I’ve been a bit of a journeyman over the years in the world of mobile phones, going from a Nokia 3210, then a Nokia 3310, then a Motorola clamshell design whose model number I can’t remember. After that came a Sony Ericsson, the Samsung E600, and finally the Nokia E51.

While the E51 is an excellent phone and one I would heartily recommend to anyone, I feel it’s time for me to go ahead and try an Apple product that’s responsible for my communication (all past experiences with Apple products have been solely for the purpose of hearing music).

I have a strong feeling I’m going to love it. Aside from the sweet design of the user interface, the rock solid iPhone OS, and its beguiling shine and chrome, it’s currently one of the most powerful smartphones currently out there. And who doesn’t love the feeling of having a powerful tiger, dressed up in a very nice package, all in their pants? Yes that’s right, no one.

I am aware of the caveats: poor battery life, exorbitant data transfer charges, and a few more. But some of these are manageable, most are avoidable with careful usage, and some I’m willing to undergo as necessary pains, because the device is that beautiful.

And I haven’t even started talking about jailbreaking it yet.

Like her, I’m hoping that the newest iteration of Microsoft’s is as “re-pon-kin-sliv” as they’re pushing it to be. Which, in all probability, it might just be: I got to try the RC out on a display system a few months ago, and it just flew. Even when compared to XP.

I’m no stranger to system problems. They happen. Even with the most copious amounts of preparation and prevention, this process or that procedure or this hardware hangs or breaks and needs tending to. It’s only a matter of time. But when things do fail, the least you can do, aside from trying to fix it as quickly as possible, is to tell the people who are going to be affected by it. We all know that people will assume that things will work, until they don’t. As a customer of your services, I assume that your DSL service will go uninterrupted until you tell me otherwise, because hey, I’m still paying you to provide me with that service.

Now, when it goes dead with no foreseeable causes, that’s when it really gets to me. It gets even worse when I learn that this is something that’s system-wide, and that there was no previous communication made to your customers in ways that you’re sure that they will see. You might have posted something about it on your website, but who really goes there regularly to check, anyway? And for customers whose internet access is down, how can they ever check? The pressure should be upon you to spread the word to your customers, not make them come to you for the answer. Send them letters, put notes in their monthly bills, show a short advisory on TV – do whatever it takes. Just make sure they know.

I know that you know that the last two paragraphs were very patronizing, but I don’t care. I’m usually a very patient guy, but something like this is just too hard not to bitch about, because it could have been handled a thousand times better.

For those of you wondering what the problem was, some of the myDSL accounts had their username and password combinations changed, but the notification for this never came to the people who owned those accounts. I guess what bothered me the most about the situation was that I wasted a good hour or two of my weekend trying to find a way to solve the problem, and that the solution was something really simple, but it was something you would never, ever find out about on your own. You had to ask straight from the source, but only because they didn’t exert any noticeable effort in communicating with their customers beforehand.

The thing is though, there hasn’t been any one real network provider that delivers solid performance across the nation yet. The overall nature of the service you get is really a mixed bag, a hit-or-miss affair, and it (still) winds down to where you live. Under the same ISP, some people experience good speeds while others crawl through the net at a snail’s pace and go through customer service hell. Even SkyBroadband, the new kid on the block touting more impressive packages isn’t safe. That’s probably what keeps a lot of people, me included, glued to their current ISP: there’s just no choice out there that’s a hundred percent better yet.

This sucks.

Basically, Ubiquity is a mashup service for the masses. If you didn’t understand that then it makes Ubiquity even more for you. With the plugin, you take what you need from one service by the use of plain-English-like commands, like “email jhun-jhun”, and embed information into it from another service through other commands like “map the corner of quezon and west ave” or “tinyurl mrkabab.com”, and the thing does it for you without hassle (aside from the prerequisite name/password check). The idea is that you can access whatever content you need from wherever without having to click and click and click, then put all the information you got together so it makes sense to you and the people you’re sending it to.

