-Mobile Galaxy S smartphone on the T-Mobile 4G network. The rules clearly state you can’t use the WiFi option on the iPhone, it must be on the 3G network. Additionally, the rules state, “Speed challenge consists of three tests of the Galaxy S 4G versus the iPhone based solely on download speeds as measured by the Application; participants will be eligible to receive $1,000 if their iPhones are faster in two out of the three tests.”

I am sure some of the gadget blogs will create some good 3G routines which you can use to get your iPhone ready for the competition!

I wonder what odds Vegas gives to a 3G phone beating a 4G phone in terms of download speed.

You can find all of the contest details and the participating T-Mobile store locations here.

Find more stories about: AT&T, iphone, mobile, Seattle, T-Mobile, Verizon

I know, I know…Apple does nothing wrong, the iPhone is perfect, yay Apple. With the required Apple is awesome statement out of the way, I’d like to share a very important bit of poor usability in the Apple App Store. The good news is that the issue can be corrected very easily.

This past week on the tech blogs there were two major stories: the launch of the $41-million, VC-baked photo sharing app Color; and the beginning of fun posts about whether we are in a bubble or not. Rackspace employee Robert Scoble wrote a rant where he described how Color will basically never be able to recover from their initial App Store launch. I haven’t installed Color but one of the things Robert noted is that Color has a large number of “scathing reviews” and two-star ratings.

I read a few of the blog posts around the Color launch and wanted to check out the reviews and ratings Robert mentions in his post so I loaded iTunes and landed on the App Store page for the Color app. Below is a screenshot of what I see when the Color page loads. If you look at the red arrow, it points to the Rating for the Color app. It says 4+ which clearly means that Color has a rating of higher than 4 but less than 5 probably meaning the average is 4.xx. This was very confusing to me because Robert said that Color had a much lower overall rating of near 2.

Oh! While it doesn’t look like a link, the “Rated 4+” actually means that the application itself has an age rating of 4+ which means it’s basically approved for all audiences.

When you scroll down on the Color app page, you see what I’ve posted below – the customer ratings for the app. This is horrible usability – it makes nearly all apps with “Customer Ratings” of below 4 appear as if they have much higher overall ratings.

Apple could easily fix this by changing “Rated 4+” to “Age Rating” and placing “Average Customer Rating” right below it with a link that takes the customer down to the customer ratings section seen below. Assuming others agree with me, it would certainly be interesting to look at download counts for low customer rating apps after the change is made to see if in fact this major usability issue led to higher download counts.

Find more stories about: App Store, Apple, Color, iphone, iPhone 4

While attending Lean Startup day at SXSW 2011, I met with Ask.com VP Communications Valerie Combs to learn more about their new group texting mobile app. It seems that this year you aren’t cool if you don’t have a group texting app. Ask Around lets you view and engage in conversations near you.

You select your radius and then you can see what’s happening around that zone. You can also change the location — for example, you might be at the SXSW conference in Austin but want to see what’s happening at the Berlin main train station. You can also select a “spot” which will give you a list of popular locations to monitor the conversation.

The app doesn’t appear to have topics so it looks like everyone is just bundled together – I wonder how that works in terms of conversation flow. I guess it’s like Twitter – everyone just messages in whatever they want with no actual focus – but in this case the idea is that the conversation should be focused around a specific location.

I asked Valerie what makes Ask Around different than the 847 other group texting apps that have recently launched. She noted that Ask Around is specifically focused just on location – there are no algorithms, no matchmaker services, just a focus on the conversation around a location.

The Ask.com Ask Around app is free for download and currently only available for iPhone.

Below is Valerie’s video demo of Ask Around – you can check out another demo with Abby Johnson of WebProNews who spoke with Ask.com Chief Product and Technology Officer Lisa Kavanaugh.

Find more stories about: ask.com, iphone, mobile, sxsw, SXSW 2011

When I was a youngster, I busted my butt at the supermarket every week. And about once a quarter, I bought the new Nike Air Jordan sneakers. These sneakers were crazy expensive and my mother would yell at me (mainly because people were robbed for their Jordans in NYC) that I shouldn’t spend so much on sneakers. But I remember that even though they were expensive, there was something magical about wearing them. I can’t dunk a ball (though I was good at the three) but walking around Brooklyn in the sneakers just made me feel a bit cooler than if I bought just the basic sneakers.

