SMART Phone and Photo Blog

If you have old family movies, you can get them put onto DVDs.  But what if you want to take a short clip from one of those DVDs and post it as an MPEG file to YouTube for the family to see and enjoy?

Thanks to a customer of ours, Martin Strell, we know it’s easy.  There’s a free simple video editor you can use at:  http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/  With this you need to enter a file extension manually for your new clip.

While I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an I-phone on Verizon’s network, there are Google powered phones out.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114156763

Google is providing the Operating System and in the first case, Motorola is making the phone.  With the I-phone, as with all Apple products, Apple is providing both the Operating System and the phone/device itself.  So the Google announcement is more of a “platform” announcement.  You’ll see other Google powered phones from other phone manufacturers over time.

The main impact of Android is on Symbian (Nokia’s Operating System, platform effort) and probably Palm.  An application developer will probably prioritize I-Phone, Android and Blackberry to port their applications to.  Beyond those it’ll be hit or miss if an application works on a particular phone platform.  Two things drive “platform” adoption and acceptance:  “ease of use” and application availability. 

In the PC world, Windows has always struggled in the “ease of use” category but has always won the application availability aspect.  I-phone has terrific “ease of use” and over time we’ll see which platform attracts the most/best applications.  The key applications over time are the ones that businesses need to justify paying for their employees to carry around the phones.

UPDATE:  the Motorola Droid is out and the reviews are generally good.  There’s some excellent reviews with the pros and cons on our Amazon link:  http://astore.amazon.com/spphone-20/detail/B002UUTCKC

If you buy your new phone through our Amazon link, we’ll help you use it and get it configured.

1.  you may return your phone for full credit within 30 days of purchase (that’s the law and it applies to ALL phones sold in California, from ALL carriers).

2.  all cables, manuals and the box must be returned intact.

3.  no returns after rebate submission.

4.  returned phones will be sold as is, used, at a discount (if you need a retail replacement, ask about one of these).

5.  restocking fee will apply ($35 in most cases).

At SMART Phone and Photo we work very hard to only sell you the phone you need.  If a mistake is made and you get the wrong phone, we’ll gladly take it back and exchange it.  If you’re just shopping around and want to try out different phones, you have that legal right, but we’ll probably coach you to do that direct through the corporate Verizon store or through Verizon’s website.

To send a text message from your email, send to NUMBER@vtext.com

To send a PICTURE message from your email, send to NUMBER@vzwpix.com

If you send a picture to contact@smartphonephoto.com we can print it here in 4×6, 5×7 or even 8×10 size here in the store.  If you need help doing all this, stop by the store and we’d be happy to show you.

All the carriers make claims about how their coverage is the best.  AT&T is “more bars in more places” or “the nation’s fastest 3g network while Verizon is the “nation’s most reliable network.”   Of course they’re all very careful to make sure they’re technically accurate in these seemingly conflicting statements.

AT&T phones generally work everywhere in the world where there is GSM network coverage – which is all of Europe and much of Asia including China (although not including Japan or Korea).  Thus “more bars in more places” is accurate when you look outside the US.

Verizon’s phones are CDMA which is a US and Korean standard.  But a Verizon phone won’t work out of the box in Europe or China.  Verizon will loan you an international phone, or there are Verizon phones that have multiple radios in them including GSM.  But Verizon’s network claims are based on having the most coverage here in the US. 

On the 3g side, AT&T’s 3g network is technically faster than Verizon’s for data downloads.  The catch is the AT&T’s 3g network isn’t available in nearly as many places as Verizon’s (something like a 5:1 ratio in Verizon’s favor).

But if you have good AT&T coverage where you live and work, and if you have AT&T 3g coverage, your I-Phone will work great.  If you live in downtown San Francisco, you’re all set.  If you live on Alameda’s east end (Bay Farm) or move around alot around the Bay Area, the coverage will start to get on your nerves.  If you drive to I-5 for example, you’re going to get dropped ALOT by your AT&T phone.

Alameda presents some unique challenges for wireless coverage.  Because it’s flat, and near the water, the coverage will always be tricky.  Coverage near the water will always be spotty – the carriers can’t just “crank up” the signal because signals can skip across water.  If Verizon and AT&T just cranked up the coverage on Alameda’s shoreline, the signals can get picked up by drivers on 101 by the San Francisco airport, which screws up coverage over there.

Net on coverage in Alameda:  on Bay Farm, where I live, I’ve tried them all in the past 10 years.  Sprint and T-Mobile work “ok.”  With them I can have a wireless call but I immediately warn the other party I might get dropped at any second.  With AT&T I had to stand in my back yard and hope for the best.  With Verizon I am able to have an extended call from home, stay on the line, walk into my garage, get into my car and drive down to Mtn. View while never getting dropped. 

South Shore:  along the water there I’ve heard coverage problems with all the carriers, including Verizon.

Alameda Point and Marina Village:  on the west end the opposite tends to be true.  Verizon does NOT work that well on the Point, nor in Marina Village.  On the west end AT&T or T-Mobile are your best bet, is my experience.