Now that’s always been the underlying principle of the internet itself, but I guess even with the coming of the mashup sites, no one really thought about making the process more fluid because they’ve worked well enough before. Until now, that is. I’ve seen how much better it could be, and frankly I’m finding it hard to switch back to the old way, because some things are just done faster with the command line, especially when you know what you’re doing.

A short demo of what I’m talking about, straight from the devs themselves:

Ubiquity clicks with me because of many things. One is that it’s a totally new way of doing something really old; that is, Googling for something and then proceeding to copy-paste it. We’ve all done that, and while it’s fast, something can be done to make it faster and more seamless. Two, it keeps out of your way. If you need it, it’s just a quick CTRL + Space key combo, and another Esc from going away. From what I’ve tested of it, it doesn’t come in conflict with existing key combinations also. Three, it’s what Google Chrome‘s Omnibar tries to accomplish – a plethora of functions compacted into just one single text area.

Of course, there’s a couple of stuff I want to include, but basically it’s pretty much within the realm of the web applications themselves. Like, I’d rather have a couple more options with regards to the services included, but as Ubiquity is built on the foundation of open Web APIs, it’s up to the developers of the different web apps to make their code engines available. With a little pressure from Mozilla, of course.

In the meantime, I’ll be emailing people at the speed of my fingertips, and not my mouse.

• It’s fast – Meaning it’s… fast. It loads quickly and loads pages quickly. It does consume more memory at the start though, but luckily Google covered their asses with a technical answer which I think is sound anyway. See below.
• It’s stable – Tabs run as separate processes, unlike Firefox where the whole browser runs as one process. This means that when one tab crashes or misuses system resources, that tab and only that tab will crash. No more rewriting emails or reloading YouTube vids. Also, while plugins are a bit scarce for the browser right now I don’t think people should look forward much to them, as they are most often the cause of Firefox’s numerous crash times. They’ll do the same thing to Chrome, which is already very user-friendly.
• It’s spiffy – Chrome just looks sexy, don’t you think? Not much extra lines and icons cluttering the screen, leaving a lot of space for the user. You can skin it too.

• Easter eggs – Oh yes. No app would be complete without easter eggs.

There’s been a scare regarding the product’s EULA which then stated the following:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

but Google has fixed that already, saying that only the first part (the non-italicized part) applies. Ahh, carelessness.

There you go. A completely one-sided, two-week testimonial from a Chrome user.

Interested in learning more? Check out Google Chrome’s webcomic, created by none other than Scott McCloud (the dude who did Understanding Comics). It does a pretty bang up job of relating the browser’s story and technical details in a non-scary way.

Other places like Box.net offer the same service, that is, online storage. But they do it for a fee, which while relatively inexpensive is just too much for what some people are willing to pay (which is, in my case, nothing).

Dropbox gives users 2 gigs of space from the onset, which is quite enough. Enough for what most people would need for files that they’d willingly upload to the internet and share with people they know, like documents, pictures, some music and maybe a small program or two. This is very good for small teams of people working collaboratively on something.

You can share specific files and/or folders to your trusted contacts, and they’ll easily be able to easily access and modify them. Any changes made, and Dropbox syncs the files on your local folders and on your online account. Quick and easy, with no fuss and minimum worry.

You can’t upload just anything and have a URL provided for it, which you can then post everywhere to distribute your files, which is all good I guess. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be unwitting distributors of porn videos, pirated music and cracked software (that’s RapidShare’s job).

Pictures, however, are a different matter. You can upload them in your account’s gallery, which you can share with non-members through a given link. Like this one.

If you’re interested in learning more, there’s the tour.

Fez, the brainchild of the Kokoromi Collective, recently won the Excellence for Visual Art in the 2008 Independent Games Festival awards. Looks deserving if you ask me. With beguiling pixel graphics and extremely intriguing gameplay, I’m waiting quite impatiently for this one to come out.

That trixel thing is just really something to see in action.