Technology Guides

For this phase I’m trying to gain an understanding of what exactly I’m looking for. Since I’ll be sticking with my choice for up to 3 years I’ll need to put some thought into what phone I get, what type of plan I’m looking for and what carrier I’ll be going with.

Phone

I traditionally keep my phones for 2 years and make a switch to something new and although my current phone is a Blackberry 8820 and might be older than me, I’ve had it in my hands for 2 years so it’s time for something new. In this day and time, technology moves so fast that I’ll definitely need to buy a top of the line phone such as the HTC Sensation 4G, Samsung Galaxy S II. I am also heavily leaning towards an Android device and I can get into the reasons in a whole other post but I’ll leave that for another time. The basic premise for me jumping from Blackberry to Android is because it’s super fast, upgraded hardware and very easy to customize.

Plan

My cousin recently signed with Bell and her sister is probably going to do the exact same thing. Her plan is absolutely amazing and I am going to try and mold my plan after theirs. It consists of the following:

• 200 Anytime Minutes
• Unlimited messaging
• Unlimited E/W at 7pm
• 1GB Data
• CID/Message Centre
• 100 LD minutes
• Nationwide Fab10

This is all for $49.50+tax CDN. Hopefully I can get a plan that resembles this fairly closely and I would be satisfied. Due to my cousin already getting this I am leaning towards trying to get this out of Bell. It also doesn’t help that Bell currently sells four Superphones including the Samsung Galaxy S II.

Carrier

As mentioned above I am leaning towards Bell because of the potential opportunity with the plan and their lineup of superphones. My backup is going to be Telus because of their customer service but I may have to wait to land a decent phone from them.

Update: I knew it would be hard to land a decent plan being a new customer so I’ve developed an alternate strategy. As previously mentioned in my post about landing a better cellphone plan, I am going to use Cellswaper as well as Kijiji/Craigslist to try and take over a contract. This can take time as people back out and don’t respond sometimes and it can be frustrating but in the end you can get the plan you’re looking for.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I came up with this series mainly to document my struggles and joys with switching from one carrier to another. I am learning many things including what options to exercise and really how cutthroat the wireless industry is. I had initial idea of what I wanted to do when I set on this learning experience. That initial idea involved just going to Wind Mobile and picking a top-end phone that was compatible with their network. Like everything in life, it wasn’t so easy.

Why I Didn’t Go This Path

Wind Mobile is expanding at a rapid rate but has still left voids in its current coverage area leaving me skeptic about a brand new coverage area in KW. Although I am a student and I really should have low needs and a low budget, I am also constantly looking for a new job for the next co-op term or communicating with my current employer. It wouldn’t be the best situation if I had a potential employer on the line and the call gets dropped or they place a call to me and I’m in a dead zone so they can’t get a hold of me. Sure it’s probably going to be fairly rare but at the end of the day I’m not going to go with a more robust network which the Big Three can offer me in the Kitchener/Waterloo region.

The price (and new smartphones) keep on enticing me but with network quality so important I decided it wasn’t in my best interest for now. Hopefully down the road they’ll still be there with competitive prices and updated phones so I can give them another shot.

My New Options

With Wind Mobile out of the picture (keep in mind I’m not considering Mobilicity & Public Mobile due to their lack of coverage in KW), I was left with the Big Three and their side brands. Outlined below is my current opinion on the carriers I have to choose from.

Fido – My current carrier has done fairly well for me but because it’s a discount brand, the phones do lack in quality (they’ve added the LG O2x and Nexus S which are two great phones). I have a decent plan but what really threw me off was a horrible mishap that they handled even worse and a call into the CSR to upgrade. Not everyone will experience this so take the following with a grain of salt.

• Mishap -I basically lost my SIM and so I needed to replace it. I went in to purchase one; got home and put it in. Called Fido; they did some stuff and then they told me to power down and restart. I did as I was told and hung up. My Blackberry took a long time to load up but when it did, I had someones account with their number. I called Fido back and they had no clue how it happened and I was just going to have to wait. They also told me I was free to use the account however I pleased. The next day, I’m calling Fido to figure out the status of my situation and lo and behold, I can’t make a phone call because they’ve cut my service off. Luckily I’m in a mall with a Fido store so I go in and the guy sells me a SIM card and I’m finally back to my old account after a call in to Fido. Best I get for my troubles in unlimited local calling for the month.
• CSR – I was able to let go of the above situation because other than that, Fido was pretty good to me. My friend recently got a contract renewal so I decided I’d try the same. The guy I talked to laughed at me when I mentioned it and told me I’d never get it. The way he acted actually disgusted me and from that point I vowed not to go back. I felt hugely mistreated for making such a simple call that usually gets a yes or no answer.

