TimesToCome Mobile

Those idiots you saw waiting in line for a phone Friday? I was one of them. Who’d've thought it? I’ve never waited in life for anything in my life. But I thought it would be fun and it was. 5 hours of dancing cows, food brought to us by Apple store employees and the local Chick-Fil-A and Godiver stores, and lots of geeky conversation to pass the time. It was fun.

And we scored! Two shiny new white 16gb 3G iPhones.

Here’s some things you’ll want to know.

You can still use your old phone as an iPod touch. Leave the old sim card in place or it won’t sync. It work fine as an iPod and with the wireless network here at the house.

The new phone is lighter, brighter and feels much slicker. The old one feels clunky now.

3G fades in and out here at the house. I expect the ATT network will be hammered for a few weeks.

The app store is painless to use. Most of the apps are not yet impressive, that will come with time.

The phone calls are much clearer and louder.

You can now follow yourself on Google maps, be sure to look up and wave to the satellite.

Yahoo pushes mail to your phone, Google does not. ( I’m hoping Google fixes that soon ).

All your passwords get erased when you switch phones. Be sure you know what they are.

Zenbe makes a very nice free todo list.

Urbanspoon is lots of fun but doesn’t have a whole lot of restaurants listed yet.

Picture messaging is still missing. Perhaps that will come when Apple gets the app server up and running in August?

If you are still hunting for an iPhone check out Find your iPhone, you put in the model you desire, your zip code, and it returns the nearest location that has it in stock.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Twitter this year. I signed up for an account and there it sat while I tried to figure out what to do with it.

Recently I attended a blogging convention and learned all sorts of cool information on what you can do to make life easier with Twitter and your mobile phone.

First you sign up for a free Twitter account. Then go to settings->devices and follow the directions to add your cell phone.

Then you can:
1 ) Send appointments to your Google calendar. Add GCal as a friend (follow ) in your Twitter account and grant access to your Google calendar here. Then you can text from your phone to 40404 d gcal meeting Tom 7am tomorrow and your appointment will be added to your Google Calendar.

2 ) Write reminders for yourself, text ‘pick up milk’, ‘don’t forget to pick up children’, etc. You can look at your Twitter account anytime from your cell phone and see your list of things to do.

3 ) Leave notes for your family and friends. Text a twitter ‘running late’, ‘kidnapped by aliens’ etc to let everyone know what’s happening with you. It’s easier than texting everyone.

I’m still getting the hang of Twitter and finding uses for it. It’s far more useful than I thought it would be. Don’t be the last on your block to get a Twitter account because all the good user names will be gone soon.

You can also use Twitterfone to do all this by voice from your phone.