When people ask me why the iPhone has been so popular, I reply by saying, “it’s the white headphones.” I only owned an iPhone for three weeks when it first launched because there was no AT&T signal in my apartment building in Manhattan. When I returned the iPhone, I went with a Samsung ACE which has Windows 6 Mobile. The phone has been great, it handles email great, phone calls with Sprint have always been rock solid and I like the keyboard. It’s a great utility phone, but it doesn’t have the white headphones.

I’ve taken two flights with Virgin Atlantic in their Upper Class service (I used points back in the day when the points from Delta transferred – it was sweet!). The experience from the second I arrived at JFK and LHR was absolutely amazing. Virgin Mobile has tried to copy the “look” of Virgin Atlantic but I am not sure the experience offered is the same.

I am not an Apple fanboy, but there is no doubt that when you buy an Apple product or visit one of their stores, it’s like slipping your feet into a pair of Air Jordans. I think Apple has realized that making a phone is easy, it’s making an experience that is much harder. These mobile devices are attached at our hips, in a purse, a fanny pack, or a belt clip night and day. And so the experience is so important today with technology. I bought an Apple iPod Touch during the holidays on Amazon and just opening the packaging made me think the device was made for the experience.

When I talk about experience, it combines the hardware, the software, and the support. With that said, I’d like to share some thoughts on my first 24 hours using an Android device. I plan to write another review after 30 days of usage assuming the data service eventually is re-activated. Assuming that I like Android over the next 30 days, I will probably move to a higher-end device from HTC, Samsung or Motorola (I am hoping I can get some test devices and provide some reviews).

I bought the LG Optimus V at Target this week while the phone is on sale for $109. The purchase went fine – I picked up a $25 top-up card for the first month of service (apparently there is also a 80-cent charge for 911).

I came back to the office, opened the box, started the charging process. I turned the phone on and went to the Virgin Mobile website to get activated. The process seemed to work ok – you signup online and then click the activate button on the phone. But the activate button kept giving me an error. I figured maybe it takes some time to get the service to register the phone – I waited two hours and then called customer service which is offshore. The person I spoke with basically told me there must be something wrong and he asked me for the ESN number and then told me he would create a ticket for a manager to call me back and that it would be 72 hours before I heard from the manager. I waited another two hours, called back again and was told basically the same thing. I kept trying to make the phone work – I want to play with this damn thing now!

One of my friends told me to talk to Virgin Mobile support on Twitter. So I sent a message to the VMUCare account. I quickly realized that the person monitoring the account was replying to comments that were sent 12 hours ago! This will be of no help to me I thought (I was right, she sent me a message over 12 hours after I asked for help).  I called back at 10pm and another service person actually got the phone working – turns out the ESN number was entered incorrectly. She fixed the number and in a minute the phone was active and I was online.

The LG Optimus V device is nice – it’s lightweight, fits in my pants pocket and has a nice screen. If I decide to stay with Android as my main device, I may go for a device with a bit larger screen but overall the build quality on this Optimus is good. And for a $100, no-contract phone, it’s the best on the market.

So I started to play – clicking buttons, trying to learn how the phone works, where the apps are located, etc.  I downloaded the Twitter app from the Android Market which was easy (I had to sign-in to my Google account which seemed to load up my Gmail automatically which I found a bit odd).

The only issue I couldn’t seem to figure out was where the apps went after you installed them. On my iPod Touch, the apps just appear right on the screen – they don’t behave the same on Android. I had to install shortcuts (reminded me of Windows) to get the apps to appear. This morning my friend Corsin taught me that there is an apps button on the main home screen which houses all of the apps you download and everything that Virgin Mobile loaded on the phone to begin with.

The big issue currently is that Virgin Mobile’s 3G service has been down nationwide for over 24 hours.