Rogers - Although they are a powerhouse, I have never enjoyed dealing with them and our family (among others) has had considerable problems with them. Granted most other wireless companies do, I have had first hand experience with them. With that being said, there’s little chance I will choose them especially considering the above experiences as well.

Bell – I had never heard a good thing about Bell in regards to customer service support and as you can tell I’m not a big fan of poor customer service. The restructuring of BCE, Bell’s parent company, in 2008 marked a turn for the better with a focus on better customer and tech support. I have still heard stories but it didn’t seem as bad and what wireless company doesn’t have a bad story or two?

Telus – This is actually probably the only wireless company I have not heard a bad thing about so far but then again the only person I know who’s on Telus is my Dad and he doesn’t have many issues as he’s on prepaid and barely uses the phone. The reason though I will not be considering these guys is because they don’t offer some of the top phones (although they will probably be releasing the Samsung Galaxy S II variant, Hercules).

From here, I’ll have to decide where I want to go and there will be sacrifices on the way. The factors playing into my choice are:

• Hardware Choices (i.e. what types of cell phones they offer)
• Plan Choice (i.e. what kind of a package can I get)
• Price (i.e. pretty self-explanatory )

Popularity: 2% [?]

Everyone has dealt with this problem sometime or another and I know I have dealt with it more than once. The question is, how do you deal with it? I’ve also been on both sides where a citizen has taken their anger out on me, a helpless servant to the town. There are two general ways you can deal with the situation as a consumer: get really angry which is the natural option or you can try and negotiate a compromise of some sort. I’ve tried both and found that the latter is the best option.

Getting Angry

Many people, including me, like to take this approach because it’s the most natural thing to do. You receive poor customer service and by taking that anger out on someone in the company you feel that you are getting something accomplished. In my experience what happens is the customer service rep shuts down and is taught to try and mediate it by calming you down and if that doesn’t work they’ll hang up. Therefore nothing is accomplished on both sides; you don’t benefit and the company just logs another angry caller.  Occasionally, something will come out of it but it’s too rare to be noticeable.

My experience came back in 2009 when I had problems with my Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptop and so I went to their online help as it is much quicker. They gave me advice, I was supposedly happy and then after rebooting my computer wouldn’t start up. Since I couldn’t log onto the internet I couldn’t receive more help on the issue, I decided to call them up. Turns out they wouldn’t help me because my phone support had expired. I got really angry because they gave me advice and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. I eventually hung up on the representative even after I asked to speak to the manager and nothing got resolved.

Be Calm and Come to a Compromise

This is the approach I highly recommend if you want something out of the poor customer service. The keys to this approach is be calm, explain your side and in the back of your mind realize that sometimes it’s not the fault of the customer service representative. Many good things can come from this and I’ve only had success while using this approach.

My experience came on Canadian Thanksgiving 2009 when I lost my SIM card (don’t ask why ) and so I went and replaced it. I phoned up Fido, registered my new card and cycled down my phone. As soon as I got it up and running I had a different account. Not only that but someone else had my account. Obviously I was ticked off as the representative told me to get a new SIM card on them. When I went to get it at the store they said they weren’t authorized to do it. So I called them back and they changed their story saying I had to get it shipped and wait another week and I couldn’t switch back to my old account but I could use this account all I wanted to. The next day rolls around and I go to make a call, lo and behold, I can’t because my account has been canceled. Now this is where I get really pissed but luckily my brother was there to give me advice. Here I put the second approach into action. I called them up again and they told me to go to the nearest Fido store and register a new SIM card and it would be credited (don’t know why they didn’t suggest this before). Once I was up and running I called them up and followed these steps.

1. Explain your situation and in my case highlight the fact that you’ve lost x number of hours (or days),
2. Be calm and never blame or take your anger out on the representative because it’s not their fault, and;
3. Tell them you deserve better and want something in return for your inconvenience.

In my case I got a $12 add-on for my inconvenience and at the end of the day, just making them realize they screwed up and needed to make things right was all I needed.