The best thing to do is talk to all your neighbors.  People are very eager to share their experiences and you’ll learn pretty quickly what works best in your area and for where you go.

Feel free to stop by the store and give us your insights on mobile coverage here in Alameda, or ask about your particular neighbor or area.

The main thing to know about “smart” phones today is that they ALL come with a required $29/month internet/data plan IN ADDITION to your voice plan.  That’s $720 over the two years of your contract.  That’s why I-Phones and Blackberry’s are so cheap.  Those devices cost $300+ to manufacture, but are sold for $49-199 because you’re committing to the two years and $720, and it gets you hooked on a smart phone for life.

That said smart phones can be terrific value.  If you do alot of email, a Blackberry from Verizon is a terrific productivity tool.  You can be “in the office” and online wherever/whenever you need to be. 

There’s three key elements to a smart phone:  email, synchronizing to your desktop/laptop Outlook, and the internet.  Email means managing multiple email accounts and many messages in the day.  You can still view and receive all your messages on your desktop when you get home, but with a Blackberry you can get rid of many of them before you do get home.  Synchronizing your Outlook allows you to see and manage calendar appointment, tasks and contacts on the go, while synchronizing all that back to your desktop at night.  The Internet on the go is quite handy, but remember that no matter what you do, that screen is pretty small compared to your desktop/laptop at home.

Feel free to stop by the store for an in depth discussion about smart phones, regardless of what carrier you’re looking into.  We usually have a working Blackberry here in the store you can try out to see for yourself.  If you’re interested in web browsing in particular, try out some of your favorite sites before you buy that phone.

It’s not widely publicized, but Verizon has an overseas loaner program if you need to take your phone with you on your overseas trip.  If you call 800 711 8300 you can arrange for them to send you a loaner ahead of your trip.  You’ll activate that phone as your Verizon phone before you go.  Then while overseas your local phone number will follow you wherever you go.  The voice rates are somewhere between $.69 and $1.29 per minute – typical international roaming fees no matter whose phone you have.  For a full list of prices go to www.verizonwireless.com/goglobal   

When you return from your trip you’ll switch your phone back to your own, then ship the loaner back in the prepaid box.  The switching is done by calling Verizon.  The charge for the phone is typically just the $9.95 for the shipping.

So don’t be burdened by a clunky “global” (re AT&T) phone around here just for the occasional overseas trip.  Verizon’s loaner program works great for that occasional trip.

For anyone that bought their Verizon phone from us at SMART Phone and Photo, we’ll help you get your device switched back & forth and move your contacts to the loaner phone for free.

If you’re going to collect and organize your photos digitally, there’s a couple of ways to organize them.  You can put them in folders but then you must decide if the folders will be named by date (”2009″ with “Jan” “Feb” etc underneath that) or by topic (child name, activity etc.).  This can also be a problem if you move one of the photos out of its folder, by itself it isn’t searchable.

A better way is to rename the files.  If you right click on a photo file in Windows, “rename” comes up as an option.  If you have a photo of a family member, Aunt Ethel, from 1948, at the house in San Francisco, you could rename it:  “1948_AuntEthel_family_SanFrancisco”  That way it’s searchable by ANY of those names.  Note that in Windows you can use names with spaces in them, BUT beware that if you ever put a photo on the web it’s going to work alot better if there are NO spaces.  So use _ or no space at all is that recommendation.

If you give a group of photos all the same name as a “rename” Windows will number them consecutively with the same name.  The FIRST photo though will be a blank number, the second photo will be “1″ and so on – a bit counterintuitive but still a good way to go overall.

Stop by the store and we can show you how this works, it makes a big difference to organize your photos this way.

Any photo or document that can be scanned can be restored.  The original will generally be given back to you on the spot.  The restoration work is done with Photoshop typically.  There’s a number of examples on the website of “before” and “afters.” 

It’s possible to “fix” a photo that’s been torn in half.  It’s possible to fix badly faded photos.  And generally it’s possible to rebuild missing body parts in photos.  Also you can colorize and old black and white – in this case you need to provide hair, clothes and eye color.

Pricing is $34.95 typically.  Stop by the store and we can discuss in more detail and show you some examples.

Most digital cameras today, including some Digital SLRs even, have a video mode.  These generally take decent videos at medium quality resolution.  It’s not going to be the quality of that old camcorder you never use anymore.  But it can be taken with that small camera in your pocket – a good trade off.

Note that digital video files are HUGE files though.  So if you have a 1 GB memory card in your camera, that’s ALOT of photos, but not that much video.

My suggestion is to use these video capabilities to take 5-10 second clips with photos before and after.  So if you visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, take alot of photos, but then work in some video clips on the roller coaster and such, to give some multimedia context to your trip.

The bigger question is:  what to do with those video clips afterwards.  That’s the next, broader discussion.

Stop by the store and give us your perspective on camera videos.  Or stop by and we’ll show you how your video works and how to use it.  We also have a selection of large capacity memory cards you can purchase for those big files.