I can’t get online at all. You can see in the screenshot at the top of this post – I had to use my camera to take a picture of the phone. There is no notice on the Virgin Mobile Twitter account, the person who runs the VMUCare Twitter account keeps replying that the service is down. There is no notice of the outage on the Virgin Mobile website. Why haven’t they sent a SMS to every customer with a status update?

After only 24-hours of usage, Android feels like a utility device – everything works great but it’s not as smooth as using the iPod Touch (I assume the same smoothness is available on the iPhone). For example, I wanted to take a simple screenshot showing the networking error. Apparently there is no way to make a screenshot without either loading some software or rooting your phone. On the iPod Touch you click a button and bing you have a screenshot. What normal person wants to root a phone or install software to make a screenshot?

There’s nothing wrong with a utility device, I’ve been using one for over three years now and am very happy. Perhaps the happy balance is Android for work where utility is ok, and iPod Touch for home where experience is more important than utility.

I am hopeful that Virgin Mobile will get this 3G service working soon so I can continue to test and play with this device. I also certainly hope they will be crediting me and all of the other Android customers for this outage.

Assuming Virgin’s 3G service comes back before SXSW begins, I plan to try out the device during the conference and will leave my WinMo phone at the office. This should be a great test to see how I like using an Android device as my main mobile device.

Find more stories about: Android, Apple, Google, iphone, iPhone 4, mobile, Reviews, Virgin Mobile

If you have been looking to purchase an Apple iPhone 4, here’s the deal of the season. Apple sells the iPhone 4 mobile phone for $199. You can also purchase the iPhone 4 at an AT&T store for the same price.

Over the next week, Walmart will be selling the iPhone 4 for $199 plus a free $50 Walmart gift card. The deal begins on Saturday so don’t head over to Walmart today.  What makes this deal great is if you were planning to buy an iPhone anyway, use the gift card immediately to buy an iTunes gift card and use the $50 to load up on apps and music.

Here are the terms of the Walmart deal, “Gift card offer not available online. Offer valid from Saturday, December 18 – Saturday, December 25, 2010. Offer only applies to Apple iPhone wireless phones sold with new 2-year contract or qualified upgrade. Store selection may vary. While supplies last. No rainchecks. Gift cards are not eligible to be used with the phone purchase. Offer available at select stores. See store for details.”

You can also get a discounted iPhone by purchasing a refurbished iPhone 4 through AT&T.

Find more stories about: Apple, AT&T, iphone, iPhone 4, mobile, walmart

I’ve always been a big fan of Starwood hotels (that’s Westin, W, Aloft, etc.) — mainly because their points system is the best for earning points. Because of the points, I get to stay at nice hotels a couple of times a year on points (like the trip this week in San Francisco).

Today I learned via an email from Starwood and inside the hotel itself that you can now use Apple Facetime on your iPhone or iPod Touch to speak with their customer service hotline. Gadling reported that the program began last month.

The Facetime customer service option is only available during the day although I was unable to find any specific Facetime information on the Starwood web site.

Perhaps having a face-to-face conversation with a customer service rep will lessen the yelling, screaming, cursing that usually goes along with many customer service calls. It’s easy to do all of the former when you are hiding behind a phone but when you are “seen” will you want to be as aggressive?

Find more stories about: Apple, Facetime, iphone, iPod, Starwood

I am working hard to find you deals that will save you real cash on the tech gadgets you actually want. This morning I posted about Amazon’s iPod Touch deal and now I found a way to save a good bit of cash on an iPhone 4.

Tomorrow AT&T will offer deals on refurbished Apple iPhone 4 devices. What’s great about Apple refurbs is that they look and act brand new unlike my Dell laptop refurbs that come with bright orange stickers. Apple puts the refurbished iPhone 4 devices into new cases. The AT&T pricing is $50 less than their regular refurbished price.

The pricing (remember the pricing is available tomorrow) for the different models is:

• iPhone 4 32G Refurb – new price $299, refurbished sale price $199
• iPhone 4 16G Refurb – new price $199, refurbished sale price $99

AT&T will also sell the iPhone 3GS 8G refurbished for $79 although I would think one would want to spend the extra $120 to get the latest generation device since you will have it a minimum of two years.