Hopefully these tips help you next time you receive poor customer service or get a product that stops working.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Many people know how to make your own ringtone for the Apple iPhone when you have a Mac. You just use GarageBand by adding a song and clicking Share–>Share as Ringtone and voila, your done, but for Windows users it’s a little harder but still very simple. This little tutorial will help you create a free ringtone in less than 2 minutes.

Step 1

Firstly, open iTunes and select the song (preferably mp3) you want to use as your ring tone. Pick your favourite part because the ring tone is only allowed to be a max of 30 seconds. Once you’ve found the part you like, right-click the song and click Get Info. For this tutorial I have used Ghosts N Stuff by Deadmau5 featuring Rob Swire.

Step 2

Now hit the Options tab and check off “Start” and “Finish” and enter the section you want the ringtone to be.

Step 3

Once that’s done, you can go ahead and start converting the file. Right-click the song and select Create AAC Version. If you can’t see this option, go to Edit–>Preferences–>Import Settings and make sure AAC Encoder is chosen.

Step 4

iTunes will now start converting the song, but only the snippet that you selected for your ringtone. Next step is to go to the file location of this new file. It usually will be in My Music–>iTunes–>iTunes Media–>Music. Once there you’ll want to rename your file so iTunes recognizes it as a ringtone. Right-click the file and hit rename, changing the file extension to m4r. If you can’t see the file extension, you’ll want to go to Tools–>Folder Options–>View (tab) and scroll down to Advanced Settings. Uncheck, Hide extensions for known file types.

Step 5

Once it’s renamed, you can import it your iTunes library and then sync it to your iPhone. Just remember when you sync it to check off Ringtones and you’re good to go.

Popularity: 27% [?]

I was sitting in my dorm room watching the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother, which by the way was amazing, when my friend came in and asked if I could help him install a third-party Windows 7 Theme. Now I have never actually done it myself but it seemed easy enough. My friend explained the instructions seemed complicated but here’s a dumb downed version that should be easy for the everyday computer to understand.

Step 1

Download Universal Theme Patcher and run the application that matches up with your operating system, either x86 (32 bit) or  x64 (64 bit). To check this go to Computer–>System Properties. Under the System heading will be your system type.

Once you run the correct version, you’ll see a screen like this. Now manually patch all three files. A backup of each file will be made so don’t worry if something goes wrong, you’ll have the original files.

After you’ve done this you’ll be asked to reboot. Once you have rebooted, you’ll be ready to move on to Step 2.

Step 2

The reason you’ve decided to load a new theme is most likely that you saw a crazy theme that you just loved and wanted to embark on the journey of installing it. If not, there are some great sites that offer like the ones at Addictive Tips (Remember to save it and not open it). Once you’ve got your new theme saved on your computer, extract it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

Step 3

Now make your way to Control Panel–>Personalization and select your newly installed theme. Voila, you’re done.

Update: Some people have made it easy to install Windows 7 Themes and one of those happens to be one of my favourite themes. Smashing Magazine makes a post of desktop wallpapers for the current month. Someone else just took those wallpapers and made a theme. Check it out, Smashing Magazine January 2010 Windows 7 Theme because I am loving it.

Popularity: 22% [?]

With the year coming to a close I thought it would be good to update the my list of some of the top apps you can get for free at the Apple App Store.

Productivity

For productivity there are a ton of different apps you can get for free that would be useful. There are three that I’d point out and one that is under productivity but not as useful as you may think (still it’s a neat app so it’s worth a mention).

Expense2Go

This app is great because I can easily enter a few of my expenses as I pick them up and easily track it. I find it comes in even more use for students like me who have to borrow money and keep track of how they spend their own money. All you do is create different reports for various things and enter each expense including the date, type of expense, amount of expense and any notes that may accompany that expense.

Evernote

After registering on the site, Evernote, you can easily add notes that can be viewed on your device, your desktop or the internet. You are allowed to create text, camera, or voice notes that can be emailed as well. It is a very versatile application and I highly recommend it.

Awesome Note Lite

This app is also a note taker but it also has other features that make it a good download. It separates your notes into: My Ideas, Study, Shopping and To-Do List. I like this because it combines a to-do list and a note taking device that also includes a shopping list because I always forget to stop and buy the milk.

Writepad

If you can master this app it may be a savior if you have bad handwriting like me. It is like a small tablet PC as you just write with your finger and it translates it into text but you only write one word at a time and there is a bit of a lag so it’s not really the most practical thing.