OS X Daily has some additional notes about the deal. Two years ago AT&T sold the first generation iPhone as a refurbished deal for $249. And check out Jonathan Hirschman’s 10 iPhone 4 game changers.

Find more stories about: Apple, AT&T, iphone, iPhone 4

One of the huge downsides of being an early adopter is the lack of features you generally get in the early days of a device. For me, the massive difference between the number of iPhone apps currently available and the number of Windows Phone 7 apps available isn’t that big of a problem, but there are a few apps I really miss. Following is a brief list of those apps. Please feel free to add more in the comments if you have any apps that need to be ported straight away.

• Google Maps and MapQuest – While the native “Maps” app in Windows Phone 7 is nice and functional, it’s just not as full-featured as the Google Maps and MapQuest apps on the iPhone. While the spoken directions built into the iPhone MapQuest app could get annoying at times, I do miss that feature on my WP7 device. I also miss being able to utilize the be-all, end-all database that Google seems to have built into their Google Maps implementation.
• TweetDeck - I don’t know if TweetDeck has any plans to build an app for WP7 or not, but I sincerely hope they do. While the official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 is leaps and bounds ahead of the official iPhone Twitter app, it would still be nice to use the familiar interface found in TweetDeck. In fact, the Windows Phone 7 Twitter app is really nice, and very similar to TweetDeck, but it doesn’t include all of the features generally included in TD. For starters, it only works with Twitter, no other social networks. Also, while you can stay logged into multiple Twitter accounts, it only allows you to display one at a time. You have to go into the settings for the app and turn off the active account in order to turn another one on.
• Safari – As mentioned in my previous post, the Internet Explorer implementation on Windows Phone 7 isn’t dreadful, but it certainly doesn’t stand up to Mobile Safari.
• PayPal – I loved having the ability to check my PayPal balance quickly and easily with the iPhone PayPal app. What makes it even more disappointing is that PayPal doesn’t automatically redirect to its mobile interface. Once you do find the mobile interface (m.paypal.com), you also find that it lacks a lot of the functionality found on the full site and within the iPhone app.
• Square - Although I hadn’t yet had the chance to use Square very much, I really liked the concept and was happy to have the ability to easily accept credit cards with my mobile phone. I will be holding onto my Square reader just in case they do get around to releasing a Windows Phone 7 version of the app.
• Paymo – While you may not be aware of Paymo, I had really come to rely on their iPhone app to help keep track of time I was spending on various freelance projects. It was especially helpful for tracking time spent in client meetings; easily adding that time to my account to be included in project invoices at a later date.
• WordPress – I didn’t use it much, but I did really like the WordPress app for the iPhone. I sincerely hope someone is working on a Windows Phone implementation so that I have the ability to blog from my phone again.
• Facebook – The Facebook app on Windows Phone 7 is really nice, but it lacks some of the functionality found in the iPhone version.
• What the Font? – I used this app quite a bit to try to identify various fonts.

Other Notable Apps Missing

While I didn’t really use the apps listed below, I know that a lot of people do, and many of them will not even consider switching until they’re supported.

• Skype
• Pandora
• Dropbox

There are also a lot of games I played regularly on my iPhone that are sadly missing from the Windows Phone right now. However, there are some really good-looking games already available; but I’ll need to build up my bank account before I start shelling out for the paid versions. The nice thing about Windows Phone 7, though, is the fact that you can download a free trial of any paid app in the Marketplace; so you have the ability to test out an app before you buy it.

Find more stories about: Apple, iphone, Microsoft, mobile, Windows Phone

After using an iPhone 3G for about 2 years, I gave it up last week. This week I picked up one of the new Windows Phone 7 devices (the HTC Surround). Following is a brief comparison of the two from my perspective.

Table of Contents:

• Buying Apps
• Interface
• Media
• Buttons
• Web Browser
• Camera
• Email, Contacts
• Other
• Conclusion

Buying Apps

The iPhone has the famous App Store, Windows Phone has the Marketplace. While the iPhone obviously has exponentially more apps available than Windows Phone does, a lot of the major apps were available for Windows Phone from day-one. I can’t, in good conscience, say that the Windows Phone Marketplace even compares to the iPhone app store in terms of apps, yet, but things do look good for such a new system.

Both systems allow you to buy/download apps through your computer or through your device, so they are basically equal in that regard. I do think that the Windows Phone will need to find a better way to arrange and organize the apps and games once the marketplace starts to really take off, though.

One place the iPhone has the Windows Phone beat, hands-down, right now is the fact that you can’t view what apps you currently have on your Windows Phone when using your PC. You can only view and manage your apps through the phone.

Interface

The iPhone interface was revolutionary when it came out, but it’s become old after a while, and a lot of flaws have become apparent. It’s difficult to arrange the icons on your iPhone; there’s no real method of organization and it’s actually somewhat clumsy.

On the Windows Phone, it’s a little more simple (in my humble opinion; I am well aware of the fact that people will disagree with me vehmently). You have one home screen and can pin as few or as many apps to that home screen as you choose. Almost anything can be pinned to the home screen. If you need something that’s not pinned to your home screen, you tap an arrow and get to view the full list of apps on your phone. One minor complaint I have about this is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a way to search for the apps you have installed (clicking the search icon while viewing your app list takes you to Bing to search the Web).

Media

I realize this is probably an argument similar to the old VHS vs. BetaMax (if you’re old enough to remember that) or, a little closer to my heart, the Sega Dreamcast vs. Sony Playstation 2 argument; but the Zune media player interface is superior to the iPod/iPhone interface. Everyone I know that’s tried a ZuneHD and an iPhone/iPod has said they think so. The iPhone/iPod is so ingrained in the world culture, though, that it will probably forever beat the Zune/Windows Phone simply because of that fact.

That said, the Windows Phone does everything the ZuneHD does, and it does it just as well. The interface is extremely simple to use and works beautifully.

One more thing the Windows Phone has, because it is integrated with the Zune interface, that the iPhone does not is the Zune Pass. If my kids are any indication of the way trends are moving in the world, people are buying less and less music to actually keep. They want to download new songs right now (note I said “songs” not “albums”; apparently nobody buys albums anymore), but in another few weeks they won’t even remember why they liked it in the first place. The Zune Pass is perfect for users like that. You pay one flat rate ($14.99/month or $149.99/year) and you can listen to as much music as you want for a month. When that month is over, you can download 10 songs to keep forever, and the rest basically get thrown in the trash.

If I were to add up all of the money my step-daughter has spent needlessly on iTunes buying songs that she listened to for only a few days; I guarantee the Zune Pass would have ended up being a better deal.

Buttons

I realize this is a radical concept, but the Windows Phone actually has buttons (at least 3 of them, a few other auxiliary buttons on different handsets). There is a “Windows” button that always takes you back to your home screen, a “back” button that takes you back one screen (sometimes it takes you back a step within an application; other times it takes you back to the application you were previously using) and a “search” button.

The search button is kind of cool in the fact that it is completely context-based. If you are on your home screen, the search button takes you directly to Bing to search the Internet. However, if you are in an app, the search button allows you to search within that app. For instance, if you are in the Zune app, the search button lets you search your collection and the Zune marketplace together. If you are in the Marketplace app, the search button lets you search for music, videos or apps within the marketplace. Clicking the search button twice, though, will take you to Bing.

The Windows Phone also has a camera button that acts as the “take picture” button when you’re in the camera app. The other neat thing about the camera button is, even if your phone is locked, if you hold the camera button down for 5 seconds, it will unlock the phone and go directly to the camera app so you can take a picture quickly.

Another feature related to the buttons on the Windows Phone is voice command. When you’re using your Windows Phone, if you hold down the Home button for 5 seconds, a voice-recognition app will open. You can then speak a command such as “call Home” or “find restaurant” or something like that and the phone will attempt to interpret your command and take action on it. It’s not as cool as the speech-to-text features found on some Android phones, but it is still pretty handy.

The iPhone basically has one button (it also has volume up/down and the on/off button on top, but the Windows Phones have those same buttons). Everything else is handled through the touch screen. The one button/switch that the iPhone does have that the Windows Phone (at least the Surround) lacks is the switch that puts the phone on vibrate. Within Windows Phone, you have to press the volume button and then touch the ring/vibrate icon that appears on the touch screen.