Games

I like strategy games so I chose a couple other than Sudoku.

Airline USA

This game involves directing the different forms of aviation from their origin to their destination and making sure each of their routes don’t crash. So at the beginning you have regular planes, then you get jumbo jets which travel slightly slower, and then blimps and then jets. It’s harder than it sounds . Let me know if you beat my high score of 69.

Traffic Rush

If you can’t tell by now my love for all things transportation then this will solidify it for you. This game also involves trying to make sure the cars don’t crash. The games setting is an intersection and the cars come from all sides and you speed up and stop them to make sure they don’t crash with one another. My high score for that is 129.

I don’t spend too much time on these games so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if you beat me.

Utilities

Flashlight

By far the best app in this department is the flashlight app. It is just as bright, if not brighter than the flashlight that comes on the Sony Ericsson phones and just as good as a regular flashlight. It’s very handy and has helped me in numerous situations.

Communication

Ping

This would be my favourite app if I knew more people in my area with Apple iPod Touch’s or Apple iPhone’s. Regardless I know many people will find pinging other Apple users for free very useful.

Popularity: 40% [?]

I have been on various trips and many of them involve the airplane. I have heard of horror stories where people lose their baggage and either don’t get it until a lot later or never get it all. I remember watching the movie, Meet the Parents, and Ben Stiller loses his luggage for most of the trip. Well I too worry about that very same thing happening to me every time I go on a plane trip, those painful moments waiting to see whether your luggage is going to enter the conveyor belt. ReboundTag approached me to do a product placement and I graciously accepted because I wanted to see how it would work and if it would solve my problems. They sent me their featured product, the Microchip Bag Tag accompanied with a 3 year membership.

Now I haven’t been able to use it yet because I have yet to be on a plane trip just yet and so this is just an initial review. Now whatever the company may say, airport security in various airports across the world have a mind of their own and so when they see this tag, they may just snip it just like they did to one of our pieces of luggage because they didn’t recognize our lock. They also snipped the zippers which makes no sense but that’s airport security for you.

The basic overview of this product is you receive the tag, register it on their website and change the description of your luggage that it will be attached to and your travel itinerary and this can be updated on the go on their website. You can also choose to be anonymous which means that airlines or other people can only send you messages about where your luggage is.

Later I will update you on how this product fairs when I put it through its paces.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Google seems to be continually redefining markets time after time just like Apple obliterates the competition with its mind blowing gadgets such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and Magic Mouse. Google has GMail (best mail app out there by far for its continuous innovation), Talk and Maps Navigation (I know there’s much more Google has to offer but that’s a good summary for now).

Mark this day on your calendar, November 4, 2009, as a day the big navigation providers took a huge hit in their stock price because a lot of people realize that Google Maps Navigation could destroy their business. Sadly it’s only offered in the U.S. for now on phones with Android 1.6 or higher but there’s a bright end to the tunnel for Canadian consumers. DAVE Wireless, one of the three new wireless companies set to hit the market in the next 6 months, is planning to release Google’s phone with Android pre-installed. Now for the features of Google Maps Navigations.

• Search in plain ‘ol English (watch video). Much like searching on Google Maps, you don’t need to know the address of where you are going (unless it’s a house and then you may have trouble). All you have to do is type the name of the business (i.e. Best Buy) or the type (i.e. electronics)
• Search by voice (watch video). This is not a new feature as a Magellan GPS offers it, but now Google Maps Navigation does as well. Just speak your destination such as “Navigate to Air Canada Centre in Toronto”
• Traffic view (watch video). If your area is supported by Google Traffic then this feature is golden. On-screen you will see either green,yellow or red depending on the current traffic conditions on your route.
• Search along route (watch video). What I hate about some GPS’s (or at least mine) is that you can’t look at the map and see common things such as gas stations. Google fixes that allowing you to turn on layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
• Satellite view (watch video). A small feature but still cool is you are able to see a 3D satellite view of your route with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Street View (watch video). This to me is the best feature. Just as you’re about to turn, Google Street View imagery is overlaid and navigation automatically turns on to Street View when you approach your destination. Pure genius!
• Car dock mode (watch video). Simply place your device on the car dock and it will activate a special mode that will make it easier for you to use your device at arm’s length.

Popularity: 17% [?]