Web Browser

While the mobile implementation of Internet Explorer is nice, it still lacks some fundamental features that are standard in all other mobile browsers. It does not support HTML5 or CSS3 at all, unfortunately. This means that, when viewing a mobile version of a website, you get the bland, standard mobile website instead of the nice, polished version of the site that you would see on the iPhone or an Android handset. This also means that all of the mobile Google apps work completely differently than they do on the iPhone.

Camera

Unfortunately, since I never had an iPhone 4, I can’t comment on its camera. However, the 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash that’s included in the HTC Surround takes really nice pictures even in low light. The iPhone 3G took decent pictures in ideal conditions, but really stunk otherwise.

The photo shown on the right was taken in near complete darkness with the camera zoomed in about 50% (which, by itself, would have resulted in a terribly pixelated and blurry photo on the iPhone 3G).

On Windows Phone 7, after you take a picture, you can share the photo through MMS, e-mail (any of your accounts), Facebook or your Windows Live Skydrive (which appears to be like Dropbox on steroids – 25 gigabytes of storage space for free) account. If you have any photo-related apps installed on your Windows Phone, you can access them directly from the camera, as well. Simply touch the “extras” menu and it brings up a list of the photo apps (for instance, on my phone, I have the “flickr manager” app installed) and lets you use the photo in the app you select.

E-mail, Contacts and Calendars

As you would probably expect by now, the Windows Phone beats the heck out of the iPhone in this category. You can add as many accounts as you want and you can choose to sync any or all of the following for each account:

• Mail
• Contacts
• Calendar

If you choose to sync more than one calendar (for instance, I am currently syncing two different Google calendars and my unused Windows Live calendar), they will all be shown together (in different colors) within the native calendar app. Add an event or appointment to your calendar, select the appropriate account with which to sync and your appointment will be automatically added to that account’s calendar.

In addition to syncing the contacts from your various e-mail accounts, Windows Phone also allows you to import contacts from your old phone’s SIM card and to automatically import all of your Facebook friends as contacts.

If you end up with multiple entries for the same person, that’s not a problem; simply click the little link icon on one of those contacts and the Windows Phone will show you a list of the other entries in your contact list that might match up. If the other entry you want to link is not shown in the list, you can search your contact list for the entry. Then, you just tell Windows Phone to link the two (or three or four or however many related entries you have) together, and they all then get merged into a single entry.

Also, since Facebook is integrated as a feature of your contact list, you can easily choose to write on someone’s Facebook wall simply by searching for that person in your contact list. You also have the option to e-mail that person, visit his or her website(s), call them, message them or post to their MSN Live account. You can even view that contact’s recent activity on Facebook and MSN Live from directly within your contact list.

Other Perks

This is a feature that’s specific to the HTC Surround handset, but the speakers on that particular device blow the iPhone’s speaker(s) out of the water. The volume is really strong and the sound is crystal clear. Even with the volume turned all the way up, the sound does not distort; though it does get really loud.

Also, the HTC Surround (and, as far as I know, all other WP7 devices) uses a standard micro-USB plug to charge and sync the phone. With this device, you don’t have to worry about searching for the specific, proprietary cord (that can cost upwards of $30 each). My kids’ Samsung phones, my Virgin Mobile MiFi and my wife’s Blackberry all use the same micro-USB plug, so we can all share cords when necessary.

Another nice thing about Windows Phone 7 is the fact that you have a choice in which device you buy. You’re not stuck with only one choice (well, if you count the vaporware “white” iPhone, I guess you have two choices). If you don’t like the features found on the HTC Surround, you can go with the LG Quantum or the Samsung Focus and still stick with AT&T if you want. If you don’t want to stick with AT&T (another choice you don’t currently have with the iPhone), you can switch over to T-Mobile and buy the HTC HD7 or the Dell Venue.

Also, since the Windows Phone has the Zune HD interface integrated, you can set it up to sync your media over WiFi rather than physically hooking it up to your computer. Once you hook it up to your computer and configure the wireless sync feature (I am currently experiencing an issue getting this to work; but I think that’s related to my firewall settings), you never have to hook your phone into your computer again. You can easily drag and drop music, videos and photos to your phone within the Zune software; and it will automatically sync those items the next time you charge your Windows Phone (assuming it’s connected to the same WiFi network as your computer when you charge the device).

Finally, Windows Phone 7 has native MS Office integration (along with direct integration with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 if that matters to you). It’s not living up to its full potential yet (you can open Office documents that are attached to e-mail messages, but you can’t download or upload documents from/to SkyDrive, yet), but it does do a nice job of rendering the Office documents on a mobile screen, allows you modify and send/share them and doesn’t destroy the formatting in the process.

Conclusion

Is Windows Phone 7 better than the iPhone? That’s not really a question that I can answer. It really comes down to what you want out of your mobile experience. If having over a million different apps from which to choose, using apps like Facetime or the Google Mobile interfaces, using copy and paste, syncing with a Mac or using iTunes is really important to you, then you should definitely stick with the iPhone. Likewise, the plethora of 3rd-party accessories for the iPhone currently puts the Windows Phone to shame and most likely will continue to do so unless the Windows Phone gains a lot of traction.

If the ability to sync multiple calendars at once, open, edit and share Office documents, keep up with your friends on Facebook, integrate your gaming experience with your Xbox Live account and use the Zune Pass sound like things that might be important to you, it might be time to pick up a Windows Phone 7 device.

I will be the first to admit that there are a lot of things I miss about my iPhone (I’ll be writing a post soon about the various iPhone apps I really wish were available for Windows Phone 7), but I really like my new phone and am extremely impressed with the implementation of its features.

Find more stories about: Apple, Curtiss Grymala, iphone, Microsoft, mobile, Windows Phone

It’s obviously cheaper for a company to send you a monthly invoice by email than it is via paper in the mail. Going paperless is also better for the environment.

Found via SlickDeals, AT&T is currently offering up to $20 cash if you switch to paperless billing and auto-pay. The promo notes that you will receive $10 if you switch to paperless billing and another $10 if you move to auto-pay. I figured the deal was worth sharing since so many CN readers have iPhone devices.

You may be able to get $20 per AT&T account (wireless, cable, etc.) but this is unconfirmed as of the time of this post.

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So the big news yesterday was that dating site OkCupid released stats that iPhone users have more sex than users of Android or Blackberry devices.  Looking at the stats that OkCupid provided, it also looks like iPhone users sleep around more than users of the other two devices. I can only wonder where my Samsung Ace would rate on the chart. It’s pretty hot if you ask me. This morning on the Scott & Todd show they discussed the survey results and were wondering where the new Droid X would rank on the sex scale.

With all of that said, I’d like to share with you the REAL reason iPhone users are having more sex than with the other devices. Cartoon artist Guhmshoo put together the following cartoon which provides the sex argument explanation.

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It’s amazing how much awesome technology is available for little kids today. When I was a little kid, I had a Fisher-Price cash register and thought that was awesome. That was until Transformers came around – even today any kid would take Optimus or Starscream over an iPad. Startup advisor Louis Gray and others have posted videos of their young kids interacting with his iPhone and even at their young age, the kids seem to know which buttons to press for the desired action!

Russia-based semantic search engine Quintura has released a version of their Kids search engine for the iPad and iPhone. I’ve included a sample screenshot from the app below. The search app uses Quintura’s cloud technology to refine the results for a search query. From the overview, “The cloud features most popular concepts that we pick up from the texts from most relevant web pages. This helps you define the best direction for further searching and refine your query.”

Quintura uses a manual selection process for the search results to make sure the available sites are kid-friendly.

The Quintura Kids for iPhone/iPad app is available for an intro price of $1.99.

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The big news in the Apple blog crowd this week was the Steve Jobs announcement that current customers will receive a free bumper guard for their iPhone 4 devices. I like Om’s take on the press briefing – a look at lessons from Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

But what if the press briefing didn’t go so well? Guhmshoo takes a look at the setup Apple staffers created for Jobs just in case panic and mayhem were to break out at Apple’s HQ.

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